Long reads, short reads, interesting articles that aren't straight up news or clickbait.
Gawker is gone, so let's revisit one of their best pieces of journalism: The unmasking of one of the internet's nastiest trolls
Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web
Last Wednesday afternoon I called Michael Brutsch. He was at the office of the Texas financial services company where he works as a programmer and he was having a bad day. I had just told him, on Gchat, that I had uncovered his identity as the notorious internet troll Violentacrez (pronounced Violent-Acres).
I'm not putting this up as an anti-Reddit post. I really mean this to be a Gawker appreciation thread, if you're so inclined. And I'm also interested in the particulars of this tale.
The story of Violentacrez is, in its twisted, strange way, incredible. Here's a military father and cat lover who loves trolling. Creating subreddits dedicated to Hitler and racism was part of the fun for him. His appetite knew no bounds; Chen has no problem outing his identity because the harm he does is very real. As a mod on Reddit who was good at his job, his incredibly wretched subreddits thrived because he had protection. In Chen's detailing, he was a good mod; he taught other mods how to do their jobs well; he developed connections that might have won him employment. He became a celebrity, seen as defending the worst so other people could enjoy their own indulgences.
There's a lot of issues to talk about with this story - the misuse of free speech, the over reliance of a certain other site on mods, the growth and festering of hateful subcultures, the warped norms of online culture. Part of me is most interested in what it means to be a good mod, how to contribute to a site and its users well. There's not a lot to learn from this piece about that. I kinda want to contribute things of worth to all your communities, because then I'd feel like I was useful to at least a few of you.




I'm just starting on the article, but I'm having trouble with reddit's thought process in allowing a subreddit called Jailbait to exist.
One thing I never cease to feel: people always seem way more professional and polished than I am, and yet it's just amazing how corrupt or limited they can be.
Reading about how they started banning Gawker links to"protect their privacy" is where the true intentions become clear. It's not about free speech, it's about protecting a certain small group of people and their interests.
Thanks for posting this article, what an interesting read!
Years later, many major subreddits still use the same automoderator configuration to ban (boycott) all gawker links. It's actually a pre-defined term built into the bot, and specifically noted in the wiki.
Most subreddits these days will tell you they do it because of clickbait (and in some cases that may be true), but it's a holdover from the violentacres debacle and the subsequent gawker boycott.
This was a difficult situation to go through as a reddit employee who very much wanted that content to die in a fire but also a person who is very pro-privacy and anti-doxxing. Such conflicted emotions. We also got to explain the company we worked for to our parents in a more in-depth fashion. Good times for all : )
Ftr, my job had no influence on content at all at that time. I was still at redditgifts. The decision-making process was all a mystery to me. I still don't get why the content was allowed other than it not being against the law.
I need to re-read this. I haven't look at it since it happened. It will be interesting to read it without the worry of how it would reflect on us.
I think a lot of people feel "holy schamoly" when it comes to the fate of Mr. Brutsch. It's not an easy topic, because American life is all about second acts, and how does one recover from something like this, something enabled by the ambiguity of the term "right?"
But obviously, he had to be outed after all this craziness. Chen's a good reporter who makes clear how he approached the situation, outlining his own ethical dilemma in the article. His reporting on Russia's army of trolls in the nytimes magazine is a must-read for any social media platform (hint hint). A large reason why Twitter and Reddit are so toxic is state-sponsored. Russia literally has an army of trolls hired that bolster the ranks of neo-Nazis and spread disinformation and try to get information for the sake of hacking.
Wow, I had no idea about any of this.
It feels like a bad dream; it's almost impossible to believe any of it is real. A place to start is with Anderson Cooper clips from CNN - CNN called out Reddit on one community they had, as you read in the article.
But it's just amazing that anything like that could exist and people wouldn't be prosecuted. It's a crazy world we live in, one that makes me feel so sheltered every second.
Yeah, I had to go and find out more. On the one hand I'm glad I missed it, but on the other this is morbidly fascinating.
Also, on another note, your art is awesome. Please feel free to create a personal community for yourself, I'll join. It'd be lovely to get your work to the attention of everyone else here.
Seconded!
Aw, thank you!
Because of people who are like this, let people like this exist and people who let people like this express themselves on a large scale is why I hope Imzy will be better than reddit. Community wise anyway lol
Preachin' to the choir. Agreed one hundred percent.
I think it's easy to be better community-wise. What I feel right now is that a bit more content has to be produced. Some of the best content on reddit occurs when members of a community create "how-to" guides, then later, another member follows up with an updated guide, updated precisely because she used the guide already given.
That relation between content and community is something I want to help foster here.
As a reddit employee who was there for all of this, I still hate Gawker. They had a vendetta against us and did some terrible journalism around us.
That being said, they didn't deserve what Thiel did.
They're very mean-spirited; there's no way around that. The amount of abuse and ridicule they can spawn is wildly disproportional to the foibles of their targets.
But yeah, Thiel is bad stuff, and this is a huge loss. I remember when Deadspin - which will still be around, but I count it as part of Gawker b/c Gawker media - broke the Manti Te'o story. Here was a guy with a completely made-up story that he was repeating, over and over, about a dead girlfriend. ESPN had no problem airing this story like it was the truth and not vetting it at all, or, when vetting it, pretending like it didn't exist because of their closeness to Notre Dame. Deadspin broke the story, detailing their attempts to find her and verify his statements. It turned out there was no dead girlfriend, he was circulating a picture of some random Facebook user, and that certain media organizations will sit on the truth if it threatens to cost them a dime.
I probably should add that no one has any idea what exactly is going to happen to Gawker's archives. You're wise to read this and e-mail a copy to yourself as soon as possible. One thing people have been pointing out for years is that the web is not exactly great at preserving things.