Bombings Trip Up Reddit in Its Turn in Spotlight

After site members, known as Redditors, turned into amateur sleuths and ended up wrongly identifying several people as possible suspects, Reddit went from a font of crowdsourced information to a purveyor of false accusations, to the subject of a reprimand by the president of the United States himself, to the center of another furious debate about the responsibilities of digital media.

Last Monday, Erik Martin, the site’s general manager, posted an apology, saying, “Activity on Reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties. The Reddit staff and the millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened.”

In a subsequent interview, however, Mr. Martin was unclear about how it might play out differently in the future.  “We could have reminded people about our rules on the disclosure of personal information; we could have shut down the subReddit earlier than the moderators shut it down,” he suggested. (SubReddit is a name for threads of conversation that develop on the site.)

But, he added, except for higher vigilance and a moderation of discussion “tone,” the site was not ready to institute new rules of behavior. “Reddit is a sort of attention aggregator,” he said. “It can tell you what to pay attention to, but it is certainly not a replacement for news reporting.”

While Reddit has never pretended to be a news organization, it is learning that as it grows bigger and more influential the rest of the world expects it to exercise judgment — judgment that is often at odds with the freewheeling culture it and its members prize. (Internet host sites are shielded by federal law from liability for the speech of their users.)

Other sites have felt the need to police themselves after being scrutinized in similar situations. Craigslist, which carries classified ads of all kinds, suspended its adult services offerings in 2010 after more than a dozen state attorneys general threatened action against it, complaining that it was promoting prostitution. Last year Google, the owner of YouTube, blocked a video that mocked Islam in Libya and Egypt as violent reaction to the video spread in those countries.

This is not the first time Reddit has found itself in an embarrassing situation, and by some accounts the timing now could not be worse.

“They are sort of a subculture ready to break into the mainstream and it is too bad this was the moment,” said Robert Quigley, a senior lecturer for the College of Communication at the University of Texas, Austin.

Started in 2005 by two University of Virginia graduates, Reddit is essentially an updated version of the electronic bulletin board in which registered users, anonymous or otherwise, can post a comment or a link on a topic deemed worthy (subjects vary from pornography to cat tricks to science). Users can then vote the posts up or down as they add their own commentary.

The most popular posts appear on Reddit’s home page. A recent example is a bizarre picture of the teenage idol Justin Bieber in a ski mask with a bodyguard in a zippered one-piece sweatsuit.

The site’s traffic has more than doubled in the past 12 months, and it currently reports some 62 million unique visitors a month. It was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in 2006, but in 2012 was spun off as a separate entity. Advance Publications, Condé Nast’s parent company, remains the largest stockholder.

Although it is not a news organization, Reddit is used by young people as a place where they can tap into trends that do not appear on mainstream sites. It has also become an in-the-know stop for celebrities and politicians looking to gain traction with that age group. President Obama made Reddit his last official campaign stop in the waning hours of the 2012 election.

Like many digital operations, Reddit, which is based in San Francisco, keeps its staff mean and lean. It has 25 employees, and uses volunteers to police its Web site to make sure rules are obeyed. Among Reddit’s basic rules are a prohibition against vote manipulation, spam, child pornography and revealing other people’s personal information.

Still, anyone who starts a subReddit essentially becomes its dictator, deciding who can moderate and who has access. This has not always turned out so well.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/business/media/bombings-trip-up-reddit-in-its-turn-in-spotlight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss