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Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
731–740 of 877 posts
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#732I know someone worked for reddit for a while last year (they don't anymore because they hated every second of it) and from what I understand the engineering teams there are a nightmare of groups that don't talk to each other, constantly write the same code in completely different ways, have no common style and just shoehorn in whatever they want. Everything breaks pretty much all the time. All of that is aside from t…
To their credit, they got rid of the "incel" stuff pretty quickly after it became basically-synonymous with "dangerously violent male-supremacist cult" (it used to just be "losers who can't relate with the opposite sex, and seem to be weirdly proud of this fact"). A similar story holds for the racist content.
They just created new subs as they got shut down, they're all still there
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#733Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Really? I thought it was a fantastic reminder to users: they hold all the cards, and pretending otherwise is just diluting yourself. If only other online platforms were that honest! Imagine Google sending out misleading gmails in your name, or Facebook mining your private messages for incriminating secrets and offering to "share" them with all your friends. There's nothing technical preventing any of these kinds of a…
I... kind of agree with you, actually, with the caveat that I see decentralised platforms being the solution rather than laws. I think moving to a different platform is better than staying on the known-manipulator, but moving to a platform without a potential-manipulator is better still. Proper decentralised solutions would be and are prohibitively expensive at the moment, in a number of senses, but if we valued free (as in freedom) discourse more this wouldn't be the case, and the costs should decrease over time anyway.
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#734Earlier quoted context omitted.
The browser is a client that works for the user (well, Google, Apple, and Microsoft muddy the waters). The mobile app is a program that works for the developer. The end result of browsers becoming more adtech-hostile and user-friendly is that more companies turn to mobile apps.
I can understand a developer/company wanting to do the app route to regain control (and not having to deal with the annoying inconsistencies/hacks in different browsers/versions), but is ad / tracker blocking really the major driver of going the app route?
You can see indirect evidence for this by looking at the exponential rise in ad-blocker-blocking efforts from a wide array of sites. 'Hi, we see you're using an ad blocker. Please turn it off.' That literally did not exist several years ago, even though ad blocking has been around for decades. Companies in recent years are getting aggressively desperate as the web becomes increasingly user friendly. At the same time, mobile is still dominated by an OS developed by the the world's largest ad delivery corporation - and it behaves accordingly.
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#735It 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…
I myself have been looking for a good Reddit alternative.
Notabug.io seems nice.
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#736Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can understand a developer/company wanting to do the app route to regain control (and not having to deal with the annoying inconsistencies/hacks in different browsers/versions), but is ad / tracker blocking really the major driver of going the app route?
Yes, Firefox has been consistently blocking nasty advertiser tricks each release and it supports ad blockers on mobile. The latest Firefox release has a built in list of tracker domains to block and next release blocks auto playing video.
Brave is also making major progress here. It natively includes anti-fingerprinting, ad blocking, tracker blocking, HTTPS everywhere, and one-click in-session TOR windows on demand (similar to how incognito windows work for other browsers). It's also blazing fast.
From a user perspective, now is probably the best time ever to be using the web.
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#737I've given up most social media but have become obsessed with Reddit. No matter how much I use it, I'm constantly amazed that I can be immediately connected with the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic people on virtually any subject I care about. I'm not a fan of the redesign or their push to look at other social media platforms, but I understand the direction they have to go to build revenue.
I actually found a shocking lack of knowledgeable people in fairly mundane hobby reddits like r/guitars. Other forums seem to attract a much more competent crowd.
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#738I'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…
Re: "Download the app!" gates, banners, etc. Medium does this too. Why? What's the business reason? What does a native app provide the business that a mobile website doesn't?
> Why? What's the business reason? What does a native app provide the business that a mobile website doesn't?
Simple: you can’t block ads in a native App (at least not by installing an ad blocker or other methods accessible to normal users, you‘d have to modify DNS responses or similar).
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#739Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is also still a haven for the far-left. Does that leave a bad taste in your mouth too?
Does advocating for single-payer healthcare, free community college, marriage equality, pro-choice, and higher tax rates for wealthy individuals constitute 'far left'? Serious question. I have in mind what I would think of as far left, but I don't see those folks are particularly well represented in the United States.
There are plenty of actual communists on reddit you know.
Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
#7403,000 millions. Not 3 million, not 30 or 300. 3 thousand millions dollars. Unbelievable. And they barely make and revenue. Think about this for a moment.. if internet would stay like this for the rest of your grand children life, then they would make that money back. Bu we are at the tip of an ice berg. 15 years ago nobody knew half of the world will be using Facebook, daily. To think that those giants survive in next 25 or 50 years and everyone will get their money back and then some more.. its staggering!