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Reddit Doubles Down

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Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#411

Post by throwaway742 »

xatax wrote: post #350
mulmen wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s an idea, call them employees.

Every company I've ever worked for has had some sort of name for their employees. It's probably supposed to foster some sense of community/belonging. You're welcome to take the cynical approach to that, sure, but I've never felt it to be a particularly harmful thing. It's good to have some semblance of a friendly culture, if only to break up the day. Some people will like it and I'm sure some people hate it. I've nev…

I always hated it. It feels infantilizing.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#412

Post by xracy »

thr_low_latency wrote: post #184
lokar wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be overrun by nazis pretty fast. A lot as changed in 10 years.

Yes, like the definition of Nazi and the fact that Goodwin's law no longer means you lose the argument.

It's not that Godwin's law meant you lost the argument. Godwin's law was just an observation, that a common evil, is an easy thing to reduce someone who disagrees with you to. So you have to avoid doing that, if you want to be able to maintain any level of discourse.

That, of course, goes out the window when the person you're arguing with legitimately identifies as a Nazi.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#413

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

whatsuphotdog wrote: post #40

I love that the CEO calls the users voicing their displeasure "noise". When those users voice opinions on other things, it's called content. When those users voice their opinions against reddit, it's noise. Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is. The very people that give your platform its value are revolting against you, and you think it's noise. What's your product? What do yo…

> Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is.

hoffman founded reddit ... together with btw aaron swartz.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#414

Post by aembleton »

ars wrote: post #228
ink_13 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Reddit isn't going to value its communities, it's just going to turn into a clone of the bloated corpse of "I Can Has Cheeseburger", an endless stream of cat pictures and short videos, posted and reposted. High in traffic, maybe, but catering only to the lowest common denominator, stripped of the things that made it valuable to long-time users. But that's probably fine with them. Reddit seems to have taken that th…

That's kind of all that Reddit is to me. There are some exceptions, but for the most part Reddit posters are some of the stupidest humans on the internet. They are great fun with cat pictures and other stupid content. And you'll have the occasional laser-focused sub-reddit (that will be a loss). But the vast vast vast majority? Utter stupidity.

That's OK, you don't have to subscribe to the ones with stupid content. Just subscribe to the ones with laser-focused content.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#415

Post by mariusor »

raincole wrote: post #99
whatsuphotdog wrote: post #40

I love that the CEO calls the users voicing their displeasure "noise". When those users voice opinions on other things, it's called content. When those users voice their opinions against reddit, it's noise. Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is. The very people that give your platform its value are revolting against you, and you think it's noise. What's your product? What do yo…

My personal (cynical) bet is that Huffman actually understands what Reddit is better than us, and Reddit will be just fine after this. To be completely honest, if a two-day blackout is proven to be the most serious "protest" the community can do, I'll buy Reddit stock when it IPO.

As someone that has been using reddit for a decade and a half, I agree with you. We the old timers are stuck in the "good ol' days", when reddit didn't have any subreddits, discussions were mostly about technical topics, and the meme du jour was to put dollar signs in Microsoft's name.

I think it has stopped being that a long, long time ago, and Steve kept track better than us what the new demographics of reddit are. I am sad that the reddit I enjoyed is no more, but I am looking forwards to the new crop of discussion platforms (or whatever else) that will crop up.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#417

Post by piva00 »

ars wrote: post #228
ink_13 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Reddit isn't going to value its communities, it's just going to turn into a clone of the bloated corpse of "I Can Has Cheeseburger", an endless stream of cat pictures and short videos, posted and reposted. High in traffic, maybe, but catering only to the lowest common denominator, stripped of the things that made it valuable to long-time users. But that's probably fine with them. Reddit seems to have taken that th…

That's kind of all that Reddit is to me. There are some exceptions, but for the most part Reddit posters are some of the stupidest humans on the internet. They are great fun with cat pictures and other stupid content. And you'll have the occasional laser-focused sub-reddit (that will be a loss). But the vast vast vast majority? Utter stupidity.

The occasional laser-focused subreddit has been my bread and butter on reddit for the past 15 years.

I never access /r/popular or /r/all or any of the default subreddits, all my usage on reddit is from niche communities about my hobbies, and through the past 15 years each new hobby I started there was a subreddit to kickstart it full of information and a community. That's going to be the biggest loss.

Most of reddit the past 10 years has been shifting towards new users just lazily scrolling /r/popular but those users are not profitable, they don't generate value, the ads will be poorly targeted. The laser-focused subreddits is where the value of reddit as a platform comes from, I don't like advertising but I could tolerate targeting on those subreddits as it'd be relevant without invading users' privacy (like the old days of AdSense using the context of the page for ads, not profiling the user).

The vast majority is utter stupidity, I agree, but that is a part of reddit that you can completely avoid if you are a bit more of a power user... It will suck when it dies.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#418

Post by revelio »

zerohp wrote: post #386
was8309 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very interested in the recent origins of this playbook. 'never apologize, never explain' is really old, but it seems to be a thing now

The president demonstrated it from 2016 to 2020. We are just seeing the copycats now.

Trump is to blame for the behavior of the company that banned Trump's subreddit? Is there anything this man can't be blamed for?

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#419

Post by revelio »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #282
dasil003 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely it's about control, not financials.

I found it interesting that spez admitted in his call with the apollo dev that the actual hosting cost for the api calls were pennies compared to the 'opportunity cost' of not having users use the official app. He basically admitted that harvesting data via the app and selling it to advertisers was reddit's bread and butter now.

Why is it interesting? Alternative apps aren't necessarily going to show ads, which is how Reddit makes money. Surely those statements are mundane.

Re: Reddit Doubles Down

#420

Post by piva00 »

whywhywouldyou wrote: post #373
scubadude wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that started with the redesign. It's so weird looking at some of the default subs, just pure trash imo, yet there are still the incredibly diverse, bespoke communities ranging from knitting to woodworking. Users in those subs are the real losers out of this.

Those "incredibly bespoke communities" are almost entirely people posting images of a professional/elaborate project, and then asking for feedback in the form of "hey you guys this is the first thing I've ever made please give me some feedback but go easy on me OK?" It's a massive circle jerk and echo chamber of regurgitated opinions. So in other words: exactly like the rest of Reddit.

And it's also people posting reviews of some tool, or long tutorials on some technique, or answering questions from beginners, or collecting a FAQ with the basics/intermediate level of learning of a hobby which becomes an intro manual of what you probably need to learn as a foundation.

It can be also a massive circle jerk but if that's the only thing you can see from niche subreddits you are coming into this with a massive bias and ignoring the good parts, and these good parts are missing from most of the rest of the web.

I feel that your opinion is the same, just an attempt at a massive circle jerk about how terrible reddit is. It is, but it's also not and if you sincerely can't see how useful reddit is for a wide range of hobbies it's probably because you're a little myopic.

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