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Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

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Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#51

Post by lessnonymous »

rm999 wrote: post #42
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #33

For what? I hate to be that guy, but I have seen a huge increase in "OP is a faggot" style posts being upvoted in the main subreddits (just in the last 4 weeks). I've always championed finding niche subreddits, and I do, but the result has been me spending increasingly little time on reddit. I check /r/rust, /r/golang, etc but that's about all I can stand.

When you see drastic and sudden changes in reddit, it's usually something external. In this case the beginning of December marks the end of the semester for college and high school students, who use reddit more during reading period/christmas break. They will soon start school again and things will return to normal. That kind of behavior has been pretty much the norm for years at reddit. Not to say it's ubiquitous, r…

I hate this sort of joke. It reinforces the behavior for people who don't see it as a joke. And there's a lot of them.

"Oh, it's OK and funny to call people faggots"

I wish regular Redditors would stamp this shit out.

No, I'm not being unnecessarily precious or PC. I used to laugh at distasteful misogynistic jokes (and worse) but somebody pointed out to me that joking about it normalizes it. And to the depraved part of society the joke is missed and they see it as support for their depravity.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#52

Post by rm999 »

natrius wrote: post #39
kami8845 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.

When I actively read them, I valued the communities of Slashdot, Fark and Metafilter just as much as I value the Reddit community. Reddit is less unique in that regard than you might think. It is absolutely more replaceable than the New York Times. It's mindboggling that I even had to type that last sentence.

Your evidence that reddit is replaceable is you've used similar sites (most of which are basically dead in the water at this point). But in the same paragraph you exempt the new york times from that same reasoning. There are several large high-quality newspapers out there competing with the new york times (washington post, wall street journal, la times, chicago tribune, etc). I love the times, but "it may be less unique than you might think."

If anything, the internet has made the media extremely fungibile. Social networks are the opposite - as they grow the ability to switch between them becomes more difficult.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#53

Post by markdown »

kami8845 wrote: post #26
markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. NYT on the other hand... The latter should be worth far more than it is.

>Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.

> You don't understand the value of reddit.

You'd take that back if you saw my karma level. I use selfcontrol.app to keep Reddit at bay.

> It's the community and that's impossible to replace

I've been a member of lots of better communities... there's only so far you can get 'attached' to people who are anonymous.

Your entire argument is that a venue to discuss things is more important than the source of the discussion topic. I just can't agree with that. Throw out the water cooler and I'll take my discussion to the coffee machine. But throw out the discussion topic (Exposé on corruption at the FDA in the NYT), and water cooler or coffee machine, what will we talk about... Honey Boo Boo?

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#54

Post by drivebyacct2 »

sillysaurus wrote: post #41
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #33

For what? I hate to be that guy, but I have seen a huge increase in "OP is a faggot" style posts being upvoted in the main subreddits (just in the last 4 weeks). I've always championed finding niche subreddits, and I do, but the result has been me spending increasingly little time on reddit. I check /r/rust, /r/golang, etc but that's about all I can stand.

If you have something to say that starts with "I hate to be that guy" then just don't say it. You're not their main audience, and they're massively popular. They're continuing to grow in popularity, and they're becoming increasingly relevant as a primary source of information. Reddit represents a fundamental step forward in how the internet interconnects everyday people. You may not see anything worthwhile, but in re…

A year ago I would have bought that. Log out, look at the front page and repeat this with a straight face:

>It has the potential to affect and influence generations.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#55

Post by rdl »

kami8845 wrote: post #22
markdown wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me personally Reddit is much more important than the NYT will ever be. Honey Boo Boo is much more important to me than NatGeo and NPR.

Why? I'd love to know what value Honey Boo Boo provides you that's unique and can't be filled by others.

100% of US RDA of feeling of superiority, no matter who you are or how much you've fucked up your own life.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#56

Post by thaumaturgy »

kami8845 wrote: post #10
yesimahuman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love reddit, but I do fear bringing on lots of investors will seriously damage the site and the community. Just look at what appears to have happened with Quora in the scramble to satisfy stakeholders.

