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

Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 313 posts

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#71

Post by starfallg »

secondcoming wrote: post #38
mard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech stands against the financial interests of social media. Reddit is the real estate for ads, and the best value for top global advertisers are safe spaces that are free of controversy. In the end, it's the advertisers that decide what is allowed to be published there.

Having advertisers control online narrative is very worrying and an unintended consequence of Brand Safety. There is no financial reason for reddit or youtube to distribute content they can't monetise, especially if that content is popular.

The question is who should have this control in media? Traditional media had gatekeepers that allowed for extreme (but popular) opinions to be suppressed.

We've seen what it looks like when opinions form in a bubble online without oversight and spirals out of control in the real world. From conspiracy theories and extremism to doxxing the wrong person in mass murder.

We should be aware of the limitations around a model based entirely on unfettered free speech. Otherwise we are just ideologues trying to put out a fire with more fire.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#72

Post by dogma1138 »

secondcoming wrote: post #49
dogma1138 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH the platform itself doesn’t lend particularly well to free speech by penalizing unpopular opinions through karma. Ironically I think HN is worse in this regard by greying out posts once they get to -1, I often find out that sorting by controversial on many topics gives you the most interesting read on reddit. I would actually love if both HN and Reddit allowed you to see a Karma graph for each post.

Any upvote/downvote concept on online content is flawed because it does not show the historical score of a post over time. Even here on HN I can post something during GMT business hours that gets scored based on the views of HN's readership at that time, but when the US wakes up the score can change dramatically. Essentially, the US west coast can have the 'final say' because of its timezone and probably larger user…

Yes, it also on a wide scale leads to silos being formed where you only share content with people you know that will upvote it this is why reddit gets a subreddit on every subject and even then those communities tend to split over and over until they get their perfect echochamber.

Heck there are two primary subreddits for the Labour party in the UK - Labour and LabourUK.

A year ago someone asked what's the difference between Labour and LabourUK and this was pretty much the answer (I've quoted one comment but the same answer was repeated across that entire post):

>r/LabourUK is a Blairite echo chamber for bitter right wingers, and if you dare criticise Israel they'll call you an antisemite and ban you. You can call for the destruction of the left as much as you want over there but don't dare say anything against the Blairites, that's another bannable offense. Not sufficiently sucking up to the mods, also a ban.

>r/Labour is mainly frequented by supporters of the Labour Party and not by people who are praying for Labour to lose so they can replace Corbyn.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#73

Post by kaoD »

xevrem wrote: post #50
sebmellen wrote: post #4

Reddit is very clearly not in favour of free speech: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/reddit-bans-thedonald-and-... . Aaron Swartz was very clearly in favour of free speech: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan . I think the reasons for this are self-evident.

honestly, i would say the banning of thedonald is clearly a response to The Paradox of Tolerance rather than not supporting free-speech. you cannot be tolerant of the intolerant if you want free speech to survive.

In Karl Popper's own words:

> I do not imply for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would be most unwise.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#74

Post by Krasnol »

mantap wrote: post #64
ceilingcorner wrote: post #28

Reddit today is the opposite of what it was in the beginning. Unsurprising that they’d write out Swartz in their quest to be a friendly corporate face. Alas, a new competitor will replace it soon. Virtually no one has brand loyalty to Reddit and their audience is becoming narrower and narrower.

Considering that Reddit's own popularity was boosted by Digg's collapse due to unpopular changes and dysfunction, you'd think that Reddit would be more aware of the risks of pursuing an antagonistic relationship with their users.

But their success proves that they don't have to care...

I mean seriously this "Diggs past will come for you"-line is being repeated for years but it's not happening.

Meanwhile "alternatives" come up and and become irrelevant or nests of hate.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#75

Post by bonzini »

li4ick wrote: post #70
bonzini wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The_donald at some point was basically squatting the entire front page and making it unusable.

because reddit programmers are so bad they couldn't just add an _if_ statement, or a limit?

That's literally what they did and it was already considered censorship by some.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#76

Post by achn »

valvar wrote: post #60
xevrem wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly, i would say the banning of thedonald is clearly a response to The Paradox of Tolerance rather than not supporting free-speech. you cannot be tolerant of the intolerant if you want free speech to survive.

No, the utterly ridiculous "paradox of tolerance" is just a bad cope for people who truly do not believe in free speech. "Free speech" which only applies to your predefined set of approved speech is not free speech, but a monstrous parody of it. The purpose of free speech is to enable dissent, not to affirm the status quo.

Sorry,free speech does not mean that private companies have to provide their resources and time to support your hate speech. It means that you, on public property, using your own resources, have the freedom to say what you want without reprisal from the government. But even that should have limits, especially when your “free speech” limits the right to liberty and prosperity of others (most isms).

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#79

Post by blueboo »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #28

Reddit today is the opposite of what it was in the beginning. Unsurprising that they’d write out Swartz in their quest to be a friendly corporate face. Alas, a new competitor will replace it soon. Virtually no one has brand loyalty to Reddit and their audience is becoming narrower and narrower.

I think this is wishful thinking. Reddit at its inception was sock puppet-boosted discussion of atheism and coding. Every choice its leaders have been made have been in support of further growth, not some philosophical ideal.

It’s now one of the most vibrant discussion forums on the internet. It’s been growing faster than it can manage, but that’s been the case for years. Hostage to a brittle moderation model that doesn’t scale, certain discussions can’t be safely or productively had at its scale.

It’s a practical reality...in support of further growth. For every open internet advocate that abandons it in disgust, another dozen grandmas and teens register and download the app.

Whatever the case, I do hope you’re right and a competitor finds a way to do this better.

Re: Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

#80

Post by NateEag »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #21
losvedir wrote: post #6

I thought it really was founded by those two, and written in Lisp at that. Then YC hooked them up with Swartz and his big thing was rewriting in python. (And maybe there was some contention about this? I forget, but I seem to recall some drama at the time about his contributions.) It was a long time ago, though, so I might be misremembering. In any case, I'm fairly certain Swartz did join after the fact, but I'm not…

In Aaron Swartz's own words from May 2007 > One of the points of the merger was that we would all call ourselves co-founders, so that's what I've been doing. I'd be happy to stop if that's what Steve and Alexis wanted, though. https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co... This comment by spez is also interesting https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_th... It seems AS was given th…

As I recall, Aaron was doing his own startup through YC (Infogami).

Paul Graham introduced him to the Reddit guys and I believe suggested they merge Reddit and Infogami.

As part of that merger, Aaron gained the title "cofounder", IIRC.

This is backed up by comments in that Reddit thread, FWIW.

Post reply on HN