Reddit CEO Admits To Editing User Comments Amid Pizzagate Malarkey (cnet.com) 254
Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, today admitted to editing several comments that criticized him on the site. He made the admission on Reddit, where he posts under the username Spez. CNET adds: Huffman got a lot of flak from members of the The_Donald, a subreddit for supporters of President-elect Donald Trump, after Reddit banned the Pizzagate subreddit. Pizzagate was dedicated to a debunked conspiracy theory linking Hillary Clinton to a paedophile ring. In response, he edited comments reading "fuck Spez" to instead be directed at moderators of the The_Donald subreddit. "I messed with the "fuck 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," he wrote. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly." Huffman added: "Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again."
Debunked? (Score:4, Insightful)
Debunked by who?
Re: Debunked? (Score:5, Funny)
Well by Snopes of course! The obviously Non-Partisan fact checkers of the world who would NEVER lie for The Clintons.
Re: Debunked? (Score:5, Funny)
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I LIKE CMDRTACO
TIMOTHY NEVER POSTED TERRIBLE STORIES
Apparently that's too much caps to post. Even admins can't post with caps.
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Debunked by who?
Wrong question. If there's no evidence then it's automatically debunked.
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> there's no evidence
but #pizzagate is collecting exactly that
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they would say "It's not a witch hunt when there are actual witches involved"
That makes no sense. If I go rabbit hunting, is it not a rabbit hunt if there are actual rabbits involved?
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How do you even ...
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Eben Emael? Where half a million Belgians *in a fort* surrendered to a German marching band and a dog, without firing a shot?
Proven correct, not debunked. (Score:2)
exactly what, a collection of gullible idiots
Which refers to the people that believe NYT's non-dismissal.
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I have to say the picture if the picture of the suspects in the Madeleine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] disappearance are any where near accurate and the Podesto brothers were there, than they have some serious explaining to do, as would those in the US State Department who possibly covered up their presence (lets be honest, their taste in artwork is seriously questionable and would be a red flag for any police department, there is a limit and a headless body in gold matching one the Dahmer victim photo
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That depends on what a person is claiming. Is there evidence that could lead to criminal charges? I haven't seen that and I haven't seen people claiming there is. I'm sure someone probably wrote something somewhere by now, but after as much as I've read, it can't be anybody important.
But if you're asking why people are upset about this, it's because they've found some very weird and disturbing crap. If you click, don't say I didn't warn you!
WARNING: NSFW / DISTURBING CONTENT: http://vigilantcitizen.com [vigilantcitizen.com]
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NSFW / DISTURBING CONTENT
As someone that fired up a VPN just to browse that I'm very underwhelmed.
Is this part of 'trigger society'? I've seen worse stuff linked from Slashdot without a warning. If you're over 30 and grew up on the internet there's really nothing there.
Re:Debunked? (Score:4, Informative)
There, fixed that for you.
They haven't "found" anything - they've made up a bunch of completely unhinged nonsense (of the "substance x in your food is one atom different from dangerous substance y!" level) practically from whole cloth. The only people "creeped out" by this are people already dangerously disconnected from reality.
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Ask yourself why voat and gab.ai are getting massive amounts of refugees from reddit and twitter OVER THIS ISSUE
Because reddit has realised that angry, toxic crazies are making it miserable for the more sane majority, so they're finally not letting them have the run of the place. All those people are off to voat. I do not have a problem with that.
Re:Debunked? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because reddit has realised that angry, toxic crazies are making it miserable for the more sane majority, so they're finally not letting them have the run of the place. All those people are off to voat. I do not have a problem with that.
Really? Because they sure do seem to be catering to those angry, toxic crazies that are there. You know the ones, in /r/shitredditsays /r/circlebroke /r/offmychest and so on. Those same subs that have a history of doxing and harassing people. Oh I get it, you're okay with the insane angry left-wingers that attack people for perceived insults and slights, while engaging in witch hunts.
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I've never seen any doxxing or harassment I r/offmychest.
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I don't know where you learned to read but really... You are making a strawman only using your handwaving instead of straw. It doesn't work very well.
Facts = strawman. Up next: You'll claim that /r/worldnews /r/politics and so on, don't engage in so much censorship and banning of people for posting ideological wrong-think that they'd make the STASI proud.
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Reddit doesn't understand that they built their brand on angry, toxic crazies.
The fascists aren't trump supporters. They're you. (Score:2, Troll)
Because reddit has realised that angry, toxic crazies are making it miserable for the more sane majority - yet choosing to defend the crazies from the sane majority of Trump supporters
You mean the crazies that have stolen cars just for being white owned ("We caught a Trump!") or vandalized for having a Trump sticker (where a silver Mustang was burned & spray-painted)? Or would you like to talk about the crazies in UNC Chapel Hill that called for actions against Pence?
