Reddit is rigging my shit. I need a different website

This is half shitpost and half castle building. We could be instrumental in site wide rule clarifications.

https://www.reddit.com/r/america/s/tqMe3iewvz

Does this violate r/america s rules?

https://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/s/8U9telNYZ1

I posted a case and it was taken down.

After, after about thirty minutes and at least fifty views. This case unfortunately highlights not just the ineptitude of the mods at r/police but the diminished quality of reddit in general.

I have a valid case showing that the mods of the police subreddit will absolutely take down content that doesn’t fall in line with their preview. Despite reddit stating that this is a place of free speech. I violated no rules.

I continue to ring the bell, ding dong, reddit is dead. Continue use of the app is a gross form of necromancy. Living in the shell of a once great beast.

You all offend me. Does anyone remember the days of yore?

I have enough material for your blog to last at least a year. I used to frequent Karma Court before the wet noodles and the crooked knees took over.

Ding Dong, reddit is dead. Weep and flood the Earth.

For example, if a mod has a dispute with a subscriber?

I thought it was a karma party subreddit and got banned immediately. Is there anyway to get unbanned this actually looks like a pretty fun sub.

Recently, u/EndTheBS filed a case against on the part of Redditors everywhere against a Reddit admin by the name of Chtorr.

“Mysteriously” ^(not) the case post was quickly removed. However, the post itself still survives; it's just not visible. Nevertheless, we (the Judge, Prosecutor, and Defense) have chosen to continue the trial.

Since the case post is no longer visible, here's a direct link to it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/tvk1oy/people_of_reddit_vs_uchtorrr_for_undermining_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Justice must be served!

I filed a full format [case](https://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/t3ro79/uyouknowwhoitsme_v_ubeerbellybegone_for_stealing/) for the first time (i am not a native english speaker and i don't know the US/English legal system + jargon)
My questions:
-Should I myself be the prosecutor at the same time as the one "suing"? I think i would like to find an attorney for myself.
-I have a judge and a defence and for now i am still the prosecutor. how do i proceed when judge and defence are installed and i stay prosecutor?

If anyone wants to takeover you can, if that’s not the case then I think we can all agree than u/J_S_M_K deserves all the credit for being the best member throughout the entirety of 2021.

Hi guys.

The judge for this case had to unexpectedly back out at the last minute.

Is there anyone around who would be willing to take up his mantle?

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, and welcome back to The Ten Top Cases Retrospective, where I, KCR Editor u/FailureToCompute, take a look at the ten highest upvoted cases of all time on r/KarmaCourt. In this, the tenth and final instalment of this series, we're going to be taking an extensive look at the highest-upvoted case of all time (which has 4,484 points and a 94% upvote rate). This is the kind of case that all younglings of the courts should strive for. It's this place's creme de la creme, magnum opus, piece de resistance, synonyms. It's everything one could want in a case. But before we dive in, a large serving of context is required. After all, this was an incredibly large scandal over the course of a few days on Reddit. So, what happened?

Context

Everything began on July 2nd, 2015, when the incredibly popular subreddit r/IAmA went completely private. This meant that no one on Reddit, excluding moderators and approved users, could post or even visit it. Bewildered that a subreddit of this size could possibly go private, a user by the name of u/chickenmagic made a post on the subreddit r/OutOfTheLoop asking about the privating. On the post, a moderator on the subreddit by the name of u/karmanaut left an extremely long comment which explained that one of the admins at Reddit, who goes by the real name of Victoria and the Reddit name of u/chooter, had been removed from her position, which was bad for the IAmA mods, as Victoria was a huge help in the organisation of AMAs thanks to her communication with those doing the AMAs (or, more accurately, their agents), as well as her power to fix almost anything that went wrong immediately. As summed up in u/karmanaut's TL;DR:

For r/IAmA to work the way it currently does, we need Victoria. Without her, we need to figure out a different way for it to work.

This sparked a massive blackout of dozens of subreddits, a large amount of which had upcoming AMAs that would likely involve Victoria for contacting the talent involved, such as r/Science and r/Books (quotes used respectively below):

Victoria was the only line of communication with the admins. If someone wants to get analytics for an AMA the answer will be "Sorry, I can't help."

Dropping this on all of us in the AMA-sphere feels like an enormous slap to those of us who put in massive amounts of time to bring quality content to Reddit.

​

This seems to be a seriously stupid decision. We have several AMAs upcoming in r/Books and have no idea how to contact the authors.

Aside from specific cases like this, most chose to join the blackout either because they disagreed strongly with Victoria's firing, or were more broadly agitated with the mishandling of the site by Reddit admins, such as mass neglect of moderators, a negatively-received search interface and many broken parts of the website that had been broken for years, which led to most people having to use a third-party extension called r/toolbox. A large amount of hate ended up going towards Ellen Pao, the then-CEO of Reddit, even though the firing of Victoria was done by u/kn0thing. Some of the biggest subreddits to join in were r/funny, r/pics, r/todayilearned, r/videos, r/gaming, and many more. If you'd like a full* list, here's a link.

^(*for the most part)

The backlash was immense. And when lots of people are angry about a thing, there's only one place it can go to: anger management therapy alcoholics anonymous Karma Court!

Let's have a look at the charges presiding.

Charges

CHARGE 1: Firing a Reddit employee who was essential to the ongoing of IAmAs in r/IAmA, r/Science, r/Books.

CHARGE 2: Lack of communication and openness regarding what the mods had to say about the moderation tools.

CHARGE 3: Making an act that created a revolt (worse: a riot) on the whole platform. Hundreds of subreddits went private (defaults subs as well) to protest against the actions taken by the Admins. Where the hell am I going to go now?

CHARGE 4: Deploying a broken and unusable new search interface in complete disregard to months of negative feedback at r/Beta.

CHARGE 5: Douchebaggery.

