Reddit banned me?

By Ted Cohen/Patch.com

A blogger who called me a scumbag wasn't banned but I was?

Really.

All I did was blog about a failing Maine newspaper and Reddit pulled the plug on me.

For sure, my posts on Reddit could be described as offensive and demeaning if you were of the faint of heart.

I poked fun at Maine publishers, editors and reporters. I told them they were incompetent journalists, which they are.

I laughed at a Facebook blogger who has a newsroom snitch, accusing him of pretending to be a journalist, which he isn't.

When a former columnist for Maine's largest newspaper came out of retirement to advocate for boys being allowed to play in women's sports, I ridiculed him as a political shill because that's what he is.

But although I was banned by Reddit for such harmless editorializing, the Karens who run Reddit allowed the guy whose threatening post called me a scumbag to do so with impunity.

As the "moderator" of a Reddit blog, I could have blocked the scumbag accuser or reported him for harassment.

But I did neither because I'm one of few journalists who can take it as well as give it. My feeling is, if I am going to make fun of others then I need to allow them to make fun of me.

In fact, I gave the scumbag accuser an upvote and thanked him for his comment. No selfless deed goes unpunished.

Who knows - maybe I got banned for allowing a guy to post a "scumbag" comment on my blog.

Reddit's scoring system incentivizes users to post comments that will make people happy. True story. If you get too many down votes from your posts or comments, meaning you're not making people happy, you'll be banned.

Think about that as a business model for public speech...

In any event, the bottom line is that those with thin skins have no business in the rough-and-tumble world of public opinionating.

If you can't publicly criticize a newspaper that is so incompetent that it not only doesn't know what news is but fails to realize what a joke it is, then platforms such as Reddit are themselves at fault for pretending to promote unbridled give and take.

The users of Reddit enjoy huge readership. An estimated 1.2 billion gossipers a month enjoy full access to free accounts on Reddit, translating to 97 million page views everyday.

In case the Reddit suits don't get the point, if they curb public speech they are stealing money out of their own pockets. No one is going to pay for premium Reddit services if they're not allowed to speak their minds.

Even scumbags can understand the obvious.

Editor's note: Ted Cohen is a former long-time staffer for Maine's largest newspaper, the Portland Press Herald.