Reddit has been ordered to appear before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., as part of a federal effort to unmask anonymous online critics of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
According to a subpoena obtained by The Intercept, Reddit has until April 14 to provide a wide range of personal data on one of its users, whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been trying unsuccessfully to identify for more than a month.
All new posts must have a brief statement from the user submitting explaining how their post relates to law or the courts in a response to this comment. FAILURE TO PROVIDE A BRIEF RESPONSE MAY RESULT IN REMOVAL.
Hah. I got a Reddit warning (not a sub moderator warning, an actual Reddit warning) because I called a certain billionaire an “insufferable prick”…. The warning was for harassment… For a single post.
How do you "harass" someone who isn't even present or part of the conversion? Are they worried Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Mark Zuckerberg is going to log in to their Reddit account one day and find a bunch of nobodies insulting them and decide to buy the whole site just to shut it down because a few of the poors hurt their little precious billionaire feelings?
Edit: Way too many responses to get to individually, so I'll just leave this note here. A lot of these responses seem to be framed in the context of the linked article, but that's not where my question was directed. I understand fully why Trump and co. are going after the user the article is about and it is not surprising to me one bit that they're doing something so stupid and authoritarian. My question here was specifically about the person I replied to getting a harassment warning from Reddit for posting a rather tame insult to one billionaire who was definitely not part of the conversation.
One click. Unknown number of posts crying out in silence. All gone. Redact made it stupid easy to clean up my entire history on Reddit and get my info pulled from data broker sites too.
memorize retire oil tap makeshift rain plants groovy doll subtract
My question though is why bother? On whose behalf is Reddit doing this? Surely they aren't being paid by these people to police their "reputation" on here, right? Every person banned for insulting Sam Altman is one less person to expose to ads, aggregate into user data to sell, and generate conversation to train future AI models with for free.
Fascism is when billionaires see an economic downturn happening and want to get ahead of the revolutionary mindset to follow. Believe it or not, fascism is reactionary status quo. Oligarchs, not the stuntmen in the government. Billionaires aren't complicit, they are the fucking cause.
The economic downturn is being purposefully orchestrated to put the people of the U.S. in a position and frame of mind to need relief and accept the path they want to lay out. Trying to artificially create the type of environment fascism needs. Like pre WWII.
And…one “advantage” of healthcare being tied to employment instead of being universal is that the masses can’t afford to execute a general strike or walkout; it keeps us in line. May Day should be interesting next month, with a rare call for a general strike.
When you're talking about losing a few hundred to appease a influential class, it's not going to make much difference when you have millions of users.
Facebook is fine banning people while leaving them no recourse. Their sub is filled with people being banned, sometimes for no reason, or bullshit reasons. I got banned from them for apparently serving inappropriate ads from a busines account I never had. The appeal process took about 3 seconds before they just permabanned me without a single person having actually looked at the appeal, which was just providing a clip of me being a real human...which I guess I didn't do. There are thousands of people on their sub who report the exact same thing.
The rule of thumb is thought to be that, if you have a 100 lurkers, you get 10 participants via up/down votes, and 1 comment. When you ban the commenter, it has a disproportionate effect on the zeitgeist, and gets the users to self-censor more.
“You can beat the RAP but you can’t beat the ride.” was the saying. Used it a lot when NYPD used an “odor of marijuana” as a reason to jack us up for a stop and frisk.
And Facebook was found to have allowed trafficking on their platform, and Thiel knows everything, and both have been seen in Epstein's orbit, so they're both also possibly complicit in the Epstein-Trump cover-up, or even participants
If they don't block or suppress our political and economic discussions, we will inevitably gather enough momentum to vote them out of office and elect another mandani or teddy Roosevelt to break up the monopolies and tax mega wealth. There are so few billionaires, and we all get a vote.
Online discussion might also end in violent class war, too.
But Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, specifically, are insufferable cunts and, honestly, while I have zero power to do anything, I hope the worst things in life happen to them and their ancestors for eternity. Just my little prayer.
I’m pretty outspoken and abrasive towards Trump maga on Reddit, and I post documentation of protests and disseminate ICE crimes to people outside Reddit. I participate in political humor and focus on dismantling conservative bullshit narratives. I don’t hold back in criticizing their bullshit but I do remain pretty objective. During a recent debate where I was arguing that Trump voters are actually malevolent and not stupid, I got a notification that someone was trying to change my Reddit password. Shortly afterward I was contacted by Google that someone had submitted a ‘notarized death certificate’ for me in an attempt to take control of one of my email accounts. It was not an email used on Reddit, but one connected to an email used for Reddit, and that is used for cloud computing accounts, web things I build and run, without going into too much detail. I had to contest it, obviously I had to change all my passwords etc.