These are all things that have been established (if briefly) previously, so there's nothing all too pressing to be concerned about here. Let's now get ourselves stuck into the

Trial Thread

For this momentous trial, we have u/Kell08 and u/IceBlade03 assisted by u/GhostOfWhatsIAName and u/AnotherPhilosopher as the prosecution, u/DJ_Deathflea and u/CRaFTDOS with assistance from u/kuntnal and consultancy from u/BlueAndOrange92 as the defense, and of course, u/Kikool42 as the all-seeing* judge. This trial also features a jury of 12, 3 bailiffs, a Karma Court Reporter, a hotdog vendor, a loud stenographer, a pitchfork sponsor, and much, much more. Without further ado, let's get going.

^(*may not actually be all-seeing)

[NOTE: Throughout the trial, I will be referring to the prosecution and the defense as one entity.]

It all started where most cases do, the prosecution's opening statement:

Today we are gathered here for a monumental case. One that will change the history of this site as we know it. The defendants are charged with:

* Firing a reddit employee and not effectively passing on his/her duties as they were essential to the ongoing IAmAs in r/IAmA, r/Science and r/Books.

* Lack of communication and openness regarding what moderators had to say about moderation tools.

* Making an act that created a riot on the whole platform, causing hundreds of subreddits to go private, even default ones, in protest of the actions of the Administration Team.

* Deploying a broken and horrid search interface with complete disregard to months of negative feedback at r/Beta.

* Douchebaggery.

Some of these charges speak for themselves, but people of the jury today we will show you the seemingly business orientated people you trust as your Administration team. Today we show you that a good Community Director was let go just for having a sniffle for some time; that the site that we once knew and loved is now being marketed and not developed.

This is worse than accusations of panhandling Reddit gold to users u/kn0thing had been accused of a year ago. These actions compare to the dictatorship currently run by the Reddit overlords, the defendants.

We come to you as simple folk and ask you what is right? What do you want this community to look like in a year, in five years? Will you still want to be a part of this place if it looks just as it does now? Good environments grow; just like this platform should, part of that process is ridding itself of weeds...

A long but detailed opening statement. The two links presented in this statement are essentially two excerpts from what appear to be former Reddit employees that demonstrate a lack of communication from Reddit as well as some douchebaggery, showing that this isn't just a one-time goof.

The defense fired back with their own opening statement, which was shorter, yet still sound as a statement:

Ladies, gentlemen and otherkins of the jury:

The key question here today that we must answer for ourselves is: Was it possible that Victoria's firing was justified?

The case hangs on this question. If the possibility exists that our defendants acted justly, then the blame for the consequences of those actions can in no way be given to them.

We intend to prove that our clients' actions were indeed justified and that rather than being vilified, they should be praised for their swift and decisive action.

Ladies and gentlemen of this Honorable Court, today we are here to address a grievous miscarriage of justice. We intend to prove, using newly found evidence, that the Reddit admins were acting in self-defense and attempting to protect the majority of Reddit users. The admins have shown time and time again, they are willing to do the right thing, despite public outcry. When we prove that Victoria's firing was justified, we hope the jury will do the right thing, and acquit the admins of all charges!

Essentially, this is the defense's manifesto for the case; what they plan on proving throughout the trial - namely, that the firing of Victoria was justified. We'll just have to see how they get on with that.

After some objections regarding the presence of Jared Leto as a witness, the prosecution made a rebuttal to the defense's opening statement, saying that:

The admins of Reddit are directly responsible for the removal of u/chooter [Victoria]. As is well known, this former admin was essential for the smooth conduction of a popular attraction on Reddit: AMAs. There was zero notice provided to the swift removal of u/chooter, and consequently the mods of several subreddits were unexpectedly put into a position of being unable to maintain the quality of work on their subreddits with the sudden extra strain in work.

Furthermore, the admins have been promising improvement to the tools at the disposal of the mods of Reddit, and have as of yet failed to make good on these promises.

So great is the ignorance towards the mods of Reddit that the mods of several subreddits, including defaults like r/AskReddit and r/Videos, have been made private in protest, severely destabilizing Reddit's integrity. The admins ignore the protests yet.

The disregard for promises to improve conditions for moderators and the sudden blow to the stability of several subreddits and the AMA system with the sudden discharge of a well liked and needed admin is something that cannot go unpunished, Your Honor.

Nothing necessarily new in this statement, but some good points are made regarding the situation.

In another thread entirely, the defense moved to dismiss charges 2 (lack of communication and openness regarding what the mods had to say about the moderation tools) and 4 (deploying a broken and horrid search interface with complete disregard to months of negative feedback at r/Beta) as they were past the 21-day statue of limitations outlined in the Karma Court constitution (Article IV.4). An objection was raised by the prosecution, expressing that:

[These charges] constitute a continuous series of acts as both acts have not been concluded yet, neither the lack of communication nor the search interface have been repaired, and continue as of today, at least went on until the beginning of the blackout yesterday.

The judge ruled that Charge 2 would not be removed, but demanded evidence that Charge 4 did take place under 21 days ago. This never appeared to materialise, and everyone seemed to forget about it.

One charge that was dropped was Charge 5 (douchebaggery), which came up when the defense mentioned in another thread that Pao did not fire Victoria, which meant that this charge that was levied against her was, to put it simply, bad. The charge was fully dropped.

Continuing with the main trial at hand, the defense issued a rebuttal to the prosecution in an excruciatingly long comment:

What is the one, immutable fact about Reddit that remains constant? Everyone among us, from the youngest child to the oldest man (aged 36) knows the answer:

Reddit Loves Cats.

Have we ever stopped to ask the question?

Do the Cats. Love. Reddit. No. Cats do not love Reddit. In fact, cats hate Reddit.

Why? The answer is very culturally complex, but as one small example let me draw your attention to the top of this very thread, where but not a few hours ago this announcement remained: "A KITTEN IS KILLED EVERYTIME YOU DOWNVOTE."

Need we say more?

Let me draw your attention to a subreddit which belongs to Victoria, the recently dismissed mod. https://www.reddit.com/r/SosAndTheTiny/

I submit to you, the second to the top post from this sub:

http://imgur.com/6l28fcZCaption: "Sos wears lion hat of shame and vows revenge."

Victoria's proven associate, the cat called Sos has openly admitted to plotting revenge. Let us wander up the page to the top post on her subreddit as of last night:

http://imgur.com/jemfL3P Caption: "the tiny helps."

