[ajsnigrutin]

I mean... reddit also defended that.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19975375

> Social news site Reddit will not censor "distasteful" sections of its website, its chief executive has said.

jailbait, upskirt, etc. were all huge subreddits back then.

[pjc50]

Yes. People that run these things often start from a libertarian presumption that everything should be allowed. Then they find out what's actually illegal. Then the stuff that's not strictly illegal but incredibly antisocial, causing pushback. Then the age verification wave as various countries and states get fed up with the easy availability of porn to minors. And so on.

[troosevelt]

I found this YT vid from back when CNN was covering these subreddits. Ohanian gives this interview where he says (paraphrasing) that there's nothing they can do to police this stuff (they ended up just banning those communities) and it was human nature. We're again talking about some especially abusive content, subreddits targeting minors.

I wonder what he'd say about this today, because it comes off as extreme naivety, and I even held similar views, though I don't get how your mindset could be so extreme that your first instinct would not be to disallow content which is this distasteful. It really shows how deeply "free speech" was embedded into net culture of the time above all else.

Not to misuse this argument, but I really really wonder how he feels given 1) who he's married to 2) how he presents himself today and 3) that he has a daughter now. I'd guess this is NOT his view of running Digg,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXZYvrue1BE

[EasyMark]

I don't believe they got fed up honestly. I think it's just their "think of the children" scheme to get blackmail material on people and in hopes they can use it for other nefarious activities in the future. It's always been this way when "think of the children" comes up, it's never about children, it's about power.