So far Spez’s legacy includes, in no particular order:
Changing other peoples’ comments
Starting a war with the 3rd party app devs who made reddit the easily accessible platform it is (browsing reddit on the toilet wasn’t nearly as common before the first apps came out, and all of the first ones were 3rd party)
Being a moderator on the jailbait subreddit, a community for sharing sexually suggestive pictures of underage teenage girls
Forcing new moderation teams on communities whose moderation he didn’t agree with
Straight up lying about the 3rd party apps and their developers every step of the way
Way to go, Steve Huffman! You had a community of volunteers build your platform for you and now you’re taking it all away from them. I’m sure this won’t backfire.
The statement from r/watchredditdie when they closed the sub really put things in perspective for me.
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian have gone so far as to renege on their promise of listing Aaron Swartz among Reddit, Inc’s founders. Such an egregious breach of contract - only performed once their agreed-upon co-founder no longer walked the earth - could only be carried out by immoral individuals acting in fundamental bad faith. In this way and so many others, Reddit is dead.
spez is also a doomsday prepper who dreams about living as some sort of lord in a post-apocalyptic feudal society
“Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
I have spent a lot of time with very rich people over the years for work and they will certainly bite it incredibly early in the apocalypse. If someone is born into wealth, they are almost always fundamentally inept in basic ways. The longer someone stays rich, the more inept and abstracted from the world they become. They are entirely ensconced in a bubble of their own making. Money opens so many doors and protects them from so many just basic consequences of living that they entirely forget that those obstacles exist.
They are also just constantly, constantly being glad-handed and yessir’ed into an excessive amount of confidence. They know it too, but they can’t really trust anyone so they just make friends with people who they know would steal the wallet off their corpse but happen to be nicer about it than the other ones who would also do it because they have nowhere else to turn. Other rich people aren’t trustworthy to them either because they are only either more or less rich, above or below them.
It’ll go down pretty much how it did in the last third of the movie Triangle of Sadness. They are building bunkers that their handlers and others will actually live in. Not to mention that anyone that knows they were a potential engineer, actively or passively, of the downfall of man will have someone to take it out on right in front of them.
He has mistaken having a lot of money for having leadership talent or any useful skill that would be valuable in a situation where infrastructure has completely collapsed and fiat currency is worthless. He is not physically strong, he doesn’t inspire people to follow him, he doesn’t know how to find and prepare food, how to source water, how to build shelter, how to make fire…
He knows nothing at all that would make him useful as anything beyond “that guy who digs graves” until he eventually dies from the physical exertion that his candy ass has never actually had to deal with.
Pff, as if they’d risk getting banned from the former front page of the internet! Cuz, ya know, that’ll still be super relevant in a post-apocalyptic scenario… 🙃
The statement from r/watchredditdie when they closed the sub really put things in perspective for me.
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian have gone so far as to renege on their promise of listing Aaron Swartz among Reddit, Inc’s founders. Such an egregious breach of contract - only performed once their agreed-upon co-founder no longer walked the earth - could only be carried out by immoral individuals acting in fundamental bad faith. In this way and so many others, Reddit is dead.
Is your comment threatening him? Why are you blackmailing him, man? How is he going to work together with you now that you’ve so aggressively threatened him?
Why is your comment so badly coded? I can’t help you optimize your comment, Google didn’t help me write mine.
At the time, there was a lot of popular sentiment, on reddit itself, that the internet should be free and it should allowed to continue so long as it was legal.
He actually moderated jailbait? I always assumed he was the type of person to have an alt for it, but to actually use his real account? What a scumbag.
He was forcefully added as a mod on the subreddit. Reddit used to have a system which allowed you to make someone mod without requiring them to accept.
While it’s certainly better than actively moderating a community…
Is being the admin of a website that actively hosts jailbait and required a massive media outrage to finally remove it that much better? I get free speech and all, but I mean, the subreddit straight up catalogued which pictures were “fap material” and encouraged people (including parents) to take candid photos of the children around them.
A community like that wouldn’t last a millisecond in a server I host.
It’s not like it was a small sub either, IIRC. I’m not going to google jailbait to find the stories, but it must’ve been a few hundred thousand subscribers I think. At a time when the big subs had a few mill at most.
Even though it was ethically very bad, it was legal. And Reddit had a policy of not removing content, unless it was illegal or doxxing.
