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Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

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Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#31

Post by geofft »

piotrjurkiewicz wrote: post #16

It is clear that Reddit is facing some problems with scalability. I often get server errors during peak hours. But I think that politically-based censorship, which is being enforced by many moderators (with the help of Reddit admins), will kill this service sooner than scalability problems. Users will simply left Reddit when they will become censored. Many users I knew already did that. Moreover, moderators of many s…

> Users will simply left Reddit when they will become censored. Many users I knew already did that.

I wonder if there are actual statistics here (reddit probably could compute them, but may not want to release them publicly). I'm an avid redditor, so I obviously disagree with this, but most non-redditors seem to have the impression that the place is disgusting filth and needs to step up its censorship of racism and the like. And I think there are way more non-redditors than redditors.

If you want to argue that it's the right business decision for reddit to be more of a bastion of free speech, as opposed to simply a moral imperative, that needs to be backed up with an analysis of potential new users as well as potential ex-users.

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#32

Post by geofft »

obstacle1 wrote: post #27
cfqycwz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to you when you talk about politically-based censorship? I was increasingly turned off by the growing racism, misogyny, and hate that I saw daily on Reddit, and am quite happy to see many of the most disgusting subreddits finally done away with. I suspect that for every free-speech absolutist worried about Reddit refusing to sanction such vitriol there are many more that will be happy to find a…

Advocating against censorship and arguing against banning subreddits is not equivalent to supporting those subreddits. Basic, undergraduate-level logic. The fact is that there are plenty of hateful subreddits explicitly supported by admins and mods (e.g., SRS) but the hate is pointed in the 'right' direction (i.e., +SJW). And the point of the above is that there is clearly bias shaping the site's content from the ver…

The article is about hiring a CTO to take on scaling challenges, which only matters if they plan to grow. I don't see any evidence from any recent statements that they're prioritizing ideology (of any kind) over growth and profit. If keeping SRS and banning everyone else gets them growth, that's what gets them growth.

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#33

Post by amyjess »

piotrjurkiewicz wrote: post #16

It is clear that Reddit is facing some problems with scalability. I often get server errors during peak hours. But I think that politically-based censorship, which is being enforced by many moderators (with the help of Reddit admins), will kill this service sooner than scalability problems. Users will simply left Reddit when they will become censored. Many users I knew already did that. Moreover, moderators of many s…

No, this canard keeps getting brought up over and over again. /r/europe has a serious problem with racists posting all kinds of hate speech. A couple of years ago, the moderators started cracking down on the racism and banning the racists, and now the racists are all crying censorship because a popular subreddit now has a policy against hate speech.

And /r/subredditcancer is a subreddit that exists for hate groups to complain about getting banned from the rest of reddit. Hell, one of the moderators there, KrustyKoonKrackers (username is a KKK reference and contains a misspelled racial slur) used to be a moderator of /r/coontown (good riddance to that hellhole), and another ex-coontown mod, /u/DylannStormRoof (named after a racist mass murderer), is very active on SRC. I've seen SRC repeatedly lie and distort facts to claim that they're getting banned from places for no reason, and every time, it turns out that there's a very, very good reason, and the poster was just lying for sympathy. I can't believe anything anyone says on SRC.

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#34

Post by spike021 »

boomzilla wrote: post #9

What are the technology challenges is Reddit facing? Clearly not scaling as it's been pretty reliable. New features? What more feature does one need from Reddit? It's pretty good for what it's doing.

I can't say how often, but I've dealt with Reddit issues pretty frequently (at least once a week) where for at least three to five minutes I get the alien mascot (yes I forgot the name) saying the site is down/needs maintenance. It's not so good. Maybe if it was just once or even twice a month it wouldn't be so bad, but for me it's noticeable (so much so that I remember it happening).

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#35

Post by amyjess »

tallerholler wrote: post #23
dublinben wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moderation tools are absolutely archaic. Moderating any subreddit of sufficient size requires a small army of bots and third party tools. Basic forum moderation tools like IP banning persistent troublemakers and spammers are still not available.

hello, what challenges in particular? Are you a moderator? edit: I saw you posted a few challenges :) I don't work for reddit but if you're a moderator Id be interested to PM you about something around that...

