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[–]akkordeonplayer 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I remember when I was naive and thought Reddit higher ups would give a damn about this, and I mentioned how he bragged about data mining people. Nothing ever happened, though, as he's obviously still on a banning and stalking spree.

[–]ISaidWhatISaid[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It's amazing to me how Reddit are ignoring this. He is literally violating their own stated rules, not just by abusing his access to the API to trawl entire subreddits. There is the question of notice and consent. When people log into Reddit, they consent to Reddit themselves using their data. They do not consent to unofficial third parties like Bardfinn secretly politically profiling them behind their backs. If anyone was made a-priori aware of this happening, no one in their right mind would ever agree to use Reddit ever again. It is therefore pattently unacceptable that Reddit never warned users about this happening and never took steps to make it stop. Then there is the very high likelihood that by secretly trawling Redditors' data and using it in such a blatantly abusive manner behind their backs - using people's posts to get them pre-emptively banned across the site is arguably a form of abuse - he is literally violating international privacy laws. To give you an actual example of such an international privacy law that comes into play, in Europe they have a law, the GDPR, which says that you cannot log and use a European internet user's data online without prior notice given and consent obtained, which Bardfinn of course has never bothered to obtain from all the European Redditors he's secretly data-mining and blacklisting for the purpose of getting them banned site-wide. If you look at some of my other posts here in the sub, you will see the one where Bardfinn asked Reddit to allow him to use subreddits as honeypots in order to get all the wrongthinkers in one place so that it's like shooting fish in a barrel, which would constitute outrageous deception and abuse even by Reddit standards. Reddit are aware of these laws, they know he's breaking the law and they just don't care. I guess it's because he's doing work for them they'd otherwise have to do themselves, and they're happy that this zealot with no life is taking all this excess work onto him. But Reddit are thus aware of the fact that they are aiding and abetting him in violating international privacy laws like the GDPR, which makes them complicit IMO.

[–]akkordeonplayer 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm thinking Bardfinn has some kind of high-end position there, as how else could this person do all of this without losing the position they have?

[–]ISaidWhatISaid[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There has been a lot of speculation over the years as to whether he's secretly working under the table for Reddit, especially in the context of his statements about knowing Reddit's CEO u/spez personally. Nothing definitive though. I personally think that Reddit are keeping him around because he is doing a lot of work for free that they would otherwise have to hire and pay people to do. Also, the fact that he's keeping a secret blacklist database of Reddit wrongthinkers means that he gets to break international privacy laws, instead of Reddit themselves. Thus, if anyone ever ends up asking any pointed questions - about this nut who falsely claims to be "a retired scientist" doing supposed "research" on Reddit, while profiling Redditors without any prior notice or consent - Reddit can always decide to throw Bardfinn under the bus then, while they still get off the hook scot-free. Reddit can throw their hands up and lie that they didn't know what the League of Extraordinary Trolls were doing on their site, when they knew all along exactly what was happening.