Here we clearly see damming evidence:

Victoria did not do her work at Reddit alone. she was assisted by cats.

Cats whom have stated openly that they seek revenge. Cats who would like nothing better then to see Reddit burn.

This plot was discovered and were it not for the quick actions of our Administrators, we fear the worst would have happened.

Ladies and gentleman, it appears that at great risk to himself, u/kuntnal has obtained this leaked document, apparently from reddit headquarters itself. I will thusly submit it here for your consideration:

https://i.imgur.com/HH7RyuO.jpg

Does this story sound strange? Far fetched? Even ridiculous? It may be. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we simply are not able to see the full story here today. This story may seem silly, but I believe it proves an important point. Because of the nature of personnel decisions surrounding hiring and firing, we CANNOT know the full truth of the matter. Who can say then, that Victoria's firing was not justified? Can we, in good faith fill these gaps in our knowledge with any narrative we please in our desire to seek justice?

TO DO SO WOULD BE A PERVERSION!

We CANNOT know the true reasons behind the decisions our admins have made, and thus it would be wrong to convict them with so incomplete a picture. To do so would be a court driven by emotions and feelings, not fact. We must be better than that. Ladies and gentleman, our clients are INNOCENT until proven guilty. Unless the prosecution can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Victoria's dismissal was not justified the defendants MUST be exonerated. Otherwise we all the filthy puppets of the cat overlords.

TL;DR - Victoria worked with evil cats while she was an admin at Reddit, which is why she was fired.

It was around this time that a KCR of the case's first day was published to this very subreddit. The article itself is fairly comprehensive of the events that had taken place prior to the publishing, with a short opinion section at the end:

The defence is certainly trying to be ambitious on this one. Attempting to prove that Victoria's firing was the right decision will likely prove unpopular, and with ordinary Redditors making up the jury, it will require some pretty strong evidence and arguments to get away with that one. While Ellen Pao may have escaped from these great halls of justice, the prosecution remains on a very strong footing here. The question is: will the defence be able to convince the braying mob that the admins are not, in fact, the return of the Third Reich?

The events that followed were enquiries for witnesses so they could be cross-examined over the case. While there were many potential candidates, it does not seem as though any witnesses were examined. As the judge said themselves:

You have until Friday to bring something new (witness testimonies, evidences, arguments, rhetoric, cheese, salami, etc). I will give my verdict on Sunday on the twelfth knock of midnight.

This essentially says "find some new things if you want, but I'm still doing the verdict on Sunday".

Nothing new, however, was brought. Not even some nice salami.

And so, it's the moment that at least 2 people have been waiting for. Yes, ladies and gentlemen (and anyone in between), it's time for the Verdict.

Verdict [SPOILERS]

The verdict came at the stroke of July 11th, 2015. It was posted in both the comment section of the case and as its own post. For each of the four charges, a select jury of 12 voted on what they believed was the appropriate ruling. Well, I say 12 people, 2 of them didn't vote so it's technically 10. But technicalities don't matter to me - let's just get to the verdict.

First off is (obviously) Charge 1, which was "firing a Reddit employee who was essential to the ongoing of IAmAs in r/IAmA, r/Science, r/Books". On this charge, 80% of the (alive) jury found the defendant...

GUILTY

The judge added:

It has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that kn0thing has fired Victoria.

This "proof" came in the form of a screenshot of a message sent by u/kn0thing to all of the Reddit moderators, wherein he took responsibility for the miscommunication behind the firing. This was taken by many to mean that kn0thing was the person who fired Victoria.

Next is Charge 2, which was "lack of communication and openness regarding what the mods had to say about the moderation tools". On this charge, it was unanimously decided that the defendant was...

GUILTY

...which lead to the judge adding:

It has been stated before the crime that the administrators were aware of the bad things going on regarding moderation tools. Nevertheless, it took this riot and this strike from the moderators to finally make something happen. During the time of the trial the admins started to make some change. Unfortunately, the constitution does not state how we should approach not only new evidence but also new acts (acts of repairing, acts of crime, etc) coming up during trial. Therefore, I will rule that actions committed by the defendant will not be taken into consideration during the trial, that only actions committed before the crime will be taken, but anything new happening during trial will serve to influence the sentence.

This clarified that, while the admin team had begun to make changes after the strike, it did not excuse the crime committed. However, the sentence would be influenced by these actions.

Next is Charge 3, which (in summary) was "making an act that created a revolt (worse: a riot) on the whole platform". This charge, despite having 60% of the jury voting for guilty, was...

RELEASED

This was decided by the judge, who said:

This means that the proof of guilt has not been established during trial. There was only a cause-effect argument submitted to court which is not enough for the court to rule.

We needed to define what happened. Is this really a riot? No. It's a strike. A strike is a hold of any activity in the objective to make a message pass. The moderators made a strike. It is not stated in the Karma Court Constitution nor in the Reddit rules whether or not the moderators are allowed to make a strike. Well, I will rule that yes, they are allowed to go on strike, and at least this one was legal. However, the only form of strike that I will allow is for the mod to turn the subreddit private with a message stating the reason of the strike and the request they hold on.

Just like in real life, you do not sue or bring to criminal trial the managers of a company when the employees go on strike. Same thing here. A strike means the employees (or in our case the volunteers) want something to change and we cannot hold the superiors responsible for the wills of the volunteers.

However, the admins are forced to cooperate and find a settlement between them and the moderators. This is already happening (r/modsupport, r/modnews). Part of this settlement must also concern the replacement of Victoria so that the AMAs can go on in a steady way that fits the moderators of r/IAmA.

In summary, it's unfair to sue the admins for something the users did. While, yes, they did mess up, it's not fair to sue them for the strike that they didn't choose to make. In addition, settlements and cooperations are already taking place.

And finally, we have Charge 4, which was "deploying a broken and horrid search interface with complete disregard to months of negative feedback at r/Beta". On this charge, despite 80% of the jury voting the other way, the judge declared the client

INNOCENT

...adding:

It has been shown that the search interface is in fact not broken, it works well, and that the admins are receiving the feedback from it.

