Anyone else who used to be on Reddit in the early 2010s remember how it used to be a Wild West?
This comment was in a post about a guy who openly spilled secrets then got fired.
https://www.reddit.com/r/golf/comments/1dynric/rip_to_the_augusta_ama_guy_yesterday_who_was_not/
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To be fair, people stopped after starting a witch hunt for the Boston bombers and identifying the completely wrong people. It may very well be the case that they over corrected, but there is at least a good reason for the change overall. (also corporate interests I suppose, fuck them though)
I'm not sure one has much to do with the other. I completely agree that the Boston bombing investigation was a witch hunt, no argument here. But witch hunts target individuals, and individuals are entitled to a certain degree of privacy which one would hope would protect them from an uninformed mob.
But airing your employers' dirty laundry is whistle-blowing. It should be protected, especially if the industry secret is anti-consumer, dangerous, or illegal. And importantly, a corporation isn't an individual, so they shouldn't benefit from protections for individuals.
It's tempting to think that we don't see the Name and Shame posts actually naming and shaming because of Reddit's interests with advertisers. But I think it's also just as likely that users don't want to be identified leaking secrets - likely due to the litigious nature of their employers.
The problem is when it is weaponized by corporations to bypass competition or by activists who are upset for one reason and get everyone to rally for an untrue reason.
Example: McDonalds has an employee write about their horrible experience working for Burger King which is a complete fabrication to get people to hate their competitor.
Example 2: supporters for Presidential candidate John Smith don’t like that Target has been donating to Smith‘s rival political party. Smith supporters fabricate untrue stories about Target’s working conditions to get people to boycott the store and hurt profits. This would lead to less money being available for donations from the store.
In all honesty, I do think Name and Shame is perfectly reasonable and should be done. But I still want to highlight some ways that it can be abused. I don’t think Reddit should use this as an excuse to forbid the practice but Reddit should do due diligence in proving the story is right like verifying an employee’s employment at the company they are shaming, for example.
You don't even have to make up things like this. The amount of "Name and Shame" between fucking people working on different fucking web browsers (Brave and Firefox) or different versions of de-Googled Android (GrapheneOS, DivestOS, /e/OS) that are all ostensibly open fucking source.
It happens constantly.
Reddit also gets a lot of blame for shit that actually came out of 4chan in that case. Though reddit definitely amplified it.
We did it, Reddit!