Recently, Reddit had a massive drama bomb go off when they hired some transgender failed politician with some sketchy qualifications and even sketchier views and associates to be an admin, and no sooner did they get confirmed, they (or someone carrying water for them, makes little practical difference) went full Ministry of Truth, trying to prevent people from posting anything that was already in the public domain about their sketchy and incredibly messed up past, despite it being on public record on multiple news outlets.
This backfired, the Streisand effect kicked in, and Reddit eventually caved and sacked the party in question, claiming rather weakly they had no idea who they hired (as if it was not their job to do a little basic googling, unless they were hoping no one would notice, which is even worse, implying they were fine with this party being of ill public repute and still having a lot of responsibility), and sacking them to hold off the wolves baying for blood.
This all said, Reddit could have exercised a thimbleful of good sense and actually made sure they were not hiring some PR disaster, but for some reason, they thought this was a good idea and did the worst thing they could do in attempting a terrible coverup with the hideously laughable excuse of trying to prevent harassment of said hiree when it's not harassment by any legal standard to bring up the matter of public record when that party looks questionable for having a public responsibility.
It's worth noting Reddit wants to have an IPO and go big on Wall Street soon, so they likely cut their losses on this in the hopes this won't scotch the deal. Regardless, they've already locked the door after the horse got out of the barn, and from what I understand several skeevy people who are associated with this party still remain in moderator positions on Reddit (which refuses to look at the evidence because the source hurts their feelings).
Now, I rarely read Reddit these days, save for one subreddit, and if it died tomorrow, I'd live. However, it still amazes me how smooth-brained they had to be to think they could do the equivalent of concealing the sunrise even in the short-term when they planned to be answerable to the shareholders on the stock market soon. This was inept from start to finish, and I hope they do get on the stock market, I bet with people this intelligent running things, their next gaffe is likely to be worse, and I want to see them weep when their idiocy costs them money.
What this tells me, as a takeaway, is that whoever is calling the shots there is a blithering idiot. If you want to claim a prominent position in promoting public discourse, you had better be prepared to face the lions for every screwup you've made. I've been doxed, had my dirty underwear examined by all sorts of people, and write now under my real name for a gaming blog. I therefore do not as much expectation as most other people would to some degree of privacy anymore, and I've come to terms with that. To ask people to ignore all Google results for me would be idiocy at this point, and I'm amazed Reddit's staff was stupid enough to expect their own users to play along with this when they have every right to know who will be lording over them, especially since Reddit has a global reach and wants to go public as a traded company soon.
I doubt I will ever reach that level of public accountability, but these guys are already there and have made me cringe hard at how badly they handled it so far.
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