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Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

reuters.com

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Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#291

Post by throwaway0a5e »

fireattack wrote: post #101
comboy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a company that made people moderate their content for free. You don't need to know sub names to get some use of it. I append "reddit" to probably 1/3 of my search engine queries. Especially useful when looking for product recommendations.

>looking for product recommendations This is the trick I use too; but I found the result still isn't great enough for a few reasons. 1. People seem have a tendency to recommend products/brands that are niche or "in minority". Like some obscure ones that scratch particular itch for that user (and often expensive and hard to find). This is totally fine on its own, but you want to have the big picture (i.e. learn about…

Reddit is great for knowing what products to buy if you want upper middle class status symbols. If you're looking to spend money with little regard for efficiency of the dollar (i.e. buying someone a gift) it's fine. If you are accountable to yourself or others it is far from ideal.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#292

Post by Kbelicius »

markdown wrote: post #261
wraptile wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is really not that special under the hood. Given the opportunity it can be replaced. It just suffers from people moving issue most social networks suffer. A decentralized alternative Lemmy[1] is already quite feature complete and in many ways even better than reddit itself. It's just a bit of a ghost town and many of the instances are aimed towards and/or controlled by political/social rejects.

It just suffers from people moving issue most social networks suffer. "just"? Reddit is the community, not code. Users aren't going to run off to Lemmy or any other site. It just isn't going to happen.

Are you saying that Digg wasn't a community?

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#293

Post by leereeves »

Kbelicius wrote: post #289
leereeves wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say my citation is r/popular itself, but it looks like there's less of it now that the election is over. During the election it was disgusting. The toxic content is still there though, like a LeopardsAteMyFace post crowing about the death of Ron Wright, and as if to prove my point: "This thread has been locked due to extremely toxic and rude comments." Such as the current top comment "...I'm really pas…

> The toxic content is still there though, like a LeopardsAteMyFace post crowing about the death of Ron Wright, and as if to prove my point: "This thread has been locked due to extremely toxic and rude comments." Such as the top comment "...I'm really past playing nice with even the memory of these fucks...... Rot in hell, Ron." Comment that you decided to quote contains no conservative hating just hate towards Ron,…

> Why would you even think that that was a conservative hating comment?

The hate in that comment wasn't directed only at Ron: "people like this", "these fucks". The comment doesn't specify who "these fucks" are, but the sub generally directs hate toward conservatives, so that's a reasonable assumption.

> because of his behavior and others who behave in that way

Others who behave in what way? The post I linked contains only a tweet from him criticizing the hypocrisy of allowing big stores to remain open while closing small businesses. Is that hate-worthy?

Surely not, so I assume you're referring to something else. Please be specific.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#294

Post by throwaway0a5e »

NoPicklez wrote: post #147
rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

Could you not argue that HN is the same thing, just at a smaller scale? HN is essentially just a front page. Reddit just doesn't tailor itself to one particular type of discussion like HN does. But rather the dominant topics of discussion such as /r/funny frequently dominate the front page due to popularity. Reddit is really what you make of it and if you only subscribe to topics that interest you, it becomes a vastl…

>Could you not argue that HN is the same thing, just at a smaller scale? HN is essentially just a front page.

The more niche a community is the higher the bar to entry the less internet riff raff you get. The more one's past comments stick around the less inclined people are to type bullshit. Reddit is slightly better on average than 4Chan. HN is better at the extremes and on average than Reddit. But they're all crap compared to some niche forum you've never heard of where the guys who maintain diesel electric locomotives (or some other niche) hang out.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#295

Post by desmap »

rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

> Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine

IDK, yes dopamine gets triggered but much less than with the typical suspects out there. I find many of reddit subs quite helpful tbh, you check them out, comment, upvote, submit and leave again.

It's just bothering that one company could monopolize the entire forum space. They did a good job but yeah, one company to rule them all isn't good.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#296

Post by nicbou »

rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

I used to moderate /r/berlin, and it's a little bit like my internet pub. I recognise some of the users, and some of them recognise me.

