Reddit Revelations: Part 2

Trigger warning: rape.

In part 1 of this series, we examined how a number of the moderators of /r/conspiracy are closely affiliated with the moderators of "anti-conspiracy theory" subreddits like /r/justshillthings, /r/conspiratardmythos, and /r/TopMindsOfReddit, and how all of these moderators are part of a larger network which runs misogynistic and racist subreddits like /r/coontown and /r/rapingwomen.

In this post, we will begin to examine how the administrators of Reddit are directly connected to this network of moderators and subreddits. If you have not already read Part 1 and my introduction to Reddit & Information Warfare, you should do so before continuing as many of the moderators and subreddits mentioned here were first introduced in these earlier posts and this context will not always be repeated here.

On July 3, 2015, moderators of over 300 of Reddit's subreddits temporarily shut their forums down, turning them to private, ostensibly, to protest the firing of the site’s director of talent, Victoria Taylor.[1] The moderators of at least one subreddit which participated in the "blackout," however, have offered a different "satirical" rationale:

 

Racist and sexist comments in this subreddit (/r/blackpeopletwitter) are frequently and heavily upvoted, such as this reply to the above announcement:



Moderators of /r/blackpeopletwitter also moderate a number of other misogynistic and racist subreddits, such as /r/rapingwomen, /r/niggersrebooted[2] and /r/raccoonsareniggers[3] (a subreddit created in the aftermath of Dylann Roof's terrorist attack in Charleston, South Carolina), of which half the moderators also moderate /r/blackpeopletwitter.[4]

The creator of /r/raccoonsareniggers was /u/T_Dumbsford, who also moderates /r/tifu (which has over 3 million subscribers), /r/niggersrebooted, and /r/shitkrustysays[5] (a reference to /u/KrustyKoonKrackers, /r/coontown moderator) along with several other moderators of /r/blackpeopletwitter, /u/fritzly (see part 1), and /u/i-am-you, the top moderator of /r/Oppression and a moderator of /r/niggerdrama.[6]

In the wake of "blackout 2015," the chairman of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, announced that Reddit administrator /u/krispykrackers would become the point person for moderator issues.[7]

/u/krispykrackers moderates no less than four subreddits with /u/T_Dumbsford,[8][9][10][11] including the eponymous /r/fuckkrispykrackers. All six of the currently extant moderators of /r/fuckkrispykrackers besides /u/krispykrackers moderate /r/Oppression together.[12]

Before talking about /r/fuckkrispykrackers and its moderators in greater detail, taking a closer look at the moderator account which has since been deleted, /u/0x_, will help us better understand how "satire" functions as deployed by these moderators.

/u/0x_ was a moderator of the following subreddits[13]:

• /r/Oppression
• /r/TrueRedditDrama (along with /u/T_Dumbsford and /u/KrustyKoonKrackers)[14]
• /r/ProlapseVille (created by /u/BardsDirge, moderator of /r/rapingwomen, /r/beatingfaggots, and /r/Fuck_The_Quran)[15]
• /r/3rd_World_Boobs (along with /u/T_Dumbsford and /u/BardsDirge) [16]
• /r/Kelloggs, /r/Kellawwgs, /r/KelloggsAnimals
• /r/ExxonMobil
• /r/OxiClean
• /r/DacvakIsAwesome (along with /u/T_Dumbsford)
• /r/TalesOfPrivilege

/r/TalesOfPrivilege contains a "disclaimer" that "this sub is for satire! anything serious will be removed!"[17] which, in the minds of the moderators of this subreddit, somehow makes content like this unproblematic:

Similarly themed subreddits /r/PrivilegeParty[18] and /r/SJWhate ("where privilege runs amok")[19] do not pretend to be "satire," and the moderators of /r/privilegeparty and /r/talesofprivilege are connected through /u/BardsDirge, who moderates /r/rapingwomen, /r/privilegeparty, and co-moderated multiple subreddits with /u/0x_ before that account was deleted.