The fact is that they wanted to follow the same principles as the government, and allow complete freedom of speech. And if you are following freedom of speech, the ethicality of content is irrelevant.
Reddit never approved of r/jailbait. They simply allowed it.
When people add you as a mod, you can still leave. He never did. That subreddit in particular was known to have the blessing of the reddit admins to operate and eventually made ‘subreddit of the month’. Then a news org picked up that reddit was hosting this content and then they shut it down.
They were well aware of what was going on. Andrewsmith is right, there is some plausible deniability there, but with the everything else we know about Steve Huffman, I’m not so sure I can agree with his assessment that it was forced upon him.
He let Ghislain Maxwell mod a bunch of subs until she eventually went to jail. It was common knowledge that its was her account but no problem from the pedo reddit admins
It was never proven that the account was hers and it was literally just users automatically claiming that account was Ghislaine Maxwell because that account stopped posting around the same time she got arrested. Nothing bugs me more than that myth being parroted as if it was proven fact.
Yeah he changed one comment saying: “Fuck u/spez” by replacing “spez” with one of the r/the_donald mods. This was also done silently so no * to indicate the comment had been edited.
Yes. I believe it was people on the donald subreddit, which could be seen as funny, because most sane people (myself included) don’t agree with them politically, but it’s still a huge misuse of admin powers and proof that he has no integrity. Can’t let other peoples’ rights be violated if we want to keep our own.
So far Spez’s legacy includes, in no particular order:
Way to go, Steve Huffman! You had a community of volunteers build your platform for you and now you’re taking it all away from them. I’m sure this won’t backfire.
I posted this previously elsewhere.
The statement from r/watchredditdie when they closed the sub really put things in perspective for me.
Never even heard about this. Why haven’t they been sued by the surviving family members or some pro-bono representative?
spez is also a doomsday prepper who dreams about living as some sort of lord in a post-apocalyptic feudal society
https://archive.today/20220703182824/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich#selection-901.0-905.391
I have spent a lot of time with very rich people over the years for work and they will certainly bite it incredibly early in the apocalypse. If someone is born into wealth, they are almost always fundamentally inept in basic ways. The longer someone stays rich, the more inept and abstracted from the world they become. They are entirely ensconced in a bubble of their own making. Money opens so many doors and protects them from so many just basic consequences of living that they entirely forget that those obstacles exist.
They are also just constantly, constantly being glad-handed and yessir’ed into an excessive amount of confidence. They know it too, but they can’t really trust anyone so they just make friends with people who they know would steal the wallet off their corpse but happen to be nicer about it than the other ones who would also do it because they have nowhere else to turn. Other rich people aren’t trustworthy to them either because they are only either more or less rich, above or below them.
It’ll go down pretty much how it did in the last third of the movie Triangle of Sadness. They are building bunkers that their handlers and others will actually live in. Not to mention that anyone that knows they were a potential engineer, actively or passively, of the downfall of man will have someone to take it out on right in front of them.
Bill Murray would probably survive. Saw it in a movie.
I agree with most of this. Also mew movie in my cue.
In a post-apocalyptic world? That skinny nerd (not to be meant as a slur, I myself am a nerd)?
Yeah I sorta doubt that. He’d need to 1) not be an asshat and 2) have a fair bit more physical size, strength and fighting ability
I wonder if this assclown realizes that his fortune will be worth fuck-all if society collapses, and with it goes his power.
" I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader." No steve, it’s 100% egotistical.
Spez looks and acts like a pussy that would be under someone boot 15 second after shit hits the fan. Boy is a walking fake confidence.
I think he’s overestimating his power and abilities. More likely scenario is the other survivors try to recreate that scene from Deliverance with him.
Of course he’s overestimating about himself, he’s a narcissist
He has mistaken having a lot of money for having leadership talent or any useful skill that would be valuable in a situation where infrastructure has completely collapsed and fiat currency is worthless. He is not physically strong, he doesn’t inspire people to follow him, he doesn’t know how to find and prepare food, how to source water, how to build shelter, how to make fire…
He knows nothing at all that would make him useful as anything beyond “that guy who digs graves” until he eventually dies from the physical exertion that his candy ass has never actually had to deal with.
He strikes me as one of those clowns who buys a ton of bitcoin as their prep.
That’s going to be hilarious when the actual warlords stop by and kick in his door.
Pff, as if they’d risk getting banned from the
formerfront page of the internet! Cuz, ya know, that’ll still be super relevant in a post-apocalyptic scenario… 🙃this guy is such a loser
Lmao does he even know how to chop firewood?