While I couldn't see this explicitly in the comments of the case, there was some controversy surrounding Charge 4 when the defense made a motion to throw it out (because it was past the statute of limitations), which was considered but rejected.

And those were all the charges, Pretty fitting conclusion for the case of the century. But what does some random journalist have to say about it?

Journalist's Take

Overall, I agree with the judge's ruling on all of the charges. 1 and 2 are obviously guilty, 3 is understandable when looking at the full situation, and 4 passed the statute of limitations, alongside not actually being broken.

And that, more or less, is the end of The Ten Top Cases Retrospective! I hope you enjoyed reading through them all. They took an ungodly amount of time to make. In terms of future projects, I'm thinking about possibly doing something similar for the 10 most controversial cases (i.e. what comes up when you sort by controversial of all time) but that will probably be a good while away. In the meantime, I'll likely go back to covering cases via KCRs (which is what I was doing before I dropped off the face of the earth) so look out for those when they come out. Until then, though, I'm going to go think about my life for a little bit. This is FailureToCompute, signing off.

Introduction

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, and welcome back to The Ten Top Cases Retrospective, where I, KCR Editor u/FailureToCompute (who is somewhat dreading the behemoth of the top case of all time), take a look at the ten highest upvoted cases of all time on r/KarmaCourt. In the ninth instalment, we're going to be taking a look at the second highest-upvoted case of all time (which has 4,431 points and a 93% upvote rate) in an adequate amount of detail. Let's not stall any longer and get into the case post.

The Case

The case post itself doesn't have much to write about, so I'll explain the whole case itself. On April 17, 2017, u/dinoignacio posted this gallery of their child at the Star Wars Celebration 2017 to r/pics, and it did quite well, receiving nearly 20k upvotes before its archiving. However, 4 days later, u/BookerDeWittsCarbine posted this standalone picture from the gallery, and it received over 4 times the amount of upvotes, over 80k of them. However, several people noticed the theft of the image and called out the defendant for their crimes. At this point, only one solution was clear: Karma Court.

The case received a lot of attention, as well as a judge - u/deathslayer-pcmr- - and a prosecution - u/John_Mica, but no defense, which is something to bear in mind for later.

Let's now get to the

Trial Thread

The trial began with the defendant providing an apology/explanation for their actions:

To begin with, I would like to say a hearty "I'm sorry" to u/dinoignacio. I don't mean this in satire. I am incredibly sorry for posting your wonderful and heartfelt picture without correct attribution. Your family looks awesome and your Death Star plans tablet is incredible.

I saw the image first on my social media, from io9 and Tor (two well known science fiction and fantasy websites). I thought the pictures were adorable and wanted to share them. I did a short search of r/pics to see if they had been posted before, but I was on mobile and the search was clearly not thorough enough. I did link to the Tor website (now downvoted and buried), to direct people to more pictures. I honestly didn't expect this to blow up so much. I'm a big Star Wars fan, so your pictures utterly delighted me.

This was responded to by the plaintiff, who left a heartfelt note (which is missing below) before receding back into their satirical character:

My child was stolen and sold for 40k Karma points. I don't know how I will ever recover from this. My wife is distraught and has lost all hope. Your apology is meaningless. How do we explain this to my child?

The defendant responded similarly, going from heartfelt to satirical very quickly, which may have accidentally uncovered the defendant's concerning past:

I have... a lot of debts. I usually solve them by kidnapping people. I should really seek therapy or something.

The prosecution interjected, pointing out that the defendant appeared too mentally unstable to be allowed to lurk on r/pics, which was followed by a sob story that convinced approximately -12 people. Elsewhere, one of the witnesses made an important point to the case:

As an official witness to this case, I must say, the defendant did cite a tor.com article as his source. BUT the article itself cites the imgur account of /u/dinoignacio which would have led the defendant to the proper source had he done his raysearch. So take of that what you will.

[NOTE: The link to the original article is broken. Here is a web archive link.]

This was combatted by the defendant, who mentioned:

An Imgur account does not a Reddit account make. People who don't Reddit do use Imgur. If it had been found on Reddit, I would have expected a cited Reddit user name. There was none. So after I did my own search of r/pics and saw no post, I decided to go ahead. I should have searched more thoroughly but I was on mobile and Reddit's search is known to be terrible. Hence why I cited the Tor.com article in my post.

However, the plaintiff pointed out something noteworthy:

My Twitter, Reddit, Imgur, and real name are all the same. Dino Ignacio. A simple search would have revealed results.

...which the defendant yielded to with a second apology.

In another thread, the prosecution echoed a similar point:

Now, your honor, this post was clearly done with malicious intent. The defendant gave no implication that they were not the person in the photograph, nor did they credit the original post. Such cruelty must be scarring to a young child, knowing that someone is going around, masquerading as the Leia that received the plans. And what nerve the defendant has! Reposting only days after the original, and in the same subreddit, no less. Now, your honor, I might just be a simple caveman lawyer, but I know that a good, innocent person would not contribute such trauma to a parent and child.

...before making their final statement:

Throughout this case, the defendant has shown a series of irrational actions, ranging from crying over mere memories, a bizarre act, to not providing sources in a neat, presentable manner. He is the worst kind of criminal; the kind that would steal a child for 40k updoots! To be allowed to get away with something so immoral is an INJUSTICE!

AN INJUSTICE, I SAY!

The defendant has continuously shown manipulation through irrelevant stories regarding his childhood and war memories. This vermin is a cold and calculating fiend, and their posts deserve to rest at 0 karma.

Anyway, let's get to the

Verdict

Eventually, the judge ruled based on the arguments of the prosecution and the ^(nonexistent) defense:

From the evidence that I have seen and from what has been stated i can firmly state that on 4/21/17, u/BookerDeWittsCarbine has been declared GUILTY (cue some black person saying oh no he didn't, some crying, shock, and cheers). He is guilty of lying, stealing precious karma, stealing from a little girl, and manipulating the jury. From what I have seen this is not his first offense. He does, however, have mental problems so I will shorten his sentence to 1-year probation from pics and probation for 4 years, if you are found guilty again I will bring you to karma court myself. You have been warned. COURT DISMISSED.

