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The influential social media site Reddit.com, which has hundreds of millions of users, came under fresh fire today for allegedly discriminating against users of the pro-Trump section of the site called/r/The_Donald. Critics accused Reddit ofunder-reporting how many "subscribers" the section has while telling advertisers that the section has a much higher number of users.

But Reddit tells Fox News that the flap was caused by a simple labelling error that Reddit made when it rolled out a new system for advertisers Thursday.

Reddit.comhas a live counter available to the public thatsays the pro-Trump section of the sitehas 385,000 subscribers. Reddit users closely follow such counters to gauge popularity. But between Thursday and Friday afternoon, if a user went to Reddit's advertising platform,ads.reddit.com, and expressed interest in advertising in the Trump subreddit, the user was shown a dramatically higher number of subscribers: more than 6 million.

The discrepancy was first reported by the blogRight Side Politics.Fox News confirmed the two differing Reddit counts.

PRIVACY ACTIVISTS WANT TO SELL TRUMP'S BROWSING DATA

Users of/r/The_Donaldsay this is just the latest example of Reddit discriminating against them. Reddit has takenother censorship measures in the pastand blocks most posts from the pro-Trump section of the site from appearing on the "front page" of Reddit.

A post in the Trump section Friday afternoon reads: "385,000 subscribers? TRY 6 MILLION... STOP LYING TO US."

Users also said thatReddit could be guilty of advertising fraudif it were to turn out that the 385,000 number were correct and the 6 million number were wrong.

Fox News asked Reddit about the discrepancy.

SOCIAL MEDIA SITE REDDIT CENSORS TRUMP SUPPORTERS

Reddit Director of Communications AnnaSoellner told Fox News that the high advertising counts were caused by a labelling error in a new service:

"When we released the new ads self-serve product yesterday, the ad interface said "Subscribers" in the targeting dropdown list. However, the actual number represented here was not "Subscribers" but was actually "Daily Unique Visitors" to the subreddit,"she said.

In other words, the advertising page was meant to say that the Trump section averaged 6 million unique visitors to the page each day; not 6 million subscribers.

She said the error has been partly fixed as of Friday afternoon.

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"We have just pushed out a change to rename this number Daily Impressions and will modify the numbers shown in the dropdown to show Daily Impressions."

"Daily Impressions" is the number of advertisement views available. Soellner alsolinked toadditional details about the difference between the three different terms.

As of 3 p.m. Friday afternoon, the Reddit advertisers page said the Trump section had 28 million "subscribers" -- but according to Soellner that should really (and soon will) read 28 million "daily impressions."

By 3:30 p.m. Friday, the page had been fixed to show 28 million "daily impressions." It no longer shows 6 million subscribers.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Prior to the fix, other sections of the site also had apparent discrepancies between the advertising count and the normal count, but not nearly as big as for the Trump section. Reddit's politics section, for example, was listed as having 6.3 million subscribers to advertisers and 3.3 million to the general public.

Other sections actually had advertising counts that are lower than the public counts: The Reddit Science section was shown to advertisers as having 10 million users while the general public saw 16 million.

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Reddit defends against accusations of ad fraud and Trump censorship - Fox News

Gamer Professionals (blog)

Threats of Video Game Censorship Need to Stop Gamer Professionals (blog) I do not care for censorship in any sort of art form, no matter what it is. I fully believe that artists should have final say in what they pour their heart and soul into. Whether or not the consumer wishes to experience whatever the artist has created ...

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Threats of Video Game Censorship Need to Stop - Gamer Professionals (blog)

Washington Post

Public Records Sought to Expose Trump's Climate-change Censorship Common Dreams WASHINGTON - The Center for Biological Diversity filed four Freedom of Information Act requests today with the Trump administration's Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and ... Energy Department climate office bans use of phrase 'climate change'Politico all 43 news articles »

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Public Records Sought to Expose Trump's Climate-change Censorship - Common Dreams

President Trump may be close to nominating Chuck Cooper to be U.S. Solicitor General.(Photo: stock photo)

A state judge has thrown outan order that censored The Trentonian newspaper, and attorneys for the publication on Thursday hailed the ruling asa victory for First Amendment rights in New Jersey.

