Redditors Stand Up to Gawker to Protect Child Pornography

Reddit has blocked Gawker from several of its threads in order to protect "a prominent member of Reddit's community, Violentacrez," who started the /r/picsofdeadchildren and /r/jailbait sections. Yesterday Violentacrez deleted his account because Gawker's resident Reddit reporter Adrian Chen is intending to run an expose with his "real name and picture," according to a post on Reddit announcing the ban. Chen had mentioned Violentacrez in his post "Reddit's Child Porn Scandal," where describes the user as a "50-something Texas software engineer who openly brags about having oral sex with his 19-year-old step-daughter." Because of that "pursuit to harrass and, allegedly, blackmail reddit moderators with public release of photos and personal information," some subsections have punished the entire Gawker network disallowing any of their links. 

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Violentacrez was a beloved member of the Reddit society, it seems, because of his contributions to the porn community. Voted redditor of the day on March 25, 2010, he was described as "synonymous with porn on Reddit." This tribute to his legacy singles out the traffic he drove to the site in its early days, "as his numerous porn subreddits brought in a lot of visitors and pageviews to this site and, thus, advertising revenue," writes user POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS. He also moderated other, more safe for work, threads, but he even called himself Reddit's "creepy uncle" in his Reddit Ask Me Anything. (That's where he talks about hooking up with his 19 year old step daughter).

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Beyond his general interest in porn—he gave his son a box of porn mags when he was six years old, which the son has confirmed in his own AMA—Violentacrez got Chen's attention when Reddit's managers shut down the "jailbait" section. It went further than just suggestive photos of pre-teens when redditor TheContortionist posted a picture of a 14 year old performing oral sex. Even though /r/jailbait is no more, Violentacrez moderated plenty of other threads dedicated to scantily clad children, like /r/trapbait, which has also since been banned and another that was for fans of rape.

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Given his history with the site, redditors aren't happy about the absence of Violentacrez. Tacked onto that tribute post are a handful of comments dismissing Chen. "This Adrian Chen sounds like a real scummy journalist," wrote one. "Adrian Chen is an attention whoring cunt. I can't wait for this whole thing to blow up in his face," wrote another. Chen doesn't seem to be phased, responding with a ban of his own.