This issue is over pornography the way Star Wars is about Princess Leia's "death star plans" or the way North By Northwest is about microfilm. It's a Macguffin - a football that gets kicked down the field but other than that, adds nothing to the game.

Reddit has long had a TOS that their lawyer told them to adopt early on saying, basically, "we reserve the right to pull anything, and don't go posting anything that gets us in trouble, Little Rabbit Fru Fru, or we'll turn you into a goon." The problem is that Reddit has no mechanism whatsoever to deal with anyone violating their TOS on any scale.

One of Reddit's earliest prominent users was a creepy guy who went by "p3do." He was, he made no bones about it, a pedophile. Before IAmA, he had lots of interesting conversations about what actually drives pedophiles - and if he was a troll, he was an exceptionally good one. That dude was creepy. Kevin Bacon in "The Woodsman" creepy.

One day, p3do just up and disappeared. No explanation was given. I even talked to Jedberg about it, in person, off the record - and he refused to discuss it.

https://twitter.com/#!/p3do/statuses/1713672159 (warning - the rest of the account's tweets are unsettling in the extreme)

So Reddit disappeared him.

And unlike Violentacrez, who has a self-promoting streak a mile wide, p3do disappeared into the night. The admins were able to make the problem go away the only way they know how - a strategic first strike without warning. You'll note that when they warned Violentacrez about /r/jailbait the stupid thing ended up back online due to outcry. p3d0 didn't have any friends, didn't make it a 1st amendment issue, and that was that.

Reddit has no problem with the morality of policing content. They have a problem with the practicality of policing content. The reason this whole thing isn't overblown is that SomethingAwful forced their hand - they made a big stink to require Reddit to enforce their TOS. Reddit now has to enforce said TOS with the exact same resources they had yesterday - ie, none.

And they can't pick and choose, either. One whiff of favoritism and that site goes full retard. How many front page events do you think they're due in which someone says "they censored this but not that! They came after me but not him! ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE!"?

That's the issue: Reddit, a fundamentally lawless place, just blinked and said they're going to try and enforce laws... without the most rudimentary beginnings of a police force.