Reddit CEO defends free speech — even for creeps like Violentacrez

Everyone has a right to free speech -- and that even extends to creeps.

49-year-old computer programmer Michael Brutsch was the main moderator for Reddits Creepshot forum, which sparked outrage last month for encouraging users to post covert photos they had taken of women in public, typically close-ups of body parts for voyeuristic sexual thrills.

Brutsch was publicly exposed by Gawker writer Adrian Chen last weekend, leading his real-world employer to fire him and many Reddit administrators to ban links to Gawker websites as a show of solidarity with head creep Brutsch.

Please dont do that, said Yishan Wong, CEO of the massive social news site.

We stand for free speech, Wong wrote in a private post on the site obtained by Chen. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because thats the law in the United States but because we believe in that ideal independently.

Besides, banning any links from Reddit to Gawker just looks bad, he wrote.

Lets be honest, this ban on links from the Gawker network is not making Reddit look so good, Wong wrote.

Wong began his post -- titled we seem to be in a bit of a pickle -- by laying down the law: Reddit is all in favor of the freedom of legal speech, even if that speech is as clearly offensive as Brutschs Creepshots was.

The majority of Wongs posting dealt not with free speech or whether Reddit ought to host forums such as Creepshots -- a revolting collection of images so widely denounced that it was ultimately removed from the site -- but Chens investigative journalism and ultimate decision to reveal the identity of the forum moderator.

Moderators were enraged by Violentacrez's "doxxing" (hacker slang for outing) and decided to censor Gawker links in protest, Chen explained.

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Reddit CEO defends free speech -- even for creeps like Violentacrez