The social news site Reddit has occasionally been the topic of controversy due to the presence of communities on the site known as "subreddits" devoted to explicit or controversial material. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. This started discussion in the media about the ethics of anonymity and outing on the Internet. In , Reddit introduced a quarantine policy to make visiting certain subreddits more difficult.
Visiting or joining a quarantined subreddit requires bypassing a warning prompt. The community, which featured graphic depictions of violence against women , was banned after its moderators were found to be sharing users' personal information online, and collaborating to protect one another from sitewide bans. The subreddit's leaders decided to ban individuals advocating for murder. He also expressed concern that he would be falsely labeled a child pornographer or anti-semite because of some of the subreddits he created.
Reddit CEO Yishan Wong defended the content Brutsch contributed to the site as free speech and criticized efforts to ban the Gawker link on the same basis. In the interview with journalist Drew Griffin , Brutsch was apologetic about his activity on Reddit. He explained that he was most fond of the appreciation he got from other redditors, and that Reddit helped him relieve stress.
Brutsch also described the support he had from administrators, stating that he had received an award for his contributions. Chris Slowe, a lead programmer of Reddit until , said of the relationship between Brutsch and the Reddit staff: "We just stayed out of there and let him do his thing and we knew at least he was getting rid of a lot of stuff that wasn't particularly legal.
Sady Doyle , writing in The Guardian , compared it to the outing of the alleged blackmailer of Amanda Todd and suggested that such outings may be justified, but that they may also unduly focus attention on individuals without confronting the underlying problems by engaging in "sensationalism" at the expense of cultural reform.
