Adrian Chen
Adrian Chen | |
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File:Adrian Chen at IRL Club 2016.JPG
Adrian Chen at the IRL Club, February 2016.
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Born | November 23, 1984 |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Journalist |
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 Reddit Jailbait 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 2016, he became a staff writer for the New Yorker.[12]
Investigative reporting
Silk Road
In June 2011, Chen wrote an exposé of Silk Road, a Darknet market which facilitated online drug purchases.[13] Following publication of the article, Chen was interviewed about Silk Road on NPR's All Things Considered.[14] As a result of Chen's investigation, United States Senators Charles Schumer and Joe Manchin publicly called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to shut the site down.[15][16][17]
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]
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In October 2012, Chen uncovered the background of Michael Brutsch, a moderator who oversaw several forums 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 as a term for the interview. Though Chen claimed this "did shake [him] a bit",[22] he published an article revealing his name, location, and workplace on Gawker which was doxing and a violation of the terms of use of Reddit. 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 .., then there's not really a legitimate claim to privacy" completely ignoring his and his employers own past with theft and doxing..[26] For his article revealing Brutsch, Chen received a Mirror Award for Best Profile in the category of Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media.[27]
References
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- ↑ http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web
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