Reddit banning users for sharing Julie Bindel article

Apparently there's something about it in The Times today. US media need to wake up.

Oh and it actually resulted in the CEO coming out and personally announcing the firing of this person all while they're trying to prepare for an IPO.

And yet tumbleweed...

Can we also talk about how not one mainstream outlet has covered the Reddit thing? Metro and the Verge. That's it.

This story is HUGE. Over 200 subreddits went private. A significant number have over 1 million members. The Music one alone has 27 million and yet somehow The NYT's super woke tech reporter has missed this story? Shocking.

You would, Errol, but what we would we know? We're just silly old mummies whose brains have been surgically removed with the placenta.

I'm not an expert on safeguarding, but I know we have many here. Isn't the saying 'there can't be any protected castes'?

I hope Reddit follows through and looks very carefully now at who they have moderating groups for children and teenagers, and other vulnerable groups. Common sense dictates that people applying for those positions should be vetted with great care.

You'd have thought that would be a basic rule, wouldn't you?

Good analogy. I wouldn't want to move to a model where all MPs have to be graduates, but when I am looking at a list of people I could vote for, I always want to know something about their education, qualifications, work experience, life experience. If I see a candidate who appears to have next to nothing in any of those areas, I would discount them. Leaving aside everything else we've learned about AC, someone as young as that would need to be an absolutely exceptional person to justify being appointed to the kind of roles AC has had.

Malala, for example. She rose to global prominence because of what happened to her in Pakistan, but she's clearly extremely bright and hard-working, and highly articulate.

To put it in perspective, consider William Hague. I expect we've all seen that speech where he addressed the Conservative party conference at 16 years old.

Regardless of whether you agreed with his politics (I don't!), he was evidently passionate about politics, and confident. Checking wikipedia, he became the Conservative Party's then-youngest MP after being assigned a safe seat at the age of approximately 29. Then it was a meteoric rise to becoming conservative party leader at 36.

He obviously always aspired to be an MP, but he was obliged to go to university and do student politics first, wasn't he? The eighties were a different time, but I don't think the Tories today would tell a modern day teenage William Hague that he could go straight into politics with them.

FWIW, I do feel there was an excessive generalisation in what I was quoting. It was hyperbolic.

But the problem is that what we're fighting is an excessive generalisation IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. This belief that being under this "umbrella" makes you somehow unquestionable - any questioning or pointing out problems is from evil bigots.

The rule is:

Sweeping negative generalisations about any group, including trans people and gender-critical feminists, won’t be tolerated.

But why should sweeping positive generalisations be permitted? They are the root of the AC problem.

Delirium, Aimee’s been on here.

Indeed my claim to fame is that I was once quoted on Aimee’s Twitter profile. Something about being influential.

I doubt however, that Justine is about to hire them. Or Aimee about to apply. Not high profile enough, I suspect.

The editing is interesting. On reddit comments can be deleted by mods. But deleted comments can be fished out by tools such as removeddit. The only way to prevent this is to edit the comment first and then delete it. And that can't be done by automodding. This was the first time I've ever seen admins editing comments before deletion.

How many more people with publically admitted unsavoury fantasies are on there running or moderating subs for children and young people? Are they going to check mods?

Very, very many. The mod lists for subreddits geared towards very young LGBT or trans people are... worrisome.

I did not know this was going on until seen on here as an adhoc, rather than regular reddit user, however after googling Aimme Challenor I am gob smacked that reddit have employed then. Their father was a peado who raped and tortured a 10 year old, which they knew about but still employed him. They have been removed from several political roles due to their/their husbands peadophillic posts from their SM platforms. Even Stonewall, who are currently one of the most controversial organisations dissociated from them. I hope reddit becomes non existent after this

All very odd. My money would be on a combination of wanting to tick the woke box and also wanting to appeal to younger voters, combined with complacency that older voters with established loyalties to a party would continue working for/supporting/voting for them anyway.

That latter point isn't working out very well. I'd be interested in stats on party membership changes in recent years for the Greens, LibDems and Labour. Possibly also the SNP. The last general election showed that lifelong Labour voters can change their loyalties when they are riled enough. I don't have any sense that Labour has really taken that on board yet.

I hope Reddit follows through and looks very carefully now at who they have moderating groups for children and teenagers, and other vulnerable groups. Common sense dictates that people applying for those positions should be vetted with great care. Surely there must be some parents looking at all of this with horror and realising that unsupervised use of Reddit could be harmful to their impressionable kids. I have no idea how Reddit makes money but if enough users pull out surely it must affect the bottom line?

Reddits actions:

Immediately delete and forbid any mention of admins name

Industrial scale censorship

They knew

Aimee becomes a sacrifice to appease

How many more people with publically admitted unsavoury fantasies are on there running or moderating subs for children and young people? Are they going to check mods?

I know nothing about reddit but this affair isn't exactly filling me with confidence in their standards or intent

I’ve got a fair idea which sentence doomed necessary’s post to oblivion...I wonder if a more bowdlerised version would survive?

Yes, me too, I hesitated on that, and decided to go for it. Feel free to try, someone else, if you agree the gist of the post is worth seeing. Don't want to push my luck.

Lots of people on that thread not buying what Reddit’s selling. They’re still pushing the “accidental automod” line even though there’s evidence of editing of people’s comments and also people were getting comments removed that didn’t have any direct references.

Agree it’s very weird that Challenor has had a very quick rise to prominence at a young age - I don’t want to get all tin foil hat but it is very... odd. Is it just lazy companies/organisations wanting to tick the woke box?

No they're not going to get a big job for a while, unless they namechange.

Thinking about it, reddit are probably treading carefully in their announcement because they've seen this person react to all this. They are probably seen as a suicide risk right now.

Seeing thousands of posts chanting names could be hard for the sturdiest of characters, let alone someone who has probably been fucked up since birth by their parents. AC is the latest in a long line of people who is both damaged and damaging.

I think you’re right about Twitter.

They definitely knew.

I’ve got a fair idea which sentence doomed necessary’s post to oblivion...I wonder if a more bowdlerised version would survive?

instead of using Google when the first complaints about Reddit employing Challenor came in, they instead, doubled down and deleted anyone and anything mentioning Challenor's name.

They KNEW of Challenor's background yet were quite happy to ignore it until the pushback became too much for anyone to ignore and the press had picked up the story. Insane!

This is exactly what I can't get my head around.

Even Challenor being trans and thus adding a diversity element does not explain how someone so publicly toxic keeps failing upwards into ever more influential organisations. What the fuck is going on.

Publicly toxic, extremely young, autistic, and lacking self-awareness to hide even the most unpalatable.. er, hobbies. And still, two political parties, Stonewall, and one of the world's most influential social media platforms wanted Challenor.

I mean, try to get into those positions as a barely out of your teens regular garden variety enthusiastic young woman. There'd be no chance.

Is it "ooh, we need a trans person for diversity's sake, let's hire the first one that comes along"? Or is Challenor well connected? Boggles the mind.

Well, there's some extra details on that drEm thread that I wish I didn't know

Weird, I was logged out of mn and had to log in to post that.