Superior Court Judge Lawrence DeBello ruled in favor of The Trentonian on Monday, lifting an unusual "prior restraint" that had been imposedby another judge, Craig Corson.

At the request of the state Attorney General's Office, Corson issued atemporary injunction in October that prohibited The Trentonian from publishing articles based on a confidential child-abuse complaint obtained by one of its reporters, Isaac Avilucea. The document lays out how a 5-year-old boy from Trenton went to school carrying 30 packets of heroin in his lunchbox one day and crack cocaine in his school folder six weeks later, among other sensitive details.

DeBello, a more senior judge who took over the case andheld two hearings this year, issued an order vacatingthe prior restraint on Monday.

The Trentonian has continued to publishstories about the case, questioning why the boy was allowed to remain with his family after the first incident was reported to authorities. The boy, identified only as "N.L." in court papers, is now in foster care.

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"We want to thank Judge DeBello for affirming and protecting important First Amendment values today," David Bralow, an attorney for The Trentonian at the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, said Thursday."From the time that the Trentonian learned of the unfortunate order, it has expended significant effort to protect its and its reporters First Amendment rights.We are vindicated today."

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office did not respond immediately to a request for comment Thursday. The office may appeal DeBello's ruling.

Judicial orders imposing a prior restrainton a news organization prohibiting it from publishing information on a specific topic are extremely rare in the United States. Attorneys for The Trentonian and Avilucea argued that Corson did not take into account some of the U.S. Supreme Courts most important rulings on the First Amendment, which guaranteethe freedom of the press and impose a very high bar on authorities seeking to censor news organizations.

New Jerseys child welfare agency, the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, got Corson to bar The Trentonian from publishing "any information obtained from the filed verified complaint in any form." The complaint contained sensitive details and confidential allegations being filedagainst N.L.'s parents and paternal grandmother. Represented by the Attorney General's Office in court, the agency alleged that Avilucea obtained the complaint illegaly from the boy's mother, although criminal charges were never filed against the Trentonian or the reporter.

Attorneys for the Trentonian argued that the child abuse complaint was not marked "confidential" and that the boy's mother, Tashawn Ford, parted with it willingly.

"The judge basically found that the state presented no proof Isaac obtained the complaint unlawfully and no proof he encouraged release of the complaint in violation of the law," said Avilucea's attorney, Bruce Rosen of the law firmMcCusker, Anselmi, Rosen andCarvelli.

"I'm glad I'm not going to jail after months of being persecuted," Avilucea said Thursday."Journalism, and a journalist, was on trial for the last five months."

Censoring the press is more serious than a criminal penalty because it doesnt just chill speech; it freezes it altogether, one of the newspaper's attorneys, Eli Segal, argued in January.

Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights, Segal argued, quoting from the U.S. Supreme Courts 1976 decision in Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart.

On behalf of the agency, Assistant Attorney General Erin OLeary argued that the freedom of the press under the First Amendment is not an absolute right and that Corsons order prohibiting The Trentonian from publishing certain information was necessary to protect N.L.s privacy.

The more that the world learns of this intensely private situation, the more likely he is to be ostracized by his peers, OLeary argued in January. Allowing confidential documents to be publicly disseminated also could hurt the states ability to investigate child-abuse incidents, she argued.

In a landmark 1971 decision, New York Times Co. v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request from President Richard Nixons administration to prohibit The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a classified study of the Vietnam War. The governments interest in keeping that information secret could not overcome the freedom of the press to choose what to publish, the justices said. That ruling followed a 1931 decision, Near v. Minnesota, in which the Supreme Court said nearly all forms of prior restraint are unconstitutional.

