The war on 12-year-old girls

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Behold the scariest, most dangerous creature in America: the 12-year-old girl. Better shut her down.

It's been an alarmingly terrible week for girls. There's been the sickening story of the death of Amanda Todd, whose odyssey of bullying and shaming began when she was a curious seventh-grader who responded to a webcam user's request for a "flash" of her young breasts. On the bright side, though, there was also the cheery news that vaccinations won't turn 11- and 12-year-old girls into dirty whores. That's got to be some form of possible advancement for female health, because "promiscuity risk" is still the No. 1 concern parents have about Gardasil, the vaccine against the HPV virus that can lead to cervical cancer. Great to know we live in a country where families are more worried about the imaginary risk of their daughters' sexual behavior than the real one of viruses and cancer.

Leaked memo from Reddit CEO: “We will not ban legal content”

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Gawker's recent expose on the identity of notorious troll Violentacrez hit the Internet hard: Michael Brutsch lost his job, Reddit moderators banned the profile for a day and censored links to Gawker in over 70 subreddits, and the Internet exploded into a heated debate about doxxing -- the practice of using publicly available information to piece together and reveal an anonymous poster's identity -- and free speech on the Internet.

During this time, however, one voice remained conspicuously absent: that of Reddit's management.

On Tuesday night, Gawker received a leaked memo from Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, originally posted in a private subreddit. In the memo, Wong finally weighed in on the issue, saying, "We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it," meaning that free speech -- even for creepy trolls like Violentacrez -- continues to have a place on the site. But Wong acknowledged that the Reddit community went against this very principle by banning Chen's piece and censoring links to Gawker:

Salon.com > violentacrez

The war on 12-year-old girls

Leaked memo from Reddit CEO: “We will not ban legal content”