/r/popular is more like the random junk bins at Aldi. Most of it is trash, but somehow you're always tempted to have a look at it.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#297

Post by throwaway0a5e »

kart23 wrote: post #181
jug wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, discoverability of "good" subreddits is not there. But on the other hand I think Reddit get too much criticism. I find most subreddits besides the big catch-all ones like /r/pics good. Basically all the TV shows have fun post-episode discussions and going through Game of Thrones, Black Sails or The Expanse wouldn't have been the same without Reddit for me. It becomes the group of buddies I can vent or be in awe…

r/formuladank for the more...edgy f1 content! Good subs exist like you said. But even with f1, the same opinions start get upvoted, and that ends up just being noise for me. There's a definitely a sweet spot in terms of size and moderation.

The joke subs are always better on average because they are fundamentally rooted in BS so you don't have people rabidly agreeing with whatever the common trope is to show how much they fit in.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#298

Post by gurkendoktor »

matsemann wrote: post #193
throwawaysea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I find awesome about reddit is its ability to connect people and really have group conversations on almost anything I see Reddit at its best in niche subreddits but it is far from a place to have conversations on almost anything. The site as a whole as well as most of the biggest subs have banned various topics or lines of discussion in a bid to align to progressive left political views.

> in a bid to align to progressive left political views Is there really this huge conspiracy by the left, or are most just tired of hate speech from the right when they want to look at funny memes? > it is far from a place to have conversations on almost anything Well, except for this alt-right stuff and things that are illegal, are so much else censored? I'd wager most people could find a discussion about any of the…

Intentional or not, the word choices in your reply are the reason why my "office politics" alert goes off whenever I visit reddit (enough that I deleted my account):

The word "conspiracy" has become a way (mostly for the media) to assign low/outgroup status to unfavorable theories. In the unlikely case where something is later proven to be true, one can always just say, "okay, but isn't it GOOD that everyone was silently cooperating?" And when it works, it's a tool to move the Overton window by painting the others as loonies.

I mean, the idea that a company worth $6B has a political strategy is hardly outlandish. You can have five people working in an office and they'll eventually start to conspire against each other, power games are human nature.

"Hate speech" and "alt-right" are similar terms that are not clearly defined, but conveniently serve the dominant discourse.

reddit's tolerance for "anyone but the bad guys" was brilliantly summarized by SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

(I agree with the sibling thread that /r/popular looks really fun today! It was a very different place throughout 2020.)

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#299

Post by mschuster91 »

Havoc wrote: post #257

Reddit is exactly one drama away from zero valuation. Hero to zero like digg. Just way too much diverse communities under one roof that don’t really fit with their corporate need to be PC

Reddit has weathered countless dramas over the last years without noticeable negative after-effects. Basically, once or twice a year they get some outrage, shed the outermost layer of bullshit and that's it.

And since it's almost always either far-right stuff (t_d, chimpire, incels, greatawakening, pizzagate), morally obscene stuff (jailbait, watchpeopledie, gore, deepfakes), discriminatory stuff (fph, gendercritical) or legal hot topics (sonygop, gunsforsale, creepshots, darknetmarkets) that get banned, the reactions from general society to the bans are usually positive. Not many are willing to defend pedophilia, Nazi stuff or LGBT-haters.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#300

Post by np- »

fireattack wrote: post #101
comboy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a company that made people moderate their content for free. You don't need to know sub names to get some use of it. I append "reddit" to probably 1/3 of my search engine queries. Especially useful when looking for product recommendations.

>looking for product recommendations This is the trick I use too; but I found the result still isn't great enough for a few reasons. 1. People seem have a tendency to recommend products/brands that are niche or "in minority". Like some obscure ones that scratch particular itch for that user (and often expensive and hard to find). This is totally fine on its own, but you want to have the big picture (i.e. learn about…

It’s good if you keep in mind who the typical redditor is and if you would take advice from that type of person in real life. One notable example was when I was trying to do some research on cars. The type of things generally recommended seemed almost tailor made for young men at a certain stage of their life (ie budget/sporty/manual/etc). Sure I love that stuff too, but just take a look around in the real world, and it’s pretty clear that the recommendations you’re getting are super limited in scope.
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