Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web

[chaya]

Last Wednesday afternoon I called Michael Brutsch. He was at the office of the Texas financial services company where he works as a programmer and he was having a bad day. I had just told him, on Gchat, that I had uncovered his identity as the notorious internet troll Violentacrez (pronounced Violent-Acres

Comments

[cuterabbit33]

They would say he was a child pornographer, when all he had done was spearhead the distribution of thousands of legal photos of underage girls.

... That's what child pornography IS. What the fuck do they think it is otherwise?

He offered to act as a mole for me, to be my "sockpuppet" on Reddit.

I hope all of his supporters read this part.

A lot of this article - in that what reddit consists of and what this guy has done - made me go AGHHHH AGHHH UNREAD UNREAD FOR THE LOVE OF GOD UNREAD

[maladaptive]

That's what I was wondering-- how the fuck can you have legal photos of underage girls? They're by default illegal.

Unless they're non-pornographic/not somehow "titillating,"* but from the context I don't think that's the case...?

*I used that word because you can have non-pornographic images that're still explicit/racy/naughty but none of those words (not even titillating, tbh) belong with children.

[cuterabbit33]

Well I imagine he wouldn't post them unless they were "appealing" to look at (oh that felt so gross to type), since he put so much effort into making sure none of the girls in the pictures were of legal age - even says so in the article. So... geez, I really don't even know, the more I think about it the more nauseated I get.

[mangosorbet007]

Because said underage girls post the pictures on FB. One person's holiday photos are another person's porn.
It's in very bad taste, possibly, but very far from illegal.

[thenakedcat]

Except that some of said underage girls are getting charged with production and distribution of child pornography for taking pictures of themselves to send to their boyfriends, and may never have intended for the pictures to be posted on a public forum.

[mangosorbet007]

Is there a proven link between cases here or are you just connecting two equally disturbing events?
The text says that Mr Dipshit was actually very good at weeding out actual pornographic images. From what I understand he posted pictures that were legal.

[thenakedcat]

Not a proven link between cases, but several high-profile sexting incidents involved the victims being charged, sometimes for nothing more explicit than topless pictures.