(Photo: Imgur)

It’s no secret that Reddit, the link-sharing site that members tout as a bastion of free speech and creativity, also serves as a seedy showcase of the sexism, racism and misogyny that’s always existed on the web. Reddit has a long history of publicly grappling with its dueling reputations: on the surface, it's a knowledge-sharing platform that even the President has deemed worthy of his presence.

But the site has also battled to suppress some of its more hateful communities while toeing the free speech party line. Last year's Violentacrez scandal, in which Gawker outed one of the site's most notorious trolls for moderating the controversial subreddits r/Jailbait and r/Creepshots, exposed much of what Reddit admins gloss over in favor of inspiring "free and open Internet" rhetoric. In short: Reddit, much like a lot of the Internet, is still a pretty difficult place to be a woman.

Communities like r/Doppelbangher don't make it any easier. The subreddit, which has over 8,000 subscribers, allows users to submit photos of celebrities and--more typically--users' friends so that others can find their porn star lookalikes. It seems kind of harmless at first: sure, we totally get why it might be funny in a weird way to find your porn doppelganger. But the majority of photos appear to come from male redditors looking to find porn lookalikes for women they know, whose photos they've used without their permission. Creepy.

Of course, like most of Reddit, the subreddit discourages the outing of personal information. "If you are going to post a Facebook pic make sure the girl in the picture can't be traced back," reads the subreddit's sidebar. But just because the women in the photos are anonymous, doesn't mean they appreciate cropping up on a subreddit like r/Doppelbangher.

One female Reddit user found her photo on the site and was so incensed she created a throwaway account, "wtfisthisbull," in order to respond. In response to the post, "[REQUEST] Friend from high school," which asked for users to submit porn lookalikes for her photo, the woman posted a photo of herself holding up the sign, "You're disgusting." The user deleted his original post, but not before being shamed out of the subreddit.

Vengeance is sweet, sure, but the existence of r/Doppelbangher speaks to a deeper pattern of casual misogyny and disrespect that permeates the site, one so obvious that even former Starfleet captains take issue with it. "I am apalled [sic] by some of the immature, horrifically racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnic… etc.. posts that are just ignored [on Reddit]," William Shatner wrote in a post to r/StarTrek this weekend. "Reddit has been the first ‘mainstream’ site that I have been to that actually appears to allow racists and other hate mongers to group, congregate, incite and spread their hatred. There’s entire subreddits that allow it."

(Photo: CNN)

Last night, the now-notorious Reddit troll Violentacrez, whom Gawker recently exposed as a 49-year-old Texas-based programmer named Michael Brutsch, appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 for God knows what reason. In the painfully awkward two-part interview, during which Mr. Cooper thankfully gave us a commercial break to collect ourselves and tweet our thoughts, Mr. Brutsch invoked every possible excuse to justify his poor behavior, which includes creating controversial subreddits like PicsofDeadKids and Jailbait.

Throughout the interview, Mr. Brutsch referred to his Reddit username Violentacrez in the third person, echoing other statements he's made about Violentacrez being a character he played and attempting to distance himself from taking personal responsibility for his actions. He also admitted that his sole purpose for creating racist and misogynistic subreddits was to get a rise out of people (he bragged he has a "gift" for it) in order to accumulate "meaningless internet points."

Shortly after the interview aired, Mr. Brutsch again took to Reddit under his clean handle "mbrutsch" and admitted that appearing on CNN was a "huge mistake, which I will not repeat." He also agreed with users who alleged that Reddit's statement given to CNN is actually riddled with factual inaccuracies. "It was suprising that the admins straight up lied about banning VA multiple times," one user wrote. "Didn't surprise me at all," replied Mr. Brutsch.

Still, it was rather shocking to witness Mr. Brutsch's willingness to completely throw Reddit, a platform he has essentially dedicated his life to for the past five years, under the bus in order to save his own neck. Though he was once a Reddit power user, tapped by administrators to wrangle the darkest subreddits and keep illegal content from cropping up on them, he has continually called Reddit admins out for lying and for not having his back.