So that should be it, right? Guilty and gone? Well, some people had some valid points over the validity of the trial. The first concern was over the ^(nonexistent) defense:

u/BookerDeWittsCarbine was tried without the benefit of counsel and justice has not been served. I move to strike the confession as it was given under duress. I submit to the court that it was coerced on the basis of peer pressure and overcuteness on the part of the alleged victim's progeny.

I would put forth that an innocent mistake was committed by my client and the necessary elements to establish malice and fuckwittery cannot be established due to low IQ on the part of the defendant.

...and the second concern was over the qualifications of the judge:

According to the Constitution, Article IX clearly states that the Judge presiding over a trial must fill these requirements:

a user must have a history in the courts, and r/KCBAR Certification

Mr. Deathslayer-pcmr has no such history in the courts or evidence that he has passed the KCBAR. As evidence, I present the search results for this Most Esteemed Court when searching for Mr. Deathslayer-pcmr: Evidence #1. I also present the search results for the KCBAR Association, that most prestigious association responsible for certifying the Officers of this Most Esteemed Court: Evidence #2. As you can see, neither search query has any result for Mr. Deathslayer-pcmr before the 22nd of April in the Year 2017, thus invalidating both the "history in the courts" and the KCBAR Certification clauses. In fact, some of the statements made by the "judge" Deathslayer-pcmr in the trial may be construed as generating Karma undue to him.

Should you require legal representation in this matter, Mr. DeWitt, I would gladly represent you pro bono, however, a new case may need to be brought before the court. Please send me correspondence if you wish to pursue righting this injustice.

Both of these were noticed by the judge and they planned to hold an appeal for the case, but this never came to fruition - and so, the guilty verdict remained.

Journalist's Take

As for my Journalist's Take, it's hard to call, honestly. I think it's actually unfair to choose; after all, the trial was quite unfair considering the lack of a defense attorney.

And that's the end of this instalment! Hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next time. Until then, this is FailureToCompute, signing out.

UP NEXT on The Final Top Ten Cases Retrospective: The highest upvoted case of all time: The Victoria Case.

Introduction

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, and welcome back to The Ten Top Cases Retrospective, where I, KCR Editor u/FailureToCompute (who is running out of jokes for this segment), take a look at the ten highest upvoted cases of all time on r/KarmaCourt. In this seventh/eighth instalment, we're going to be doing another double bill, where we'll be looking at the fourth and third highest-upvoted cases of all time in an adequate amount of detail. Let's not stall any longer and get into the first case of this post.

The Identity Hijack

This case was published on August 7, 2018, and received 3,897 points prior to its archiving. In addition, it had a 97% upvote rate and a singular gold award, which was kind of that stranger to give. Let's get into the case post itself.

Case Post

What Happened: u/fearfulblank copied my, u/shadybaby22, post from January 2, 2018, of a selfie I took when I was the only passenger on the plane.

This was my most successful post and, as a selfie, which I conducted interviews about giving my full name, I'm especially sensitive to how this photo is used.

Up until I posted this no one in my real life knew my Reddit account and I took the risk of being identified by posting myself and I considered it worth the risk once I saw the joy my story brought to others. Now I'm, sadly, regretting one of the most exciting things to ever happen to me.

Essentially, what happened was the plaintiff posted this to the subreddit r/mildlyinteresting, got an incredibly large amount of upvotes, and a good amount of recognition. Months later, however, a certain defendant reposted the image and the caption in what appeared to be an obvious karmawhoring attempt. It didn't go too well, and it ended up with a 17% upvote rate, which is quite bad. And that is all you need to know going into this case.

This case's main important people are u/ToxicPilot as the prosecution, u/ItsMrMuggles as the defense, and u/Schwarzekekker as the judge.

Trial Thread

The trial began with u/ToxicPilot's opening statement, which essentially re-establishes the case at hand:

Ladies and gentlemen of /r/KarmaCourt, today we see a blatant case of stolen karma too brazen to put into words. Just after ringing in the new-year, our plaintiff, u/ShadyBaby22, posted a photo of herself as the lone passenger of a commercial aircraft to the somewhat interesting sub r/mildlyinteresting. Little did she know at the time, her photo would be shamelessly stolen and used by the defendant, u/FearfulBlank for his/her undeserved gain! Not only did the defendant repost the image, he/she claimed THEY were the subject of the photograph! Any civilized society cannot tolerate this tomfoolery and brazen disrespect for the rule of Karma. It is for this reason, that the prosecutor is charging the defendant with the following counts:

1 - First degree bamboozlement, for attempting to deceive the users

2 - First degree karmawhoring, for using a photo that is OBVIOUSLY not him/her and passing it off as their own

3 - First degree grand theft identity. Identity theft is not a joke, Jim

This was followed by... nothing. The defense never replied to the thread after their application to become the defense. But a revelation had taken place elsewhere. It was discovered by u/pagem4 that the defendant had pussied backed out of the Reddit-sphere and deactivated their account. It seemed as though the case would be coming to a swift end. But then, ANOTHER revelation took place in the form of three separate re-reposts, all of which used the plaintiff's face and a very similar story (my [family member] got a whole plane to herself). However, none of these re-reposters were tried, and they all deleted their accounts, except for u/floridamoejoe, who hasn't posted anything since their dirty karmawhore attempt.

And that's the case! As for the Journalist's Take, this is hopefully another incredibly obvious one. Let's get on to the second case of this post!

A Shining Crime

Before we get into the case post (and honestly, there is barely anything to it), let's get a hearty dose of context^(TM) into our bodies before realising that we actually just drunk rubbing alcohol and are going to die imminently.

Context

This whole ordeal started on October 31, 2016, where u/PassingThroughRider made this post to r/Pokemon, claiming that he would give out a copy of the video games Pokemon Sun and Moon to everyone who upvoted (before commenting so he knew who to send the games to) his post, provided that the post reached at least 100 upvotes. Aaaaaaaand it got 138,601 points, which makes it the top upvoted post of all time on the Pokemon subreddit, beating second place by nearly 60,000 upvotes. The post also received over 78,000 comments, none of which received a copy of Pokemon Sun and Moon. This ended up being one of the biggest bamboozles in Reddit history, and what do you do when someone does bad thing? You take them to Karma Court!

