Long ago in internet lore there was a mass migration of users from Digg to Reddit. Most people say good riddance. Digg (though still alive today) engineered its own fall from prominence by ignoring user votes and instead placing paid content on the front page. But one former Digg employee (now at Gizmodo) still appears salty about it, and wrote an hit piece article about how terrible Redditors are.
Bryan Menegus, despite working at Digg long after the migration, seems to hold a deep resentment for Reddit and the people who use the site. In his article, “These Are the 10 Most Hated Reddit Posts of All Time,” he takes Reddit controversies out of context to make the site’s users look like bigots when really, the issue at hand was free speech.
The first post relates to the Zoe Quinn/Gamergate controversy. The mods at r/gaming made a post reminding people that doxxing (or releasing someone’s personal information online) is never okay. In response the post was downvoted into oblivion. Out of context it makes Redditors look like a bunch of jerks, and the author makes no attempt to add any context.
In reality, Redditors were mad at the mods for mass deleting comments about the controversy and poorly communicating their actions with the users. Then the mods responded with a condescending post telling people something they already know, that online harassment is bad and should not be done. So of course there was a backlash.
The aftermath of the Orlando shooting caused another controversy in r/news. The moderators locked all discussion threads during the shooting and for hours after. The mods handled the situation incredibly poorly. While they first locked the threads for “hate speech,” they quickly began deleting any comment criticizing them of the censorship. The author conveniently leaves that last bit out.
Another incident mentioned was the mods in r/cringe writing a post about how they will ban people on first offense over breaking certain rules. The Gizmodo writer acted like the community was pissed they couldn’t post videos making fun of minors and handicapped people anymore. In reality, it’s because the mods of r/cringe have and continue to be ban-happy and the sub has suffered for it. Over time the rules have gotten so restrictive that there is not a healthy cycle of fresh content on the sub.
The point of the article is to develop a pattern showing that Redditors are terrible for fighting with the mods about censorship.
“What about any of that is even remotely encroaching on your freedom, my dudes?” he writes.
Most subreddits are in a constant standoff between the mods and the user base. Mods seek to restrict the sub and form it in their own image. The libertarian-minded users almost always are on the side of free speech. Redditors aren’t bigoted, they just want to say what they want without some power hungry twerp telling them not to.
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