There went your narrative with those pesky facts.
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The reason Twitter banned a few of the people posting this conspiracy theory is that they were harassing the owner of the pizza place in question.
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Twitter always claims that anyone they banned was banned for "harassment". It's such a convenient reason, always paints them as the good guys.
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it's not just a convenient reason, it's also a good reason.
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Sure, anytime you don't like someone's politics, just ban them for "harassment" and people like serviscope_minor will tell everyone "it's a good reason", and just assume you're telling the truth (oh, someone may need to claim harassment every so often as well). It's very convenient.
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Townsend got busted when his CC # turned up in CP web site's databases. He never reported anything.
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it has in fact been categorically refuted with evidence
You ought to know by now that it is impossible to categorically refute anything since all evidence has become suspect.
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I think by debunked he means that no one has explicitly proven it. That is why it is a conspiracy and not a court battle.
Pizzagate must never be spoken of (Score:2, Insightful)
Pizzagate must never be spoken of
Remember the vast right wing conspiracy where the then First "Lady" had to tell us herself that there was absolutely no truth to the terrible lies that the right was saying about her husband, the honorable William Jefferson Clinton? And she certainly would know better than anyone if the rumors were true or not, she was not only right there but she was also the smartest woman in the country if not the whole world. It's just like that. Complete bunk. The perpetrators deny
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Re:Debunked? (Score:5, Informative)
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the US mainstream media completely discredited itself in the recent election by coming out in full force backing Hillary.
An opinion piece on Hillary means every fact they give is false?
These sites have a huuuuuge audience, larger than the mainstream media,
That makes them MSM.
"Cheese Pizza" stands for CP, which means child porn in pedo slang.
So says the only pedo here.
If NYT is so obviously wrong, why couldn't you point to any facts to back up your unsubstantiated opinion?
Make up your own mind!
I did. That you refuse to accept reality doesn't mean I didn't think independently. NYT wasn't the first cite I found, but it was one of the larger from the MSM, rather than some conspiracy theorist's blog.
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This comment edited by CmdrTaco...oh wait he left here years ago right?
Re:Debunked? (Score:5, Insightful)
By anyone who looks at it. A pizza restuarant posting pictures of kids does not make it a pedophile ring. Hell they were so far lost they were convinced the birthday bracelet biden made for obama had a slice of pizza on it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cp... [twimg.com] If you can't see that that's a piece of cake you really aren't in touch with reality.
The question isn't whether or not it is true. The question is a message board deciding what is true and deleting things they disagree with.
Re:Debunked? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he didn't delete anything. He edited some insults directed at himself.
It's still bad, but it's not like he was trying to stop people posting their conspiracy theories. The more I think about it the more stupid it seems. Wow, the site owner can edit posts, what a shock.
Reddit isn't some highly respected debate forum that claims to be totally non partisan and allow absolutely any content.
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Reddit isn't some highly respected debate forum that claims to be totally non partisan and allow absolutely any content.
True, but Reddit has no value or purpose in life other than for people to go online and post messages. The Reddit CEO showed incredibly poor judgement, and what the heck do companies pay CEOs six or seven figure salaries for if not for their good judgement?
So... a firing offense? Let's just put it this way: If I posted unauthorized comments about the online game I worked on, let alone editing other users' posts, at the minimum I'd be reprimanded, and I might very well get fired. Were I on the Reddit boa
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Oh, I agree this this was a big mistake. My only point was that we shouldn't expect too much of Reddit.
Re:Debunked? (Score:5, Interesting)
It was deleted because people were using it to harass people in the real world, some users were even making up stories about unrelated restuarants and posting child pornography to go with those stories.
Not quite true. People there weren't harassing people, nor were they doxing them. There was a non-doxing/harassment rule like on most subs. What's interesting is that members of the /r/pizzagate mod team [reddit.com] have claimed that the administration were unbanning people, [imgur.com] who were being banned by the subs mods. Those people who were being banned included those who were doxing, and posting CP. On top of this, that subreddit had already broken open a massive CP ring on twitter. Last count ~7000(I've seen numbers as high at 14k) or more accounts. [dailystar.co.uk] Twitter's response [oneangrygamer.net] so far has been to ban the people who found the accounts. Some of those CP accounts have been banned but most have not.