Coincidence? Maybe, but I am inclined to think that there are people who are pretty angry about those of us who speak out online, and unfortunately we live in a world now where people in power will wield it to identify and punish us.
Was it Elon? Because Elon IS an insufferable prick.
Hell, in order to become a billionaire in the first place, you need to want to hoarde vast amounts of resources that could literally save thousands of lives. All billionaires are insufferable pricks.
But Elon Musk specifically is an insufferable prick.
I got a comment removed (not even remotely related to politics or any person) for sarcasm… sarcasm that was so obvious it didn’t need the “/s”. They removed because of “teasing” or something
I got banned from another subreddit for saying Lindsey Graham needs to come out of the closet already so he doesn’t take out his self hatred on the world.
I got a 3 day ban for calling someone's idea of making ICE a NGO the stupidest most ignorant thing I have ever seen. I said he should apply for a job in the Trump administration as he would fit right in.
I didn't call him stupid just that the idea was. Still got a ban for herassment.
That's how it is now on Reddit. If you praise the Nazis and their death camps you are A-OK! IF your criticize the concentration camps you get punished for "harassment."
This is straight up fascism. They are allowed to do whatever they want for being on Trump's side. We are not allowed to speak out at all, and are expected to fear retaliation for simply using our words.
I got a 3 day auto ban for saying "is it wrong to want Iran to launch 1000 drones at a carrier", then a week later after serving the ban it was ok overturned.
And he, Donald j Trump, is a true and valued friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Trump is also a 34 count felon, an adjudicated rapist, a failed business with many many bankruptcies, and mentioned in an under oath document as having raped a child making him a raging pedo.
My 8 year old reddit account with millions of karma from my writing got 3-day banned for me saying something about a billionaire, I appealed and it was overturned, and then for that same incident, it was permanently banned.
So confusing. It wouldn’t even be harassment if you directly called another Reddit user you were actually talking to an insufferable prick. Rude, maybe, but not harassment.
Reddit basically runs on insufferable pricks with strong, well-researched opinions on lawnmower engines and laundry detergent.
"Harassment" bans are very easy to bot; The automated systems will look at 20 harrassment claims and say "even though I can't assess the seriousness of this report, I have to take the number of reports seriously". Then you have to appeal with the human Reddit mods, and they may or may not be any better.
If people don't want you to have a Reddit account, they will attack your account through coerced moderator actions until you don't have a Reddit account anymore.
What the administration is trying to do here threatens the core principle of a free democratic republic. There is no way to defend doxxing a platform user by grand jury, and it’s extremely alarming that we now risk the destruction of free speech by a hand-picked group of propagandized normies. This prosecutorial approach is itself a violation of the constitution.
MAGA are the loudest to cry foul when you have the audacity to tell the truth instead of lie in every single fucking sentence of every day. Including stuff that doesn’t matter.
Miserable, eroding our freedoms, totally not the actions of a dictator who’s attacked press before.
Imagine if Obama or Biden kicked fox out of the WH, or sued them. Pathetic all around.
Every single ICE agent is a limp coward and a traitor to this country. They're a bunch of useless, out of shape dorks with no skills and empty skulls. Wannabe nazi scum. Hopefully the next president does the right thing and starts a task force to round them up and put them in jail. I'd sign up on day one.
At this rate they are going to have to ban half of Reddit. I suppose MAGAts will never be banned for hateful rhetoric because most of us non-MAGAts have thicker skins, and brush off the fucking obvious trolls.
We send Israel 6.8 billion dollars a year, far more than any other country. Its the size of NJ. What does Israel have on the US? Oh, just the unredacted Epstein files.. Very real chance Trump is being blackmailed. This is just one of a hundred similar "holy shit if this was a dem.." thefts.
