Reddit is still in turmoil • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#11

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:28 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #5

Reddit, from a business perspective, baffles me. During the Yishan Wong/Ellen Pao era, we had Reddit-Made and Reddit TV, both of which bombed especially. Under Alexis Ohanian, we had Upvoted and Formative which as the article notes were killed silently. Reddit released a native app and an image host years too late. (I just checked the data and it is not killing Imgur: Reddit image usage was 18% in the top image subre…

I wonder how much of not evolving the site is due to legacy code. A few years ago I briefly read some of their code, since it is open source, and found it difficult to understand due to a lack of comments and descriptive function and variable names. And it is all Python. So basically any change to the code can be catastrophic because you have no guarantees everything will still work.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#12

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:29 PM UTC

LA_Banker wrote: post #7

minimaxir wrote: post #5

Reddit, from a business perspective, baffles me. During the Yishan Wong/Ellen Pao era, we had Reddit-Made and Reddit TV, both of which bombed especially. Under Alexis Ohanian, we had Upvoted and Formative which as the article notes were killed silently. Reddit released a native app and an image host years too late. (I just checked the data and it is not killing Imgur: Reddit image usage was 18% in the top image subre…

It's not. Reddit could easily sell targeted ads based on subreddits (e.g. inking a deal with Uniqlo to advertise on /r/malefashionadvice or /r/femalefashionadvice). It chooses to pursue other monetization means to preserve the Reddit experience. We'll see if it's able to stumble onto another sustainable business model.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#13

Post by a_small_island » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:30 PM UTC

>"Reddit’s Upvoted podcast, which Ohanian launched in January 2015, also appears to be abandoned. Aside from a single episode published in June, the podcast hasn’t been updated since October 2015. The “Formative” video series produced in partnership with Google, which aired new episodes roughly once a month since its launch, has been dark for four months."

Hopefully any employees hired specifically for these ideas were able to find other groups at the company or future employment.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#14

Post by mindslight » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

> The mistake was ever allowing that kind of freedom in the first place, because people developed an expectation that it would persist.

Sure, and then we wouldn't be talking about reddit but rather whatever site was actually free at the time.

The only reason web forums exist is because people are lazy about adopting decentralized Free software. Yet the owners of these centralized services, as well as paternalistic spectators, end up deluded that the communities they serve are "theirs" to mold and control. In reality these sites' power is but an epsilon, and they should be thankful they can at least exercise it to generate revenue by surveilling users who are too lazy to protect themselves.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#15

Post by grandalf » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:32 PM UTC

Why does Reddit have to become a media empire?

The formula for doing that is pretty well-known by this point:

We'll see a ban on throwaway accounts and a push for real names, then a ban on third party URL shorteners, then interruption ads, and finally some sort of paywall.

Reddit is a useful piece of internet infrastructure, and I'd be pleased if it would stay that way. It doesn't need to become its own media empire with its own Rupert Murdoch, etc.

Some things that could be improved:

- opt-in home pages that are tailored at specific audiences. The standard one is pretty low quality.

- more detection/policing of voting rings and vote fraud in general.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#16

Post by gdwatson » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:32 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

Part of the problem is that Reddit even more than Twitter is structured as a meta-community, and so any standards which are imposed will be external to a given sub-community. That means that they will be perceived as, and may sometimes be, social and political censorship.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#17

Post by yuhong » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:33 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #15

Why does Reddit have to become a media empire? The formula for doing that is pretty well-known by this point: We'll see a ban on throwaway accounts and a push for real names, then a ban on third party URL shorteners, then interruption ads, and finally some sort of paywall. Reddit is a useful piece of internet infrastructure, and I'd be pleased if it would stay that way. It doesn't need to become its own media empire…

I really wish that Reddit would however add HN-style about boxes.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#18

Post by zarriak » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:36 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

I think the biggest problem with it in general was how it greatly relied upon moderators of the individual subreddits. This inherently creates problems as they have to rely upon many individuals who have very different ideas and goals from the Reddit staff, both in terms of monetization and in moderation.

It is inherent in social media, the more stuff you allow on your platform, the less able you are to generate revenue. I think that has been clearly demonstrated by Twitter, 8chan, 4chan, etc. never being able to generate large amounts of profit.

Facebook realized that censoring is unfortunately profitable, and made a platform that is much more easily advertised upon.

It is similar to the development of sports, where in the US all sports have commercial breaks, even in things like F1 that do not run commercials during the race, while ads are run over it in the US. I mean it even happens in soccer with showing ads during the game, as clearly demonstrated by the sprint ads during Copa America.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#19

Post by existencebox » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:37 PM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #10

matwood wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have beer in the fridge and a keg at work. Sometimes it's nice to have a beer at the end of the day, but after a working all day I usually just want to go home.

Yeah, i can see that. Finish a big project and have a beer with your team. I have a hard time seeing that as a daily or even weekly thing.

I'd like to give a counter-perspective, since those who drink at work are often grouped as "brogrammers" when I don't feel like the term encapsulates the environment I'm seeking at all; I have a group of mixed engineer/PM peers accumulated from multiple past jobs who perhaps once a month after work on a friday go to a bar for happy hour and just shoot the shit about work. We have non-drinkers there (we'd glady have more but by no planning of my own many of my coworkers happen to drink) and I've never heard any murmur of pressure to participate beyond being a grumpy engineer :)

Sometimes, as the parent said, this happens out of the work fridge, as going to the bar isn't feasible, and it's nice to take 30m or so out of a long afternoon to be slightly less heads down, as said above, the fact that beer is involved is more just that it's a common source of enjoyment than any intrinsic ties to the hanging out. Coffee, video games, etc are all other ways of doing this, and I think if the culture is natural and very laid back you can avoid the peer pressure that naysayers like to bring up.

To your earlier point of being counterproductive, by 4 on a friday, I am so far from my peak of engineering productivity that a casual chat that spawns some interesting conversations is probably far more work-beneficial than my banging my head further on the same thing I've been doing for the prior 79 hours of the week, if I'm being honest with my workflow.

Just my thoughts. The stated lack of pressure comes from a recognition that these are just that, MY thoughts; I absolutely believe that this pattern doesn't work for anyone, but after so long of seeing the anti-drinking sentiment grow I wanted to chime in a bit with a positive spin; in as mentally intensive a field as we often have a chance to unwind is so valuable to me.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#20

Post by Esau » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 11:38 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

I think what happens when we have truly anonymous free speech, on places such as Reddit, Twitter, and 4Chan, shows that we are nowhere as civilized as we like to think we are.