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I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

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Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#71

Post by brokenmachine »

kypro wrote: post #64

A decade or so ago Reddit used to be a great place with some very high quality communities that I'd visit often. But as time went on a one or two of the communities I liked got banned and others were forced to tone down discussions. Although I have an interest in controversial communities though so this may not be a universal experience. But what finally made me leave was that the quality of every community I like ju…

100% agree.

Reddit is now completely dominated by repulsive echo chambers ruled by angry opinionated mods.

Any idea contrary to the hive mind is either agressively downvoted and shouted down, and/or blocked/banned by overzealous mods.

Just as one example, try daring to say that most men aren't rapists in https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes ...

Can't quite find the link right now but there was a well upvoted post there that was simply, "god I hate men."

They're not even interested in discussion at all. It's such a toxic misandristic subreddit, under a paper-thin pretense of being about female empowerment.

I'm really not a person who clutches pearls often, I think what gets me is the silencing of any dissent.

Posters shouldn't be getting banned for simply expressing an alternative opinion with no rudeness.

Rule 3 on there is "no tactless posts generalizing gender". But every third post is about how all men do x...

Subreddit rules mean nothing when interpreted by rabidly terrible mods, so coming into any new subreddit I don't feel comfortable to post anymore, lest another such mod should ban me for having an opinion.

I definitely think it has gotten much worse overall in the last couple of years.

That's why HN is so great... I often see opposing worldviews expressed here without animosity between posters.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#72

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

chubot wrote: post #49
mlyle wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit was weakly profitable but now has done a ton of hiring in hopes of building a huge business and chasing the IPO money train. They have 2000 employees now. They had fewer than 200 in 2015.

That's kind of what I suspected ... it seems like a self-inflicted problem, a consequence of the VC model and "enshittification" This makes Wikipedia seem prescient. It also has basically all user-contributed content, and user moderation You can point out a lot of its flaws, for sure, but at the end of the day, the product actually works Reddit for me is barely functional, I still used old.reddit.com Of course that w…

The whole thing can be summed up as such: Reddit has continued to expand its business and increase costs while failing to innovate in any meaningful way.

In a bubble, the business is ultimately a failure and it deserves to die. It's just sad given the quality of the content is so high in contrast to the platform and the lack of an outstanding of alternative for people to congregate around, as Reddit once was for digg users.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#73

Post by midoridensha »

stOneskull wrote: post #62
midoridensha wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not profitable because they choose to not be profitable, because they have too many employees and are trying to be the next TikTok. If they operated like archive.org, they could sustain themselves. They don't want to do that, because it doesn't result in big returns for investors.

old reddit was fine they wasted, and continue to waste, bunches of money, for nothing

It was "fine" in your opinion, for doing the kinds of things you liked to do with it. But that wasn't leading to TikTok-level profits.

They may be wasting money, or maybe not. If they chase away all the people like you, and end up with a userbase of vapid morons who just watch idiotic TikTok-style videos on it, and this makes the company billions in profit, then that money wouldn't be "wasted".

I mean, it sucks (IMO) if running a discussion board service for people to have intelligent conversations about various niche topics is financially undesirable compared to running a social media site for people to share and make moronic comments about moronic 1-minute videos, but that seems to be just how humans are.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#75

Post by opportune »

chubot wrote: post #49
mlyle wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit was weakly profitable but now has done a ton of hiring in hopes of building a huge business and chasing the IPO money train. They have 2000 employees now. They had fewer than 200 in 2015.

That's kind of what I suspected ... it seems like a self-inflicted problem, a consequence of the VC model and "enshittification" This makes Wikipedia seem prescient. It also has basically all user-contributed content, and user moderation You can point out a lot of its flaws, for sure, but at the end of the day, the product actually works Reddit for me is barely functional, I still used old.reddit.com Of course that w…

Wikipedia enshittified too, to a lesser extent, but still they have made their begging more and more aggressive over time.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#76

