• wwiehtnioj [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    In those days a subreddit owner could add any arbitrary user as a mod and you couldn't decline or opt out. What is important though is that reddit were well aware of jailbait for a long time and looked the other way until it started getting them backlash on mainstream tv.

    • underisk [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      As the admin in charge, he could have manually removed himself at any time. Much like he manually edited comments of other users.

    • pooh [she/her, love/loves]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      The top mod of that sub was also given a custom "Pimp Daddy" award by reddit. So that combined with spez being listed as a mod makes me think this absolutely was something he was in on. That same top mod who got the award also modded /r/creepshots and a bunch of other problematic subreddits.

      • wwiehtnioj [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        He was in on it in the sense that he knew what was going on and more than looking the other way was happy to encourage it for the traffic it brought. I don't believe that he was doing the internet janitor work of being a mod nor was it particularly significant to be listed as a mod.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Pretty much yeah. The Reddit admins just let some crazy guy that got exposed by CNN moderate all the forums that no one else wanted to, and washed their hands of it. In fact, they even gave the moderator official Reddit awards for moderating the deeply disturbing content. I linked the CNN interview elsewhere in the thread.

        I actually do not understand how Reddit has survived for so long.

          • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            The only person I feel sorry for in that story is his disabled wife to be honest. And obviously all the innocent kid victims.

            Yeah I've been on Reddit since I got internet access back in 2012. I quickly learnt to only use it for tech advice and avoid everything else back then.

              • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                I wonder how much longer sports subs will remain at all appealing. Some team subs are OK, but a lot suck (super negative/dumb comments at every turn) and even the league subs have problems with declining content quality.

          • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Honestly sometimes I'll randomly think about the whole 'i_r*pe_cats april fools day' drama, which was probably the real first :reddit-logo: drama I remember seeing. anyways I should be put down because that was like 13 years ago and even then I was like 'wow reddit is a shitty site i'm going back to the invisionfree forum (rip) i used to shitpost on'

          • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I've technically started using Reddit in 2010, but it was mostly to look at rage comics lol. I only remember the major drama that everybody remembers (/r/jailbait, the fappening, "we did it Reddit!", /r/politics filled with Ron Paul spam in 2012, people shitting on Ellen Pao after FPH got banned).

    • AernaLingus [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I seem to remember Snoop Dogg being made moderator of a whole bunch of subreddits

    • Socialcreditscorr [they/them,she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      In those days a subreddit owner could add any arbitrary user as a mod and you couldn’t decline or opt out.

      As the owner of reddit that would still entirely be his choice. He was fine with it full stop.