You owe it to yourself to browse /r/all at the moment. I intend to be AFK for the rest of the day.
Jesus WEPT. I am so glad that the kinds of people who do this are deserting Reddit in droves. Most of them weren't there at the start, in those long ago days (when /r/atheism was actually a constructive and fascinating place) and I sure as hell won't miss them once they're gone. The amount of truly interesting, intelligent contributors who will jump ship due to some angry trolls not being able to vilify fat/whatever people is negligible. And there are more than enough great people who will remain. I found it more amazing that they left /r/jailbait up for so long, and have left all these other subs up for so long.
They have no ability to police. /r/all for the past 18 hours demonstrates this pretty cleanly. So announcing an intent to police, without buying new squad cars, hiring more beat cops, building out a courthouse and otherwise assembling the infrastructure necessary to do actual policing accomplishes exactly fuckall. /r/jailbait was left up as long as it was because it was the devil they knew. Violentacrez was on a leash and worked with them; cut off that head and a thousand others will spring up. It worked in the Admins' advantage to have their pr0n in a well-controlled, sanctioned corner. The only reason they took it down is SomethingAwful demonstrated to them just how sensitive they truly were to bad PR.
The issue I had with /r/jailbait is that it clearly involved photos where the age could not be verified, nor the user permission, regardless of violentacrez's supposed moderation. (Did he personally track the subject of every image, the date it was taken, and their birth certificate?) It should never have been allowed from the get-go. I thought it highly unwise they allowed it as long as they did (same with upskirt subreddits). While I think there are also serious risks with /r/gonewild and similar (in terms of pictures being posted without permission, the best mods in the world can't totally police that) at least its intention is self-posting. That was never the intention of /r/jailbait. Its aim was to post images of teenagers who looked borderline age of consent. Ultimately the issue is whether Reddit ever needed to be a porn site to gain sufficient traction? Maybe it did. Maybe it was simply a business decision to tolerate (and still tolerate) all that shit.
The issue Reddit faces is simple: If they want to control content, they need the tools to control content. If they lack the tools to control content, they must rely on social engineering. I would go as far as saying anything with nudity should be well-firewalled deep into Reddit. Require a credit card at least. But the twin problems with this are (1) see previous comment about tools (2) 80% of Reddit's traffic, as of 2011 at least, was porn search. And yes. "Jailbait" was one of the principal search terms. There's a world of difference between the traffic stats Reddit advertises and what a paid report from any of the CPM sites will give you. Reddit is a porn haven.
Knew a guy in charge of "the internet" for all of one of the big 5 studios (Sony, Warner, Universal, Disney, Paramount). Bigtime redditor. Tried to sell said same studio on Reddit. Said same studio paid for the actual traffic reports, as opposed to the stuff Reddit usually hypes. Reddit is radioactive with porn.
You must have gotten there way before me. I used to get railed on for being agnostic because "goD don't realz" was the only acceptable answer to some people. And few people would say anything or downvote their obvious disinterest in the actual conversation.(when /r/atheism was actually a constructive and fascinating place)