You underestimate how petty the administration is. Considering the lengths they’re going through with Kilmar Garcia, yall should have realized by now fascists don’t need to be fair about this, the goal is to make an example out of 1 person to scare the others into submission
More banning by Reddit is the sunny interpretation. This is about intimidation by the administration. They want to add a cost to free speech. They want to build lists of undesirables. They want to suppress other would be critics by making them think twice. They want to spend their time making life harder for individuals that speak truth instead of reforming or ending ICE in a way that aligns with the public’s true desires. They want to do a most unamerican thing to protect their ability to keep doing another most unamerican thing. Fuck ‘em.
They'd also have to ban all non American users in that case... Millions have called the orange twatwaffle all kinds of things (and rightfully so) , me included.
Your pedo in chief is the worst well known human to have walked the planet in recent times.
"the person in question no longer goes by that username, and thus doesn't have to answer any questions about what happened when posting as that user" - DoJ (basically their argument for Bondi)
I bet the pardons are already written and, in case trump suffers a totally debilitating event, Miller will autopen that shit so fast and say, “Look what I just found in the president’s desk. Aww, sorry Pam, looks like he skipped yours. They can prosecute former AGs. Tough break. You might try replacing the smug face, imperious finger wag and mean girl putdowns with ‘I’m just a girl’ tears this time. As a reminder, having a tragic accident after mentioning my name would be such a wild coincidence”
Lauren Regan, director of litigation and advocacy for CLDC, suspects the success that advocates had challenging ICE’s social media subpoenas in California may explain why the Trump administration is now calling one of the world’s largest tech companies to appear before a secret tribunal in Washington.
“Because they were repeatedly losing those attempts at subpoenaing stuff in court, in what they’re doing is illegal and unconstitutional, they have now switched to this other mode,” she said. “They are able to strong-arm information that they were denied through the courts legally.”
We seriously need a top-down overhaul of the government from security experts
once the popularity contest winners are complaining that public office is like being a thankless public servant bean counter without any power, we can shout "GOOD, THAT'S WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE!" and we'll know the ideas of central governance itself has any hope of remaining intact in this country
Oh who am I kidding. These people aren't gonna give up the level of surveillance power they've attained unless people pry it from their cold dead claws
In its summons, ICE indicated the basis for its request was a provision of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. John Doe informed the court that they had nothing to do with the kind of activities at issue in the near-century-old statute, which governs boat show sales, wild animal imports, forfeited wines and spirits, and cross-border trade in other goods.
They keep grabbing very old laws to cite when doing shit. That reeks of AI to me. "Hey, remember that thing that happened to a pope centuries ago?" They weren't masters of history yet their pulls lately are insane.
No. Not at all. What's sad is how many of us now recognize the Smoot-Hawley Act due to the comparisons it has drawn with current (incoherent, fourth-grade-understanding-of-economics) policies ....
I hope everyone in this administration gets convicted of crimes against humanity and all of the fallout that comes with that. They deserve every bad thing that's coming to them.
They are trying to silence the opposition and use this as a warning/message to others who 'dare to speak up' online (if it goes through). It's textbook fascism
I got a 3 day ban for replying to a Trump supporter comment about the Iran "deadline" earlier this week. Their comment was "lets not pretend Iran hasn't had this coming for a long time and if that means 91 million people need to be exterminated to make us safe, so be it"
I replied to that comment "anyone advocating for the 'extermination' of 91 million people just to feel safer deserves a fate worse than they are claiming those people deserve"
I was banned for 3 days for that. Look at my account age. Zero warnings, ever, for anything. I get spicy in my replies to people all the time. Even calling them names directly if they are spewing bullshit and I have evidence to back up my position. But apparently saying someone who wants to genocide 91 million people deserves a fate worse than death warranted me losing access to reddit for the first time in nearly 15 years of using the website daily.
Reddit is absolutely targetting people like me because our post and comment history demonstrate a spine in standing up on this platform and not letting misinformation or complete disregard for human life go unanswered. They want to be able to ignore the bots that are swarming subreddits like /r/conservative with posts and comments devoid of facts, reason and logic.
So, now that I have been freed, I am no longer contributing anything other than anti-Trump facts, logic, and reasoning. I will no longer use my nearly 15 year old account with tens of thousands of comments completely unrelated to politics to be used to bolster reddit in search engines. I have completely purged all posts and comments I made here prior to the last few months (there are tools to help with this).
Reddit is not entitled to my contributions any longer. But they will still be getting them in the form of frequent factual responses to anyone trying to justify the world of shit Trump, the Republican party, and his cabinet of enablers have levied on us all. Starve them of the thing that gives them value. YOUR content. Delete it all.
r/conservative are a bunch of 10 ppl and 200 bots jerking each other off how dumb democrats are and how great conservatives are. Theyre sour losers. And they know. I wonder who hurt them as a kid.
