Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#191

Post by babypuncher » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

ppod wrote: post #45

minimaxir wrote: post #16

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

I've always thought that the day they crossed the line was when they arbitrarily changed which subreddits were default, removing some (such as /r/atheism) with no real reason. At the very early days of reddit, discussing atheism positively was still kind of unusual in the news. Then, over time, it became a very popular position and advocacy case especially among developers, and new users found the stridency and repet…

I'm a proud atheist, in part thanks to early Reddit. /r/Atheism at the time it was removed from the default subs list was a toxic cesspool filled with a lot of the same kinds of hateful rhetoric and magical thinking they criticize religious groups for. Removing it as a default was the right call.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#192

Post by mfoy_ » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

pitaj wrote: post #85

ppod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought that the day they crossed the line was when they arbitrarily changed which subreddits were default, removing some (such as /r/atheism) with no real reason. At the very early days of reddit, discussing atheism positively was still kind of unusual in the news. Then, over time, it became a very popular position and advocacy case especially among developers, and new users found the stridency and repet…

r/atheism was made no longer a default because it became notoriously toxic

There was a actually a meta-game of where you'd (1) take a horrible quote, (2) mis-attribute it to Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking, (3) put it on an image of space and (4) post it to r/atheism to see how many up-votes it got.

It was a very easy game.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#193

Post by nisuni » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

ppod wrote: post #45

minimaxir wrote: post #16

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

I've always thought that the day they crossed the line was when they arbitrarily changed which subreddits were default, removing some (such as /r/atheism) with no real reason. At the very early days of reddit, discussing atheism positively was still kind of unusual in the news. Then, over time, it became a very popular position and advocacy case especially among developers, and new users found the stridency and repet…

/r/atheism was absolutely obnoxious, to the point that the obnoxiousness of some of the users is still a meme:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-this-moment-i-am-euphoric

> a community that is still one of the most hated

As far as I can see in the USA and in most of Europe it’s way more socially acceptable to declare to be atheists, rather than observing Christians.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#194

Post by IggleSniggle » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #145

GordonS wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 things about Reddit's "use our app instead!" buttons: 1. They cycle through a couple of different messages, and the buttons get switched around 2. The wording is such that you read it twice and still aren't sure which button will just take you to the damn website I don't mind them promoting their app, but these dark patterns truely rile me

I do mind them promoting their app, it’s a horrible app and they’ve continually ruined their website. The only way I can stand to use reddit anymore is through Narwhal, at least until they kill their 3rd party apps API.

It’s funny, the web app used to be really good. Much better than the native app. Since then they have been making the web app increasingly worse over time, actively degrading its functionality and pleasantness to use.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#195

Post by Zecar » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

vvillena wrote: post #122

gfwhuuku wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I welcomed that change. They had handpicked a few left-leaning subs like that one. I also remember there was one about feminism. I believe that was a bad idea, to position themselves like that. Maybe it was a good idea when reddit was a niche website. Now, as far as I know, they simply have an algorithm that shows the most popular posts of all subs, except a few ones that are banned (like the popular the_donald, a su…

/r/the_donald should have been closed a long time ago, due to their users and their mods breaking the rules (hate speech encouragement, mainly) that the rest of subreddits have to respect. Reddit has a dark incentive to keep it open, because it's a very popular community that helps Reddit make money, via ads and Reddit Gold.

Go read r/politics comments for 5 minutes and then go read r/the_donald comments for 5 minutes, then come back and tell me which subreddit has the most hate speech. Also let's not forget that r/politics mods sold the subreddit to Shareblue for $2 million.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#196

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #126

GordonS wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 things about Reddit's "use our app instead!" buttons: 1. They cycle through a couple of different messages, and the buttons get switched around 2. The wording is such that you read it twice and still aren't sure which button will just take you to the damn website I don't mind them promoting their app, but these dark patterns truely rile me

I've noticed this as well. Really annoying. Or any website that immediately pops up a "sign up for our email list!" and blocks you from seeing the content. Isn't there a ton of data that most people don't even use many apps anymore? Or they install them once and then uninstall them or ignore them? I hope we can move towards a web that stays in the web browser. Apps are becoming really annoying, especially for interac…

>Isn't there a ton of data that most people don't even use many apps anymore? Or they install them once and then uninstall them or ignore them?

That doesn't mean the app can't exfiltrate data (presumably data useful to advertisers) in the background.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#197

Post by arcticfox » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #151

It amazes me the kind of sheer incompetency their product team has demonstrated over the past 2-3 years. (Edit - as pointed out in replies to this post, this is an unfair characterization fueled by my recent frustrations with the direction the site is going. I don't think it is unreasonable to point out that reddit is failing the expectations of their users, but I don't doubt for a minute that the individuals working…

They've totally broken "quarantined" subreddits as well. I used to occasionally visit /r/watchpeopledie as a reminder of my own mortality and some of the horrors of the world, but apparently NSFW wasn't enough for people visiting "watchpeopledie" to realize they might see something bad. So they "quarantined" it, which actually means totally breaking it, in my browser at least. RIP.

Discussion by others here [0] "I'm a senior mod at /r/watchpeopledie, and we can all see through Reddit's bullshit and hypocrisy" and here [1] "Just a few thoughts on the hypocrisy of Reddit's quarantine"

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/9js8gf/im_...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/watchpeopledie/comments/9js9j4/just...

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#198

Post by ramphastidae » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #16

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

Also the ‘Open Reddit App’ button at the bottom of the screen. Blocks content, can’t remove for the session, and a close button that is purposefully small in order to make it difficult to click. Enraging.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#199

Post by axaxs » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #154

axaxs wrote: post #72

The only problem I have with Reddit from a valuation perspective is that it doesn't really offer much 'secret sauce.' The tech itself is not great, and I don't really know of anyone who likes the redesign. Point being, the value is all in the users and content. Users are fickle, and as we saw from Digg (and lesser extent, StumbleUpon), can flee en masse at any moment. That's a tough pill for me to swallow as a potent…

It seems like their big problem is monetization. They're probably reluctant to monetize too aggressively given past experience with companies like Digg, where the users saw the system turning against them and fled. Somehow Facebook managed to do it, but you still hear grumbling about how big of a mess the news feed is and people searching for something that can replace it.

Well, that was kind of my point I should have expanded on. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, et al have a -lot- of interesting tech behind them. From "creepy" suggestion algorithms, calls/video calls, face filters for pics and videos...the list goes on and on. Sure another company could do it, but it's got a higher barrier to entry. Reddit has nothing interesting or proprietary. An unreliable clone would probably take a single person all of a day or two.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#200

Post by growlist » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #77

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #8

Reddit has been raising money for almost 15 years! I wish I had the connections to VC's that reddit apparently does. I can definitely spend all the money a VC gives me, then raise more money, and then spend all that money, and never turn a profit for 15 or 20 years.

It's easy to get such connections with half a billion active users.

I'm actually quite amazed at this. I thought Reddit had gone the way of Digg some time ago. Isn't it mostly manufactured content these days? I certainly remember it had that feel about it at certain times in the past when they were trying to paper over a mass exodus.