(Photo: Crimint.com)

Andrew Auernheimer, better known by his pseudonym "weev," was sentenced today to 41 months in prison for exploiting an AT&T security flaw that allowed him to collect and publish the email addresses of 114,000 AT&T iPad owners. He alerted AT&T to the flaw before sending the dataset to Gawker, which published it, leading to an FBI investigation.

Mr. Auernheimer is part of the grey hat hacker collective Goatse Security, a division of the Gay Nigger Association of America, recently responsible for trolling the Daily Mail and unleashing a torrent of malicious spam on Tumblr. Back in November, Mr. Auernheimer was found guilty of "one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization" for his participation in Goatse Security's AT&T hack.

The case is a controversial one, as Goatse Security didn't technically have to hack anything to obtain the information--they simply were exploiting a security flaw with AT&T. Still, Mr. Auernheimer must serve approximately 3.5 years in jail with three years of supervised release and a $73,000 fine to be paid to AT&T for damages (because AT&T is the real victim here).

Mr. Auernheimer's legal defense team attempted to argue that he did not deserve hard time, and instead just six months probation for the offense, but that plea failed.

According to Gawker's Adrian Chen, prosecutors cited a Reddit AMA Mr. Auernheimer did last night as proof that he would reoffend following his release. In the AMA, Mr. Auernheimer stated that he would run for Congress once released, and because of "congressional immunity" this would allow him to "drop hacks on the floor of Congress and be completely immune for doing so."

For his part, Mr. Aeurnheimer seemed to show little remorse towards AT&T. "My regret is being nice enough to give AT&T a chance to patch before dropping the dataset to Gawker," he wrote. "I won't nearly be as nice next time."

https://twitter.com/AdrianChen/status/313649642057371649

Fake Cord Jefferson (Screencap: Twitter)

Spam accounts are nothing new on Twitter, as anyone who has ever tweeted the words "iPad" or "sex" can attest. But another spam ring has recently cropped up on the platform, and it uses the name cache of prominent journalists, techies and celebrities in an attempt to attract followers.

On Friday, Gawker writer Cord Jefferson discovered a copycat account that lifted his name, photo and bio in order to appear as if the account was that of the real Cord Jefferson. "Ha ha. What is this? Why is this? How do I kill this thing?" he tweeted. Twenty minutes later, BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski noticed the same thing. "Fuck is this account?" he tweeted.

As it turns out, Misters Jefferson and Kaczynski aren't the only media people affected by this trend. It appears that these spam accounts are also following hundreds of other spam accounts that pull the same trick, taking a real user's avatar, background photo and bio in order to make the fake profile appear legitimate.

There's one for actress Chloe Sevigny, Politico tech reporter Eliza Krigman, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and Dropbox product manager Matt Holden.

Celebrity impostors have always been an issue for social networks, which is why verified accounts exist. But the phenomenon doesn't seem to be related to a user's number of followers. Mr. Kaczynski has over 70,000, Mr. Jefferson over 8,000, and Learnvest's Allison Kade, who also has a copycat account, just over 500. The accounts all appear to be part of the same spam enterprise, since they all follow each other.

Weirder still is the fact that none of the accounts have tweeted anything yet. If the point of creating a ring of fake accounts that appear legitimate is to disseminate your spammy message, the spammers are either still building their core base of users or they haven't decided just what exactly their message is.

Users can report the accounts for spam, but that doesn't get them removed automatically. We've reached out to Twitter for comment and will update when we hear back.

(h/t Peter Sterne)

(Photo: CNN)

Michael Brutsch, the 49-year-old Texas resident whom Gawker outed last week as the man behind the racist and misogynistic Reddit troll account Violentacrez, is slated to appear tonight on Anderson Cooper 360.

In sound bites published to CNN's Press Room blog, Mr. Brutsch speaks with CNN's Drew Griffin about his experiences moderating the controversial subreddit Jailbait, where users posted sexualized photos of minors before it was shut down by Reddit last year.

Mr. Brutsch even gives an apology for his actions ... well, almost:

GRIFFIN: Anderson outed you without saying your name a year ago, right? You could have stopped then. Is the only reason you're stopping because we now know who you are?

