Yahoo:
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has confessed to modifying the posts of some users on the most visible Donald Trump-supporting “subreddit” community after they repeatedly slung verbal abuse in his direction.
The story begins earlier this week, when The New York Times published a report on Comet Ping Pong, a Washington DC pizza place that a false news item on social media had pegged as the center of a child-abuse ring run by Hillary Clinton and her campaign head John Podesta, despite a lack of any evidence.
Following that report, Reddit took steps to shut down the “r/Pizzagate” subreddit community, which had the stated goal of proving the existence of a conspiracy centering on Comet Ping Pong. “We don’t want witchhunts on our site,” says the warning that replaced the Pizzagate page on Reddit.
The move to shut down r/Pizzagate proved controversial to users of “r/The_Donald,” Reddit’s most popular community for supporters of Donald Trump. Those users repeatedly left comments to the effect of “f**k u/spez” and other forms of abuse, including Huffman’s “u/spez” Reddit name in the post to make sure he was notified of each new message.
On Wednesday afternoon, members of “The_Donald” noticed that their posts had changed without their knowledge or consent: Instead of referencing Huffman himself, the posts now hurled the same expletives at the moderators of the “The_Donald” community.
Angry “The _Donald” members accused Reddit leadership of modifying or otherwise censoring their posts — which turned out to be correct, when Huffman posted the following comment, confessing that it was him personally who was performing the changes (with expletives taken out):
“Hey Everyone,
Yep. 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. 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.”
Comment from discussion The Admins are suffering from low energy – have resorted to editing YOUR posts. Sad!.
“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,” Huffman wrote.
Now, users of “The_Donald” are accusing Huffman of having destroyed Reddit’s credibility