I won't be talking about the case post, because there's pretty much nothing to it, but it was submitted by u/appa311 on the same day as the original post came out, and received 4,230 points with a 91% upvote rate. Let's get to the trial.

Trial Thread

Before we begin, let's go through our stars of the trial. We have u/mrtittyfingers as the judge, u/chromaticfinish as the prosecutor, and u/Expleto is the defense.

It all began with the judge asking whether the defendant pled guilty, to which the defense confirmed negative, and so the trial began.

The prosecution and defense both began with their opening statements, which remained mostly vague for the mean time. First, we heard from the prosecution:

Good evening, Monsieur Titty, and thank you for presiding so justly over this unjust event.

We the people of Reddit.com are filing suit against u/passingthroughrider. His charges of lying, contempt of court, and getting-my-hopes-up are extremely serious.

In the coming posts we will see undeniable proof of OP's ruthless shitposting. I have screenshots proving A) that the defendant is not rich and B) that the defendant never intended to follow through on his offer.

My expert witness will present his estimates for damage done to the general populace.

Then, the defense:

My client u/passingthroughrider is accused of malicious actions on r/Pokemon. In the coming discussion it will be revealed that he was simply partaking in festivities and that mob mentality twisted his intentions that resulted in the damage done to the find trainers of Reddit.com.

This was followed by the prosecution's main point, which showed that the defendant was a lying bitch person from the start:

I present exhibit A, graciously screencapped by the honorable u/Luvodicus. Here, PassingThroughRider clearly states that he is "a poor student." PassingThroughRider attempts to defend his self-description, by claiming that he is rich in karma, though karma, while holding value, does not hold cash value; you can buy karma with money, but YOU CANNOT BUY MONEY WITH KARMA. Thus, PassingThroughRider is NOT RICH.

Similarly, PassingThroughRider is almost certainly not bored. He maintains his boredom in exhibit A, though his behavior in that very same thread betrays him!

I present exhibit B. wherein PassingThroughRider clearly states "muahahahah." THIS IS NOT A SOUND OF BOREDOM. It is, in fact, a sound of EVIL ENJOYMENT. This lying motherfucker was ENTERTAINED FROM THE START.

Exhibits A and B both come from an AMA that the plaintiff did soon after the post came out, where he admits he was essentially lying on the post. This seems like damning evidence, and it is, but the defense retaliated with three specific flaws:

Flaw One. Shitposting, an act made legal by the moderators of /r/Pokemon grants users the ability to spew false promises without repercussion.

Flaw Two. The URL proposed by the Prosecution (https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/5ac0p2/if_i_get_100_upvotes_ill_buy_everyone_who_upvotes/?st=1Z141Z3&sh=640a06f6) does NOT contain the promise of 'POKEMON: Sun and Moon', only a 'Copy of Sun and Moon'.

Flaw Three. The contractual agreement set out by my client stated that only 100 upvotes were needed to grant the 'copies of Sun and Moon'. The post well exceeded 100 upvotes and reached dozens of times that amount. By this assumption we can assume the 'Oh-Shit-This-Is-Too-Much' clause is enacted and my client cannot be held responsible to provide beyond that which they stated.

In conclusion, I do not deny that my client made such statements. However given the environment of Chaos created by the Moderators of /r/Pokemon, the lack of contextual wording in the claim and the "Oh-Fuck-I'm-Screwed" clause my client is released from all responsibility and repercussions.

In this passage, the defense points out that A) r/Pokemon allows shitposting (or at least, it allowed shitposting as there seems to be nothing about it in the rules nowadays), B) the defendant was not specific in their game choice (which is a good use of "Taking Everything Incredibly Literally"^(TM)), and C) the defendant should be excused because they weren't expecting that many upvotes. The prosecution retaliated with an

OBJECTION!

Your honor, the right to shitpost is not the right to be a LYING DINGUS.

It is a well-known fact that you cannot lie on the internet.

u/PassingThroughRider's attempts to deny responsibility for the emotional damages done to the general public hold no sway. He gave the people false hope! He defrauded karma from r/Pokemon and /r/all!

This objection, however, was overruled by the judge, who moved the trial onward to the witness statements. These statements appeared to fizzle out over time, though, and both the prosecution and defense disappeared from society. Thankfully, however, the judge actually made a verdict, so let's take a look at that now and give some opinions on it.

Verdict / Journalist's Take

The verdict presented by the judge was GUILTY, and the defendant was sentenced to a boiling in oil. In my opinion, this was the right call. There appeared to be nothing to prove this post was a shitpost, and it also wasn't very funny, which one would hope a shitpost is meant to be. In addition, I find it reasonable for one to expect that a post offering a new Pokemon game would get a lot of upvotes.

And that's the end of this double instalment! I hoped you enjoyed, and I'll see you next time, where we'll be going back to the standard single case format of most of the instalments for the second-to-last case before the magnum opus of Karma Court itself. In the meantime, this is FailureToCompute, signing off.

UP NEXT on The Top Ten Cases Retrospective: Star Wars, grand karma theft, and a child kidnapping over the internet.

Introduction

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, and welcome back to The Ten Top Cases Retrospective, where I, KCR Editor u/FailureToCompute (who has a lot of time on his hands thanks to the apocalypse), take a look at the ten highest upvoted cases of all time on r/KarmaCourt. In this fifth/sixth instalment, we'll be taking a look at two cases at once: the sixth highest-upvoted case of all time - a case about a karma bamboozle with a death weapon - and the fifth highest-upvoted case of all time - a case about the poor management of a subreddit, which was actually created 8 years ago. Without any further ado, let's start with the anti-task missile case.

An Explosive Case

The case in question was published on May 21, 2018, and received 2,776 points prior to its archiving, with a 97% upvote rate. It also received a singular gold award and the coveted Case of the Week label. Without a single second of further ado, let's dive into the case post.

Case Post

At a first glance u/WhySoSadCZ seems like the unicorn post! Above 50k upvotes within 8 hours with multiple gold and comments with gold and comment karma surmounting the post itself.