BRUTSCH: Yes. I mean that is, you know, Violentacrez is what I did in my spare time to unwind from my 10-hour-a-day job. That's how I relaxed in the evening. I no longer need to relax in the evening, because I no longer have a job. That and the fact that the curtain's been pulled back and everyone can see the puppeteer ... That and the fact that I have, as with the rape and pregnant reddits, I have come around over the last few months to understand that some of these things can be harmful to other people.

DREW GRIFFIN:  Are you apologizing for what you did or trying to make an excuse for what you did?

MICHAEL BRUTSCH: Well, I am to some degree apologizing for what I did. Again, I was playing to an audience of college kids. Two years ago, when all of this was at its height, the audience was appreciative and supportive of this sort of gallows humor that I put out there.

GRIFFIN: Did you get a thrill out of that?

BRUTSCH: Well, honestly, the biggest thrill I got was those meaningless internet points.

Reddit users collect "karma" by publishing posts or comments to the site, which other users can then vote up or down. "He really did care about the karma," the Daily Dot's Kevin Morris tweeted at Betabeat. "Used to PM me, complaining that our leaderboards weren't accurate."

Mr. Brutsch announced earlier this week in a post on Reddit that he had an interview with CNN. When other users chimed in asking him to provide details about the interview, he responded that they did not pay him to appear. "They did cover valet parking, so that was $40," he said.

When another user asked how the interview went, he replied, "I don't think it will help anything."

Mr. Brutsch, who was fired from his job following Gawker's exposé, is now soliciting programming work in the porn industry.

Reddit CEO Yishan Wong. (Photo: Reddit)

As the story of notorious Reddit user Violentacrez and the controversial subreddits he moderated sinks its tentacles into the greater internet, Reddit administrators--known for their laissez-faire attitude toward site moderation--have remained astonishingly mum. In conversations with Betabeat, Reddit general manager Erik Martin gave little indication as to how Reddit intends to handle the Violentacrez and Creepshots fracas, except to admit that two of the subreddits had been banned by admins.

But a thread published by Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, posted to a private subreddit for moderators and obtained by Gawker, sheds some light on Reddit's intentions toward the controversial content on its platform:

We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse).

As Gawker notes, Mr. Wong did not mention Violentacrez by name in his note, nor did he directly address the myriad issues surrounding controversial subreddits like Creepshots. Instead, he reiterated the policies established following last year's shuttering of the subreddit Jailbait, a forum for users to post sexualized photos of minors:

We will ban illegal content, and in addition sexualized pictures of minors, immediately upon any reports to us. We gave our rationale for that back when that issue was resolved, and we will maintain that policy for the same reasons.

This is where Reddit continues to draw the line: it will not ban sexist, misogynistic or racist content, but it will ban anything illegal, as well as images of minors that could be considered "sexualized." That means Creepshots--however offensive it may be--is here to stay. This is because the vast majority of photos posted in Creepshots and its ilk are taken legally and--when moderated properly--do not break any of Reddit's rules.

Oh, and Mr. Wong even provided a handy little TL;DR for moderators with a case of ADD:

TL;DR: We stand for freedom of speech. We will uphold existing rules against posting dox on reddit. But the reality is those rules end at our platform, and we will respect journalism as a form of speech that we don't ban. We believe further change can come only from example-setting.

Mr. Wong was tapped as Reddit's unconventional CEO back in March, after the "front page of the internet" was spun out from its corporate handlers, Advance Publications. Just after publishing the post, he said he was going to "nip off for a spot of tea," because he apparently moonlights as Mrs. Doubtfire.

(Photo: Reddit)

The creeps just can't be held down. Jezebel reports that the subreddit Creepshots--which has been at the forefront of controversy recently and helped spur a war between Gawker Media and Reddit--is back in action.

The original Creepshots subreddit was banned by Reddit administrators last week, along with "Creepsquad," a new subreddit which had popped up to collect Creepshots refugees. In an attempt to retaliate against Jezebel for posting the original feature about Creepshots, Creepsquad posted a photo of Jezebel writer Katie J.M. Baker to its front page.