Returning to the rest of the mod team of /r/fuckkrispykrackers and the subreddit itself, the sticky at the top of the thread alleges that the subreddit was made for people who love crackers and "have no ties to major companies like Nabisco":


Two of the moderators of /r/fuckkrispykrackers (/u/T_Dumbsford and /u/i-am-you) also moderate /r/Cadbury[20] which is a Mondelez International brand, like Nabisco.[21]

In addition to /r/Cadbury, /r/fuckkrispykrackers, and the extremely racist subreddits mentioned above, /u/T_Dumbsford and /u/i-am-you moderate numerous subreddits together, including:

• /r/Kelloggs, /r/KelloggsGoneWild, /r/RandomActsOfKelloggs, /r/KelloggsAnimals, /r/KelloggsMusic and /r/KelloggsLounge [22][23][24][25][26][27]
• /r/Kraft, /r/AmericanExpress, /r/Foldgers, /r/NaturalAmericanSpirit, /r/OxiClean, and /r/ExxonMobil [28][29][30][31][32][33]
• /r/hitlerjerk, /r/fascistjerk, /r/repression, and /r/ATimeToShill [34][35][36][37]

In an alliance with Monsanto, the companies Kelloggs, Kraft, and Mondelez International donated a collective sum of 9.5 million dollars in 2012 in a successful bid to defeat Proposition 37, a GMO labeling initiative in the state of California.[38]

Monsanto serves as an "umbrella corporation" with respect to these companies in at least two ways:

1. The products of corporations like Nabisco, such as Fig Newtons and Ritz Crackers, are either suspected of or known to contain ingredients which are genetically engineered to intake Monsanto's RoundUp Ready.[39][40] RoundUp Ready contains glyphosate, which has been known by Monsanto and the EPA to be linked to cancer for over thirty years now.[41]
2. There is a large degree of overlap between employees of Monsanto and the United States federal government. [42] This has allowed Monsanto employees to effectively craft many of the FDA's most important policies with regards to GMOs[43], and in turn companies like Kraft and Subway appeal to these FDA rulings in order to justify their corporate practices.[44][45]

Many of the moderators of /r/fuckkrispykrackers are directly connected to /u/bipolarbear0, who has promoted the subreddit /r/GMOmyths in the past (see my first post) and co-moderates a number of subreddits with /u/fritzly, who has "satirized" /u/bipolarbear0's affiliation with Monsanto in the subreddit /r/blamebipolarbear0[46]:

• All six of /u/krispykrackers' co-moderators in /r/fuckkrispykrackers are moderators of /r/oppression, which /u/fritzly moderated until very recently (having recently downsized from moderating 106 to 24 subreddits)[47][48][49]
• Three of these moderators (/u/i-am-you, /u/T_Dumbsford, and /u/TortoiseSex) co-moderated /r/online_sluts_fuck along with /u/fritzly and /u/KrustyKoonKrackers[50]
• Two of these moderators (/u/OBLIVIATER and /u/T_Dumbsford) co-moderated /r/moderati alongside /u/fritzly and /u/BipolarBear0[51]
• One of these moderators (/u/OBLIVIATER) co-moderates /r/fritzly and alongside /u/fritzly and /u/BipolarBear0[52]
• One of these moderators (/u/the_dinks) co-moderates /r/ilerminaty alongside /u/BipolarBear0[53]

The corporate relationship between Reddit and Monsanto is very real. Until 2011, Reddit was owned by Conde Nast; now, it is a subsidiary of Conde Nast's parent company, Advance Publications, and the president of Conde Nast, Bob Sauerberg, sits on the board of Reddit.[54][55] In 2014, it was revealed that Monsanto had enlisted Conde Nast in a stealth marketing campaign to manufacture pro-GMO propaganda.[56]

In my first post, we examined how pro-Monsanto propaganda on Reddit goes beyond the creation of subverses and includes the site-wide brigading of threads which contain information perceived as harmful to Monsanto's corporate interests. A similar propaganda technique, "forum sliding," has been deployed by /r/Kelloggs moderators with direct ties to /u/krispykrackers and the moderation team of /r/fuckkrispykrackers.

Approximately one year ago, a reddit user reported in /r/conspiracy that:

"Reddit user /u/GreatStarts, a 4 day old account with 2 posts about only breakfast, edits their post on the frontpage and ads in a Kelloggs plug."