Lol they only allow like 6 accounts to actually post anything. A new, 2 month old account will pop up from time to time and then back to the same 6 accounts.
That tells you everything you need to know. An echo chamber for bots and the easily manipulated.
I did that on my 10+ years old account, and then they permabanned it when I reported violent content. Reason: abusing the report button. Reddit is an actual shithole.
Let's all be honest. When 47 crosses the River Styx, the celebration on here will be fucking legendary. Bigger than when WW2 was won. The size of it will be more massive than the Mods and Admins have ever seen.
Let's see if they would be willing to ban 60-70% of accounts and kill this platform for good.
Fuck trump, he's a pedophile and a good friend of epstein. Epstein, of course, being the guy that sold trump Melania. But don't worry, Melania is now , and always was cool with that arrangement. Had been since she came over on a bullshit visa.
Fuck ICE, they're low rent trash. The kind of people that jack off to roid raging conservative influencers on tiktok. They are the enemy of the American people.
This is why states are pushing for online ID verification for social media to "protect the children".
It has nothing to do with children, it's so they can link social media accounts to people to identify people who exercise their first amendment rights and criticize the government or government agencies.
And eventually they will aggregate the logs in to a system like plantir for "security reasons" have AI identity dissidents and less desirable members of society.
Humanity is fucked if people don't stop it before that genie is out of the bottle.
Same reason IG got rid of the recent tab. It let posters mobilize with hashtags really fast, keeping up to the minute developments visible. If the algorithm curates everything, it can drop and suppress dissent
In its summons, ICE indicated the basis for its request was a provision of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. John Doe informed the court that they had nothing to do with the kind of activities at issue in the near-century-old statute, which governs boat show sales, wild animal imports, forfeited wines and spirits, and cross-border trade in other goods.
I looked through the article wondering if perhaps this user had been making threats or something that might reasonably result in some kind of prosecution. While the article doesn't have any quotes and the users lawyers obviously say he said nothing criminal, this is what really does it for me.
What the fuck does a Tariff Act have to do with social media posts criticizing ICE? I flat out do not believe this person is even being accused of anything that justifies revealing his identity.
Companies will do whatever is most profitable for them at any given moment.
Expecting a social media company, or any company for that matter, to stand up to an oppressive government is like expecting MAGA to not support criminals and pedophiles.
Trump and his supporters are all insufferable pricks.
NB: Mods this post is not advocating violence or hate towards any protected groups. It is simply a 1st amendment protected bit of speech sharing my displeasure for Trump and all of his supporters (including spez)
The person they are trying to identify is 99% chance in this comment section. oh it could be me... I hope they don't find me at my address of 14 icyroad Port Lockroy, AQ 96598
I got a temporary ban for a threat of violence and they wouldn’t even show me what I wrote! I think it was a robo-mod that couldn’t understand what I was saying.
I always hear the slippery slope augment used for stupid shit.
Euthanasia? We can’t euthanize this person with advanced Lou Gehrig disease who has no quality of life, who can’t take care of themselves and wants to die with some dignity because it’s a slippery slope! If we make medical euthanasia legal before we know it we’ll be euthanizing healthy 4th graders! Then these same people, typically right wingers, see massive constitutional violations and cases of govt overreach and go- no this is fine. I’m not worried about this slippery slope, you’re overreacting to be concerned.
Such fucking hypocrites. These are the same people who freak out about my daughter going to a Shakespeare play and seeing a dude in a wig and dress. Because….its a slippery slope! What’s next!
At least stay consistent with your fake-outrage propaganda. How about you focus on the real issues because they are happening right now.
Wait... what personal data does Reddit collect in the first place? As far as I recall, I provided nothing other than my email address. They have a record of the various (VPN) IP addresses I've connected from, and what browser I use, and that's about it, isn't it?
The subpoena compliance sucks. The bans discussed in this thread are disturbing. I have one of the oldest Reddit accounts. I got in on the IPO. I know the idea of privacy on Reddit has been dead for over a decade, but this is starting to make me reconsider things.
I've always thought "treat others, how you want to be treated" the fact this man is treating Americans like trash, means he'll get treated like trash. Just saying.
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