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Reddit is still in turmoil

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Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#221

Post by lumberjack »

xnull2guest wrote: post #121

Reddit's content curation has come at a time when social media writ large (Facebook, Twitter) has become linked into State Department and DoD programs. Counter-intelligence objectives are fought on the 'private property' of social media servers that host the content of individuals. Fighting the 'War of Ideas' in the 'cognitive domain of warfare', the effort to starve unwanted ideas for a place to roost and feed other…

>There is some value in ungoverned spaces, where advertisements, political astroturfing, politicized content curation ("no 'RT' allowed, but we'll allow VoA and Sky") play a secondary role to the contributions of individuals.

All those things are daily occurrences on Reddit.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#222

Post by jib »

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 dunno, it seems weird to me to treat reddit as one community. I use reddit a lot, but really 99% of my interactions is on /r/cfb, which is a space far from the descriptions painted here.

It is a community (and I do believe it is a community of its own) imo not far away from Hacker News in terms of creating and curating interesting content, and discussing it, for a focused group of interest, except rather than tech the interest happens to be college football.

I imagine there are plenty of other spaces like that on reddit for people. I dabble a bit (mostly lurking) in /r/kettlebell too which seems to be similar except smaller.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#223

Post by kartickv »

duiker101 wrote: post #216
kartickv wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory — to clean up a site, find and expel the most egregious offenders, like the people who engage in repeated name-calling ("You are a fucking asshole!") as opposed to constructive discussion. You can't police every user, but if you find and expel the worst offenders, I suspect it will have a significant effect on the quality of conversation.

name calling is not even on the list of stuff that I would have placed in a list of bad things users of Reddit do. Unfortunately, while that could be applied to HN, reddit is another world. Much of the freedom of speech culture still exists and while not on the main page, there are a lot of communities dedicated to hate or just fighting each other and instigating rage.

Name-calling was an example of bad behaviour you want to ban. I'm sure we can think of other, worse, types of behaviour. Whatever it is, find the most egregious offenders, and ban them.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#224

Post by zem »

minimaxir wrote: post #29
zem wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just checked the data and it is not killing Imgur: Reddit image usage was 18% in the top image subreddits at beginning of June, today it is 25% that seems like a pretty significant rate-of-uptake to me - why would you say it's not killing imgur?

Here's the plot of the Imgur and Reddit pics market share on /r/pics and /r/gifs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cgoFF6njlyv1W0DQ3IF5... There is growth in Reddit Pics and decline in Imgur, but it'll be a few months before the lines intersect. A cry from the Imgur killer everyone expected.

just how fast do you expect these things to happen? overtaking the overwhelmingly dominant reddit image sharing host in a matter of a few months sounds pretty damn dramatic to me.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#225

Post by DanBC »

mrweasel wrote: post #220
orionblastar wrote: post #123

Well seeing failures in Reddit, are almost the same failures I saw in other dotcom startups, not having a business plan that works. When Reddit was formed, it supported free speech of everyone. They didn't have a plan to earn a profit, they just wanted a better discussion board than Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Digg, Stumbleupon and others. Digg eventually had to make changes to their site that went into the paid accounts and…

>either they want controlled speech that meets Liberal guidelines and a Social Justice Agenda, to attract more people like that to provide a safe place on the Internet There's a lot of well made points to you post, so I feel bad focusing only on this one thing, but I really don't believe in creating a "safe place". It's simply not possible to provide a safe place online, while providing a platform for any meaningful…

> but I really don't believe in creating a "safe place". It's simply not possible to provide a safe place online, while providing a platform for any meaningful debate.

Rape threats and other threats of violence are not part of meaningful debate.

Unsolicited images of genitalia are not part of meaningful debate.

Anti semitism like this [1] isn't part of meaningful debate.

You can safely ban all of these without harm to the robust debate in the community.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChH5Va7WkAAktXV.jpg

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#226

Post by kartickv »

codezero wrote: post #208
kartickv wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory — to clean up a site, find and expel the most egregious offenders, like the people who engage in repeated name-calling ("You are a fucking asshole!") as opposed to constructive discussion. You can't police every user, but if you find and expel the worst offenders, I suspect it will have a significant effect on the quality of conversation.

You'd be very surprised. The most abrasive people in a community do a very good job of building a positive reputation amongst other "power users" such that banning them causes a ripple effect in the community that _always_ makes the moderators look like one-sided haters.

Sure, the moderators may end up looking one-sided, but it sends a clear signal as to what kind of behaviour is not tolerated. The other members can adjust to the new normal, and some will leave. Either way, you've cleaned up the site to some extent.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#227

Post by CM30 »

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…

Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation.

If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is/isn't acceptable.

Twitter doesn't really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you're popular enough (or a large company), you can often get away with things that would get a less popular user banned.

For example, contrast what happens when a left wing user breaks the rules and attacks people and what happens when a right wing one does it. It seems like the former will get punished a lot less harshly for the same offence.

Twitter needs to stop this, and enforce the rules for everyone in every situation.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#228

Post by ansible »

jokoon wrote: post #212

I like reddit. I don't really care so much about the frontpage. I like other subreddits where discussion is central (bestof, subredditdrama, changemyview, self, ask ), or content subreddit (games, wallpapers, military, photos). The default subreddits feel like google news. What's important is the users and how there is room for them to exchange both ways, unlike standard medias. There also are many people watching fo…

Fortunately it seems that they will always find people for that, because their subreddit revolves around something they like, and they will often do a good job (it seems) because they want to promote that hobby, not that it will directly benefit them financially (example, moderator of askhistorians).

Yup. I'm one of the mods for /r/AskEngineers. I want to promote engineering in general: designing things, fixing things, learning how things work. I'm glad to do this, and to encourage good and useful discussions.

I especially like when we've got questions from engineers who are working outside their own discipline, and just need a little nudge in the right direction. Getting just a paragraph from an expert can save days or weeks of effort.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#229

Post by CM30 »

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…

And yeah, you're right about Reddit. Problem is, they're in between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, users want more freedom than on most traditional community sites. There's a certain expectation that communities nowaday are basically the equivalent to a free speech zone in a local park, where near enough anything goes. And because social networks originally were really hands off about what people posted, that's become the baseline now. You need to claim your site is free speech friendly to get people using it.

On the other hand, true freedom of speech is impossible on communities owned by companies and individuals. You'll get a lot of material that's extremely disturbing. Advertisers won't touch the site with a ten foot bargepole. And to some degree, a lot of normal users will actually be put off when the site draws in the less savoury users that freedom of speech often attracts most.

So Reddit is kind of screwed. They either have to say 'there's no freedom of speech here, here are acceptable standards' (and watch their audience evaporate) or say that there is freedom of speech still (but have their audience gets more and more angry when stuff gets removed anyway).

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#230

Post by cocotino »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #45
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…

It goes to what kind of company and site you want to have. If all you have is 20-something tech bros then that's the kind of company and site you will have. If you want to appeal beyond that, you may want to broaden your culture. Sometimes the founding cultural DNA is too strong, or attempts to change the culture fall short for a variety of reasons.

I don't think hiring women or blacks is going to do much to the community.
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