I wanted to believe that somehow a company had no need to go in their server room for 2 months.

I wanted to believe that a disgruntled employee just left a missle in a room for no good reason.

I wanted to believe that OP had his phone taken away even though he was able to post comments throughout the entire ordeal.

After a few minutes of thought and evidence provided by u/The_Drizzzle it is clear we've been bamboozled.

This is the bulk of the case. The defendant, on the day of the case submission, submitted this post to the subreddit r/whatisthisthing, with the caption "Some kind of explosive lying on the floor of server room? This post ended up receiving nearly 75k upvotes, as well as 3 gold awards, 2 "Helpful" awards, and 1 "Wholesome" award. The post was later confirmed as fake by both the Czech police (link may require translating) and the defendant themselves, which inadvertently called the case to a halt.

So that should be it, right? The defendant admitted to the crime. And, well, it is. As far as I could see, there was no real trial thread for this case. Local Justice u/Yanky_Doodle_Dickwad tried to begin a trial thread but no one replied to it. I think you can all now tell why this is a double episode of the retrospective.

As for the Journalist's Take, I think you can work out what my opinion on this case is.

Now, onto the second case: The People's Report. And this is an oldie but a goldie.

The People's Report

Before I get into the case post (which, to be fair, doesn't feature all that much), a side serving of context^(TM) is probably required, so let's do that first and foremost.

Context

On April 15, 2013, two terrorists planted two bombs near the finish line of that year's Boston Marathon. At 2:49pm that day, the bombs were detonated, killing three and injuring hundreds, which included approximately 17 that lost at least one limb. Naturally, as it was an event that impacted a lot of people, it was posted to the subreddit r/worldnews by several people. However, these posts were all, at one point or another, removed. This was apparently because the posts were considered "US-internal news" as per rule 1, but many believed it to be a global tragedy and not just an incident that took place in the US. Some people, however, also argued on the other side of the spectrum - it was something that took place in the US and thus should be confined to r/news. As u/EvanMinn wisely put it:

The debate seems to be, does US internal news mean:

News that happens in the US

or

News that only affects or is of interest to the US

The Boston bombing would clearly fall in the definition of the former but not the latter.

If nothing else, this gives the opportunity to come to a consensus opinion (well, as much as there can be on Reddit anyway).

And what better way to come to a consensus opinion than with a case in Karma Court.

The Case

On the same day as the tragedy took place, u/DOPE_AS_FUCK_COOK posted the case against r/worldnews, and it went on to receive 2,976 points with a 92% upvote rate. Let's see the charges presided against the subreddit:

1. Felony Pointless Rulery
2. Fuckwiticism of the First Degree
3. First Degree Unreqquited Douchbaggery
4. Felony Misrepresentation of Spam/Ham
5. and Grand Theft.jpg just for the fuck of it
6. Felony Electronic Jackassery
7. Incomprehensible Lack of Common Sense in the First Degree
8. Misdemeanor Disregard of Common Courtesy

Most of these appear to apply to the case presented which, generally speaking, is quite helpful.

The case gained a lot of traction very quickly, which caused a lot of discourse and requests to be involved with the process. A large amount of people requested to be part of the jury, which the plaintiff said would be finalised 2 days after the case post. The trial was also postponed to this day to give the families affected some downtime. However, this downtime was extended... to 8 years. Yeah, this was another case that had a large amount of upvotes but no trial thread. And I think I've figured out why. Bare with me for a second.

The Section Where u/FailureToCompute Tries To Justify Wasting His Life

I believe that the reason these cases got so popular but have no ruling is that they have cases involving large subreddits or large amounts of stolen karma, which leads to a lot of people upvoting them, despite not knowing how the Karma Courts work. Because of this, no judge/prosecution/defense is found, so the trial goes stale and it gets archived after 6 months. You can make cases all you want, but if no trial thread even happens, did it even take place?

Anyway, as for my Journalist's Take, it's hard to say considering that there were no proper arguments made for or against the subreddit's guilt. But if I had to choose a side, I would probably lean towards guilty. A bombing on that scale, which might have people from other countries participating in the marathon, definitely deserves global attention.

And that's the end of this double instalment! Hope you liked this new format, sorry it's a little short (after all, we had two "dud" cases) and I'll see you next time, where we'll likely be having another double bill! This is FailureToCompute, signing off.

UP NEXT on The Top Ten Cases Retrospective: Identity theft, empty planes, and grand karmawhoring. / A new Pokemon game, a rich kid, and a swindling of karma.

Note: Any spelling/grammar errors in the trial thread have been corrected for easier reading.

Introduction

The year is 20XX. Karma Court HQ is filled with rubble. A guy called FailureToCompute crawls out from underneath it all.

Where the hell am I? It's been ages since I've seen or done anything. I wonder why.

I guess I should pick up where I left off, so...

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, and welcome back to The Ten Top Cases Retrospective, where I, KCR Editor u/FailureToCompute (who needs a scheduler immediately), take a look at the ten highest upvoted cases of all time on r/KarmaCourt. In this fourth instalment, we’ll be taking a look at the seventh highest-upvoted case of all time: a case regarding the birth of a baby, and its name. The post stands at 2,456 points but there are no awards to be seen. Let’s get into the case post.

Case Post

Good people of /r/karmacourt, thank you for taking the time to read through my case.

You are welcome, Plaintiff.

Earlier today, on the subreddit /r/thanosdidnothingwrong, one /u/rkniepmann claimed that if his post got over ten thousand upvotes, he would name his firstborn child Thanos. Approximately one hour after it was posted, and long before it hit the requisite number of upvotes, I posted in response saying that anything short of a birth certificate being produced would result in my pressing charges. He has now updated the post to say that his girlfriend flat out said no to the idea, revealing that he had no real plans to follow through, as the idea had not been discussed with his significant other beforehand.

This is the main part of the case. The plaintiff alleges that the defendant bamboozled tens of thousands of people for upvotes by saying that they would name their child Thanos if their post received a sufficient amount of upvotes. The plaintiff requested the birth certificate of the child when it was born, or else they would pursue charges. After this, the defendant doubled back on the idea, claiming that their girlfriend never wanted the idea.

