Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 96 posts

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#41

Post by longtom »

m12k wrote: post #21
longtom wrote: post #11

The notion that big brands do not want to advertise in "chaos" seems suspicious to me. In real life, there are Gucci ads right next to the homeless and drug addicts. People vandalize public ads with swastikas, Hitler beards and other sh*t, but brands do not care. Such incentives simply do not exist in real life, because nobody will realistically associate the ads with their coincidental context such as vandalism. I'm…

I think Reddit is one of the only places on the internet that mirrors the diversity and messiness of the real world - but that's not the case for pretty much all the rest of the internet, so people's assumptions and expectations are based on that instead. In the real world, when Gucci has an ad next to a drug gang hideout, they don't worry that they will have to explain to anyone that they're not associated with or c…

Yeah, this is a thought that occurred to me right after making my first comment. I guess the only solution reconcilable with free speech should then be that one educates the public about the difference between a politically driven site and a politically neutral one. Neutral sites can easily be identified in that everyone can sign up and contribute. Advertising on any site that resembles the diversity of the public at large, and where ads are not placed based on political affiliation, should not be amenable to accusations based on moral grounds. Neither by law, nor should it be socially acceptable. So this is an issue of public education rather than an issue of cleaning up the internet.

That fact that reddit is starting to delete instead of doing public education is suspicious to me.

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#42

Post by foldr »

arkh wrote: post #38
Aozi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It wasn't a magnet for extreme content back then. That happened as a result of subreddits. This. And it's not just reddit. As long as you can create subgroups within communities you're eventually going to attract some problematic people. While something like CP on tumblr really brought it to light, tumblr was and still is home to some insanely extreme ideologies. Ideologies that some people find completely idiotic b…

What is the problem with having extreme or dumb ideologies? Without extreme views you can't have progress: in a lot of countries, being for homosexual rights or abortion is extreme.

Try imagining that you're hosting reddit yourself. Pretty easy to see what the problem is from that point of view. Do you want to be hosting and enabling child porn, hate speech, terrorism, etc. etc.?

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#43

Post by pjc50 »

samdoidge wrote: post #36
dspillett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that's why HN is only good for a very specific and narrow subtopic of the whole reddit universe. Which is a good thing IMO. Not everything needs to be the next (or just another) digg/reddit/whatever. HN deliberately has a more specific focus than that of reddit, it is a feature not a flaw (if you watn everything to be reddit, then perhaps you would consider it a flawed feature). > You can't even have decent pol…

> Complaining that you can't have the political discussion that you want on a forum where politics is officially off-topic, is like complaining that you can't have the bacon cheese burger (with real pig and cow involved) that you want in the vegan restaurant you've decided to take lunch in. Except this is disingenuous. There are political discussions found here, but one side is generally downvoted.

Hardly. It's just that there's a standard for quality of argument, which means that a lot of conservative nonsense gets shot down on sight. There are big conflicting "liberal" and "libertarian" factions, a lot of European social democrats, a growing pro-union faction, but also the gun owner faction and (unsurprisingly) a lot of "small business conservatives" and so on.

You can, for example, debate pro-vs-anti nuclear power without necessarily getting downvoted. You can't post straight up climate change denial.

You can argue that the stackexchange moderator fiasco was incredibly badly handled. You can't post straight up homophobia.

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#44

Post by hoseja »

foldr wrote: post #6
neals wrote: post #2

As with everything internet: good doesn't last. Now that Reddit has started its demise, where do we flok to next?

You're saying this on HN: a site that's vastly more regulated than reddit ever has been or is likely to be. I'm old enough to remember reddit before the days of subreddits. It wasn't a magnet for extreme content back then. That happened as a result of subreddits.

HN is very good for one focused thing. Reddit used to be good for everythng but more and more it's bad for everything but soulless corporate-friendliness.

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#45

Post by JohnTClark »

Can someone explain to me or point to some studies or books that explain why brands, advertisers etc. think that having small problematic groups on a platform affects the brand? You are making an ad for group A and put the ad on subreddits visited by group A, is the "dirt" produce by group B that bad for you that you need to get rid of group B?

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#47

Post by hos234 »

m12k wrote: post #30
sudoaza wrote: post #12

Not even the internet is safe from gentrification.

I'd argue it's almost the other way around. Ever since the internet got popular with companies it's mostly been very 'clean' in that most websites represent a single company or community and you could easily stick to seeing only 'approved' content. Now with 'social media', the internet is finally seeing the real messiness of the real world and places where all types congregate.

The "real mess" of society is different from what social media has created.

Social media has added a new dimension to complexity in society, by adding a number(upvote/click/like/view/retweet etc) next to every thought and utterance.

Those numbers amplify behaviors both good and bad.

People who say social media exposes the real mess, make it easy for social media companies to deny their contribution to the mess.

When they start removing like counts (and it's taken way to long for this move) they are basically admitting their contribution to the mess.

As data of the last 15 years gets analyzed, on the impact of these numbers on individual and group psychology, expect major class action suits against these companies.

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#48

Post by UserIsUnused »

Aozi wrote: post #19
foldr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying this on HN: a site that's vastly more regulated than reddit ever has been or is likely to be. I'm old enough to remember reddit before the days of subreddits. It wasn't a magnet for extreme content back then. That happened as a result of subreddits.

>It wasn't a magnet for extreme content back then. That happened as a result of subreddits. This. And it's not just reddit. As long as you can create subgroups within communities you're eventually going to attract some problematic people. While something like CP on tumblr really brought it to light, tumblr was and still is home to some insanely extreme ideologies. Ideologies that some people find completely idiotic b…

Tbh that's what I think is great about 4chan compared to others, it's just has those very few and limited groups/boards, rather than infinite.

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#49

Post by UserIsUnused »

arkh wrote: post #38
Aozi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It wasn't a magnet for extreme content back then. That happened as a result of subreddits. This. And it's not just reddit. As long as you can create subgroups within communities you're eventually going to attract some problematic people. While something like CP on tumblr really brought it to light, tumblr was and still is home to some insanely extreme ideologies. Ideologies that some people find completely idiotic b…

What is the problem with having extreme or dumb ideologies? Without extreme views you can't have progress: in a lot of countries, being for homosexual rights or abortion is extreme.

The problem is isolation. Usually those are isolated, which means that it won't get neither exposure if it's actual a good thing, nor backlash if it's bad. That's the problem with "infinite" divisions, you get those very little bubbles.

Re: Reddit, where chaos thrives, tries to clean up to attract ads from big brands

#50

Post by FreeTrade »

johnchristopher wrote: post #4
neals wrote: post #2

As with everything internet: good doesn't last. Now that Reddit has started its demise, where do we flok to next?

Maybe the stars are aligned for early adopters to try out a decentralized messaging style medium ?

I believe it is.

https://memberapp.github.io/

All posts are stored on the blockchain using the Memo protocol.

Post reply on HN