Reddit: scum of the Internet
October 6, 2011 by Eric Bader
Anderson Cooper, CNN’s resident silver fox, set an interesting target in his sights last week: the internet. More specifically, Cooper attacked the popular social site Reddit for its controversial hosting of child pornography and a not-pornographic-but-still-morally-disgusting section of the website titled “Jailbait,” which is pictures of children in suggestive poses – clothed, but still sexual.
For those not in the know, Reddit is a website akin to a message board fused with 4chan. It was the birthplace – or at least the great enabler – of those irritating rage comics.
Users have carte blanche to create whatever categories, or “subreddits,” they want. The creators then become the moderators of their own content, meaning they have free reign to add or delete whatever content they see fit. It’s like owning your own tiny forum.
There are administrators on the site, of course, but they rarely intervene in the actions of the subreddits.
How could they? As of yesterday afternoon, there were 58,758 subreddits. Besides, even if the administrators take action, the seething masses fight back. Admins shut down the “Jailbait” section of the website shortly after Cooper exposed them on CNN, but it’s now back by “popular demand.”
According to Alexa, an internet traffic monitoring site, Reddit is the 43rd most visited site in the United States, with more views than Walmart, the NFL, and even Hulu. For the curious, Google was number one, and the first porn site comes in at number 48.
Alexa also shows Reddit’s top searches. Four of the top five are, unsurprisingly, “reddit nsfw,” “jailbait,” “ass” and “upskirt.” Fantastic.
This website is clearly a depraved and disgusting trashheap, so why can’t we shut it down completely?
There are a few problems with that. For every gross pornographic subreddit, there are a few legitimate, useful ones, including pages that offer advice on car troubles, art, philosophy and just about anything else you can think of. It seems a shame to throw the meme-spouting baby out with the bathwater. Well, actually, it doesn’t, but I guess I can’t justify shutting those parts down anyway.
The other problem is a legal one. The child pornography section, mentioned earlier, was shut down as soon as attention was called to it.
Child pornography is illegal to host anywhere on the internet, though. “Jailbait,” on the other hand, is not technically illegal. Since there’s nothing overtly pornographic about it, Redditors are free to post pictures of 14-year-olds in skimpy bikinis with no legal repercussions.
Reddit itself, as of a few weeks ago, is its own company.
They can do whatever they want. Just as a restaurant can refuse service to anyone for no reason, so too can a private website allow or disallow any type of speech. This is a double-edged sword, metaphorically speaking. The Redditors raging about “ARE FREEDOMS” being taken away and their first amendment rights to jerk it to preteens are ignorant of the fact that the website does indeed have the right to pull any content for any reason. On the other hand, the Reddit administrators have the right to leave any disgusting content around as well, even if everyone else sees it as subversive and perverted.
I’m aware that, by writing this, I may be encouraging some readers of this column to investigate the website for themselves.
I can only request that said readers keep their attentions turned away from the morally wrong, borderline-pornographic segments of the site.
I also encourage those who agree with me to close their accounts if they have them, or not to sign up if they don’t.
An even more extreme suggestion would be to boycott the advertisers who are sponsoring Reddit’s depravity.
I know that I get worked up about these things; after all, those who know me well know that my favorite thing is to get Mad About the Internet.
I can only hope that my arm-flailing, spittle-flinging rant has encouraged at least one person to think twice before using a site that so flagrantly flies in the face of reason.
[editor's note: the "jailbait" subreddit has now been shut down by the Reddit administrators after confirmation that child pornography was indeed being distributed via private messages. 10/10/11]
Your opinion is yours to keep, but as you said, it would be a waste to throw the baby out with the bathwater. My girlfriend, who is of age, posts pictures of herself to Reddit, sometimes through me, other times on her own, and she has felt a lot better about herself ever since, as many users give her positive reviews. Even besides that, the subreddits for /r/Worldnews and /r/news are very informative and provide details of events not normally reported in the mainstream media. It would be a waste to discard an entire site based on the motivations of a few of it’s users to post pictures of young women.
On the topic of young girls, it’s OK to exploit them at beauty pageants, like in those insufferable television shows, and through advertising for clothing and what have you, but as soon as it appears on a website that you don’t agree with it becomes a problem? Become morally outraged about shit like Hannah Montana, and the other Disney girls, clothing and other types of commercials with the same content, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, your argument can hold water.
You’re scum for writing such an article without thoroughly understanding what reddit is. Honestly, if you did any research on the site, you would understand that what you are saying is just plain wrong. While their are shady parts of reddit (deadbabies subreddit and jailbait come to mind), the majority of the site isn’t even remotely like that. Additionally, the reason they are allowed to exist is because in general, the site stands for free speech (free as in the freedom to not be censored). Reddit is a community driven site, and as such, some of the community have proven themselves to be morally reprehensible. I won’t deny that, but you are pinning reddit as nothing but pedophiles and assholes who make rage comics. Reddit has donated over $600,000 to DonorsChoose.org. They raised $185,000 for Haiti relief. The Starcraft reddit raised over $30,000 for Doctors Without Borders in a single day.
Wow. You have a warped sense of what’s right and wrong. You also make it sound like you can’t go on the site without seeing child pornography. The site is, like you pointed out, mainly about people getting together and discussing current events logically, intelligently and with zeal. The internet is mostly devoid of such places in my opinion. Although you mock, people anywhere do have a right to do whatever we want as long as no laws are being broken. OUR freedoms will not be denied because of one person’s opinion about what is moral and what is not. Why would you even waste your time on this? There are actual crimes being committed on the internet a million times every day! And how do you know that the people looking a 14 year olds aren’t also 14? Your whole argument “flies in the face of reason”. To denounce an entire site where people gather for intelligent conversation and laughter to brighten up their otherwise dull lives, just because a few idiots decided to create a morally questionable branch of it, is just dumb. To make everyone suffer for the “crimes” of the few does not work and is a stupid idea in the first place.