X

Reddit CEO admits to editing user comments amid Pizzagate malarkey

Steve Huffman clashes with fans of Donald Trump as the site bans a subreddit dedicated to a wild conspiracy theory.

Daniel Van Boom Senior Writer
Daniel Van Boom is an award-winning Senior Writer based in Sydney, Australia. Daniel Van Boom covers cryptocurrency, NFTs, culture and global issues. When not writing, Daniel Van Boom practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reads as much as he can, and speaks about himself in the third person.
Expertise Cryptocurrency, Culture, International News
Daniel Van Boom
gettyimages-621865270.jpg
Enlarge Image
gettyimages-621865270.jpg

Donald Trump supporters on Reddit clashed with the site's CEO over the edited comments.

Getty Images

Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, today admitted to editing several comments that criticised him on the site.

He made the admission on Reddit, where he posts under the username Spez.

Huffman got a lot of flak from members of the The_Donald, a subreddit for supporters of President-elect Donald Trump, after Reddit banned the Pizzagate subreddit. Pizzagate was dedicated to a debunked conspiracy theory linking Hillary Clinton to a paedophile ring.

In response, he edited comments reading "fuck Spez" to instead be directed at moderators of the The_Donald subreddit.
"I messed with the "fuck u/spez" comments, replacing "spez" with r/the_donald mods for about an hour. It's been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff," he wrote. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly."

Huffman added: "Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again."

The top comment responding to the CEO's post was, "Surely editing others comments is a bigger violation of reddit [terms of service] than whatever pizzagate is accused of doing."

"Every bad comment on this site is actually a result of /u/spez 's making/manipulation until he can prove otherwise in each and every individual instance," another user joked.