C’mon, he’s a ‘leader’, he can just have his
slavesfollowers do itI posted this previously elsewhere.
The statement from r/watchredditdie when they closed the sub really put things in perspective for me.
Is your comment threatening him? Why are you blackmailing him, man? How is he going to work together with you now that you’ve so aggressively threatened him?
Why is your comment so badly coded? I can’t help you optimize your comment, Google didn’t help me write mine.
This one is a lie, he was added as a moderator by another mod, at a time when anyone could do so. Lets please stop spreading this.
Maybe he did not moderate it actively, but it was allowed to continue and even promoted by reddit until media got a whiff of it.
At the time, there was a lot of popular sentiment, on reddit itself, that the internet should be free and it should allowed to continue so long as it was legal.
No one is forcing you to apologize for pedophiles on reddit
He actually moderated jailbait? I always assumed he was the type of person to have an alt for it, but to actually use his real account? What a scumbag.
He was briefly added without his knowledge. He removed himself after he noticed.
WAIT. Spez was a mod on fucking r/jailbait??? WHAT???
Yea this will kill Reddit. Maybe not right away but soon.
I mean, look at what it’s taking to kill twitter and influencers are still all over it.
Because it’s actually not the same thing, “Twitter” = “influencers”. Without celebrities, Twitter simply dies. The same cannot be said about Reddit.
Wow I didn’t know he ran r/jailbait. Gross.
He was forcefully added as a mod on the subreddit. Reddit used to have a system which allowed you to make someone mod without requiring them to accept.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/1477psa/comment/jnuy0xf/
While it’s certainly better than actively moderating a community…
Is being the admin of a website that actively hosts jailbait and required a massive media outrage to finally remove it that much better? I get free speech and all, but I mean, the subreddit straight up catalogued which pictures were “fap material” and encouraged people (including parents) to take candid photos of the children around them.
A community like that wouldn’t last a millisecond in a server I host.
It’s not like it was a small sub either, IIRC. I’m not going to google jailbait to find the stories, but it must’ve been a few hundred thousand subscribers I think. At a time when the big subs had a few mill at most.
Even though it was ethically very bad, it was legal. And Reddit had a policy of not removing content, unless it was illegal or doxxing.
The fact is that they wanted to follow the same principles as the government, and allow complete freedom of speech. And if you are following freedom of speech, the ethicality of content is irrelevant.
Reddit never approved of r/jailbait. They simply allowed it.
When people add you as a mod, you can still leave. He never did. That subreddit in particular was known to have the blessing of the reddit admins to operate and eventually made ‘subreddit of the month’. Then a news org picked up that reddit was hosting this content and then they shut it down.
They were well aware of what was going on. Andrewsmith is right, there is some plausible deniability there, but with the everything else we know about Steve Huffman, I’m not so sure I can agree with his assessment that it was forced upon him.
As he often is. That guy knows more about Reddit than Huffman does. Hope he moves to Lemmy.
He let Ghislain Maxwell mod a bunch of subs until she eventually went to jail. It was common knowledge that its was her account but no problem from the pedo reddit admins
It was never proven that the account was hers and it was literally just users automatically claiming that account was Ghislaine Maxwell because that account stopped posting around the same time she got arrested. Nothing bugs me more than that myth being parroted as if it was proven fact.
U/maxwellhill was a monster‽ Say it isn’t so…how could he have known…FUCK spez
Ahhh, ty. It did seem even worse than expected for him to have been actively running that sub.
Forced promotion
He did not
Wait the guy changed someone’s comment?
Yeah he changed one comment saying: “Fuck u/spez” by replacing “spez” with one of the r/the_donald mods. This was also done silently so no * to indicate the comment had been edited.
Yes. I believe it was people on the donald subreddit, which could be seen as funny, because most sane people (myself included) don’t agree with them politically, but it’s still a huge misuse of admin powers and proof that he has no integrity. Can’t let other peoples’ rights be violated if we want to keep our own.
Yeah, he got busted for it and wrote a half asked apology claiming he would change. Claimed he was just trolling…
Fuck u/spez
Fuck u/spez
Yes, its even listed on the Wiki page for reddit under 2016 controversies
Has it been removed? Seems to jump from him becoming CEO to the banning of loli?
Further down the page under “Other Controversies”
Further down the page under “Other Controversies”