Reddit general manager Erik Martin confirmed to Betabeat that Creepsquad was banned by Reddit administrators, but did not elaborate as to why. Typically, subreddits are only banned if they break one of Reddit's five rules.

Having been ousted from Creepshots and Creepsquad, Redditors are now collecting in r/Cshots and r/CandidFashionPolice, invoking the term "candid" to justify the photos posted in these forums without the consent of the women featured in them.

r/Cshots is moderated by the same cast of characters who haunted the other creepshots subreddits, including Potato_in_my_anus, who was banned after Reddit's community manager found that he had created a subreddit "that disregarded the rules of reddit regarding sexualizing teens/minors."

r/Cshots takes swing at what it perceives as Reddit's hypocrisy for allowing sites like r/ladyboners--where users post photos of (primarily famous and consenting) men--to exist while shutting down Creepshots. It also purports to be a site for lesbians to look at photos of women, most likely as a way to stifle cries of "sexism" that have been lobbed at Creepshots in the past. Its moderators have adopted titles such as "Women's Shelter Employee," in a brazen attempt to keep it classy.

The Cshots sidebar reads:

You may be wondering what constitutes candid. If a person is posing for and/or aware that a picture is being taken, then it ceases to be candid. A candid photograph captures the natural, raw beauty of the subject without their vain attempts at putting on a show for the camera. That is the essence of candid, that is what makes it worth the effort of taking the photograph and that is why this subreddit exists. This is a place for lesbians to appreciate attractive, beautiful and gorgeous women.

The adoption of a lesbian slant is new to r/cshots. When Betabeat first stumbled upon the subreddit in the wake of the Creepshots fiasco, it did not to purport to be for lesbians.

r/CandidFashionPolice is in the same vein. "In this subreddit people post candid photos of women and then we judge their fashion choices similar to TLC's what not to wear," reads its sidebar. "That's it, we don't judge women's bodies, JUST THEIR FASHION CHOICES." Photos taken of women without their consent are coupled with headlines that follow the subreddit's number one rule: "Please speak like a sassy Diva when commenting or posting."

As Jezebel points out, many of the photos posted to r/CandidFashionPolice also appear in Cshots.

We've reached out to Reddit general manager Erik Martin to ask whether, like Creepshots and Creepsquad, Reddit plans to ban CandidFashionPolice and Cshots. We'll update when we hear back.

Update:

Reddit has now banned r/Cshots, but r/CandidFashionPolice is still up.

(Screengrab: Predditors)

Predditors, the Tumblr that posts the personal information of Reddit users who publish photos to the controversial subreddit Creepshots, is back up and running after a tumultuous few days. The blog was initially removed by Tumblr after administrators there mistakenly believed that the information being published was personal information. In fact, the author of Predditors is simply stringing together information available on public profiles posted by the users.

But once Tumblr put Predditors back up, its author panicked--perhaps because of the scale of the story the blog had ignited, coupled with lingering fears that she could be outed. First it was password protected, then it was taken down. Now, predditors.tumblr.com is back up, but the URL Predditors.com redirects to the original Jezebel coverage. The author appears to have individually re-uploaded each post to the Tumblr this morning.

Predditors came to prominence when Jezebel published a feature about the blog and its author, a 25-year-old female Redditor who goes by the name "Samantha." It has been at the focal point of a war between Gawker Media and Reddit, stoked by Adrian Chen's piece outing notorious Redditor Violentacrez, who was a moderator for Creepshots.

(Photo: Gawker)

Violentacrez, a notorious Reddit user who moderated controversial subreddits like Creepshots and Jailbait, was revealed by Gawker on Friday to be a Texas-based IT worker named Michael Brusch. Adrian Chen's post, "Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web," painstakingly detailed Mr. Brusch's dark online history--including the fact that he has created subreddits for submission of racist, sexist and borderline pedophiliac content--and served as the apex of a brewing inter-website war.

Now, Violentacrez has returned to Reddit under his "clean" handle--mbrutsch--in an attempt to explain his side of the story. In a subreddit for point and click adventure games, Mr. Brutsch surfaced, publishing an innocuous link entitled "Tea Break Escape." But comments on this link quickly turned to Mr. Brutsch and how he is dealing with the fallout from the Gawker article.