"Reddit encouraged and enabled this kind of behavior," he said last night on CNN. Even Redditors whose inconsistent "free speech" logic (keep Jailbait, but block Gawker links) put them in allegiance with Mr. Brutsch probably won't appreciate hearing him blame his trolling on Reddit, both as a platform and community.

We've reached out to Reddit general manager Erik Martin to ask for comment on Mr. Brutsch's accusation and will update when we hear back. But it's true that Reddit administrators have been supportive of Mr. Brutsch's behavior in the past. Mr. Brutsch also brought along to the interview a gold-plated bobblehead that Reddit administrators gave to him for creating Jailbait, a subreddit where users posted sexualized photos of minors. The Atlantic Wire points out that the statue was given to Mr. Brutsch as a token for creating "Worst Reddit," which still seems like a knowing nod and thumbs up to his behavior on the site.

This reporter is a frequent user of Reddit, in both her personal and professional life, and a fan of the platform as a fount of information. At its best, it can be an open forum for thoughtful conversation, hilarious asides and friendly knowledge sharing. But this incident has shed new light on the dark underbelly of a platform that just recently hosted a Q&A with the President of the United States.

It may seem like cognitive dissonance for Reddit to host forums like RapingWomen alongside TwoXChromosomes, but the site is also a microcosm of the Internet at large: full of some of the most wonderful people, but also some of the worst. Still, the laissez-faire attitude of Reddit admins towards the sexist and misogynistic content is concerning at best and borderline-disgusting at worst. As Anil Dash put it, "Reddit does many good things, but is also a horrendously sexist culture."

Of course, this realization is nothing new--the MensRights subreddit has been around for ages, and the internet as a whole has long been a complicated place for women to exist. But the Violentacrez scandal, coupled with that of Creepshots and Predditors, has put the conversation about Reddit's attitudes towards its female users at the forefront.

At least one woman we know, an active Redditor who has attended meetups and accrued a fair amount of "meaningless Internet points," has shut down her account in response to the recent news. "[Violentacrez] is the catalyst, yes, but the general culture of casual racism and misogyny as well," she tweeted.

Through its handling of the Violentacrez crisis, as well as last year's Jailbait scandal, Reddit has emphasized time and time again that it wants to be a platform that embraces free speech, right up to the line of illegality (but never crossing it). This will turn off some users, and perhaps cultivate a culture rife with racism and misogyny, under the banner of free speech. It is not, however, somehow immune to the criticism these types of decisions will evoke from Redditors and the media alike.

As Ken at Popehat wrote in his excellent piece on Reddit, Gawker and anonymity:

Creepers and pedophiles and bigots make up only a tiny minority of Redditors; people angry that they are being criticized make up only a slightly larger minority. Comments from Reddit administrators in the wake of the child pornography outcry has made clear that Reddit wants to be a free speech site that permits everything that the law does not prohibit. That's fine. I'd defend Reddit's freedom to publish what the law allows. But Redditors need not be taken seriously to the extent they believe they have a protected right to be free of criticism and ridicule and inquiry. You can argue all you want that forums like — oh, say, the /r/BeatingWomen subreddit — should be free to thrive without criticism. Moderators can indulge your feelings by banning critics. Moderators can decide to ban links to Gawker on the theory that if you take pictures of children in public and post them for the sexual pleasure of misfit neckbeards, you have a right to privacy that should prevent anyone from identifying you. But Reddit administrators and moderators and Redditors can't stop everyone else from calling out their conduct and their oddly inconsistent philosophy. Private individuals decrying, ridiculing, and even using their skills to identify Redditors are using a classic "more speech" remedy to speech they don't like. It's a feature, not a bug, of free speech.

Of course, individuals on Reddit are also responsible for their own actions. No matter how much Mr. Brutsch claims Reddit "encouraged and enabled his behavior," it was still just a platform full of--as he says--"college kids," and it was ultimately his decision to dutifully play into their twisted tastes. Now, he's paying the price for that: he's lost his job and his health insurance and has ultimately become the face of Internet trolldom. Reddit's reputation will recover from this poor publicity fiasco, but the rep of its most notorious troll probably won't.

