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Reddit raises $410M in new funding

nytimes.com

391–400 of 507 posts

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#391

As someone who tried to advertise on reddit (though it was > 1-2 years ago, so things may have changed)-- Reddit, along with Twitter, is very advertiser unfriendly. And Im not just talking about the users. I literally couldnt give them my money. I wanted to target a specific subreddit, but couldnt buy any impressions on it for 3 months. The app kept forcing me to advertise on /all, or all technology reddits, which wa…

>Yes, everyone hates ads, but thats how free sites make money. Maybe a simple user forum site doesn't need to make mega valuation levels of money. Maybe it, and other low effort sites like Facecrook and Twatter, should be run as public benefit corps. These companies aren't selling state of the art tech here - why do they need to be such money makers??

You just made 80% of HN readers have a stroke.

I love the idea and I love what you are saying.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#392
post #316

Every time I hit the back button on Reddit i get an error that says “something went wrong with this page” Every time i watch a video there it flashes and reloads at least two times before playing.

Don't try to scrub forward in a video in their player. In my experience, the video never loads.

I've never been able to get a video to play a second time with the 'replay' icon. So the rule seems to be, "don't touch it"

Not to mention its excellent habit of downgrading the sample rate just as the video gets interesting.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#393

Something that hasn’t been brought up in this thread is the massive problem Reddit has regarding large scale bot networks. Reddit allows for unlimited account creation and has extremely poor, if any, detection algorithms. Additionally, its trivial to stream and analyze the entirety of Reddit comments and posts in real time (check out PRAW if you like Python). Networks pushing COVID narratives and crypto frauds are pr…

I've come across crypto pumps on Reddit, but might not be on the right subs to have come across the network posts (or just haven't noticed yet). Do you have some links to those posts?

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#394

I'm honestly surprised to learn that Reddit is still VC dependant. Seems strange to me that a 16 year old company still isn't self sustaining.

Reddit's user base is poor and disaffected young men. Those might be valuable eyeballs to a warlord or a revolutionary but corporate America isn't buying.

All you need is an imagination. Paid only-fans links for example would be a huge winner when targeted at virgin men in their 20s with no real life friends (AKA Reddit userbase). These subtle advertisements are already happening all over Reddit through user posts, it's just Reddit stupidly does not charge for it.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#397
post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

Reddit currently supports many third party freemium clients ( Ala Twitter 2012). These third party apps offer a no ad experience too. Unsure how much revenue reddit shares with these apps though. It helps with growth(more options for users to be on reddit) , but definitely hurts ad inventory, ad targeting insights etc.

I love Apollo on iOS. Without that I’d primarily just browse Reddit on desktop web. The official mobile app and mobile web is actually a disaster.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#398
reddit was leveraged to maliciously target me multiple times over the years. ycombinator benefitted from reddit's success.

As only hn admins can see my responses, allow me to say: you know full well there's a huge conflict of interest regarding investigating such a claim, even if that means privately defaming/discrediting me. The incentive structure is such that reddit has zero reason to ever even address such a claim unless pushed to do so legally, which is despicable and dishonorable.

I was a member of a successful musical act, the fact of which was used to maliciously target me multiple times over the years on the reddit.com property. This had a very real and significant negative impact on me.

Prior to this, back in 2007, long before cyber hygiene was a thing, a link from reddit that I visited caused a MS network to be compromised. I was subsequently blamed for "hacking" their network -- defamed behind my back -- due to this. This false accusation snowballed likely into the scenario from the previous paragraph (combine with assumptions re: S6E12M19 - ask FBI to clarify) to justify above targeting.

Other incidents on reddit occurred in 2014 (two times) and also December 2018.

I don't anticipate that anyone at yc nor reddit will have any incentive to do the honorable thing and invesigate my claims.. ffs, give me a bit of dignity please after my life has been thoroughly destroyed in no small part due to the web property from which your org foundationally benefitted.

Email is on my profile accessible to admins. I don't anticipate any response at all, now or in the future. Deny, deflect, accuse. Or, better yet: ignore. Rules of social hierarchy thusly applicable.

Now you have an idea why I am so cynical -- there's little to no accountability nor honor amongst the ruling class (you, the entity that benefitted from reddit) when it comes to the grievances of a commoner (me, the victim who was targeted over a multi-decade timeframe, via a web property -- reddit -- from which you benefitted).

Yes, the first time I was maliciously cybergaslighted by reddit was the reason for I founded HiCapacity - Omidyar's Civil Beat techie Mr. Kanno showed up to my initial two meetings in HNL, and never gave me a chance to even address my intentions for the hackerspace. (ironically, my intent was actually in line with the teachings from snowden's subsequent tor talk.)

Snowden used HiCapacity years later, after I had disconnected, but while I was living with my half Russian gf at the time whose Belorussian best friend ran operations for a Russian Honolulu tour company that catered to "wealthy" (euphemism) Russians. Snowden may or may not have excluded the fact that his December 10, 2012 cryptoparty occurred at the hackerspace I founded, from "Permanent Record" (ironic given the name of his book). Instead, he commented, IIRC, on the location of the meetup (Box Jelly) -- thus deflecting away from the appearance of an odd, coincidental causality loop re: Omidyar subsequently purchasing Snowden's classified cache for $250,000,000.00, pertinent to Omidyar's connection to Bitcoin quasi-billionaire Mr. Kanno.

I've been through too much -- see my first comment -- this targeting against me had origins in reddit in some form or fashion -- perhaps by entities who simply used the site and controlled the content. I don't know how it happened, because I can't investigate, but you can. Please do the right thing and help a commoner with a legitimate complaint, so I don't have to include a narrative in my autobiography based on loosely speculating from the facts I've documented since 1996/1997 (ask @FBINewark about the list on which they placed me back then - I am still on it at least as of spring 2020 due to Facebook's fuck up showing me a list of NJ/Essex sheriffs and a "Sammy the Bull" fan account, in succession, on "people you may know", right when S6E12M19 was scheduled to be released from Federal Prison.)

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#399
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit should charge for all commercial posts. It would clean up spam and generate revenue. Make a special class of commercial account, include some 'verification' badge thingy. Let subreddits ban all commercial content, unpaid commercial content, or leave open (for commercial-specific subs). Let mods profit share in commercial posts. (And fix the moderator system so "first to register controls the sub" is no longer…

This is an absolutely bizarre proposal. You want moderators to willingly pollute their subreddit with ads in exchange for personally getting a kickback from reddit? Users would either migrate en masse to competing subreddits with decent mods, or they'd stay due the same old problems with moderator inertia...

I think they mean it would be better than the astroturfing that goes on currently

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing to stop people or groups of people from making thousands of accounts and joining the sub, and then eventually taking control. Even if these user accounts have to be X years old, or subbed for Y months, none of that matters in the long term.

Yes. With this system it would be important to verify identities on sign up. I think verifying phone number would largely resolve the issue (SMS short codes don't work on VOIP phones). There many other levels to reduce fake accounts that can be added if problems begin to occur. The main issue is the more difficult sign up is, the less people sign up. It's a balancing act. With any voting system you have to detect the…

Make creation of subreddits paid maybe along with phone verification?

Imo, moderation logs should all be public. Lobsters does it well:

https://lobste.rs/moderations

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