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

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

#61

Post by dspillett »

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.

Whether it is actually here in part, what votes go where, etc. does not alter that it is not considered on-topic here.

"The rule is already broken in one direction, so it should be right to break it in another" isn't a helpful take IMO.

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

#62

Post by dspillett »

samdoidge wrote: post #57
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A delightfully condescending reply.

An ad-hominem response.

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

#63

Post by TeMPOraL »

mwyah wrote: post #60
TeMPOraL wrote: post #34

Well, as the disease of advertising progresses, Reddit too will shed all that made it interesting. It so happens that first to go are the people almost universally considered undesirable, but it won't stop at that.

I dislike advertising as much as the next guy but really, what alternatives do websites like reddit have?

Individual donations, subscriptions, being treated as a goodwill or marketing expense by a company doing working in some tangentially related space (the way YCombinator keeps HN running), are some ideas free of the problems of advertising.

Here the core advertising-related problem is third party advertising. Were Reddit the co. to have some other business of their own that they advertised on Reddit in order to fund the site, there would still be ads, but they wouldn't interfere with the site itself. Here however, Reddit has to be neutered so that it appeals to generic advertisers - any content or communities that they, the third parties may find objectionable must go.

It's hard to a site as Reddit to pivot from the status quo to any of the more reasonable business models, because they were started with third-party advertisements in mind from the get go. The fatal disease was transmitted at birth, but it's only now that it closes on to the terminal stage. Once you get people used to free, it's hard to start charging money, and Reddit the company doesn't have any other business that could fund the site pro bono.

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

#65

Post by longtom »

mwyah wrote: post #60
TeMPOraL wrote: post #34

Well, as the disease of advertising progresses, Reddit too will shed all that made it interesting. It so happens that first to go are the people almost universally considered undesirable, but it won't stop at that.

I dislike advertising as much as the next guy but really, what alternatives do websites like reddit have?

Wikipedia model? Simply ask for donations periodically.

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

#66

Post by samdoidge »

dspillett wrote: post #61
samdoidge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Whether it is actually here in part, what votes go where, etc. does not alter that it is not considered on-topic here. "The rule is already broken in one direction, so it should be right to break it in another" isn't a helpful take IMO.

I'm not sure how you have interpreted my statement to mean the above. Please re-read without the assumptions.

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

#67

Post by golergka »

dspillett wrote: post #24
golergka wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why HN is only good for a very specific and narrow subtopic of the whole reddit universe. You can't even have decent political discussion here, not mentioning all the other Reddit's delightful crazyness.

> 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…

I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out the difference.

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

#68

Post by toxican »

maeln wrote: post #22
mxcrossb wrote: post #20

I’m not sure why any company would pay money to advertise there, when you can easily buy upvotes instead. Sure it takes a little more creativity and a longer investment, but if the current front page is any guide, there are plenty of organizations that can do it.

Ad works differently than normal post. Even if your post make it to the front page, it will only be displayed once. Also, it mean the user either need to be looking at r/all or popular, or be subscribed to the subreddit. Ad are display several time per page and will be display whatever subreddit the user is currently on.

But the best kind of ad is the kind the enduser doesn't realize is an ad. Not to mention that cross-posting happens all the time so your "ad" can make it all over the site for a day or so. And if it goes viral enough on reddit, it'll inevitably be picked up by a multitude of websites built around leaching content from reddit. Obviously there's no guarantee that it'll work any given time, but try it enough over a span of time and I can see how it would be more effective than traditional advertisements.

It's why Facebook ads look identical to posts at a glance. If you don't know it's an ad, you're more likely to click it, share it, like it, etc.

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

#69

Post by toxican »

zerm778 wrote: post #23
mxcrossb wrote: post #20

I’m not sure why any company would pay money to advertise there, when you can easily buy upvotes instead. Sure it takes a little more creativity and a longer investment, but if the current front page is any guide, there are plenty of organizations that can do it.

cause buying upvotes would not work at scale and you take the risk to get busted for doing that.

Busted how though? It's not like McDonalds, for example, would use a Mc-branded account to post random things to reddit with clearly visible McDonald cups or whatever. They'd use some throwaway account or buy an established account and buy upvotes to target that account's post. Reddit has no way to punish them for that. Maybe the reddit users find out and get pissed, but the site has no attention span and they'll forget and move on in a week.

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

#70

Post by arijun »

golergka wrote: post #14
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.

And that's why HN is only good for a very specific and narrow subtopic of the whole reddit universe. You can't even have decent political discussion here, not mentioning all the other Reddit's delightful crazyness.

> decent political discussion

I have never seen that on reddit. Every thread with politics in it seems to only allow one side of the discussion be heard, with the other being downvoted to oblivion. Which side is heard depends on the subreddit, but either way there is no discussion to be had.

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