Segal cited the Pentagon Papers case during the hearing and argued that the Trenton child-abuse case continued to be worth the publics attention. New Jersey state officials had not cleared the very high bar required by the U.S. Supreme Court for censorship of the press, he said.

Courts have allowed prior restraints on news organizations to prevent the publication of troop movements during wartime and when a magazine attempted to publish the secret to building a hydrogen bomb. OLeary argued that details about N.L.s case and other child-abuse investigations are similarly sensitive.

In an interview with The Record last year, Floyd Abrams, a leading expert on the First Amendment and one of the lawyers involved in the Pentagon Papers case, said the Trentonian was right to cite that case in its defense.The all-but-total ban on prior restraints exists as a critical protection of First Amendment rights, Abrams said.

Attorney General Chris Porrino's office at first offered to drop the case, provided that The Trentonian destroy the complaint and cease publishing articles about it. The newspapers management and attorneys initially decided to accept the settlement, but Avilucea refused,the agreement was not executed, and the legal battle continued.

"They offered a truce that I wasn't going toput my John Hancock on," Avilucea said.

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Judge lifts censorship order in victory for newspaper - NorthJersey.com

Recently YouTube has been swamped with controversy over a new filtering feature. Creating a restricted mode, the web streaming service was hoping to provide content for schools and more educational purposes.

However in its design, YouTube ran into a problem. The censoring feature, targeting videos with violent and sexual content, ended up hiding videos featuring LGBT themes. Examples include gay weddings, vlogs, and a variety of non-explicit content. On discovering this, various content creators, such as YouTube icon Tyler Oakley, expressed their frustration over social media, and YouTube was forced to backtrack.

This raises the broader issue of censorship on YouTube, something that is most assuredly bad.

A representative from YouTube, Johanna Wright, vice president of YouTube's product management, issued a statement saying The bottom line is that this feature isnt working the way it should. Were sorry and were going to fix it. And it looks as though YouTube is working to un-restrict these videos, as many creators who have complained have found their videos back to normal.

Most YouTube users arent watching from a school, or area where restricted mode would come into play. So the actual effects of this censorship are small. However this does raise the question of censorship on YouTube. After all, YouTube found its success because of the freedoms it gave creators. YouTube thrives on its differentiation from the culture of traditional television. Seeing censorship take over this medium known for its creativity is concerning to say the least.

Censorship isnt new on YouTube, theres been a gradual progression toward restrictions on content, however this is the first time censorship has affected creators with non-controversial content.

An example of censorship based on controversy happened last month to the current number one YouTuber, PewDiePie. Renowned for his video game commentary and more recently for his vlogs, the Swedish YouTuber found himself accused of being anti-Semitic after making radical jokes about the death of Jews. Given this bad publicity, Disney ended its affiliation with him, and YouTube stripped him of his status as recommended across its site, slashing his ad revenue as a way of trying to censor his content. In fact, YouTube went so far as to cancel his upcoming season on YouTube Red, simply for his comedy.

While anti-Semitism is certainly wrong, Pewdiepie is no Neo-Nazi. Hes an entertainer trying to make jokes. This sort of comedy wouldnt succeed on television, which is why YouTube is such an excellent medium for it; howeve,r even YouTube is beginning to let censorship slip into its policies. And while Anti-Semitism jokes arent ideal, and public backlash is certainly necessary to keep creators from crossing the line, YouTubes selling point is how its creators have more freedom than traditional media outlets.

Placing restrictions on what creators can do or say on YouTube is certainly the websites right, it's responsible for the content it displays. However, just because it possesses that right doesnt mean it should implement it. If individuals want to boycott or denounce PewDiePie for his humor, so be it. But when it comes to dilemmas like this its very hard to draw the line. As a result, when censorship enters the picture, individual expression suffers.

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COLUMN: YouTube must not censor - Indiana Daily Student