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In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations in mid-2013, moderators at /r/technology configured filters to automatically censor posts containing "politicized" words, based on findings by creq. This censorship appears to be ongoing. The banned words include NSA, Comcast, Anonymous, CISPA, SOPA, Swartz, FCC, net neutrality, GHCQ, EFF, ACLU, and others.
The admins claim they simply configured their bots to delete "politicized" posts. Yet their filters (which were not announced or explained) effectively precluded meaningful discussion of contemporary issues. Could this reflect willing government collaboration by Reddit's admins, or might they have been served with an NSL to force compliance?
News coverage of the censorship is at the Daily Dot. A fuller list of banned words are available on pastebin. The reddit post reporting censorship on /r/rechnology.
(Score: 2) by Serial_Priest on Thursday April 17 2014, @04:50PM
Clarification: my thought that the NSL might have been used to obtain, e.g., mod account details, server private keys, and other data that would effectively allow government entities to control the website as appropriate. Obviously, subpoenas are not orders. But if you have root access you don't need any orders. Best of all, you have plausible deniability if anyone questions your actions (cf. "never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.") Neither malice nor stupidity are in short supply in large bureaucracies or governments.
A year ago, I might have agreed with you that such a scenario is unlikely. But manipulation of popular opinion through infiltration of online communities is a stated goal of US and UK intelligence, as per the leaked documents. See, for example: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtri g-manipulation/ [firstlook.org]