Reddit is dangerous. The admins are out of control. Humanity needs a alternative
maximiliankohler.blogspot.comLists the problems & benefits of reddit, and argues for the need for viable alternatives.
It covers reddit retaliating against me (seemingly illegally) for being a long-time public critic of theirs. They did something similar to the /r/WatchRedditDie founder.
Is anyone familiar with US laws related to Reddit admins using their position to try to harm me in an act of revenge? Surely there are some limits on what they're legally allowed to do. I imagine it would vary from state to state. My state (CA) bar referral services haven't been very helpful in finding someone familiar with this situation. Recommendations for how to find a lawyer specialized in this would be appreciated.
Don't waste even a second on a lawyer. Reddit is a private corporation that is a silo, you have zero rights. It is not a public common and no contract is entered into by being either a user or a mod. All rights belong to the corporation.
Your rights are basically limited to that they are not allowed to engage in activities that are already illegal in common law, e.g. publishing your residential address and inviting people to go teach you what-for. They cannot claim copyright over content already copyrighted, but they might have a claim over original content, but so do many other social media sites.. fine print may say something like they have the right to use images for their advertising, etc.
The bar to proving harm when there was no business relationship is high. My advice to you is to forget about the site and not want to be a member of a club that doesn't want you.
Yes, I am not a lawyer, and my advice is not legal advice, but it is common sense that you will lose against venture capital money if you cannot prove a violation of existing state or federal law.
As mentioned in the blog though, the UK has a law (Consumer Rights Act) covering this. California (where I am) seems to generally have strong laws as well.
Also, I can't believe it would be legal for a Facebook employee, for example, to use their position to harm a public figure, journalist, critic, politician, etc.. That seems very illegal.
What harm have you experienced, other than hurt feelings?
Don't get me wrong, I've had an issues with an admin there because I didn't share their viewpoint on a news story, but that in itself is not illegal and I haven't been harmed as I didn't use the account for commerce. They are guilty of violating an internal code of conduct but the corporation is not going to care about that.
On Twitter, Musk chucks off whoever he feels like. A recent high-profile example was the "Twitter files" report guy. It's his own personal private corporation, he can do what he wants. Same way you have control over your living room. You might invite people over every night to hang out with you, but it doesn't grant them rights over your living room.
I mean, sure, if you really wanted to, you could certainly look into anti-discrimination legislation and so forth, but again, what is the compensation for what discrimination? You haven't lost income or relationships. You weren't discriminated against because of your skin colour, religion, sex, disability, etc.
At best, the employee is guilty of an internal code of conduct violation and you could report that, but they aren't obligated to tell you the outcome of their internal deliberations.
I did read the blog, you made good points, but let it go. You won't win this.
Facebook can ban a journalist from the platform, refuse to answer their emails, kick them out of F8, etc. All would be forms of entirely legal harms.
Freedom of the press (and speech, association, etc.) in the US constrains government, not private companies.
Your definition of harm is not the legal definition of harm.
You do have rights regarding issues of libel and slander, which seem to be the acts Reddit staff engaged in according to the description the user provided. (The language implies explicit acts in public intended to cause harms)
Really, y'all need to stop this stuff. You scare people from action and so things only get worse.
Absolutely nothing in the linked article rises to the level of libel or slander, as far as I can tell. Perhaps it's hiding behind "I don't want to publicly share the details".
(Unless you're referring to the situation with Apollo's developer and the recorded conversations. That might. Maybe.)
Follow the thread back to the preceding comments.
The topic ain't what's in the article, it's what the user says they experienced...
Right?
The user won’t say what they experienced. “reddit retaliating against me” could encompass anything from “they gave me a flair that said ‘poopy head’” to “they sent assassins to kill me”. Some of that spectrum is legal, some isn’t.
Lots of mean, bad things are still entirely legal.
> Is anyone familiar with US laws related to Reddit admins using their position to try to harm me in an act of revenge?
As long as they're not defaming you or hiring assassins, they've pretty wide leway. You say "seem to be using their power & platform to harm me, my community, and our organization, by allowing a highly disreputable group, and other general trolls, to blatantly violate Reddit's rules against us"; that's generally entirely legal. They make the rules, they pick how they're enforced, and they can change the rules.
Don't have an answer, but I can also say that I also was retaliated against for criticizing Reddit. They suspended an account with 5000 coins for no apparent reason, and then IP banned me for bringing attention to that to an admin with another account.
They can do whatever they want on their platform (including what would arguably be considered abusive), and we can continue to bring attention to their mistreatment of us outside it.
Corrupt or misbehaving admin have no accountability, with no means for users to remediate the issue, and the culture of the company encourages a process by which the only admins who will remain are those who are corrupt, abusive or otherwise inappropriate for the position.
Reddit is broken from top to bottom, from the front end to the back end.
I tried for so long to seed Whoaverse (later Voat) with non-political and non-crackpot content. There was a brief moment where it looked like it was a competitor that could arise similar to how Rumble is doing today in the video space. It takes a critical mass and not only that but it must be sustained otherwise people wander back to familiar pastures. I checked out from reddit years ago after a certain Vox (?) article detailed how 'problematic' users were treated like a spreading virus so they could be fully eradicated. I don't like that kind of attitude directed towards users. But I certainly hope a proper competitor can finally rise up after all this time.