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

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

#291

Post by MoronInAHurry » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

aluminussoma wrote: post #34

Ever since the site redesign in May, popularity has been falling (source: Alexa Top Websites): https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com I hope that affected the amount of money they raised. As a reddit fan, the site redesign has not been pleasant. The mobile experience, too.

It's also interesting that the "over 330M active monthly users" number somehow hasn't changed in over a year now. Their site has it here, as "Last updated Nov. 12, 2017": https://www.redditinc.com/#section-3

Their official blog posts continue using that same 330M number: https://redditblog.com/2019/01/23/health-fitness-on-reddit/

The TechCrunch article does as well.

Either their number of active users hasn't changed at all in over a year, or they're actually shrinking and deliberately just staying with an outdated number that looks better.

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

#292

Post by fivefive55 » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:27 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…

"10 years ago when reddit would go down, you rooted for them as the underdog to figure it out. Now when it happens, it's just sad. They still can't even handle the kind of traffic that the super bowl brings them. They've had years to figure this out."

Reddit goes down pretty rarely and I can't remember when it was ever down more than an hour or two. It also definitely didn't go down for the SuperBowl that I saw.

The rest of your points are fair though.

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

#293

Post by JoeSmithson » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

nisuni wrote: post #193

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 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.

> it’s way more socially acceptable to declare to be atheists, rather than observing Christians

This was a story line in HBO's Silicon Valley.

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

#294

Post by ssnistfajen » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #257

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…

> I suspect they will be bigger than Facebook (maybe not in valuation, but usage) in the next 7 years and these problems will only be exacerbated. I only agree with that in the sense that I think Facebook (the facebnook.com site) usage will decline quicker that Reddit usage. As someone who's been on Reddit for almost 9 years, I feel like the redesign is kind of equivalent to the timeline change that Facebook had. Whi…

I'd love to be surprised with a decent competitor but all of the Reddit spin-offs I've seen are all trying to be not-Reddit, and that often includes keeping the community niche/exclusive.

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

#295

Post by Avery3R » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

marknadal wrote: post #46

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…

Max, would you be willing to evaluate Reddit alternatives? One is https://notabug.io/ after the Aaron Swarz quote, has seen hypergrowth since it started a few months ago using our P2P tech.

I hate how comments pop-in out of order. It's distracting.

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

#296

Post by sneakernets » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

crowdpleaser wrote: post #204

jhall1468 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/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://w…

I really think "The illegals" needs to be erased from the discourse. Unless they have a distinct species moniker, they're still human beings located in the wrong place politically (in the geographical sense).

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

#297

Post by StringyBob » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #93

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…

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

It’s actually working well to curb my reddit addiction by making it harder to idly browse on the phone.

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

#298

Post by delecti » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

binarysaurus wrote: post #129

dx87 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing people to use a native app means they can inject ads without having to worry about being blocked by a browser extension.

Many users who use mobile adblockers will use one across the entire device (easy on rooted Android) instead of just a browser extension.

Counterpoint, installing uBlock in Firefox is a piece of cake, but lots of apps don't work on rooted devices. I know there are ways to hide root from detection, but I don't care to ride that treadmill back and forth.

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

#299

Post by protonimitate » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

buzzert wrote: post #280

Something about Reddit that has been really irking me lately is the decline in quality of the comment threads, which is arguably one of the only reasons to visit the site nowadays since link aggregators are so common. People seem to treat commenting like a game instead of a forum for discussion. I often see the same patterns from Twitter there (i.e., inciting outrage to get upvotes, virtue signaling, or just pointles…

I don't disagree, but I think this has been the case for a while now on reddit. I haven't noticed any drastic change in comment quality over the few years, and I've been using it almost daily since 2012.

There are communities that moderate very heavily and don't allow the joke/sarcastic/low-effort comments (askhistorians, politicaldiscussion, etc).

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

#300

Post by dhimes » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:32 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…

Weren't they bought by Conde Nast a few years ago? Is that when it started to slide?

EDIT: My how time flies. It was bought by CN in 2006!