(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.

(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: Twitter)

If there's anything we've learned from the Violentacrez scandal, it's that anonymity on the Internet can be easily unmasked--for better or for worse. In the case of quadriplegic Internet sensation Dave on Wheels, it was for the worse. This is the story of how an anonymous blogger tricked the Internet into believing that he was a deaf, wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy sufferer using a special computer to communicate with his thousands of online fans.

David Rose was a 24-year-old Orange County resident who kept a blog, Facebook and Twitter account where he posted inspiring and wry missives about his life and battle with illness. (All of these accounts have since been deleted.) He had communicated with hundreds of online strangers as far back as 2007, when he first registered his Facebook profile.

Last week, Mr. Rose became an Internet sensation when The Chive published a series of his inspiring tweets. Two Chive models, Erin Willett and Sarah Hill, developed tight bonds with Mr. Rose, even creating YouTube videos especially for him. News outlets quickly caught onto the story of the paralyzed young man with a rosy outlook. He seemed a beacon of positivity in a place--in a world--where negativity flourishes. His earnestness made the Internet's snark seem mean-spirited and pointless.

Then--as suddenly as his fame had come--Mr. Rose passed away from pneumonia. His doting sister Nichole Rose, who helped him maintain his blog, published an inspiring letter he wrote just before his death. Kim Kardashian even tweeted a quote from the letter.

Mr. Rose had gained fame in his death. Next would come infamy.

A photo of Hunter Dunn, which was used as a photo of the non-existent Dave Rose.

Confined to a wheelchair, he claimed to tweet and blog from a machine called a Tobii, which tracks users' eye movements, allowing them to communicate. His sister, Ms. Rose, also maintained an active Twitter account and helped him update his blog.

But a reader named Kristi-Anne was skeptical about Mr. Rose. He claimed to use the Tobii, but Twitter showed that all of his tweets came from Tweetdeck. Upon further investigation, she discovered that the supposed photos of Mr. Rose were actually of someone named Hunter Dunn, a West Virginia man who actually has cerebral palsy and who actually uses Tobii to communicate.

It was then that Kristi-Anne, who started a blog called "Dave on Wheels Exposed," knew that this was all a hoax.

Kristi-Anne discovered that not only was Mr. Rose fake, but so was his sister, Ms. Rose. The duo were characters created by an anonymous blogger who--as soon as the story of Mr. Rose began gaining fame--knew he had to shut down the hoax before it escaped his control. This resulted in the sudden death of Mr. Rose, landing a final blow to his hoards of devoted fans.

In conclusion, Kristi-Anne wrote on her blog:

So all we can really be sure about is that "David Rose" is not David Rose, or a deceased young man born with cerebral palsy. We can also be sure that this story is much more complex than any of us really understand. We don't know for sure who, or why, but we can all assume. What we can be sure of is that there is someone out there, much more intelligent and inspirational than "David" ever was and his name is Hunter Dunn. And who knows, maybe this was fate's way of trying to give Hunter the credit he so clearly deserves.

An anonymous commenter using the handle "Nichole Rose" surfaced almost immediately after the blog went up, copping to the hoax and ironing out some details. In the comment, the anonymous blogger wrote that "no celebrity or fame was intended in this ruse....the quick and furious fame is actually what brought about the end of it all."

The commenter continued:

David was just a character, a part of my psyche, and fame would soon reveal what it has revealed today. So, the character passed. In hindsight it probably would have been better just to shut it all down and have everyone wonder what the hell happened, but the final post was meant to have the effect it did. To inspire people to love and live a better life, and the public knowledge that it came under this false pretense takes it all away. I hope that people who were moved by it still live by it, but it seems unlikely. It's possible that more damage has been done in your reveal than in the original deception.

The anonymous commenter went on to explain that not only does David Rose not exist, neither does his "sister" Nichole Rose. The picture he used of her was actually a headshot of a girl who was once in Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" video.

"To all of those people affected, from those I'd never exchanged a word with to the ones I'd had lengthy and heartfelt conversations with over the years, I apologize. I am very, VERY sorry for the hurt this has caused you," continued the commenter.

