oh internet

A sudden and massive campaign by goons to force policy changes at reddit

Summary

After Something Awful goon BulletRiddled successfully pressured reddit (with a little help from CNN's Anderson Cooper's unexpected report) into forcing the /r/jailbait subreddit closed, goons and their allies returned to quietly mocking MRA "activists," militant atheists, racists, Ron Paul supporters, and other abhorrent subcultures found across reddit. They quickly noticed, however, that numerous replacements for /r/jailbait had sprung up, along with dozens of similar subreddits that hadn't been removed with the admins' initial actions. On 2/12/2012 Tony Danza Claus posted a thread in GBS stating:

It's only been 3 months since Something Awful (and Anderson Cooper) took on reddit and their r/jailbait section.

Since then they have expanded into dozens of child pornography subreddits, exchanging illegal material out in the open. This time, a single news anchor probably isn't enough, so the reddit thread in Debate & Discussion has created

The Redditbomb

The Redditbomb was a massive copypasta to be sent to traditional and online news outlets, churches, PTAs, schools, bloggers, government officials, police, and pretty much anyone else who'd be concerned. It is as follows:

reddit [http://www.reddit.com/] is a social website that allows its users to share links to content on the internet and post comments about the links. This enables not only the sharing of content (photographs, videos, websites, and so on) but also the discussion of said content.

reddit is massively popular http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/2-billion-beyond.html, especially with young people http://en.reddit.com/r/misc/comments/nevz9/results_of_the_reddit_demographics_survey_in_pie/.

reddit is split into subcommunities known as "subreddits", meaning that while reddit exists as a website, it consists as the sum of its subcommunities that people can subscribe to and participate in by means of sharing and commenting as aforementioned.

Unfortunately, the reddit community as a whole also harbors pedophiles and distributors of child pornography, including a man who goes by the name Tessorro http://www.reddit.com/user/tessorro and runs a subreddit called "preteen_girls"http://www.reddit.com/r/preteen_girls/comments/pju8h/my_daughter_is_going_through_a_weird_phase_can/c3pxuv8

The main purveyor of child porn on reddit is Violentacrez, who was the former leader of the "jailbait" subreddit, before Anderson Cooper's report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuMdQRRLoYg&feature=related got it shut down: http://www.reddit.com/user/violentacrez

A list of Jailbait (underage porn) forums which have sprung up to replace it that are currently on reddit:
truejailbait
gaolbait
GirlsinSchoolUniforms
LegalTeens
niggerjailbait
Thenewjailbait
RealGirls
trapbait
/r/jailbait is shut down now, but the traffic statistics http://i.imgur.com/jvNpg.png posted by Violentacrez http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/kzlga/traffic_statistics_for_rjailbait/ from its heydays are interesting. The dip in mid August is when admins temporarily closed the subreddit, and the spike on September 30th is when Anderson Cooper talked about it. The numbers after the temporary shut down are abnormally low, as would be expected. But prior to that, they were getting about 30,000 unique visitors each day.

When r/jailbait was open, it had a message on the sidebar asking young girls to submit pics to their jailbait gone wild subreddit, which still exists, and even wants these 'jailbait' girls to get verified before submitting photos. You're also told to "Be respectful. Don't insult the ones brave enough to submit photos / videos".

The owners of reddit know there is active trading of child porn on their forums, and refuse to do anything about it. Further, Reddit's cofounder simply dismisses the issue and blames the exploited children whose pictures are being traded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXZYvrue1BE

The inaction of reddit's administrators has been a frequent topic, part of that being Violentacrez's shockingly close relationship with them.
Violentacrez's Twitter account https://twitter.com/#!/violentacrez seems like a good example of this.
Krispykrackers http://twitter.com/krispykrackers (head of advertising and the community helpline at reddit)
Hueypriest https://twitter.com/#!/hueypriest (reddit's general manager) and
Chromakode https://twitter.com/#!/chromakode (developer) all follow violentacrez. So does Jedberg https://twitter.com/#!/jedberg (former administrator), KeyserSosa https://twitter.com/#!/KeyserSosa (former lead developer) and MikeSchiraldi https://twitter.com/#!/MikeSchiraldiraldi (another former developer type).

If you view their past tweets, you'll see that Violentacrez has regularly been in direct, public contact with them.

In 2008, r/jailbait received the most votes in reddit's "Best Community" contest http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/7okgl/reddit_awards_best_reddit_of_2008_comment_here_w/, with SuicideWatch taking a distant second, receiving about half as many votes.

Another interesting fact is that Violentacrez has the third highest amount of karma http://www.karmawhores.net/violentacrez on all of reddit for submitted links. Reddit can't get enough of the guy.

Are you sick to your stomach yet? The list of child pornography subreddits continues: (all subreddits listed below are not safe for viewing)

"Preteen Girls"
"Male Jailbait"
"Jailbait Junkies"
"Asian Jailbait"
"Young Porn"
Other awful Reddit things:

A Pedophile's Confession
A subreddit called "Raping Women"
"Beating Women"
A subreddit called "Lolicon" (cartoon drawings of naked children)
A subreddit called "Pics of Dead Kids"

Goons dutifully spread the word and on page 42 of the thread, Lowtax joined the fray, along with FYAD, and all Hell broke loose. Various creepy apologists were probated, banned, and permabanned, and as redditors found out, they came out of the woodwork to defend their precious FREE SPEECH, which apparently is an all-or-nothing deal, despite courts specifically stating that CP is in no way, shape, or form protected speech.

Origins

Reddit has long been known as a haven for the internet's undesirables, so much so that even 4chan can be considered more conservative. Rallying behind cries of all-inclusive free speech, the worst of redditors have used the site to spread misogyny, support for Ron Paul, and worse: CP. While the most blatant offenses were handled by the site's admins, many subreddits existed in a legal gray area, sexualizing images of children and teenagers without being outright porn. Headed by chief monster and molestor Violentacrez, these forums often came under fire but were never expressly dealt with and were essentially greenlighted by admins looking the other way. The Something Awful Forums and the SRS (ShitRedditSays) subreddit often focused on the absolute worst reddit has to offer, and these questionable subreddits were often in their sights.

Current status

Reddit amended their policies and rules within mere hours of the onslaught. Offending subreddits were removed, and their moderators have been scrambling to replace or recreate them, as they apparently cannot live without sharing illegal and questionable content. Reddit admins are allegedly removing offending subreddits as they are reported.

After approximately a week, everything seems to be back to normal, with more subreddits appearing and being ignored by administrative staff. Additional redditbombs are planned.

Timeline up to and after deployment

Facts

Images

	A redditor defending pedophilia

External Links

.

This article is part of a series on events.
You can find additional events here.
Explore our other categories for information on different subjects!