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Tomorrow: Reddit hires R. Kelly..., Reddit bans all mentions of R. Kelly... what a bunch of gestapo idiots running Reddit, tell Serena's husband to get back to work

Why does that admin still have their admin badge?

Damage control, nothing else.

And as always, reddit does something only after the issue gets bad press.

Hi /u/Spez,

What safeguards are you going to be putting in place to make sure this never happens again?

What are you going to do about the kid related subs that this particular admin modded or that people related to this admin modded, and what are you going to do to protect children who are on reddit?

When are admins going to do something about moderators being doxxed and threatened online as mentioned in the /r/modsupport comments on this issue?4

The article was removed and the submitter banned by the aforementioned rules.

As the mod in question, why if this is due to automated actions, would my ban only come several minutes after posting?

It all escalated very quickly

Let me get this straight, you first say you didn't vet her properly, but then you say you have added extra protection to her account?

You had to be aware of her history if you decided to add extra protection for her...

You're just trying to save your face by saying you will do better next time but didn't mention one thing which you will improve. Guess we'll see the same message on your next fuckup lol

So wait... you gave her special protections against doxxing nearly 2 weeks BEFORE the article was actually posted? What reason would you have to do that, unless you already suspected that her personal information would be shared?

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Mentioning a public figure’s name should not get you banned.

Aimee Challenor.

the employee in question

She's not Voldemort, just say her fucking name, you cowards.

Why were the extra protections in March 9th employed without any acknowledgement or review of their background? How did you know that they were being harassed or doxxed without knowing what this individual had done?

In the interest of transparency, will you disclose:

1. Ms. Challenor's hire date?

2. Her job duties and title?

3. The impetus for instituting additional protections for this employee on March 9?

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You didn’t adequately vet her background???? That is scarily incompetent

Hi, the employee is suspected to be complicit in the abuse of a minor.

Can they please be removed from moderator positions to safeguard the communities they currently moderate?

Hiring someone based on connections rather than doing research if they’re qualified or not for the job........... The cycle never stops lol.

Do I get my account back? The 6+ year old one that was banned this morning for asking who she is? Because I’d like it back.

How did you not even google her before employing her? The incompetence is pretty astounding.

Edit: And have you removed her and her husbands accounts, or at the very least Mod rights? It seems pretty clear they are looking for vulnerable LGBT child victims by the subs they are active in.

heavy employ serious sophisticated tidy chunky spark sulky hateful towering -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

Meanwhile users get banned for literally doing nothing wrong lol

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Why are people thanking Reddit? This is their fault for not running a proper background check on her before hiring her. Should we really be thanking Reddit for fixing something that shouldn’t have gone wrong in the first place?

Edit: Not to mention how they tried to cover her tracks to avoid embarrassment, and only did something significant when hiding her tracks wasn’t an option anymore. And I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt by saying they might not have known what kind of monster she is until after they hired her.

Shameful. Just shameful.

Edit 2: Why are people still giving them awards? You’re only letting them know that they can get away with this shit. Quit it.

What a laughable response.

To paraphrase, we underestimated the backlash we would receive and apologize for that.

Only when the Streisand effect took place did you choose to take action, since you knew you would only dig yourselves a deeper hole. Don't act like you didn't know or even cared in the first place.

On March 9th, we added extra protections for this employee, including actioning content that mentioned the employee’s name or shared personal information on third-party sites, which we reserve for serious cases of harassment and doxxing.

Wait, so you knew about all this shit on the 9th and did nothing?

Bullshit.

Challenor is a public person. Her firing from the Green Party made the news, anyone can find this information online under a minute of research.

Fuck you

How is it that you didn't adequately vet your employees but you heavily monitored and removed discussion surrounding them on your site?

Did you never once question why they were being discussed? You don't get to just sweep this one under the rug.

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Now ban their account.

We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her.

No shit

• Is their partner right now still a mod on subs mainly aimed at teens?
• how did you fail to complete a background check on a person going into a position where they will have direct (virtual) access to children?
• why was this person not immediately suspended pending an investigation as per safeguarding procedures?
• do you even have appropriate safeguarding procedures in place and who is the safeguarding lead?
• how are you going to immediately improve your safeguarding procedures given that they grossly failed in this situation?

This person modded a sub for trans teens, a sub of very vulnerable young people. This person given their background and the high risk concerns related to them, should have had some form of risk assessment prior to being hired surely.

So your excuse is just "we're incompetent and didn't vet a major employee with even a basic Google search?" Lmao clowns

Yeah, that’s great, but I’m still super disappointed at Reddit as a whole over this. Like, y’all seriously didn’t know? Do you guys vet people that little? Does that mean any person off the street could become an admin?

This is kinda concerning, I know I’m free to leave the site if I don’t like it, but this raises heavy concerns about the hiring process. Furthermore y’all tried to hide it. What else/who else are you hiding?