Post by bloqs »

brokenmachine wrote: post #71
kypro wrote: post #64

A decade or so ago Reddit used to be a great place with some very high quality communities that I'd visit often. But as time went on a one or two of the communities I liked got banned and others were forced to tone down discussions. Although I have an interest in controversial communities though so this may not be a universal experience. But what finally made me leave was that the quality of every community I like ju…

100% agree. Reddit is now completely dominated by repulsive echo chambers ruled by angry opinionated mods. Any idea contrary to the hive mind is either agressively downvoted and shouted down, and/or blocked/banned by overzealous mods. Just as one example, try daring to say that most men aren't rapists in https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes ... Can't quite find the link right now but there was a well upvoted post…

The echo chambers comment is particularly resonant. Its intolerable

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#77

Post by mjhagen »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #38
bittercynic wrote: post #8

I think reddit has run its course for me, and I don't think they're losing anything of value when I stop browsing. I've been using old. for years, and always been pretty strict about blocking ads. In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. Reddit is saving a little on bandwidth since I…

Reddit has built a reputation for being "not social media", but in my opinion it has come to embody most of what people say they hate about social media. If I visit Reddit without logging in, the content on the home page is disastrously bad: Videos of fights with comments from people cheering on the violence. Screenshots of exaggerated Tweets taken out of context. 10 different stories about the latest tragedy somewhe…

Aren’t power users the ones who make Reddit? They submit and moderate most content.

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#78

Post by pokerface_86 »

brokenmachine wrote: post #71
kypro wrote: post #64

A decade or so ago Reddit used to be a great place with some very high quality communities that I'd visit often. But as time went on a one or two of the communities I liked got banned and others were forced to tone down discussions. Although I have an interest in controversial communities though so this may not be a universal experience. But what finally made me leave was that the quality of every community I like ju…

100% agree. Reddit is now completely dominated by repulsive echo chambers ruled by angry opinionated mods. Any idea contrary to the hive mind is either agressively downvoted and shouted down, and/or blocked/banned by overzealous mods. Just as one example, try daring to say that most men aren't rapists in https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes ... Can't quite find the link right now but there was a well upvoted post…

[flagged]

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#79

Post by FeetYeet »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #29
wackget wrote: post #5

His response to the top comment: > reddit has a lot of cash. Monetization isn't a short-term concern of ours. Yes, we will continue to experiment with different efforts so that when time is right we know what works and what does not. So it was always about money. Guess their "experiments" have concluded that pissing off your entire user base is a strategy which works.

> So it was always about money. I'm more surprised that anyone thought it wasn't about money. Reddit is a business. An unprofitable business. They have to do something to turn a profit eventually.

I agree they have to turn a profit.

I’m just baffled at their pitiful attempts at doing that the past few years. And how it’s now culminated into where we are this week.

2,000 employees. What are they even doing?

Re: I am Steve Huffman, the new CEO of Reddit. AMA. (2015)

#80

Post by Yizahi »

redox99 wrote: post #37
bittercynic wrote: post #8

I think reddit has run its course for me, and I don't think they're losing anything of value when I stop browsing. I've been using old. for years, and always been pretty strict about blocking ads. In the past few years, it's been getting less and less enjoyable for me, and since I stopped visiting on Monday, I've been feeling better, and I don't think I'll be going back. Reddit is saving a little on bandwidth since I…

Last year after I posted a innocuous, benign comment on a certain subreddit I was permanently banned from that subreddit because I was allegedly "ban evading" (I wasn't, I have a single account). I contacted the mod from that subreddit saying I wasn't ban evading, and they replied "Sure" and blocked me from messaging mods for a year. An hour later (without doing anything else) I got banned site wide for 3 days for "b…

They also often use the invented word "brigading" to justify any and all bans. Like you can write literally anything in the subreddit and it can can be considered "brigading" because the threshold doesn't exist for that. Especially tokenbro snowflakes like to do that.

And another popular imaginary reason for bans is the crosspost feature. If you ever crosspost anything from the snowflake sub they will automatically ban you with a script, for using this stock Reddit feature.

Since Monday I've stopped visiting Reddit to try to get less addicted to mindless reading. I've caught myself opening the app like 5 times already, but so far experiment was mostly a success. Need to keep up for a month more I think.

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