Adrian Chen (born November 23, 1984) is an American journalist, and staff writer at The New Yorker. 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 RedditJailbait 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 February 2012, Chen interviewed a freelancer from oDesk, an outsourcing firm hired to enforce Facebook's content guidelines.[18] The article included the guidelines provided by oDesk.[18][19][20][21]
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",[22] he published an article revealing his name, location, and workplace on Gawker. The next day, Brutsch was fired from his job.[23] This release of personally identifiable information prompted several subreddits to ban all Gawker link submissions from their site.[7][24] 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".[25] 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".[26] For his article revealing Brutsch, Chen received a Mirror Award for Best Profile in the category of Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media.[27]
The public outpouring of hostility towards Brutsch following the exposé prompted commentators such as Danah BoydatWired and Michelle Star of CNET to question the morality of outing as a way to enforce societal standards online.[28][29] Several commentators have expressed concern that the public shaming of Brutsch may serve as an example to others, legitimizing online vigilantism and exposing individuals such as Brutsch to mass retribution.[28][29] Mez Breeze has suggested in The Next Web that, in outing Brutsch, Chen engaged in a type of trolling, making Brutsch "the victim of unwanted bullying and substantial negative attention" as a result of the exposé.[30]
PropOrNot
PropOrNot is a group that seeks to expose what it calls Russianpropaganda and published a list of websites they called『bona-fide ‘useful idiots’』of the Russian government based on methodology they called "a combination of manual and automated analysis, including analysis of content, timing, technical indicators, and other reporting".[31] Chen was critical of The Washington Post's decision to put the story on its front page. He wrote in an article titled "The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda": "The story topped the Post’s most-read list, and was shared widely by prominent journalists and politicians on Twitter. ... But a close look at the report showed that it was a mess."[32] Looking more carefully into their methodology, Chen argued that PropOrNot's criteria for establishing propaganda were so broad that they could have included "not only Russian state-controlled media organizations, such as Russia Today, but nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post itself" on their list.[32]
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