Ms. Vickery (Photo: Facebook)

It seems the hoaxter has been working on this complex ruse for quite some time. The David Rose Facebook page was started back in 2007, and after some online sleuthing, Betabeat has learned that Mr. Rose also had profiles on Stickam and PalTalk. Comments made by him on Stickam, however, reveal that his name was originally Davis Will Rose, and he was communicating with people through a gmail address: daviswillrose@gmail. Betabeat emailed this address, as well as the Gmail listed for Nichole Rose, but both emails failed permanently and bounced back to us.

It appears that Davis Will Rose also commented on a blog post that he had recently moved to San Francisco. His PalTalk profile states that he lives in San Francisco with his sister and her husband.

Had this persona always been confined to a wheelchair? In the comment he notes that he often "walks around" his new neighborhood:

Thank you Annie I love this post! I am new in area and have been reading San Francisco blogs to get a feel for the city. I have also been walking around Mission neighborhood a lot and I like Valencia, there are lot of nice bars and beautiful girls lol.

The thing is I have cerebral palsy and often get varied reactions so I almost never initiate conversation with a woman like this man did. Usually I either get women who won't look at me at all or will smile and engage me right off which is less than ten percent. The other day a woman ask me if I had tips for her about her 2 year old daughter has cp. Odd question but I know she was just seeing it as chance to learn something so we had a nice talk until her bus came.

I like this post because I see that I should be open more to initiate conversation. Thank you and thanks to the brave man who did not care if you would think he was a creepy weirdo!

Davis

daviswillrose@gmail.com

In addition, Mr. Rose's best friend Kate Vickery, whom the anonymous commenter claims was never in on it and was also a victim of the hoax, created her Twitter profile the day after Mr. Rose's blog went live on August 31, 2012. Her Facebook account has been around since January 2009. Ms. Vickery has extensive profiles across the web, including on Photobucket and YouTube. A tweet sent by Dave on Wheels to Ms. Vickery--who identifies as a lesbian--reveals that she had met Ms. Rose:

@shine7602 omg lol. that awesome pic. you meet nichole now you like her? i never meet guy who not like her lol. will tell you stories later.

But if Ms. Rose is fake, how is this possible? Is Kate Vickery behind this ruse, or was her name and likeness co-opted by the anonymous blogger?

Ms. Vickery's Twitter still exists. "I know u still check on me. How could u leave me? Our friendship was not a hoax, U lied, but you made me a better person.#betrayednotangry," she tweeted today.

Whoever is behind the David Rose hoax, it's clear that he used the persona of a sick, struggling young person in order to get closer to women online. The many David Rose profiles amassed across a plethora of social networks have collected hundreds of young female friends with whom Mr. Rose communicated publicly, at the very least.

The story of David Rose is yet another chapter in the the annals of Internet hoaxes. Dave on Wheels could have maintained his lie had the story not hit the mainstream media. But that meteoric rise brought skepticism, and the elaborate web woven by an anonymous blogger was eventually revealed for what it was all along: one big, fat lie.

(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?

Rise and shine! (Photo: flickr.com/katerha)

“You don’t want your analytical efforts to be obvious because voters get creeped out." Data mining in politics is harder than it looks. [New York Times]

It's "20 under 20" time once more! If you've just gotten to freshman year and you absolutely hate it and you've already got a good idea for something you'd like to do instead, the Peter Thiel Foundation probably wants to see your application. [TNW]

Late Friday afternoon, Gawker's Adrian Chen released the results of his epic trollhunt: "Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez." You'll no doubt be shocked to learn that he's pretty much as expected. [Gawker]

It sounds like the whole matter has been one long headache for Reddit HQ, but it doesn't seem to have made so much as a dent in Alexis Ohanian's confidence in the world-improving powers of the Internet.  [The Verge]

Sprint has agreed to sell a majority stake to Japanese telecom SoftBank--pending regulatory approval, of course. [Dealbook]

Has Microsoft finally stumbled onto a good idea? The company is launching Xbox Music, a streaming music offering 30 million songs strong. [New York Timess]

(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.