This post was deleted soon afterwards, and another /r/conspiracy user reported that it said "the best part of waking up..." before clicking the post, then when you clicked the text it was edited to say "a bowl of Kelloggs cereal."[57]

A clear Kellogg's plug was posted in response to the deleted post in question:



/u/RalphiesBoogers is a moderator of /r/KelloggsGreatStarts, and made a similar post in this subreddit one week before the frontpage /r/AskReddit post in question was made.[58][59] The other moderator of /r/KelloggsGreatStarts is /u/UnluckyLuke, and both of these accounts have subreddits named after them.[60][61] The moderators of these subverses include /u/i-am-you, /u/the_dinks, /u/Noveskan, and /u/TortoiseSex, who all moderate /r/fuckkrispykrackers together.

We began this post with a discussion of "blackout 2015" and the racism of one of the participating subreddits, /r/blackpeopletwitter, and accounts such as /u/i-am-you. Before continuing to the concluding section of this article, we will look further at how the corporate propaganda we have been discussing is entangled with the racism of these subreddits and accounts in question.

Not only do many accounts such as /u/i-am-you and /u/T_Dumbsford moderate racist subreddits and corporate brand-name subreddits, there are also subreddits such as /r/kelloggsmasterrace (moderators include /r/fuckkrispykrackers mods /u/i-am-you and /u/Noveskan) which combines both of these elements of the activity we have been examining thus far.[62]

In 2011, the Maya Archaeology Initiative announced that it was being threatened with legal action by Kellogg's unless it ceased to use a logo which incorporates a toucan.[63] While Kellogg's is exploiting this image for profit, as "Toucan Sam" is the logo affiliated with their fruit loops cereal (which also contains glyphosate), the Maya Archaelogy Initiative seeks to preserve the integrity of the Maya Biosphere Reserve as a cultural and natural landscape for the benefit of local communities. [64]

News covering Kellogg's attempt to assert exclusive property rights over an appropriated symbol deployed variations on the pun "Toucan play this game" on more than one occasion, and this pun has emerged recently as a Reddit user handle closely affiliated with the accounts and subreddits mentioned above. [65]

/u/Toucan_play_at_this is a moderator of /r/SJWhate, the subreddit which advertised itself as "where privilege runs amok," and it is also a moderator of /r/BlackOut2015, the largest subreddit dedicated to discussing and organizing around the recent temporary shutdown of over 300 subreddits. Other moderators of /r/BlackOut2015 include /u/KrispyKoonKrackers, /u/fritzly, and /r/fuckkrispykrackers moderators /u/T_Dumbsford and /u/the_dinks.[66]

Like T_Dumbsford, /u/the_dinks is a moderator of /r/niggersrebooted. [67] Both of these accounts are moderating a subreddit dedicated to a "reddit revolt" while simultaneously moderating alongside /u/krispykrackers, a Reddit administrator who is deeply implicated in Reddit's corruption. Even the two most subscribed to subreddits which participated in the "blackout" (/r/AskReddit and /r/funny) have /u/krispykrackers as one of the top two moderators.[68][69][70]

Other moderators of /r/BlackOut2015 include:

• /u/glassshield, who moderates /r/RedditLoyalists alongside /u/BardsDirge (/r/rapingwomen moderator), /u/T_Dumbsford, /r/coontown moderators /u/KrustyKoonKrackers and /u/DylannStormRoof, and /r/moderati moderator /u/Paradox.[71] The sidebar of /r/RedditLoyalists describes these moderators as "a group of people who have rallied together to support Reddit's administration team."
• /u/Nechaev, a moderator of /r/Oppression, /r/ProlapseVille, /r/RedditLoyalists, and /r/fritzly.[72]
• /u/ReBurninator, a moderator of /r/PrivilegeParty, /r/ProlapseVille, /r/RedditLoyalists, and /r/punchable_children.[73]

These are the "leaders" of the "Reddit Revolt"; the eponymous subreddit was created nearly a month before the "blackout" happened, and almost all of the moderators of this subreddit wound up as moderators of /r/BlackOut2015.[74]