I consider shitposting to be an art form. I think that there is no point in coming up with an elaborate joke only to fail to follow through at the last minute. I hope the court hears my case and that a team can be assembled for the trial in short order, as most of the people involved could be snapped out of existence on the subreddit in question at any minute.

The plaintiff provides some extra reasoning for their claim, explaining that such an elaborate joke should receive some form of follow-up considering the likely large amount of planning that went into it.

And that's the case post! Won't be going into the details of the comments because a large amount of them are a massive thread of "Perfectly balanced, as all things should be" and so on and so forth. So let's get to the trial! Here are the important people who star in this week's month's season's year's instalment of The Top Ten Cases Retrospective:

The All-Important Judge: u/Mcsadia

The Attacking Prosecutor: u/killer_whale1984

The Defending... Defense: u/twicedouble

Alrighty then, let's get to the

Trial Thread

The trial began with the prosecutor's opening statement, which covered the case being ruled on, and presented a possible explanation for the lack of a follow-up in the defendant's promise:

Your honor, the jury, today we have a case of fraud, of bamboozle, of grand theft. The defendant will try to tell you that he did not intend to break his promise, that he simply couldn’t keep his promise. I say he never intended to. The defendant did not plan on keeping his promise and was planning on bamboozling all of us out of so much karma. The defendant must be punished for his crimes against the people and today I will prove to you all of this is true.

The defense replied with their opening statement, using a clever lawyer technique called "Taking Everything Incredibly Literally"^(TM) by pointing out an "important" detail in the original post:

According to my client's alleged post, and I quote, "My first newborn is expected tonight, if this gets to 10k I will name him Thanos." Notice the pronoun that my client allegedly used "him." So according to the wording of the contract the newborn's name only has to be Thanos of the baby is a male. We do not know the gender of the child allegedly fathered by my client. Therefor[e] my client has no legal obligation to name a female child Thanos, nor does my client have a legal obligation to reveal the alleged gender of the alleged child.

Following this was a rebuttal, but not from the defense. The common misspelling bot interrupted the trial to remind the defense how to spell "therefore", which was very funny, but it was not proper, and so the prosecution replied soon after with no rebuttal, but a request for the plaintiff to take the stand and read out the original post that the defendant was being tried for. Here are some excerpts from their conversation:

Plaintiff: The defendant said, and I quote: "Update: I proceeded to bring this to attention to my girlfriend. In doing so I had to introduce to her: Reddit, subreddits, karma, the avengers, plot of iw2, this subreddit. After about 10-15 min of going through all this, I finally showed her this post."

And that's the case post! Won't be going into the details of the comments because a large amount of them are a massive thread of "Perfectly balanced, as all things should be" and so on. So let's get to the trial! Here are the important people who star in this

Plaintiff: "Her response: a simple hell no :("

After this, the defense took over once more and questioned the plaintiff via a loophole provided by the lawyer technique of "Taking Everything Incredibly Literally"^(TM):

Now, u/hauntedbypaul, riddle me this. Did you hear my client say that he was not going to follow through with his promise? Or did you only hear him say that his girlfriend said "hell no!" There is no evidence to show that my client actually listened to his girlfriend and until that evidence is brought to the table I will not rest.

The plaintiff then decided to retaliate against this point from the defense, showing that a guilty conscience had come into play (but much less Eminem and Dr. Dre involved):

Why, the evidence is in the defendant's own post. The frowny face after "hell no." The only way that face makes sense in context is if the defendant realizes that people will be disappointed he is telling them that he didn't follow through. It establishes a consciousness of guilt.

This was followed by a response from the defense, which continued to speculate on the true meaning of the frowny face:

That is complete conjecture that you have no qualifications to make. That frowny face could've meant that my client was sad that he would have to break it off with his gf and take full custody of Thanos, it could mean that he was sad that his gf did not accept the light of Thanos. We have no idea and no ability to say what that frowny face could've meant.

This was followed by another response from the plaintiff, which claims that if the user wanted karma (which he clearly did, considering the grounds of the situation), they should've shown proof to continue to farm it:

But doesn't this narrative contradict the defendant's own stated motivations? Someone who offers to do something like name their firstborn child after a villain in a popular superhero movie for 10,000 upvotes clearly loves karma and wants to get as much of it as possible. Such a person would no doubt post proof the name change took place, looking for yet more karma. Imagine the news stories. The subreddit already had some publicity, it'd have gotten far more. He could've ridden the karma train so much higher. To suddenly fail to deliver when that much more karma was on the line only makes sense if there can be no proof because the smily face means what should be plain to the jury and the judge: that he failed to follow through and that no naming of his child as Thanos occurred.

The defense then re-iterated their concerns of conjecture and asked for the witness testimony to be stricken from the record by the Judge, which u/McSadia complied with.

Unfortunately, from then on, the case proceeded to fizzle out. The defense essentially disappeared, with the prosecution motioning for a public defender to be assigned to continue with the case, and while u/Whatsitooyaa requested to be the stand-in attorney, nothing happened after this.

And that's the trial! Not much else took place overall, aside from the excellent sketch provided by u/twicedouble which appears to imagine everyone as a ladder...

But what's that in the sky? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's... a new section!

Journalist's Take

That's right! Using the spare change I had left over from the apocalypse, I decided to create a little thing called Journalist's Take, wherein I give my opinion on the cases presented before me. In this case, I believe that the prosecution should've won overall. Their case was very solid, and the best that the defense could present were a few very specific loopholes that could be quite simply be debunked. This is all I'm gathering from a very short trial by the way - there's a chance that if the defense had continued, I would lean in their favour instead, but as I see it, I believe the prosecution are the true winners.

So that concludes this instalment of The Top Ten Cases Retrospective. What did we learn?

Babies bad. Thanos good.

Thank you all for reading, and I’ll see you soon (hopefully in less time than the gap from last time's instalment to now)!

UP NEXT on the Top Ten Cases Retrospective: Police, anti-tank missiles, and professional journalism. Spooky.