BlackCat claims they hacked Reddit and will leak the data

I'm not sure they understand Reddit.

Did you know they also silently censor users?

Reddit has been shadowbanning users (making it so their accounts don't publicly hold data or karma, but allowing them to continue making comments) without telling them they're shadowbanned for many years now. The idea that Reddit is silently going and removing the content from some users is really not a surprise.

I'm pretty sure they were very sorry about a that a few years ago and promised to stop shadowbanning people. But I wouldn't be surprised if they just continued.
- They absolutely continued and never stopped. I have a shadowbanned account right now for the crime of signing up under a VPN. This happened last month, it was shadowbanned from the moment of creation. I can post all I want with it, but when someone else tries to look for my posts or profile, it does not exist.

BlackCat’s post also claims:

In our last email to them, we stated that we wanted $4.5 million in exchange for the deletion of the data and our silence. As we also stated, if we had to make this public, then we now demand that they also withdraw their API pricing changes along with our money or we will leak it.

We expect to leak the data.

LoL. I like how they try to play the good guys with this spin.

And make it easier for Reddit to take the moral high ground by saying that those protesting the changes are somehow aligned with this group.

All I can say is this. Get off my side, you’re making me look bad whether you intended to or not.
- Sometimes the enemy of my enemy...

Reddit was emailed twice by operators, once on April 13 and one again on June 16.

There was no attempt to find out what we took.

And now they are going public with it, but still haven't posted any kind of proof, or leaked anything at all. The most they say is "Did you know they also silently censor users?" which everyone already knew about as well.

It seems like a bluff to me, but of course I could be wrong.

I don't like how Reddit is operating at all and I made an active decision to use federated instances more.

With that said, I'm not cheering for hackers that steal data and hold it ransom. I can protest/dislike reddit w/o encouraging reckless behavior

While I agree, Reddit really is learning “fuck around and find out” the hard way from all sorts of angles. They must be in perpetual crisis mode. Which sucks for the actual staffers, of course
- The staffers are probably more afraid of the eminent mass layoffs. Like, if my CEO praised Elon Musk for how he's handled Twitter, I'd assume my company was about the layoff half of the workforce and somehow lose over 60% of its value very quickly.

The data sounds interesting. No matter what your API price is, scrapers, hackers are still gonna get Reddit's data for free.

80GB is very small compared to the Reddit content scrapes I've been seeing passed around by archivists. I expect this would be stuff like internal emails, ad impression statistics, payroll, and so forth.

One thing that'll be very interesting in relation to the current situation is if there's discussion of the API pricing in those emails. Perhaps some information on exactly how much bandwidth and other resources those API calls really required.

without posting any proof of claim as of today.

I would like to see proof before I cheer.

Looks like that is a new, but already established Ransom Group. To be clear, that are criminals that normally shouldn't be cheered at. But I'm ready to make an exception this time.

One of those "enemy of my enemy" situations.

Do it! Let’s see

Hoping it‘s true, but I‘ll wait with congratulations until I see some proof.

Anyway, criminals or whatnot, is a fine line anyway and subjective. To me spez is the criminal right now, it‘s just that there isn‘t a crime for "destruction of communities" and if there were there‘d be an exception for rich people.

There may be some breach of contract and defamation of the Apollo developer.
- He seems way too nice to sue over that, his last posts alone are so open and transparent and self-reflective and so on. He‘ll probably be the bigger person and move on. It‘s mostly vindictive tiny ego people like billionaires who sue over those kind of things.
  
  Though if he did sue, good for him and would be entirely justified in my eyes, they really did him dirty and spread all sorts of lies!

Users will pay as always.

"The data" sounds serious. Bet people would pay a lot of money to get hold of this "data"!

Could be interesting if this contains some data showing how reddit stores data and shines more info on reddit restoring deleted comments, since that could become a GDPR issue.

what i really hope this data will not contain:
User Login credentials. Though if it did, the hackers would probably already have taken control of some admin accounts.

Will releasing this data even do anything to hurt Reddit?

We don't know what's in it, but considering how terrible their public face is I can't wait to see what their private face is like.
It's quite possible that the data includes private communications between admin and mods. So I'd say so, yes.

Somebody post the "Dis gun b good" gif please! Ive got my popcorn ready.

dis gon b gud

is it this one

Reddit continues to crumble.

I want so bad for this to be real.

lol