This entire thing stinks. On top of that with Spez deciding to pull this bullshit, they've also likely lost their safe harbor provisions. On top of that, toss in the absolutely weird shit in the podesta emails, including wording that seems to indicate some kind of pedophile stuff going on? They may have found something, they might not have. But reddit turning around and banning the sub is going to toss more fuel on the fire.
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The proper comparison would be editing a person X posting something racist directed at person Y to be directed to person Z. A huge difference and even more so when person Z is the one responsible for moderating where person X posted.
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oh neat, a mod storm. which sub-degenerate wing of 4chan is this, i wonder?
Re: Debunked? (Score:5, Insightful)
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As an investor you might be concerned that they may be liable now for anything users post.
Re:Debunked? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Alefantis is not a "friend" of Clinton; he's just a supporter. He's never met her.
2) The art in his restaurant is weird, but it's not "kids being tortured or placed in sexual poses"
3) The case in Haiti was 10 Baptist missionaries from Idaho trying to rescue children after the earthquake without permits. The missionaries had previously planned to build an orphanage and school in the Dominican Republic. There are Podesta emails that mention Silsby, but in the context of current events and how the US government should handle what had become an international diplomatic issue between the US and Haiti (aka, Hillary's job). Example here [wikileaks.org]. Silsby is in no way a "friend" of Clinton.
You all have a strange way of declaring everyone to be a "friend" of Clinton.
Re: Debunked? (Score:2, Funny)
Public notice: "Rei" is a well known friend of the Clintons.
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> Alefantis is not a "friend" of Clinton; he's just a supporter. He's never met her.
There were various fundraisers over there so I'd be careful on the "never met her" part, I'm not 100% sure on that either way. Anyhow, it's the Podesta brothers' connection that's the usually the focus, there really isn't much about Hillary in any of this. There's the Bill Clinton Epstein connection, but you'd be right that there's almost nothing about Hillary personally.
> The art in his restaurant is weird, but it'
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Yes, he's raised money for her. And? You have a strange conception that "raising money for a political candidate" means "personal friend of said candidate".
None of the people pushing the conspiracy theory has ever put any evidence that they've ever met. He denies having ever met her. But I guess that just means it's a secret friendship and all the more evil, right? ;)
Re, the "pic
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You focused on the pics, but the emails are the weirder thing. Like the handkerchief with the pizza-related map [wikileaks.org] and the talk of spirit cooking [wikileaks.org], which that site then shows various disturbing images of.
So... he was too busy to attend that one time? (Score:2)
A) It's funny you'd link to the Washington Post, because they've never fessed up about this:
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699 [wikileaks.org]
B) The primary excuse is "it's just art" and that Podesta wasn't able to attend that one, as if that somehow makes it better. Never mind Abramovi saying on Reddit that it's only art when done publicly and this was a private performance (but who knows, maybe an admin edited that in there...). And yes, Podesta appears to believe in that, how else do you explain the attac
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Did we look at the same series of images? Those certainly aren't "INCREDIBLY NSFW & DISTURBING" images. Some are just creative pictures and some are slightly odd artwork. There's nothing wrong with either. There's only one image that's even remotely NSFW, and it's pretty damn non-explicit You guys are crazy by blowing this out of proportion.In fact, the phrase "out of proportion" doesn't even do it justice, since it implies that some wrong was done and that it's less bad than you're saying it is, BUT no
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You all have a strange way of declaring everyone to be a "friend" of Clinton.
Heh, yeah - by such loose standards, mr Trump must be a friend of Clinton, because I have seen a picture of him beside the Clintons, with a big smile on his face (well, I assume it was his face - it would have been a strange scenario otherwise)
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Of course you would say that, "Anonymous Coward". We all know that members of Anonymous launched #OpTrump to try to attack him, clearly on behalf of Clinton, and here you are, choosing to post in their name. So now that we know you're a personal lifelong friend of the Clintons, probably helping in the murder of Vince Foster, the question becomes: why is Slashdot supporting your part in the Clintons' conspiracy? How much are the Clintons paying them?
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Exactly.
As for the first post, it's just standard Clinton-style disinformation. They're everywhere, trying to throw you off from the plot.
And what else? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In response, he edited comments reading "fuck Spez" to instead be directed at moderators
He let them off easy. He should have just deleted the comments and applied a 30 day shadowban to the users.
Re:And what else? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, he should. That's called moderation and is a reasonable activity for a site owner to undertake, in an open and transparent manner (which may preclude 'shadowban', depending how Reddit interprets/implements that).
Instead of destroyed any credibility Reddit may have had remaining by guaranteeing that you can no longer trust that anything posted there has any relationship to what the person identified as posting it intended to say. It may instead be pushing an agenda the CEO or one of his friends wants instead.
