Author: Kilgoar

SLAVERY — A patent for jamming more people into airplanes promises to bring new opportunities to the slave trade as well as terrifying new kinds of warfare.

“This patent won’t mean anything to the real slavers in Eastern Europe and Asia, who exist outside of the law,” said law economist Harry Bluementhal. “But the patent will produce trillions of dollars in military contracts for a Boeing troop transport aircraft, the Freedom Airliner, capable of carrying over 1,000 soldiers a day in supersonic intercontinental flights.”

“This opens up military invasions on a scale never before imagined!” said General Angstrom H. Troubador of the Reaganomics Institute. “A full scale land war deploying the full might of the United States could crush ISIS out of existence forever, and for cheaper than ever. Once we have the Freedom Airliner, the world will be much, much smaller for the United States military. Everywhere will be our back yard.”

INTERNET — Forget the backdrop of Reddit administration cracking down on hateful subreddits like ‘Fat People Hate’, and forget the outright racist and ‘communist’ jokes aimed at interim CEO Ellen Pao on /r/GloriousChairmanPao. This is about ethics in… never mind.

“What is happening?” is on the tip of every Redditor’s tongue because the moderators have so poorly expressed their grievances during this strike — evasive “Reddit Meltdown” language is necessary for the moderators to maintain face during the Fat Hate Supporters’ Strike. The only specific talk the striking moderators have mustered tells of a canned admin, Victoria, someone that no average user really knows, but it is enough to say that she set up AMA threads everyone loved although no one really can say why she was canned or why it is so upsetting to the other moderators.

Recall the ‘doxing’ of Violentacrez (moderator of many of the most creepy and abusive subreddits, like r/creepshots) and remember that this touched off a massive stink leading to the nearly reddit-wide censorship of a single reporter, Adrian Chen.

The unpaid moderators are not demanding pay — their demands are for more power and technological tools to enact those powers. Their illegitimate and reckless determination of acceptable content has let so much unacceptable hate and abuse fester for so long that CEO Ellen Pao would be well advised to radically change the business model and purge a few hundred more unpaid moderators to hire on some paid professionals who know the difference between abuse and free speech and share the interests and goals of Reddit. Purge the bullies.