In a curious turn of events, today Reddit CEO Steve Huffman admitted to having clandestinely edited a series of Redditor comments that personally targeted and insulted him, using his admin access to replace references to his username with the nicknames of certain moderators from the unofficial Donald Trump subreddit.
Huffman acknowledged that he tampered with comments after members of the pro-Trump subreddit ‘The_Donald’ repeatedly called him out, but indicated the only changes he made were to alter the target of the insults. “Yep. I messed with the “fuck u/spez” comments, replacing “spez” with r/the_donald mods for about an hour,” he said.
Huffman disclosed his transgression in midst of ongoing ‘Pizzagate’ controversy, which links Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta to a Washington DC pizza parlor alleged in pedophilia.
Earlier yesterday, Reddit made a decision to ban the dedicated ‘Pizzagate’ subreddit following concerns that members were leaking personal information of people accused of participating in the still unproven conspiracy.
A fraction of aggravated Trump supporters from ‘The_Donald’ aimed their anger at Huffman, throwing personal insults at him and accusing him of inciting arbitrary censorship.
“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,” the Reddit CEO further added.
This isn’t the first time Reddit management has come under fire from the community. Back in 2015, former employee Ellen Pao opted to step down from her position as CEO following a barrage of vitriolic comments from Redditors.
There’s no telling how things will unfold this time around, but enraged Redditors are already lobbying for the resignation of Huffman.
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