In the thread, Mr. Brutsch announced that he was fired on Saturday from his IT job, and that he is worried about being able to acquire health insurance for his sick wife. He has also begun to refer to Violentacrez in third person, perhaps in an effort to distance himself from the online persona he created. "I'm a boringly nice person IRL," he wrote.

"VA was a character I played on reddit," he added.

Mr. Brutsch also posted an extensive rebuttle to what he believes are "lies, innuendos, distortions and half-truths" in Mr. Chen's expose. Here are a handful of those explanations, with quotes from Mr. Chen's article and Mr. Brutsch's comments italicized:

"'Jailbait,' that Violentacrez had created on Reddit dedicated to sexualized images of underaged girls."

Jailbait was for pictures of attractive teens. We actually removed overtly "sexualizing" comments when we were made aware of them. SRS has had great results using the term "sexualizing" to attack my reddits. I've actually gotten emails from people wondering why people masturbated over "pics of dead kids". What kind of sick mind thinks anyone finds that sort of image "sexual"?

"Users posted snapshots of tween and teenage girls, often in bikinis and skirts."

Tweens were against the rules. People might have posted them, but we removed them as we became aware of them.

"They would say he was a child pornographer, when all he had done was spearhead the distribution of thousands of legal photos of underage girls."

He says "underage girls" to conflate pictures of high-school girls with children. Very effective.

"for someone who once created an entire subreddit dedicated to pictures of dead teenage girls (Picsofdeadjailbait)."

Actually, they were links to news articles, not pictures.

Though the expose was widely lauded among journalists, not everyone considers Mr. Chen's piece about Violentacrez an important act of journalism. Despite his actions outlined in the article, some Redditors are supportive of Mr. Brutsch. One user suggested setting up a PayPal account where Mr. Brutsch could solicit donations after losing his job.

"Just saw this. Can you establish a paypal account for anonymous contributions?" wrote one user. "I may not agree with all of your speech, but I agree with your right to say it and to troll til your heart's content. And I will send enough money to buy a decent bottle of booze."

Mr. Brutsch responded by providing his PayPal email address.

"Dude I just want to say, you are a pleasantly fucked up guy and everyone here has done completely weird, totally socially unacceptable shit on the internet. Most of us just look at porn in isolation, you have had the misfortune of getting caught being more open and forthright with your habits," wrote another user.

Reddit moderators, who are free to create and change subreddit rules as they see fit, are also still banning Gawker links as retaliation for Gawker's decision to run the piece. Today I Learned, a popular subreddit that boasts over 2 million users, announced its intention to ban all Gawker Media links, a few days after other high-profile subreddits declared the same.

Chat logs leaked to Pastebin over the weekend also revealed that moderators were actively lobbying Reddit admins to ban Gawker links site-wide. Reddit's community manager David Croach (Dacvak) initially sent out a message saying that the link to Mr. Chen's piece had been banned across the site. Reddit's general manager Erik Martin confirmed to Betabeat that this was a mistake, and the link has since been reinstated. "Mods may ban whatever they choose but that specific link is not being blocked by the site now," he said.

Despite the life-shattering repercussions spawned by his behavior online, Mr. Brutsch's faith seems unshaken.

"Everything that happens is a test from God, and how you respond to that test determines whether you pass or fail," he wrote.

Update: Mr. Brutsch announced in a Reddit comment that he has a "CNN interview scheduled for tomorrow evening." Could this be an Anderson Cooper revival?

(Photo: Reddit)

For the last few hours, the controversial subreddit Creepshots--which is at the center of an "inter-website war" over photos users published of non-consenting women--has been inaccessible.

The message "This subreddit has been banned" is affixed front and center. The banned page notes that the subreddit may have been caught in the site's spam filter, but Reddit general manager Erik Martin confirmed to Betabeat that a moderator from Creepshots asked an admin to ban the subreddit.

Previously: Reddit Readies for Brewing 'Inter-Website War'; Major Subreddits Ban Link to Gawker Media

Creepshots' former members immediately flocked to r/Creepsquad, set up for refugees of the shuttered subreddit. Now, Mr. Martin has also confirmed to Betabeat that Reddit administrators have decided--without moderator request--to ban Creepsquad as well. It went dark around 8 p.m. this evening.

