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

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

#201

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

I've used Reddit since day 1.

The new website is a usability disaster, and one that they don't mind shoving down your throat at every turn.

Moderators are increasingly beating anyone who isn't politically correct enough over the head with their moronic code of conduct and banning users for simply disagreeing.

Most of the people who still hang around are very negative individuals who seem to be there more to project their hatred in general than to learn and/or share. Oppose their abuse and they'll invariable mob up on you and make sure your posts never see the light of day.

If I was Aaron Swartz, bless him; I would be turning in my grave by now.

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

#202

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

Looking at some of my current favorite subreddits (usbchardware, manybaggers) there are interesting avenues of monetization -- group buys, affiliates etc. Reddit is not doing any of this.

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

#203

Post by Liru » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

blotter_paper wrote: post #100

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…

Another clear red line was when spez started editing comments.[0] It was childish and non-consequential, but should have resulted in an immediate exodus from the platform. I'm not politically aligned with r/The_Donald, but I think this sort of petty power abuse should not be forgiven; the platform needs to die, as an example to other platforms. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admi...

Also, when they created comments and manipulated their timestamps to make it seem like they were created far earlier than they actually were, for advertising purposes.

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

#204

Post by crowdpleaser » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

jhall1468 wrote: post #37

collyw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can be immediately connected with the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic people on virtually any subject I care about. Politics on Reddit seems to fall into either The_Donald or "Orange man bad" with very little objectivity in the middle in my experience.

/r/politics is fairly left-leaning by US standards, while The_Donald and /r/conservative are hardly about politics anymore. Furthermore, I'd say on a global scale /r/politics is pretty much dead middle, while subreddits like /r/latestagecapitalism represent the far left. Frankly, Democrats are being pulled to the left by the progressives and Republicans went hard right years ago with the tea party, so the reason ther…

>Frankly, Democrats are being pulled to the left by the progressives and Republicans went hard right years ago with the tea party

The democrats have moved further left than republicans have moved right since 1994/2000: http://www.people-press.org/interactives/political-polarizat...

What's interesting is that most democrats want a more moderate party and most republicans want a more right/conservative party: https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2019/01/gallup-poll-...

Interestingly, the GOP probably contains the conservative and right wing impulses of the base. And it certainly feels that way, among my friends, we hate that illegal aliens are entitled to health care at ERs. I want to see their countries billed for the care / or I want to see the illegals dumped at the embassy rather than hooked up to medicine. I'm certainly not going to get my wish granted by the GOP. However, should the party fail, there's a chance I could get the representation I want.

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

#205

Post by screye » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

I would not be surprised. Reddit is easily my most visited internet community and go-to for many niche matters as well.

I use it through 3rd party apps or my PC, so have mostly avoided their dark patterns.

I love HN, but the limited scope of the discussions here (for obvious and good reasons) makes it far less frequented than reddit.

Reddit is like a slightly worse HN for everything else apart from CS/Tech.

I also love how everyone I meet in the US seems to feign ignorance about Reddit, despite it being the Alexa #5 website here (behind Google,Amazon,FB and YT) It is almost as if people don't want to be called a redditor despite using the website a lot.

It is also the site with the 2nd greatest daily time per visitor (behind only salesforce), above YT, Facebook, Twitter or ...... pornhub ....

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

#206

Post by ProAm » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

ramphastidae wrote: post #198

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.

i.reddit.com bypasses all this

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

#207

Post by toomim » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

jhedwards wrote: post #174

rubyn00bie wrote: post #108

I actually hate Reddit these days. I've never really been into their various communities/subredits- and on occasion they're really useful spots of information or entertainment. But... Their current "force you into app" (which appears to leave you logged in, able to make account changes, even if you change your password) approach is fucking horrible. Their mobile navigation is broken by design and.... for what? What i…

> What incentive do I have to sign up? Arguably the best Reddit experience is only available when you are signed in. Reddit's greatest value come from niche communities. Personally I enjoy things like r/savagegarden, r/mycology and r/askhistorians, so when I log in I see pictures of mushrooms and carnivorous plants, and get to read interesting articles about history and science. If you don't log in and subscribe to t…

Signing up for an account is cool. But we are talking about installing the app.

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

#208

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

jules-jules wrote: post #178

anonytrary wrote: post #120

The HackerNews community is more appreciative of these problems than Reddit's. But Reddit will suffer from the same problems that Facebook and Twitter suffer from, if not already. Reddit users are easily manipulated by engineered content and engineering content on Reddit is not hard if you know what you're doing. Evidently, there are power-users on Reddit (e.g. /u/GallowBoob) who know exactly how Reddit ticks and can…

Sorry if I misunderstand, but are you suggesting that these forces are not active on HN?

They're more effective on a non-technical user-base where a larger fraction of users are unaware or less aware of those techniques.

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

#209

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

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…

I think it'll be interesting to see if reddit can survive when they inevitably shut down third party apps.

If you don't think this is something they might do, just hop on over to their mobile site real quick. It's full of banner ads and misleading layouts (clicking the image in a image post takes you to a download the app page, you have to click the tiny link below it).

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

#210

Post by nopriorarrests » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

klausjensen wrote: post #188

nopriorarrests wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 5th most visited website in US and definitely one of the biggest in terms of raw text UGC. You can find anything you want there if you look long enough.

UCG?

User Generated Content