Reddit CEO Secretly Editing User Comments

In the wake of reddit banning ‘Pizzagate’ – a pro-Trump conspiracy subreddit – Steve Huffman, CEO of the social news aggregator, has been caught secretly editing user comments in the r/the_donald subreddit in which Huffman was called a “pedophile” and a “cuck”. After subscirbers of r/the_donald noticed and logged the changes, Huffman admitted that he was responsible for it.

Huffman wrote:

“Hey Everyone,

Yep. I messed with the “f**k u/spez” comments. 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.

F**k u/spez.”

Leaked chatlogs between Huffman (Spez) and senior moderators and admins (via Gizmodo) reveal the anger at how the toxicity of r/the_donald goes unchecked while other subreddits are censored or banned for much less. One veteran mod even says they’re “thinking of leaving entirely”:

The chat was leaked by UnimatrixZeroOne who, while initially regretful over leaking the message, believes that, considering the lack of official statements on the matter, reddit users should know what’s going on behind the scenes. UnimatrixZeroOne told Gizmodo:

“[A]fter an overwhelming amount of responses, I am starting to feel the leak was the right thing to do, even if how it was done was not. I figured I’d give you a comment since reddit itself has not.”