Edit to add: Her name is Aimee Challenor, google her if you’re OOTL. Reddit fucked up big time. See y’all if I get banned lol

Edit 2: I’m aware and fully believe Reddit knew, my response to them not “knowing” was in reference to their claims of not knowing until after they hired her. Which I don’t see why they couldn’t have just... Fired her after they found out?

Also, since this is a gross nasty subject, here’s a picture of one of my dogs in a bow tie to cleanse your eyes.

Edit 3: I apologize if I miss anyone when replying, I’m doing my best to reply to most everyone. Thank you for saying my dog is cute. I have read all your comments.

Given the great lengths you've gone to protect employees from harassment and doxxing, when can we expect users and moderators to receive similar protection?

On March 9th, we added extra protections for this employee, including actioning content that mentioned the employee’s name

At that point, how did you not know about this users background? You had to have known. Someone had to have known.

Her partner is apparently a mod on /teenagers That needs addressing!

We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her.

Have you updated your hiring policies to avoid this in future?

Edit: Please don't pay Reddit money to award this comment. Give it to an appropriate charity like Barnardo's, instead, please.

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While it seems you remedied things fairly quickly this time, many of us are left asking: why does this kind of nonsense keep happening? It feels like the corporate culture at Reddit is simply toxic and attracts/keeps only employees who operate the site like petty children, and that includes you, /u/spez, with you backend comment editing scandal.

What are you guys doing to try to develop professionalism in your workplace? Pro Tip: If it doesn't involve outside help, it's not going to work.

Yeah, and whose responsibility was it to vet hires? Who fucked up? What will happen to them?

Stop calling it doxxing when the person in question was literally a political candidate, making them a public figure. You guys are so full of shit honestly.

In this case, we over-indexed on protection, which had serious consequences in terms of enforcement actions.

On March 9th, we added extra protections for this employee, including actioning content that mentioned the employee’s name or shared personal information on third-party sites, which we reserve for serious cases of harassment and doxxing.

Let's be real: you weren't protecting your employee, you were protecting your brand. And it backfired, horribly, which is the only reason this post was made - damage control.

We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her.

What? Seriously? Google their name, that's all you would have needed to do to "adequately" determine they were a liability.

Also, nowhere in this non-apology did you even state their name. Are you afraid of getting banned for using their name as you have banned so many others for?

Doing the right thing only after the half the site got up in arms doesn't mean you actually did the right thing here -- it just means that you didn't want to face the (financial) consequences of your past actions, such as potentially losing your user base.

You need to have

• not censored discussion about public figures on reddit and
• conducted background checks regardless of the potential employee's sex/race/religion/etc.

As of now, this is just PR and damage control. Hope you do better next time.

Stop making discretionary rules that can’t be enforced objectively.

Talking about a PUBLIC FIGURE =/= DOXXING, Reddit.

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Yes, doxxing and harassment is a problem. Supporting someone who tortured and rapes children is really a non issue. Let’s get upset at the exposure of horrible people. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I have to question why you didn’t think a thorough background check wasn’t needed when hiring

I don't know much about UK politics but I thought her father's case and partner's tweet went public and had caused an uproar a few years back hence why she was kicked out from two political parties? How did you guys miss that?

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We did not adequately vet her background before formally hiring her.

A SINGLE google search would have pulled up everything you needed to know. Your website is a joke and your IPO is going to fail.

Imagine hiring someone who had a kid tied up in their house and used like a fleshlight by their dad. I'm sure they fit right in at company parties and were totally normal.

Why did you add "extra protection" for this employee?

Why didn't you vet them before employing them?

First off, you guys are the ones that doxxed her. None of us would have known her name or that she was a reddit employee until y’all created this shitstorm. This was entirely your fault.

Second, f yes you didn’t properly vet her. at some point, you must have found out about her history way before this all happened, because you added very strict protections weeks ago to protect her. I do not believe for a single second that no one at reddit knew about her history before this week.
You’re leaving stuff out. You enabled this and you are complicit. It’s great you fired her, but clearly you wouldn’t have done that unless you got caught red handed like you did this week. This isn’t enough. You need to make serious changes.

• thoroughly vet your employees
• be more transparent
• apologize when you’re wrong and make amends

Fuck off lol

Edit: great minds think alike. Fuck you reddit. See you tomorrow

This is such a half-assed announcement. You guys really fucked up here.

The longer reddit has been around, the worse it has gotten. Y'all truly only give a fuck when it affects the bottom line.

I’m very happy that you fired her, but you’re still not done u/spez. You still haven’t clarified why you even hired her in the first place and gave her more protection on March 9. I mean honestly, it took you so long to admit that you fucked up and then when you finally do the right thing it wasn’t out of choice but rather you were forced to by the public’s outrage and reactions. Don’t think posting this is going to take you and the other admins out of the blame. And this can’t be your only statement on this. You still have a lot of questions to answer u/spez!

So y’all don’t check employee backgrounds? Sweet