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Adrian Chen
| |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Adrian Chen is an American freelance journalist, currently working as a contributing editor for The New Inquiry. Chen joined Gawker in November 2009 as a night shift editor, graduating from an internship position at Slate[1] and has written extensively on internet culture, especially virtual communities such as 4chan and Reddit. Chen is the creator of The Pamphlette, a "humor publication" for Reed College students on a piece of letter-size paper.[2] He has written for the New York Times,[3] New York Magazine,[4] Wired,[5] and other publications.
In October 2012, Chen exposed the real name and details of Violentacrez (a moderator of several Reddit Jailbait communities), a Texas internet developer, who was subsequently fired from his job.[6] This led to all links to Gawker being temporarily banned from Reddit.[7] In September 2012, Chen acquiesced to demands from Anonymous and posted images of himself dressed in a tutu with a shoe perched on his head. The images had been demanded in exchange for interviews regarding an alleged leak of Apple iPhone and iPad user data from an FBI laptop.[8][9][10][11]
In June 2011, Chen wrote an exposé of Silk Road, a Darknet site which facilitated online drug purchases.[12] Following publication of the article, Chen was interviewed about Silk Road on NPR's All Things Considered.[13] As a result of Chen's investigation, United States Senators Charles Schumer and Joe Manchin publicly called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to shut the site down.[14][15][16]
In February 2012, Chen interviewed a freelancer from oDesk, an outsourcing firm hired to enforce Facebook's content guidelines.[17] The article included the guidelines provided by oDesk.[17][18][19][20]
In October 2012, Chen uncovered the background of Michael Brutsch, a moderator who oversaw several controversial forums such as r/creepshots and r/jailbait under the username 'Violentacrez'. He arranged a phone interview with Brutsch during which Brutsch mentioned he had a disabled wife and pleaded for him to keep his identity secret. Though Chen claimed this "did shake [him] a bit",[21] he published an article revealing his name, location, and workplace on Gawker. The next day, Brutsch was fired from his job.[22] This release of personally identifiable information prompted several subreddits to ban all Gawker link submissions from their site.[7][23] When Chen's article was published it became banned site-wide, which Reddit general manager Erik Martin said was a mistake. "The sitewide ban of the recent Adrien Chen (sic) article was a mistake on our part and was fixed this morning. Mods are still free to do what they want in their subreddits".[24] Chen claims that apart from Reddit, response to his story had been "overwhelmingly positive", telling The Guardian, "I thought there would be more of a backlash about the story, but people really are willing to accept that anonymity is not a given on the internet and if people use pseudonyms to publish sexualised images of women without their consent, and of underage girls, then there's not really a legitimate claim to privacy".[25] For his article revealing Brutsch, Chen received a Mirror Award for Best Profile in the category of Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media.[26]
The e-commerce website Silk Road is being called the Amazon.com of illegal drugs.