CITATIONS

[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/07/reddits-meltdown-exposes-huge-conundrum/
[2] http://i.imgur.com/rICqI5N.png
[3] http://i.imgur.com/4AQxXDF.png
[4] http://i.imgur.com/N4Q3MbY.png
[5] http://i.imgur.com/q18SDhV.png
[6] http://i.imgur.com/aIWFqOz.png
[7] http://i.imgur.com/zReHfsc.png
[8] http://i.imgur.com/cW9YSJ2.png
[9] http://i.imgur.com/3vM9ase.png
[10] http://i.imgur.com/6WrqvhW.png
[11] http://i.imgur.com/09N0ntW.png
[12] http://i.imgur.com/qREPFHu.png
[13] http://i.imgur.com/kI2qC9Z.png
[14] http://i.imgur.com/5OZITFK.png?1
[15] http://i.imgur.com/4AqcZMJ.png
[16] http://i.imgur.com/EspWhe9.png
[17] http://i.imgur.com/V9JwPtH.png
[18] http://i.imgur.com/qGae2C7.png
[19] http://i.imgur.com/E3qlcFN.png
[20] http://i.imgur.com/rDylCaF.png
[21] http://www.mondelezinternational.com/brand-family
[22] http://i.imgur.com/cOiuh6O.png
[23] http://i.imgur.com/zk9p5is.png
[24] http://i.imgur.com/sNj4AjZ.png
[25] http://i.imgur.com/7gcNX6W.png
[26] http://i.imgur.com/7cjMUwA.png
[27] http://i.imgur.com/5tYjvDQ.png
[28] http://i.imgur.com/TY2a7oU.png
[29] http://i.imgur.com/dBmUQMa.png
[30] http://i.imgur.com/Lfed3S4.png
[31] http://i.imgur.com/B993f3k.png
[32] http://i.imgur.com/8ixB2h3.png
[33] http://i.imgur.com/wFQ4qe1.png
[34] http://i.imgur.com/wSeU4vP.png
[35] http://i.imgur.com/SeVKtNL.png
[36] http://i.imgur.com/WDSQz5C.png
[37] http://i.imgur.com/wkuChWj.png
[38] http://votersedge.org/california/ballot-measures/2012/november/prop-37/funding#.VZ-JJEZ-uDk
[39] http://foodbabe.com/2014/07/29/fig-newtons-100-whole-grain/
[40] http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/Blogs/2915559/monsanto_and_epa_knew_of_glyphosate_cancer_link_in_1981.html
[41] https://www.change.org/p/nabisco-get-gmos-out-of-ritz-crackers
[42] http://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/public/2012/january/study1-big.jpg
[43] http://blog.friendseat.com/kraft-uses-genetically-engineered-growth-hormone/
[44] http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/07/van-hari-food-babe.aspx
[45] http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/06/health/subway-bread-chemical/index.html
[46] http://i.imgur.com/LW0HWEa.png
[47] http://i.imgur.com/Be95xjb.png
[48] http://i.imgur.com/FDeoXoy.png
[59] http://i.imgur.com/YcBmUyj.png?1
[50] http://i.imgur.com/GAoDxlq.png
[51] http://i.imgur.com/nNrIJlj.png
[52] http://i.imgur.com/9aNVy5h.png
[53] http://i.imgur.com/hB6u1Qr.png
[54] http://www.redditblog.com/2011/09/independence.html
[55] http://www.redditblog.com/2013/08/reddit-myth-busters_6.html
[56] http://gmwatch.eu/index.php/news/archive/2014/15571-conde-nast-making-propaganda-for-monsanto
[57] http://i.imgur.com/5PTPzlj.png
[58] http://i.imgur.com/F176unX.png
[59] http://i.imgur.com/XkQ1Onp.png
[60] http://i.imgur.com/dWxlcA9.png
[61] http://i.imgur.com/KZEFB6N.png
[62] http://i.imgur.com/STRHQJN.png
[63] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/09/02/kelloggs-toucan-sam-asserted-against-archaeology-initiative/id=18946/
[64] http://sustainablepulse.com/2015/01/29/gmos-glyphosate-discovered-kelloggs-froot-loops/#.VZ-x1kZ-uDk
[65] http://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Manufacturers/Toucan-play-that-game-Kellogg-backtracks-in-image-dispute-with-Mayan-group
[66] http://i.imgur.com/2O7rmgq.png
[67] http://i.imgur.com/yMlmZP2.png
[68] http://i.imgur.com/QHrhfIV.png
[69] http://i.imgur.com/htMNlr0.png
[70] http://i.imgur.com/iutPI4C.png
[71] http://i.imgur.com/F8LGZLs.png
[72] http://i.imgur.com/A0V176I.png
[73] http://i.imgur.com/wvLcr5S.png
[74] http://i.imgur.com/5UgGJ7v.png