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Reddit is still in turmoil

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Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#141

Post by Scorpiion »

erichocean wrote: post #85
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just provide better targeted advertising... On Facebook you can advertise to people based on demographics, interests, behavior, etc. On Reddit you can't even place an add on a specific subreddit if it's not one of the big ones.

> On Reddit you can't even place an add on a specific subreddit if it's not one of the big ones. Would someone please confirm this? If true, wow.

Hi, I have ads running on three subreddits right now, the smallest one has only 1,460 readers. Considering the CTR (click-through rate) I guess putting ads on subreddits smaller than that might not be worth it, even if that ad has been live for over a week it's still at less than 400 impressions/views.

As a reference, I have an ad on the /r/programming/ as well with 678,120 readers, that one has 113,613 impressions/views during the same time period.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#142

Post by flashman »

mbesto wrote: post #97
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…

> Why does Reddit have to become a media empire? Because investors have poured a ton of money into it expecting it to be a media empire.

This is what I detect in Reddit's new ideas: the fear that the existing site is good enough for most people and its population has therefore stabilised... which would be pretty bad for certain kinds of investor looking for a big one-off return instead of a consistent dividend.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#143

Post by ben_jones »

Reddit is, was, and will for the foreseeable future be, a giant pile of porn. Denial of that fact shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of not only Reddit but the internet as a whole..

I can understand that this idea would be extremely unpleasant to a lot of people. And a slow migration to curated content may seem more wholesome. But it doesn't work that way.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#144

Post by dang »

dingo_bat wrote: post #126
dang wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't make inflammatory assertions about people without evidence here. Also, please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum. We detached this subthread from https://news.yc…

I don't agree that the post in question is "inflammatory"in any way. If hn is going to be so strictly/randomly moderated that you have to think twice before presenting your reasonable views, it can't be good for the website.

That's not a "reasonable view", it's a fantasy that purports to read other people's minds from 10 years ago in order to demean their work.

I'm pretty comfortable saying comments like that don't belong on HN and that we would all do better to think more and inhibit ourselves before posting them. If people want to slag others on the internet, there are plenty of places to do it; here we try for a higher standard.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#145

Post by adevine »

empath75 wrote: post #104
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…

Reddit's main problem is that they spent years building their user base as a site to find 'jailbait' porn (it was by far the largest search result that brought people to Reddit for a long time). That created a toxic culture, which allowed stormfront and similar groups to use it as a recruitment ground for racists. Reddit still refuses to do anything about it. The 'quarantined' a bunch of truly vile subreddits but all…

This isn't how I remember the culture years ago. I looked at reddit every now and then, but I really came over six years ago during the big Digg v4 revolt when Digg fucked up their site. At the time, I remember being really impressed how many of the comments on reddit were more personally supportive, which I rarely saw elsewhere - for example, I learned a ton from r/fitness back then.

Yes, there were the more odious subreddits, but it was perfectly possible to surf around reddit and never be bothered by those.

The culture of reddit definitely seems to have gotten much worse over the past 5 years - to me, it just generally seems meaner, and there feels like there is more trolling overall. Even simple, seemingly straightforward posts seem more likely to spark some sort of vitriolic debate. Perhaps it was inevitable as reddit grew, but it still kind of sucks.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#146

Post by Karunamon »

ben_jones wrote: post #143

Reddit is, was, and will for the foreseeable future be, a giant pile of porn. Denial of that fact shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of not only Reddit but the internet as a whole.. I can understand that this idea would be extremely unpleasant to a lot of people. And a slow migration to curated content may seem more wholesome. But it doesn't work that way.

On what metrics are you making that assumption? Most people who use Reddit are going to be hitting the "default" communities, which are about as bland and inoffensive (read: has lowest common denominator appeal) as internet content can possibly get.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#147

Post by ben_jones »

a_small_island wrote: post #130
cerrelio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see why they want to create their own curated content. A friend of mine has created and run several user-generated content sites and he said: "user generated content is worthless; largely racism and porn." It's driven by the lowest common denominator. As long as content is hosted on company-controlled servers where ad revenue is the model for survival, you're going to see slow declines and eventual busts like Digg.…

>"The future is probably something where people pay a small amount to access a forum that's somehow distributed on their machines (phones, PCs, etc) and not controlled by any organization. Data transfer (even mobile) and storage are getting cheaper. It'll be like bitcoin, but for discussions." No. The future is the next Digg, the next Reddit, etc. Just like a torrent site, when one goes down (for whatever reason), th…

Here's the problem (IMO): Reddit has too many features and too big a userbase to replicate as Reddit itself did a decade ago. voat.co has been in development for years and still lacks crucial systems for things like content moderation, monetization, scaling, etc.

Essentially for a coup of Reddit to occur you have to take a large chunk of Reddit at once. That is very hard to do.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#148

Post by white-flame »

cerrelio wrote: post #95
bane wrote: post #39

Why the hell is Reddit trying to make their own content when the entire point of the site is for the users to create the content? Don't make a Reddit podcast, make Reddit a podcast hosting network. Don't make a Reddit video show, make Reddit a video hosting site. Don't make a Reddit magazine, make Reddit a source for anybody to publish their own magazines. Why does Reddit have writers and editors and creative directo…

I see why they want to create their own curated content. A friend of mine has created and run several user-generated content sites and he said: "user generated content is worthless; largely racism and porn." It's driven by the lowest common denominator. As long as content is hosted on company-controlled servers where ad revenue is the model for survival, you're going to see slow declines and eventual busts like Digg.…

There's this place between "create their own curated content" and free-for-all "user generated content" that is "moderated & curated user generated content".

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#149

Post by Razengan »

bane wrote: post #39

Why the hell is Reddit trying to make their own content when the entire point of the site is for the users to create the content? Don't make a Reddit podcast, make Reddit a podcast hosting network. Don't make a Reddit video show, make Reddit a video hosting site. Don't make a Reddit magazine, make Reddit a source for anybody to publish their own magazines. Why does Reddit have writers and editors and creative directo…

> Give a cut of advertising revenue to the mods of successful, high quality subs.

No, oh no.

Why mods?

Cuts should go to users posting the content.

Maybe make it so that OC is rewarded [more], karma "farming" is discouraged, echo chambers don't become the only places with activity, and make sure that hiveminds do not drown out all other discussion. Otherwise Reddit just becomes the online cousin of mainstream media, and a more compelling rival will pop up sooner than later.

They could even reward gilded comments that start good discussions, and so on.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#150

Post by ben_jones »

nabnob wrote: post #133
anjc wrote: post #26

It's bizarre that a company seems to be struggling to administer diversity of staff, without being certain of its own medium-term success. There's no point in having your quota of "people of colour", as the article puts it, if the business model is unsustainable and leads to people being fired anyway. Why not focus on creating a successful company first, and then worry about things that carry an administrative and ma…

Having a successful company that appeals to a broad range of users is related to having a diverse staff. Reddit has serious problems with blatant racism, sexism, and harassment on many of the larger subreddits. Until they start taking these issues seriously, they will have a hard time expanding their user base to include more women and minorities.

I hear that sentiment echoed a lot, but is their any hard evidence proving that a diverse staff increases the value significantly to the diverse demographics they themselves represent? WhatsApp is incredibly popular in South America and Africa, were their a proportionate number of South Americans and Africans on the WhatsApp team of ~18 people? Genuine question because I hear this preached like the bible whenever diversity in tech comes up.
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