It has been confirmed that due to his inability to handle verbal slurs, Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman (u/spez username) has confessed to modifying some posts in “The_Donald subreddit” which is the most popular forum on Reddit for discussing Donald Trump. Just to get an idea on the scale of the forum, there are roughly 301k people subscribed to that subreddit, with many more surely lurking on it daily.
In his statement, Huffman says:
“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 pissed at me, so I most assuredly won’t do this again.
This comes on the heels of the recent ban of the “Pizzagate” subreddit, which was the epicenter of the current investigation on PizzaGate, but had also leaked over into The Donald subreddit, as many viewers on both forums share similar concerns.
Upset about the ban of Pizzagate, many users rightfully voiced their concerns in The Donald subreddit and lashed out at Mr. Huffman (u/spez), often commenting on the posts “F**k u/spez.” The problem was that on Wednesday afternoon, the day after the Pizzagate subreddit was banned, many users of The Donald noticed that their comments and posts had changed without their knowledge or consent.
Reddit users immediately accused the moderators of The Donald subreddit of censoring posts, but it was soon found out that it wasn’t the moderators doing the censoring. Instead, it was Steve Huffman himself who was changing comments directly. While that is not illegal to do, as he is the CEO of Reddit which is a privately owned company, it has rubbed many users the wrong way and made many question the legitimacy of free speech on Reddit. With past controversies hinting at political correctness and censorship, and the CEOs recent and blatant violation of users’ trust, people are truly beginning to question whether Reddit has been compromised.
What’s interesting to note is that this crackdown on The Donald subreddit coincides directly with the ban on the Pizzagate subreddit, the censoring of other social media platforms, and the propaganda campaign against fake news. The administrators of Reddit are even discussing the possibility of The Donald subreddit being banned as well, which is sure to cause a massive wave in the Reddit community. It seems clear that all the truth spilling out lately is really starting to strike a nerve with the current establishment; and instead of competing against us with quality tactics and data, they are trying to censor and control the flow of information.
While this may work in the short-term, it is becoming clear that in the Age of Information, the truth will not be silent anymore. People are starving for the truth and unless they want to shut down the Internet in its entirety, they better come around to the realities of the new paradigm. The people will no longer be silent and the masses will move to different platforms if the censorship continues to ensue.
Everyone out there, stay vigilant and keep pursuing the truth. We have never been so close to bringing about real wholesale change, so it would be a shame if we stopped now.
Sources: https://sli.mg/a/zxwjZh, https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admins_are_suffering_from_low_energy_have/, https://www.reddit.com/user/spez
Thanks. There’s more and more smoke associated with pizzagate story. Let’s all keep up the investigation until the full truth is known by all.