Mr. Martin, who is still on the Reddit Open Internet bus tour, declined to elaborate why the subreddit had been banned.

Earlier this evening, the moderators of Creepsquad published a photo of Jezebel journalist Katie J.M. Baker to the front page of the subreddit, perhaps in an effort to intimidate her. Ms. Baker has been the target of Reddit backlash following a story she published yesterday featuring an interview with the anonymous woman behind Predditors, a Tumblr that publishes the personal information of Creepshots members who have been publishing photos of women without their consent. Predditors was removed by Tumblr, but has since been reinstated after a Tumblr spokesman said it was mistakenly believed to be revealing private information. Tumblr users have been passing around a master list of the "Predditors" after the author password-protected the original Tumblr.

Previously: Tumblr Reinstates Predditors, the Controversial Blog Publishing Personal Info About Redditors Behind Creepshots

Ms. Baker appears to be taking it all in stride. "Flattered that moderators of r/Creepsquad respect me enough to put a photo of me on the main page of their subreddit!" she coyly tweeted.

The removal of Creepsquad by Reddit admins comes as somewhat of a surprise. In an interview with Buzzfeed earlier today, Mr. Martin emphasized that Reddit does not remove content unless it violates one of Reddit's five rules. That implies that Creepsquad was removed because it violated one of those tenets, though he did not offer any details other than to admit it was removed by administrators.

There is precedent for banning subreddits. Last year, Reddit found itself embroiled in a controversy over r/jailbait, a subreddit where users posted sexualized photos of minors. Reddit subsequently updated its policy to include a new rule.

UPDATE: 

Reddit community manager and site admin David Croach has banned Potato_in_my_anus, the maturely-named user who created the now-banned subreddit Creepsquad. In a thread on Subreddit Drama, Mr. Croach wrote:

Regarding PIMA's ban...

There are actually a lot of rules that we (the admins) recently found out when we investigated his (PIMA's) account that he had broken. The most recent one was creating a subreddit that disregarded the rules of reddit regarding sexualizing teens/minors, and not being active in moderating posts that broke that rule. He's had multiple offenses in that category.

Here is a screenshot of the photo that Creepsquad posted of Ms. Baker, without comment, to the front page of the subreddit:

(Photo: Reddit)

(Photo: Predditors)

The coming Internet war may be heating up with the news that Tumblr has decided to reinstate Predditors, a blog run by a 25-year-old female Redditor that publishes the publicly-available personal information of users who post photos of women without their consent on the subreddit page, creepshots.

Yesterday, Jezebel published an in-depth interview with "Samantha," the woman behind Predditors. Reddit users immediately balked at the post, as well as the news that Gawker writer Adrian Chen may be preparing to publish a story revealing the personal details of one of creepshots' moderators. Pitchforks were readied; dramatic diatribes were penned. As of this morning, Tumblr had taken down Predditors.

We reached out to Tumblr inquiring why they decided to shut down Predditors, since its author was only linking together publicly-available information and publishing it to the blog. A spokesman for Tumblr told Betabeat:

This blog was mistakenly suspended under the impression that it was revealing private, rather than publicly-available, information. We are restoring the blog.

The blog is currently back up, but has not been updated since yesterday at 2pm.

Update: Predditors is now password protected. The Daily Dot conjectures that the anonymous author may be attempting to "avoid legal issues."

Update 2: Predditors.com now redirects to the original Jezebel article.

EARLIER: Reddit Readies for Brewing 'Inter-Website War'; Major Subreddits Ban Links to Gawker Media

Additional reporting contributed by Kelly Faircloth.

(Photo: Says-it.com)

If websites are one big dysfunctional family, Reddit and Gawker Media are the two drunken uncles who can't stop fighting over who has to pick grandpa up at the airport. Now, the two sites are preparing for a grueling "inter-website war" that threatens to rob netizens of wifi packet rations and provide hours of popcorn-eating fodder.

