Has one of those extreme cases ever occurred?
There have only been a couple of instances. One user was dropping copius links about car parts, although that's not exactly extreme. Early on, some folks from /r/beatingwoman made some posts, but were cool about it after I explained that we didn't want to host such content. Our policy isn't "as long as it's legal", so much as it is "as long as you can have a thoughtful conversation about it".
That was the circlejerkers posse. Sorry, they were mine. Some Reddit history: /r/circlejerk used to be a controlled environment for trolling. Then YTKnows decided to turn /r/circlejerk into Staples. A cadre of some of the harder trolls splintered off into /r/CIRCLEJERKERS, probably the most-often-banned subreddit in the history of Reddit. There was a circlejerker by the name of RyanBatts who thought I was awesome. he wanted my help in setting up /r/education or something. Unfortunately he was an alcoholic and imbalanced. The other mods in /r/education asked my help in controlling him. About the time I added YTKnows to the mod list of /r/favors. This annoyed the circlejerkers... however in their midst were drunkenjedi and grandpawiggly, friends/admirers of mine. I got leaked modmail of them attempting to dox me. One of the more imbalanced of them, a guy going by pozhualista, noticed what I had going on with /r/youngluck so he decided to stir up shit in there. This upset my other mod, a very nice and reclusive ex-mormon lady in her '50s, so I banned him. Thus began the circlejerkers' jihad to googlebomb the notion that youngluck was in jail for molesting his son. I stirred up shit with the admins because that kind of shit ain't cool. Hueypriest told me there was nothing they could do about it because stuff they did in their own subreddits was their own thing and stuff they didn't do on Reddit was entirely out of their control. He hinted, however, that if they violated the TOS he'd ban their subreddit. Thus began a nine month campaign of trench warfare where I occupied the circlejerkers with baiting tactics against me so they'd get bored with Dante (what his ex was able to find on the Internet did occupy a court of law off'n'on for about a year, so I wasn't completely successful). I got maybe eight of them shadowbanned, several of them multiple times, and had three of their subreddits banned. It turned me into a real dick - goading trolls as part of your daily routine is bad for your constitution. About that time I pissed off Violentacrez by implying that the admins had some sort of responsibility to civic behavior - he's more of a fan of unrest. An enemy of my enemy is my friend, and VA started hanging with the circlejerkers. Modded them in /r/jailbait, in fact, just to piss off the admins. Thus was jailbait banned briefly, then unbanned as soon as the circlejerkers were unmodded. Meanwhile, I'm a cranky fucker. And i was unduly rude to someone asking for heaven and earth from the designers of /r/favors. As there were at least a couple in there who were homeless, I was short in the modmail. It being summer, a witch hunt commenced. A couple months later, drunkenjedi pointed me here. I stuck around. As soon as google searches for my handle started pointing here, the circlejerkers followed. The simple fact that you responded to them in a civil fashion and didn't stomp on them diffused that situation - they were trying to get my goat but since I didn't follow them, I couldn't see their antics. And since their antics were largely intended for me, they decided that Hubski wasn't "trollable." Some of them have stuck around. Meanwhile on Reddit, a large number of them were IP banned as soon as Yishan took over. That thing I asked for to defend Youngluck? Sure, no problem. Youngluck, in the meantime, became an admin himself. So three years later and a shit ton of blood in the water, and all is right with the world. Other than the fact that one of those original leakers of the modlogs from /r/circlejerkers decided to dox violentacrez to Gawker for lulz. There you go. Hubski's role in one of the biggest internal dramas in Reddit's history. At least nobody had the bomb squad called on them.
Yeah. Not SRS. They aren't close enough to the bullshit. This whole stupid thing was bored, isolated, precocious 20-somethings playing with people for fun. SRS was wholly responsible for taking down creepshots, for which they deserve mad props. At the same time, the whole SRS operation is Jeno 2012 on a larger scale, which, for my mind, does actual feminism some damage.
My bad. Not "jeno" but "Geno." Source Somethingawful are experts at the long con. Nobody remembers the Geno invasion anymore; thus, that whole "archangelle" thing appeared organic. It's all lulz, though. Probably the best document is this one. Send me a PM and I'll send you another.Sometime in 2001, members of the Something Awful forums[16] began raiding the site in large groups who called themselves “Geno.” Members would change their display names to Geno or similar phonetic versions of the word including jino, geeno, or gino sometimes followed by numeric characters. Additionally, members of the group distinguished itself from other Habbo Hotel users by dressing their avatars in all gray clothing. They would block off exits or doors in the game or fill up rooms to disrupt normal users. During the raids, Geno members would line up and repeat several phrases including “the path is the way” and “the way is the light.”[7]
If they defamed youngluck by googlebombing the notion that he was in jail for molesting his son, he should have considered suing Reddit or Conde Nast (not necessarily those from /r/CIRCLEJERKERS) for defamation. That would have more than kicked them into gear on actually policing their site.
You are a walking history lesson. That was an awesome abridged history.
It's a lot better from a distant perspective. The really stupid thing is the only part of it that mattered - court bullshit - was entirely secondary to the problem. Dante had to fight a skirmish in the court system and VA lost his job because internet nerds had axes to grind over nothing.
I think it was entirely a bullshit situation that never should have happened, but that's how I feel about every silly thing that happens on the internet because people get stupid. When does one cross over to the point where they decide to take up the pitchforks because of the internet. I understand it if you're the one being persecuted, unless there's a really, really good reason, otherwise it's weird to me.
That's because you are correct. When your normal life lacks any power. Secret to the modern world: people with no "IRL" power amass as much of it as they can on the internet. Reddit meetups are an amazing thing.I think it was entirely a bullshit situation that never should have happened, but that's how I feel about every silly thing that happens on the internet because people get stupid.
When does one cross over to the point where they decide to take up the pitchforks because of the internet.