A Secret Grand Jury Is Seeking the Identity of a Reddit User Who Criticized ICE
www.jezebel.com
Reddit itself has been subpoenaed by a secret Washington grand jury, with the government wanting to know the identity of a specific user.
  • Manjushri@piefed.socialEnglish
    3 months

    OP’s headline does not match the article linked in any way. I don’t know if the site changed the article or what, but the Grand Jury has not ordered Reddit to turn over any data.

    a subpoena issued by federal prosecutors to the management of Reddit, representatives of the site have been ordered to appear before a grand jury in Washington D.C., with an April 14 deadline set in an attempt to compel Reddit to volunteer personal data and the identity of a user who had the temerity to lightly criticize Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the platform.

    Essentially, they have ordered Reddit to send representatives to be badgered into volunteering the user’s information.

    • mechoman444@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 months

      These kinds of posts and titles on Lemmy are a serious issue that I’ve noticed over the last 6 to 7 months.

      There appears to be a serious issue with moderation and a lot of Lemmy subs.

      I’m not calling for any Reddit styled moderation here. Absolutely not. I’m just saying something needs to happen here to better moderate these subs.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3 months

        It’s really easy for one of the mods in this community to make the op fix the headline or remove the post. Did anyone report it?

      • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
        3 months

        Isnt it up to the readers of the article to notice and upvote things like this? Lemmy is just a link aggregator. Mods dont read every post. I bet almost everyone has a full time job or student life too.

        Report it and upvote the problem and it will be fixed by a mod eventually, and readers will be aware until that happens.

        • mechoman444@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3 months

          One thing I love about eBay is that buyers can also be rated by sellers.

          That single handedly resolved many issues.

          I’m just saying… You’re right.

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 months

      So they are using a form of harassment? Get them to look at the cost of sending someone vs just betraying one user. Of course the blowback as reddit shows it would betray your anonymity could be a pr disaster.

      If the article is correct then the whole demand is truly bizarre. There seems to be nothing in the reddit user’s postings to warrant this amount of concern. The fact that his comments are innocuous may be to set a precedent that any criticism, regardless of severity, can be prosecuted or at least intimidation.

    • GamingChairModel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 months

      No, it’s not volunteering, at least not anymore.

      Subpoena is legal Latin for “under penalty,” because noncompliance with a subpoena carries a penalty.

      Originally, it was an information request from the feds, and Reddit refused. Then they escalated to getting a grand jury subpoena (which means they got a bunch of normal citizens to agree that the information was relevant to a criminal investigation), so now noncompliance carries a penalty.

      Reddit notified the users, who hired their own lawyers, who are resisting the subpoena and will litigate it to where they need a judge to decide whether Reddit will have to turn the information over.

      That’s the process for these things, and we’re a couple steps in already.

  • ToiletFlushShowerScream@piefed.worldEnglish
    3 months

    Good god the title is very misleading. The grand jury hearing isn’t until April 14. It’s still chilling that the administration will go to these lengths to apparently silence criticism, but I’m not convinced there is more to this story. Although the reddit user in question is enlisting a civil liberties group to represent him, I’m thinking he/she may not be a terrorist mastermind who is a danger to the American people.

    • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 months

      That doesn’t sound misleading in the slightest, because that’s not the definition of misleading. It sounds like a fucking lie.

    • Monte_Crisco@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      3 months

      This measured response feels much healthier than my/our kneejerk reactions. Any prosecutor is going to seek information that would help their case, and they expect the Court to simply say No when it isn’t compatible with the law. It sucks that this Trump admin and retributive DOJ have such an anti-American track record that our initial instinct is that every move is another attempt to suppress criticism (which it likely would be if they had any scintilla of competence to go with their thirst for fascism).

  • voidsignal@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 months

    ah pedonald trying to scare people. fuck him with a retractable baton.

    • HellieSkellie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3 months

      man i fuckin hate the us government. Do y’all really say shit like “pedonald” unironically though

      do y’all say that shit and be like “heh yeah i got his ass”? do y’all say shit like “The Orange Menace” and think it’s the fuckin bomb dot com?

      you old ass freaky mfs got that truth social energy going on. Y’all say some corn ball facebook auntie garbage and act like it’s tuff with two F’s

      Can y’all act like normal human beings instead of this weird ass insulated secluded sector of the radicalized internet for a sec big dog like damn

      slaughter conservatives and behead authority figures, stop this busted ass middle school style name calling though holy fuck

  • BygoneNeutrino@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 months

    I find it reassuring that the government is at least acting like they can’t identify this user without Reddit’s consent. I wonder why this charade is necessary; are they trying to set a legal precedent?

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.caEnglish
      3 months

      They want to prosecute peope in open court so using the NSA to id people would be inconvenient (but not impossible).

      • modus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3 months

        They’ve probably already ID’d them. Now they just need Reddit to “volunteer” the info that DickSwanger420 is actually Marvin Peterson from Boise.

      • teyrnon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3 months

        Exactly, known as parallel construction, they find a plausible way to have found what they illegally know to use it publicly.

    • teyrnon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3 months

      They are doing a parallel construction so they can publicly make accusations. It’s not reassuring I assure you.

    • slappyfuck@lemmy.caEnglish
      3 months

      Why would they be acting? It’s probably not a first amendment test.

  • einlander@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 months

    Actual title:

    A Secret Grand Jury Is Seeking the Identity of a Reddit User Who Criticized ICE

    It’s completely unclear what illegal thing the user is supposed to have done, other than dislike ICE.

  • Karmanopoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 months

    I remember when reddit first got popular and the demise of Digg

    I feel like we’re watching the demise or reddit now

    The place is nothing but bots, they allow loser power tripping mods to ban you willy nilly with basically no appeal process. And now they’re gonna give you up to the govt

    I’m sure shareholders are super stoked right now

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3 months

      Now? It died in 2023 or whenever the API debacle happened. Even before that it was pretty botty.

      • innermachine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3 months

        Yes it had been pretty shit since maybe 2016 or so honestly. You can go on any thread of an article on any subreddit and the top comments and top replies are like pre manufactured echo chamber propaganda for whoever is astroturfing or modding that community. Don’t get it messed up, Lemmy is guilty of echo chamber attitude as well but on Lemmy it’s at least a mass of people causing an echo chamber not one likely corporate interest pushing a talking point. Definatley feels more “natural” here I suppose. Or more human? Idk if I get rained on with downvotes here I’m pretty confident every individual one had a person behind it, vs u broke with the propaganda machine on reddit then you get downvoted into oblivion or censored/deleted. And if u get banned here it’s usually only one community that you likely don’t want to be in anyways, so benefits both the banned user and the community. I was glad the api debacle happened because it’s the only reason I learned about the fediverse!

        • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3 months

          The 2016 point is, on point. I remember the absolute flood of pro-Trump, incel, conservative content that felt completely inorganic and had very little representation prior popping up literally everywhere, everyday. It was like a firehose of far right fringe ideas was aimed at Reddit. Reddit 100% had problems prior but it was mostly focused on violence/sexual violence towards women and girls and wasn’t ever on the front page, other than maybe Jailbait. Even at the time people using Reddit were aware and talking about how unnatural it all seemed but now it’s too far gone and been normalized.

          I was a very early Reddit user, and a “power user” for over a decade who was permanently banned for “inciting violence” by saying I was surprised Kanye hadn’t murder/suicided Kim or Taylor yet as a joke. I think my far left progressive comments were more likely the reason.

          • GrindingGears@lemmy.caEnglish
            3 months

            It’s definitely gotten pretty weird. I’m on my last warning for inciting violence over saying I’m surprised no one has gotten killed yet, in a poorly designed traffic intersection that results in near-daily collisions near my house. Seriously. Someone reported it for inciting violence, the mods on the thread removed it and Reddit warned me and banned my account for a period. I’ve had a few other ones that were pretty random too.

    • Trihilis@ani.socialEnglish
      3 months

      Everyone is still using it. It sucks since i just want everyone to come on piefed/lemmy. I really have no idea what reddit has to do to make people switch. Its kinda like seeing a toxic relationship.

      • Manjushri@piefed.socialEnglish
        3 months

        Based on the number of people still using the cesspit that Twitter turned into, Reddit has to sink a hell of a lot lower to get people to stop using it.

    • Monte_Crisco@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      3 months

      I finally left just a couple weeks ago. Seeing and hearing about entire accounts being banned after simple peaceful criticism of political leaders showed me that they use poorly programmed algorithms to issue bans and also confirm them on appeals without any reasonable human elements. It also seemed like some accounts would get perma-banned by simply complaining about this process.

      • knotRyder@lemmy.caEnglish
        3 months

        I got banned for suggesting someone put a hole in the Charlie Kirk statue

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3 months

      Mods on Lemmy are at least as ban happy than those on Reddit. Appeals? They don’t exist at all. At least you can easily make a new account on different instance on Lemmy. Reddit has strong enforcement of also banning all accounts they can link to yours with cookie and IP.

      Lemmy admins are likely to comply with local law enforcement as well, if they have to. So far it’s just untested because of irrelevance.

      • Rage4You@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3 months

        Lemmy is self hosted and most people would for sure handover whatever they could if the feds just asked

  • sepi@piefed.socialEnglish
    3 months

    Why not worry about the pedo in the white house instead? Deport him and his entire family to the middle of the atlantic.

  • null@lemmy.orgEnglish
    3 months

    They can’t fucking WAIT until this ID verification goes through. Literally frothing at the mouth for it.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3 months

      I don’t get it. Once ID checks are here, do they think people will keep expressing these kinds of opinions publicly? Oh course not, they’re just going to keep going further underground online or find offline ways, do they really think we’ll just keep posting incriminating stuff with our real name attached?

      • ouRKaoS@lemmy.todayEnglish
        3 months

        The oppression is the goal. They want you to tell 10 people locally, not 10 million worldwide.

        • Monte_Crisco@thelemmy.clubEnglish
          3 months

          Suppression of anything critical of Trump and the other snowflakes is the goal. Oppression is their favorite tool, but they’ll settle for intimidation which still ends up being effective even when our institutions uphold the Constitution.

        • Obi@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          3 months

          Yeah but the 10 locals are the ones that might actually end up doing something instead of shouting into the digital void.

      • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3 months

        do they think people will keep expressing these kinds of opinions publicly? Oh course not

        People are already pushing all kind of extreme and suspicious opinions on multiple websites under their “official” name that can be found on their ID. This won’t change. And the risk isn’t people stopping saying thing at one point; it’s the list of “allowed” topics changing over time, then going back to older content.

  • manxu@piefed.socialEnglish
    3 months

    A’right, this is disgusting, but it’s really not Reddit’s fault if a Grand Jury requests evidence.

    spoiler

    ___Especially because the Grand Jury hasn’t even requested anything yet, I guess?