After news broke on Reddit that Gawker writer Adrian Chen was preparing to publish a post revealing the personal information of Reddit user Violentacrez, a moderator of the controversial subreddit r/creepshots, Reddit began to batten down the hatches. The politics subreddit, which boasts almost 2 million subscribers, announced that it will ban all links to Gawker Media properties--including Gawker, Jezebel and Lifehacker--in response to the news that Mr. Chen may be preparing to publish personal details about Violentacruz.

According to the post:

As some of you may know, a prominent member of Reddit's community, Violentacrez, deleted his account recently. This was as a result of a 'journalist' seeking out his personal information and threatening to publish it, which would have a significant impact on his life. You can read more about it here

As moderators, we feel that this type of behavior is completely intolerable. We volunteer our time on Reddit to make it a better place for the users, and should not be harassed and threatened for that. We should all be afraid of the threat of having our personal information investigated and spread around the internet if someone disagrees with you. Reddit prides itself on having a subreddit for everything, and no matter how much anyone may disapprove of what another user subscribes to, that is never a reason to threaten them.

As a result, the moderators of /r/politics have chosen to disallow links from the Gawker network until action is taken to correct this serious lack of ethics and integrity.

It's worth noting that--despite what was incorrectly reported in Politico--this is not a statement from Reddit administrators or officials, but instead from a Reddit moderator. Reddit moderators are volunteers and do not formally represent or speak for the website.

"Moderators are free to moderate their subreddits as they see fit," Reddit's general manager Erik Martin told Betabeat by email. "They can ban all usernames that start with the letter g if they want."

"The statement is from moderators, who are volunteers," he added, while declining to elaborate on Reddit's official stance on the move.

Other subreddits are following in r/politics's stead, including r/gaming and r/SubredditDrama. r/mensrights has also joined the fight, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

Screenshots between Violentacrez and other Reddit users show that Violentacrez believed Mr. Chen was trying to publish an article about him because of his associations with creepshots, which was set to private before being banned, and r/jailbait, which Reddit admins shut down last year.

Creepshots was just banned, but new subreddits created to fill "the hole in reddit's seedy underbelly" have already begun to pop up. [Updated: Reddit has banned Creepsquad, a related subreddit.]

The feud etween Gawker and Reddit has been brewing for a while. Mr. Chen is vocal about his distaste for Reddit both on Gawker and on his own Twitter page. Last year, he was embroiled in yet more internet drama when he trolled Reddit into thinking he was behind LucidEnding, a user who faked having cancer for karma.

Recently, r/creepshots has been at the nexus of much contention between the two websites. Just yesterday, Jezebel ran a feature about the Tumblr "Predditors," run by a 25-year-old female Redditor, which publishes the personal information of those who post to the controversial subreddit.

"I think it's cute how Reddit's CreepShots apologists/Men's Right's activists/etc. think we care if they stop linking to us. And also indicative of their hypocritical obsession with privacy and control," Katie J.M. Baker, the Jezebel author behind the r/creepshots post, told Betabeat by Gchat. "It's okay for anonymous Redditors to post upskirt photo after upskirt photo, but a huge violation of privacy for a journalist to report on the men who post them? How does that make any sense? Plus, the information on Predditors (which is temporarily down) wasn't illegal--or difficult--for my source to track down."

Tumblr has since shut down Predditors. [UPDATE: Tumblr has reinstated Predditors.] A new thread on Reddit alleges that someone whose information was published on Predditors was violently attacked last night, but there is so far no substantial proof corroborating that claim.

Redditors themselves seem to be barely able to control their glee over the ensuing drama:

Now, I see before me the beginnings of an inter-website war, sparked by mass doxing, blackmail, the fall of one of reddit's legendary figures, potentially ruined lives, admins silently working in the background, and repercussions that will have devastating IRL consequences for those involved ...

I now stand before you on the precipice of the greatest shitstorm of our time. We have come far from our origins as a humble kernel, and if this escalates to the point where the entire site falls around us, I'd just like to say that it was an honor serving with you all aboard the USS Orville.

It is unclear whether Mr. Chen still intends to publish his post, rumors of which began this chilling war. For now, we can only wait as the sounds of furious keyboard clacking and the cries of rage grow ever closer to the heart of the mainstream internet.