It's a grotesque betrayal of trust, an utter lack of ethics and completely fucking unforgiveable.
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That's called moderation and is a reasonable activity for a site owner to undertake, in an open and transparent manner
Most websites DO moderation but NOT in a transparent manner. There's no time and resources for "Transparent manner"
(which may preclude 'shadowban', depending how Reddit interprets/implements that).
Shadowban is just Reddit's name for banning a user.
I believe at some time the site admins figured out that if they simply block an account from posting, then many trolls are likely to have
Re:And what else? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't see the difference between banning and editing someone else's words?
It's a massive difference. It's the entire difference.
4chan made the choice to ban GamerGate. Their choice, and there were consequence but those were predictable and accepted. Reddit has been banning users and discussions for years, and that causes a lot of noise but most of the moderation is "We removed your comment" and the bans (shadow or otherwise) are simply preventing people posting, not changing what they say. Youtube and twitter similarly provide a "obey or don't participate" policy.
What this CEO has done is very different and very dangerous.
Interesting that Slashdot is now preventing posts containing certain words. I hadn't encountered that and I do think it's stupid and counterproductive. It's still infinitely better than changing the content of someone's post.
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Of course I see the difference. I wasn't taking about that, try to keep up. The point I made was that eventually every site lauded as the bastion of free speech on the internet commits some mortal sin against its users.
Re:And what else? (Score:5, Interesting)
4chan, of all places, lost its shit when the owner had to ban GamerGate.
That's probably because the people in Gamergate were right. Never mind that mootles didn't have any problems with project chanology, until he got leaned on by them. And the so-called people who claimed they were "anti-harassment specialists" were the ones out there harassing, doxing, and doing the shit that they claim gamergate was. The "game journalism" industry is and was corrupt, several of those sites are now gone though. Having collapsed under their own corruption, many of the people involved in the "gamers are dead" articles are no longer writing in the industry. People like Sarkeesian have moved on to a new batch of suckers(just a fyi her dvd videos are only like 4 years late now and she hasn't even finished the project). But you can see that in the gamejournopros leaks exactly how corrupt. Not only were authors colluding, they were pushing particular political and social narratives. Shit like doritogate and kane & lynch were just the start. It took years for it to finally hit a breaking point. You know, much like how the brexit campaign or Trump's election.
But I'm guessing that you haven't learned anything from those two cases either.
Re:And what else? (Score:4, Insightful)
GamerGate was using 4chan to organise their harassment. That's why it was banned, allowing it to continue would have made it impossible to keep the site going with hosting and ad revenue.
You know, 2 years on you've yet to ever show proof of this harassment. But you'll happily claim that 3rd party trolls are "gamergate people" even when it's shown that yes, they're actually 3rd party trolls.
4chan gets a lot of traffic and can only get low paying ads due to its content. 8chan can only tolerate the harassment because it needs much less cash to keep going, being much less popular. The operator being outside US jurisdiction helps too.
And another bit where you don't have any idea of what you're talking about. I'm sure next you're going to claim that the owner of 4chan is really, really short on cash and needs money. FYI 8chan's owner is a US citizen and the site adheres to US laws.
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I briefly followed GG (as a casual observer). Is there a 'where are they now, 2 years later' post? It seems everyone forgot about gaming when Trump started running for president.
You can check the timeline on one of the GG wiki's this is the one on KiA [reddit.com]. You can also check the catalog for the GG thread on 8ch.net/v/ [8ch.net](somewhat comprehensive moves fast) or 8ch.net/gamergatehq/ [8ch.net](lot of information moves very slow) Lot of people are still there, but GG itself is in a holding pattern because nearly everything that was wanted, was gained. Now it sits waiting for the next outbreak. Though some people have moved from gaming to the media at large, and that's only a good thing. The vast maj
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The First Rule... (Score:4, Interesting)
...of Usenet is of course, "you do not talk about Usenet." I'm breaking that. Sorry.
More importantly in this case, Second Rule of Usenet is "Usenet can't be subverted by its owner because, as a decentralized service, it doesn't have one." And that's why it needs to be supported instead of centralized shit like Reddit!
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I've been meaning to play around with INN. The only thing missing is voting of some sort.
Re:The First Rule... (Score:4, Interesting)
Usenet can't be subverted by its owner because, as a decentralized service, it doesn't have one.
That's also its downfall.... too much spam and abuse, and there's no such thing as a team who can review posts, delete them, and block spammers.
On the other hand, each individual ISP /news provider can still censor content they don't want you to see, or tamper with posts; but there is just way too much spam/abuse for each news provider to create their own clean version.
