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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Admits Messing With The_Donald Politics Subreddit Comments Following Pizzagate Ban

By Tony Smejek
Published on: 15:12 PST, Nov 24, 2016

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was pretty busy this week. Following the Pizzagate subreddit ban came a reaction from the The_Donald subreddit community. With each comment they produced they made sure that Huffman received a notification via the “u/spez” command which was proceeded by “f**k u” so that it read, “f**k u/spez.” The latter half of the comment was Huffman’s Reddit nickname, according to Business Insider.

To highlight the Reddit Pizzagate ban, users of that subreddit had falsely accused the Comic Ping Pong pizza business of being a part of a child abuse ring that somehow involved Mrs. Hillary Clinton. Of course, false news articles have been spawning all over social media and particularly Reddit where it really propagated, according to the New York Times. Word got back to the owner that people had taken to social media outlets to threaten employees.

This resulted in Reddit admins banning /r/pizzagate and leaving up a message saying, “We don’t want witch hunts on our sites.” This triggered a reaction from the The_Donald subreddit community which wound up with further action taken by the Reddit CEO himself.

Come Wednesday the commenters noticed a change. The same comments were redirected towards the Trump subreddit moderators. As it turned out, this was an hour-long retaliatory action made by Huffman and admittedly so.

“Hey Everyone,

Yep. I messed with the “f**k u/spez ” comments, replacing “spez” with r/the_donald mods for about an hour. It’s been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff. As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly. As the CEO, I shouldn’t play such games, and it’s all fixed now. Our community team is pretty p**sed at me, so I most assuredly won’t do this again.

F**k u/spez.”

Since the Reddit CEO’s admission, The_Donald subreddit now has taken to making accusatory posts in the direction of Steve Huffman. They also questioned that there could be a possibility that this isn’t the first time altered posts were made by the man behind the curtain and questioned the credibility of the site altogether and figured Huffman’s actions were a concern.

Reddit user homefree122 expressed the situation concerning how the powers that be could put words in his mouth by bringing “forth serious social damage” to the account holder.

“If the admins continue to shadow edit, they could surreptitiously cause serious social damage to your account without you even knowing. Imagine all of the awful things they could pretty much make you say. This is not right. It has gone too far. Manipulating the words of your users is f**ked.”

Reddit users figured the CEO or anyone who is behind the controls could edit dialogue they did not like. This isn’t the first time officials had banned subreddits, and now The_Donald users figure that this course of action is “laying the groundwork for a crackdown.”

This isn’t the first time Reddit postings of a controversial nature had taken place with a Reddit CEO. Last year, former interim CEO Ellen Pao stepped down from her position. This action was in result of the reaction she had received in firing an adored employee, Victoria Taylor, according to Business Insider.

Since strength is in numbers, this firing resulted in a response from 265 Reddit communities in “turning off in solidarity.” It was named the “Reddit Revolt.”

Although there’s been cyber turmoil and drama anywhere online, Reddit seems to be significant in having an impact on the real world. Hopefully, this incident with the Reddit CEO shall pass like any other online incident.

[Featured Image by Gil C/Shutterstock]

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