(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: 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.