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You could set up your own network of usenet servers.
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Voat, the site run by people that have never worked in a production environment ever.
It should scale from a 512 MB NGINX instance to full Amazon without anyone ever seeing a "Site's down" error message.
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Think of spam specially crafted only raise the noise threshold and effectively making it unusable, so it'd be harder to block than mail spam.
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Given the problem people seem to be having with most websites: Downtime, DDoS, Censorship Usenet is the perfect solution.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:its not just an oopsie (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget 'discussion' there are active investigations that use Reddit as evidence.
There are multiple celebrities and political figures that have accounts to do AMA. What if Spez was caught editing comments by the 'president'? (Ok, President's Social Media handlers).
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>there are active investigations that use Reddit as evidence.
Maybe ... maybe that's why he did it!
Dun dun DUUuuuN!
A future career rubbing shoulders with the Clintons might be on the cards!
Are you naive ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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He owns (or is at least the boss over) the joint including the databases. Anyone who suspects that ANY big wig at Google/Reddit/Microsoft cannot simply go in and change things as they see fit for profit, legal or political reasons is deluded. Most likely there are even a host of lower level employees that can do so unnoticed.
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Yes, but that is the case for any singular silo of data. Unless you have the same set of data (or some form of verification) in more than one, independent data silos, there is no way of knowing for sure whether it is tampered with. You can use it to support a narrative, perhaps, but I wouldn't use it as 'evidence'.
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I've been hearing about people talk about /r/the_donald as being highly botted in
What is the observable difference to a bot and a bunch of bored angsty teenagers doing something they were told not to do?
Admits (Score:5, Insightful)
but doesn't apologize...
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Not really relevant. Trust breached and an apology won't repair it. It's frankly not even worthwhile to do.
Who Cares? (Score:2)
Reddit: the armpit of the Internet. 4Chan being the asshole of it.
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Slashdot doesn't even rank.
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'Member when the "Slashdot Effect" was a thing?
Oh how the mighty have fallen. All thanks to DICE and Slashdot Beta. ... Actually, that shitstorm was a lot of fun. FUCK BETA!!!
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And.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Online community hate (Score:2)
He actually cares about that? Personally I couldn't give a damn if the entire online community hates me. What power do they have? Remember the online campaign to find the boko haram girls? So far not one has been rescued. A few have escaped on their own, no thanks to facebook. And anyone remember the Joe Kony campaign of 2012? That dude is still out there in Africa doing his thing .. not brought to justice. The whole combine online community is less of a threat to anyone than my cat when he takes a dump.
Re:This great!! (Score:4, Informative)
The Dems call all republicans racists because they are republican. Now the Republicans can fight back and call all Democrats pedophiles. In today's media led world there is in fact nobody who is not either a pedophile, a racist, or a nazi.
Don't forget when Dems tried to call Trump a pedophile too [snopes.com].
Yep, that's the level of political discourse these days, both sides seeing how far they can go to demonize their opponent as the worst human being on the planet. I think political discourse today has gotten worse than it was during the McCarthy era, and is rapidly approaching an 1850's level of vitriol. And the 1850's vitriol led to a civil war.
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Don't forget when Dems tried to call Trump a pedophile too [snopes.com]."
Huh. Your link says nothing at all about democrats, and only uses the word pedophile in relation to someone else. The article seems to suggest that this was just some random woman trying to hit up Trump for money.
You should try just making an accusation like that without giving any kind of reference. Fact checking is passé after all, that's something the main stream media does. Gross unsubstantiated libel is apparently the new normal.
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I could literally give you over a hundred citations of Democrats and left-wing media citing and circulating this story as an indictment of Trump, bit I'll just give you a couple of typical examples from The Huffington Post and Esquire:
http://www.esquire.com/news-po... [esquire.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
The point is that both sides (and their media allies) have become guilty of smearing the other with the most despicable charges, often based on the flimsiest of evidence. It has almost become a defacto standard
Re: This great!! (Score:2)
The sad thing is that you claim the criticisms of racism in the Republican party are just name-calling, and not the result of actual racism being pointed out. Racism and bigotry is something with a long history n this country, as is the defensiveness and denial about it. Not that any of the GOP's stalwart defenders ever get past screaming about the KKK being formed by Democrats, mind you. They've never heard of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party. Or the anti-Asian bigotry. Or anti-German. Or anti-
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countries that don't have freedom of speech, such as the UK
The UK doesn't have absolute freedom of speech. But then, neither does any other country.
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MSM said it's bullshit, case closed. Nothing to see here, move along.
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At this point, I'm going to believe TASS before the NYT.
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