Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him

Yeah - but imagine that Paul Graham w HN for example disagreed with your position.

Let's say that instead of allowing you to express this last comment - he used his admin privileges and made your comment PRO trump.

Do you see the difference? Having a strong opposing - even annoying - demanding - opinion is not the same as impersonating others and censoring their words.

HUGE HUGE DIFFERENCE

Does that make sense?

It does make sense... however my point is that the next president of the United States talking about manipulating media is much bigger deal than someone changing my comments on a site. Both are bad... one is much worse.

I agree it's bad, but it's almost assumed. In your opinion - did past presidents like Obama or Bush "manipulate media"?

I think all presidents have and will.

I would love to keep the naivety that CEO's of social media sites don't censor opposing views.

Suspecting that they do and having proof... are two different things in my book!

I think we can agree to disagree on which is worse.

The next president is making a bunch of public actions that will be critiqued, audited, and probably checked / balanced as the government was set up to do. The CEO of reddit is SECRETLY tampering / modifying the "speech" and content of private citizens without any checks, balances, or even repercussions (so far).

I'd also argue that reddit has a more direct engagement model with private citizens that makes this hit closer to home (i.e. if we actually were real-life friends, or internet buddies for years, and one of our messages/comments to each other was modified that could cause far more direct impact — e.g. "you" convince me to commit a crime because you have my trust as a "personal" friend)

I'm honestly surprised he publicly admitted to it at all, and I'd further be shocked if he doesn't end up stepping down because of this incident.

No, let's instead say that you and all your pals were spamming "fuck pg" in a "pg is a pedo" thread you made, and he changed your comments to instead say "fuck gamechangr". That would be pretty funny. And also a HUGE HUGE DIFFERENCE from "changing your political messaging to be for what it was supposed to be against".

This is what I think is being lost on people.

People are getting too tied up in what this "potential power" and "loss of integrity" means.

In reality is it means nothing. There never has been and never should be a guarantee or even an assumption of integrity of comments posted on the internet unless they are cryptographically signed.

He trolled some trolls for the lulz. It was a bad idea, hopefully he just drops the banhammer on all of them next time. Hell, ban the entire subreddit while you are at it for excessive harassment and be done with it.

Except Trump is doing it secretly. Many of the banned press members don't find out until they try to enter a press conference. We only know about it because they come out and say "Trumps security officials blocked me from entering". It's not like there is a list of who is allowed and who is not that is publically available.

I guess my true point is the hypocrisy of T_D users complaining about spez's actions when the man they are so fond of is doing the same. Except he's the president.

Maybe...but that's soo besides the point. Plenty of presidents do that - maybe all?

This is not a partisan issue??? It's not the "T_D users complaining" that put it all over HN's.

It's unacceptable for CEO's of social media companies to impersonate users. EVER > EVER > EVER.

He could have deleted or changed the comments and posted a note and most of the outrage would go away, but he didn't. He impersonated and censored users comments. Such a slippery slope.