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‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

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Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#101

Post by wvenable »

"They believe that if they have a billion unique visitors a month, that they have a property that is going to be worth a ton of money in some way eventually."

This is stupid; users are fickle and visitors mean nothing if you can't monetize them. And usually attempting to monetize visitors causes them to leave to the next platform trying to reach a billion unique visitors.

I can't believe intelligent people think this is a valid way to run an Internet business. It might work for small startups looking to be bought out by a larger company (who will then try and monetize it, driving away all the users) but for a company like reddit it's a bit ridiculous.

(Edit fixed typo)

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#102

Post by kickme444 »

joeyaiello wrote: post #89

Only just getting started reading this, but I had to jump into comments to give a shout-out on how amazing 924 Gilman was for me as a kid growing up in the East Bay. I wasn't there for the glory days of the 80s/90s, and I have no idea to what extent Dan played a role in its founding, but as a space for playing and watching music, I've never found a venue in my life that comes even close to what they were able to achi…

Gilman was a huge part of my life and I played various roles in participating and helping to manage it over the year, though I don't want to take ANY credit for this, it's not my place and no person should. But, the experience I had there showed me what is possible when things are started with good intentions and managed that way going forward. There were and are rocky times at Gilman, but overall it's a model that should be studied.

Also, we made and shared a lot of great music with the world, which is the real upside of gilman. I miss that time in my life.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#104

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

Bartweiss wrote: post #74
austincheney wrote: post #4

Reddit wouldn't be so toxic if the vote counts were hidden, but echo chamber validation is the ultimate badge of honor there. There is so much in this document that applies to all things Reddit (please note that I wrote it inspired by my time on Reddit) : https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...

I'm not sure hiding vote counts is sufficient, since comments are still displayed based on them. The 'Theory of Reddit' sub did some pretty compelling analyses showing that the first 3-5 votes almost completely predict eventual vote direction, and that the top comments in a thread will consistently be the first handful of upvoted comments. Which also explains complaints of the shape "Reddit hates X one day, but loves…

A subreddit solely dedicated to auditing the quality of moderation on various subs would go a long way to give reddit the tools to remove problematic moderators. Ultimately the quality of the mod makes the quality of sub.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#105

Post by gboudrias »

Gargoyle wrote: post #75
wvenable wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit would also be better if karma wasn't known.

Both reddit and hacker news would be much better off with no voting at all. Strong moderators are the only thing I've ever seen keep online forums at a high quality level. Voting is the weakest kind of moderation.

I strongly disagree. Whether the points are displayed or not, voting is what revolutionized forums. I find voting forums almost universally better than non-voting ones, because voting sorts by relevance by default.

I still dread the (lack of) content quality that I've come to associate with phpbb forums (and their ilk).

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#106

Post by motohagiography »

maxerickson wrote: post #99
motohagiography wrote: post #93

The entire Hollywood mythology was built around being "discovered," and elevated to fame and stardom, and arguably it's main product wasn't movies, it was hope. If I were Conde Nast, I would use reddit as a farm team for finding, creating, and monetizing internet celebrities through its "legit," properties the way that movie studios created vehicles to profit from actors. Costs them hardly anything to talent scout re…

Condé Nast doesn't own reddit, the parent company to Condé Nast, Advance Publications, is the majority owner of reddit, but not the only shareholder. Block me on Twitter!

Good color. Single party has control of Conde Nast and Reddit, so while there is a legal distinction, this isn't a correction to the basic business dynamic.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#107

Post by SeanLuke »

austincheney wrote: post #4

Reddit wouldn't be so toxic if the vote counts were hidden, but echo chamber validation is the ultimate badge of honor there. There is so much in this document that applies to all things Reddit (please note that I wrote it inspired by my time on Reddit) : https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...

Fundamentally the problem, I think is anonymity. On the Internet no one knows you're a dog.

I have both pseudonymous handles on reddit and also I go by my own name. On Hacker News I only go by my own name. And I have found that it made me a much, MUCH better person when posting. So now I post on reddit about 95% of the time under my own name as well.

When you have no skin in the game -- such as your reputation to uphold, no superego to hold yourself in check -- a person's id reveals itself. And it's not pretty.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#108

Post by jandrese »

Gargoyle wrote: post #75
wvenable wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit would also be better if karma wasn't known.

Both reddit and hacker news would be much better off with no voting at all. Strong moderators are the only thing I've ever seen keep online forums at a high quality level. Voting is the weakest kind of moderation.

"High Quality Level" is a relative measure though. It's really easy for a heavily moderated discussion forum to become an echo chamber for the moderator's views.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#109

Post by minimaxir »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #67
minimaxir wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A formal statistical experiment was done in /r/politics about the impact of hiding vote counts temporarily but it did not find statistical evidence that it made an impact on discourse: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/mitmediala...

Low-effort comment, but: I really appreciate your content, both here and on Reddit. It's refreshing to see anyone doing any of this sort of analysis, and it takes a lot of effort to do it, and you do it really well and at a rate that's mind-boggling.

Thanks! I do have other cool things planned with the Reddit data pipeline too, so stay tuned! ;)

(for clarification, the linked statistical analysis isn't mine)

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#110

Post by bfuller »

nabc45 wrote: post #78
psychometry wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but The_Donald is always leaking. I've seen plenty of sexist/racist content on subreddits for cities, sports teams, memes, etc. Reddit has allowed itself to be a platform used in part for really despicable content, and the despicable people who generate that content regularly venture outside their cesspools.

There's a certain sub I like that is full of sexist and racist stuff and nobody there likes Trump at all. What I mean to say with this is, when you see stuff you don't like on Reddit, that does not mean it's coming from T_D, or that getting rid of T_D would get rid of stuff you don't like.

>There's a certain sub I like

why even post this comment if you're not going to name the sub?

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