671–680 of 834 posts
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I'll give one counterpoint: When did you see anyone on TV mention Digg? Reddit's become mainstream, it's quoted by serious news outlets, joked around on Last Week Tonight (and other politic joke shows), and I'd say it's as likely to disappear as Facebook. Which is to say, surely but very slowly.
I'm sure I saw a mention once or twice on TechTV and/or G4, but that just supports your point.
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I used to think this but Ben Thompson changed my mind. This meta verse thing really could be the way we work remotely soon. It works as a working space. It works for companies, it could create good work environments, and companies can afford expensive hardware to get people to work more effecively. Think of the metaverse as a more advanced slack+zoom, not as a Minecraft/Roblox alternative.
I have a project currently deploying a bunch Microsoft Teams Rooms at a client. It tries to create a similar experience in a physical space. People are confused as hell by it — it doesn’t work the way they’re used to / expecting, so they give up within a few minutes and just connect an HDMI cable to the main screen. We weren’t even going to have HDMI as a fallback, but the executives demanded it because they weren't…
It is infuriating.
Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content…
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Reddit to me is the kind of thing where monetization methods feel like they run counter to what I consider the main value of the website is. People visit because of the communities, but advertisements and astroturfing erodes that by making the communities more and more inauthentic. The problem is that advertising is where the money is, they aren't going to survive on reddit golds. So it seems like the path they have…
I agree with you in the context of ads, but I do wonder if they could monetise these communities in a more high-value way which plays into their primary purpose. For instance, I am a member of /r/synthesizers, but all trading/buying happens on eBay or reverb.com. Can reddit provide the way for this community to transact in a more high-value/trusted way? Maybe I'm missing something and that is a terrible business.
High value honest and transparent ads can work, like say "Will it blend" or providing field related instructions good enough to essentially be the canon to say synthesier configuration and maintenance.
That is hard and bespoke. Meanwhile crap ads are very easy and adaptable. So long as there is a positive return being a menace or nuisance to the commons can pay. As spam infamously shows.
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Stop taking "the metaverse" seriously, please. It's a rich idiots dream, like a digital Fordlandia. I can hardly blame people for trying to follow trends, because following trends can be lucrative. "The metaverse" is just not the one to follow. It's nintendos virtualboy, vision getting ahead of substance, fixing problems we don't have. If it succeeds at all, it will be a testament to societies ability to bend to the…
Zuckerberg has proven extremely effective at predicting future trends. Look at Instagram and Whatsapp, perfectly timed investments. Zuck has taken long term bets on the metaverse starting with Occulus and now seemingly betting the whole company on it. He could very well be wrong but there are a lot of very smart people at Facebook and on their board I have to think they did some very intensive validation before doing…
Or, as a kid who played Civ online at the same time he did, I'd describe him as somebody who could win every game of Civ through bug exploits and memorizing the mechanics, but is such a dick about it nobody wants to play with him again and that confuses him.
"If you build it, they will come." Only if they don't hate you, and Zuck isn't doing well in the court of public opinion.
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Yeah while all the big subreddits are nigh unusable, there's a lot of small/mid-sized communities that are an absolute delight to be a part of.
This is a moral conundrum. Yes, some of the smaller sub-reddits are good, but by participating, you legitimize the conflict/fakenews/horrorshow that is the main website. It's like saying you enjoy the trains running on time in Nazi Germany whilst ignoring the rest of what the regime is.
There are times when I argue that "apps" or sites must be thought of differently than the Internet itself, but this is not one of them. Reddit has no monopoly on hobby chat, or on tiktok garbage, or on local communities, or on news commentary. It is not the same kind of network-effect trap as, say, Facebook.
If ever someone asks me about reddit or if it's useful, I say to stay off any community greater than about 100-150k. Use it for discussing specific video games or hobbies, or on tightly moderated subs with focused discussion.
If any sub has posts from "karma farmers", accounts with super high karma like 500k or more, then it's probably a place worth being suspicious of from either a utility OR an astroturfing standpoint. Lots of agenda-pushing.
The larger subreddits have problems, but Reddit has done a remarkable job of collecting people with niche interests into one area. I wouldn't discount their success and future success (as much as I'd like to). What's odd is they haven't stopped growing. It's just been linear user growth. They could literally do nothing and the site would still grow. It's closer to Wikipedia than a social network in some respects. And…
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Genuinely curious...are you old enough to remember Digg and what happened to it? I don't mean that to be patronizing...but I remember being on Digg and Reddit being a weird alternative. And after a series of huge mistakes, almost overnight Reddit was flooded with users and Digg relegated to nothing. It really opened my eyes to how quickly an empire built only on its users can disappear.
(Disclaimer: I used to work at Reddit but left in 2018) While I think you're absolutely right, I think Digg made a number of other missteps with the Digg v4 launch that Reddit did not make. In particular, they shut down the old Digg site to reuse the servers for the new one, a mistake that Reddit was particularly careful not to make. Digg was also already on the way down before their failed launch, and before the exo…
You are seeing a huge demand for more free speech platforms. Youtube is outofcontrol, Google is editing search, twitter is peering over the abyss now that Jack is gone and Reddit is right along them. It may take a while, but in a few years they are going to face steep competition. It may very well be an open source decentralized project like Mastodon.
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Now imagine Zuck being in charge. How could it not be a toxic wasteland? John on Accidental Tech Podcast ( http://atp.fm ) has articulated some pretty solid criticisms. Facebook has historically sucked at hardware. Why would that change? Whereas other parasocial hosts attempt to protect their users, like MMOPRGs mitigating griefing and cheating, Facebook and Twitter amplify and profit from toxicity. Etc.
That is a common social media criticism, "amplify and profit from toxicity". I find the charge vaucous for several reasons. 1. "Give what the numbers say you want." or "Maximize profit * area of instance." are what they actually want. Even if it leads to emergent antisocial behavior it is set by results instead of a goal in itself. 2. The charge itself could be applied to any form of media, and yet there is a blatant…
Correct. Zuck, Dorsey, and PageBrin just stole the old guard's lunch money. Just like broadcast toppled print, papyrus displaced clay cuniform.
It's an old story. The power elite always seize control of popular communications. Technological progress begets a changing of the guard.
> and yet there is a blatant double standard
By whom?
There is always a resentful cohort moaning about "kids these days".
There is always some cranks (like me) performatively rejecting the whole system. Yesterday's Kill Your Television is today's Delete Facebook.
While the masses keep plodding along, amusing themselves as able, self medicating, seeking some kind of respite from the never ending sting of the human condition. Moo.