They've done an impeccable job of steering the site in the past. With their track record and the sheer sweat and grit they've put into the site, I'm confident that won't change just because they raise capital.

"Impeccable" in this case only means, "not as bad a job as Digg or Quora".

Reddit has clearly meddled with the site in the past for business reasons (e.g. the Sears thing, /r/jailbait), and the hands-off-unless-we-change-our-mind policy of the administration has led directly to extreme frustration among the site's biggest influences and moderators of larger subreddits.

The only thing that separates Reddit from Digg-2.0 at this point is that there is not yet another site for disgruntled users to migrate to.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#57

Post by rdl »

kami8845 wrote: post #16
onedev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think has happened to Quora?

-- Lost a lot of trust in the userbase when they did the ridiculous "Matt has viewed the following questions" stunt. -- Kicked one of the 2 co-founders, Cheever off, rumour has it he didn't want to go as aggressively after growth as D'Angelo & other powers wanted. -- Widely sneered at in SV as being the company to look at if you want to know what "taking it too far with forcing growth" means. Their "sign-on to view t…

It never crashes my browser, but does stop reloading, or hangs, or whatever, so I have to reload the page. It's only been getting worse over the past 2 years.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#58

Post by thaumaturgy »

kami8845 wrote: post #22
markdown wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me personally Reddit is much more important than the NYT will ever be. Honey Boo Boo is much more important to me than NatGeo and NPR.

Why? I'd love to know what value Honey Boo Boo provides you that's unique and can't be filled by others.

I'm pretty sure he was lampooning you. Your reply here makes it hilarious. :-)

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#59

Post by samstave »

lessnonymous wrote: post #51
rm999 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you see drastic and sudden changes in reddit, it's usually something external. In this case the beginning of December marks the end of the semester for college and high school students, who use reddit more during reading period/christmas break. They will soon start school again and things will return to normal. That kind of behavior has been pretty much the norm for years at reddit. Not to say it's ubiquitous, r…

I hate this sort of joke. It reinforces the behavior for people who don't see it as a joke. And there's a lot of them. "Oh, it's OK and funny to call people faggots" I wish regular Redditors would stamp this shit out. No, I'm not being unnecessarily precious or PC. I used to laugh at distasteful misogynistic jokes (and worse) but somebody pointed out to me that joking about it normalizes it. And to the depraved part…

There are a number of things we try to stamp out and it is damn hard.

I mod a subreddit with over 100K users. It's difficult to control trolls and others...

At the same time I have petitioned to Yishan directly several times to block /r/picsofdeadkids to no avail.

I use RES to heavily filter out the content I don't want to see.

And while that works wonderfully, I am often turning off the filter as well just to see what is on /r/all...

It is more successful to self-temper and manage your own experience on reddit than to try and change reddit.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#60

Post by thaumaturgy »

kami8845 wrote: post #24
majormajor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "impact of it disappearing" is your metric, I don't think it would take long for new Reddits to pop up if it disappeared tomorrow.

Reddit has a unique and incredibly community. If you take the time and actually explore all of the amazing small subreddits that have developed their own cultures & rulesets and the content they've created, I doubt you would make this statement. There are great people in the specialist subreddits. Reddit is only worth as much as its community and that is _incredibly_ hard to reproduct and immensely valuable. Just loo…

> Reddit has a unique and incredibly community.

No, it doesn't. Reddit is not a "community", and it does not have "a community". Reddit is millions of people, some of whom form communities in only the loosest possible sense of the word.

There's nothing inherently incredible about Reddit's "community", because Reddit's "community" is a mix of the same people that frequent 4Chan, SomethingAwful, and Fark. Reddit's user base includes people from nearly all walks of life: scum and villains, heroes, poor people, rich people, lonely people, and people who are friends with 500 other people on Facebook.

Reddit's "community" includes /r/askscience, /r/picsofdeadkids (you probably don't want to visit that), /r/bestof, /r/ShitRedditSays ... these things have nothing in common with each-other.

The only reason the various Reddit clones haven't taken off is because they aren't better. Reddit was not a Digg clone, Digg was not a Fark clone, Fark was not a Slashdot clone. Each of these offered a unique experience, some thing that the previous sites did not.

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