It's widely held that modmail is horribly designed.

The admins have recently made some changes to that (threaded modmail), so there's definitely some improvement in that direction though.

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#36

Post by sroerick »

diyorgasms wrote: post #19
piotrjurkiewicz wrote: post #16

It is clear that Reddit is facing some problems with scalability. I often get server errors during peak hours. But I think that politically-based censorship, which is being enforced by many moderators (with the help of Reddit admins), will kill this service sooner than scalability problems. Users will simply left Reddit when they will become censored. Many users I knew already did that. Moreover, moderators of many s…

There is no need to bring reddit intra-site politics here. I doubt readers could care less about SJW vs anti-SJW factions on another site. Furthermore, the actions of certain moderators have nothing to do with this staffing announcement, so you are doubly off-topic. It would make me happy at least if we could contain reddit politics to reddit itself.

Reddit's response to the community woes has been "we are building technology to respond to these concerns.

The hiring of a new CTO is likely designed to address these concerns.

So airing these concerns here seems pretty on topic to me.

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#37

Post by piotrjurkiewicz »

amyjess wrote: post #33
piotrjurkiewicz wrote: post #16

It is clear that Reddit is facing some problems with scalability. I often get server errors during peak hours. But I think that politically-based censorship, which is being enforced by many moderators (with the help of Reddit admins), will kill this service sooner than scalability problems. Users will simply left Reddit when they will become censored. Many users I knew already did that. Moreover, moderators of many s…

No, this canard keeps getting brought up over and over again. /r/europe has a serious problem with racists posting all kinds of hate speech. A couple of years ago, the moderators started cracking down on the racism and banning the racists, and now the racists are all crying censorship because a popular subreddit now has a policy against hate speech. And /r/subredditcancer is a subreddit that exists for hate groups to…

Only if you consider information about terrorist attacks as a 'hate speech'.

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3b86ws/mods_of_reur...

(This post was delisted many times by mods, despite the fact that its author is Turk, so he cannot be racist against himself.)

Moreover, /r/europe moderators explicitly admits their practices:

>Censure or visible islamophobia. One has to choose.

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3b6fgi/mégathread_a...

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#38

Post by raldi »

dntrkv wrote: post #12
boomzilla wrote: post #9

What are the technology challenges is Reddit facing? Clearly not scaling as it's been pretty reliable. New features? What more feature does one need from Reddit? It's pretty good for what it's doing.

Maybe one day they will fix search?

What's an example of a search you did, and a submission that belonged in the results but wasn't?

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#39

Post by x0x0 »

optimusclimb wrote: post #30
hkmurakami wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically "Engineer hire #1" (or similar) that was on board super early but wasn't part of the founding team when the team itself was formed. I am guessing the distinction is to delineate the fact that the engineer did not join 1+ year from company founding, which is often the case for Engineer #1.

So basically founder minus the shares?

and not promoted to direng/cto or (s)he would have use that title, though maybe the company has a policy of not promoting interally

Re: Reddit Names Marty Weiner, Early Engineer at Pinterest, Its First CTO

#40

Post by alayne »

piotrjurkiewicz wrote: post #37
amyjess wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this canard keeps getting brought up over and over again. /r/europe has a serious problem with racists posting all kinds of hate speech. A couple of years ago, the moderators started cracking down on the racism and banning the racists, and now the racists are all crying censorship because a popular subreddit now has a policy against hate speech. And /r/subredditcancer is a subreddit that exists for hate groups to…

Only if you consider information about terrorist attacks as a 'hate speech'. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3b86ws/mods_of_reur... (This post was delisted many times by mods, despite the fact that its author is Turk, so he cannot be racist against himself.) Moreover, /r/europe moderators explicitly admits their practices: >Censure or visible islamophobia. One has to choose. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/c…

In the first thread, it looks like the mods admit to making a mistake.
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