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Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

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Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#161

Post by Kodix »

adventured wrote: post #116
anonymousab wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or if it's destined to go the way of digg, etc. Does Reddit's competition of today have as much reach/popularity as Digg's did when that exodus occurred?

Won't matter. There's no real lock-in among text / link content communities. They're trivial to build, there will never be a lack of new variations. Reddit doesn't even have possession of the vast media (youtube, imgur) that gets posted to its service, making it that much easier to replace. Imgur will probably see among the greatest benefit as Reddit erodes.

That's true about Imgur. It has already gained a sizable community not directly related to reddit before this fiasco, I wouldn't be surprised if it grew more quickly now. It has the infrastructure as well as the most popular form of content from reddit - unlike something like voat.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#162

Post by drspacemonkey »

calbear81 wrote: post #143
drspacemonkey wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to kn0thing, it's a shame, "but so it goes". And then there's the implication that they're all sitting back and enjoying popcorn while Reddit consumes itself. http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama...

I think it's more like a "haters gonna hate" type of comment. Whatever kn0thing says, it won't be good enough to placate the masses with their pitchforks so the best thing to do is sit back and wait till it all blows over. Generally, reddit has very short term institutional memory, by next week new users and admins will be like "Victoria who?!"

Didn't people say similar things about Digg's short-term collective memory right before their ... "mishap"?

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#163

Post by pyre »

rtpg wrote: post #91
27182818284 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a default subreddit carries extra responsibilities. Tell that to the admins that just cut a beloved person without prior consultation or a continuity plan. I'm blown away by what Reddit has been doing in the last few months. I thought it was just me being a get-off-my-lawn old user (since I've been on Reddit like 7-8 years or something) but then I had a young copyrighter (early twenties) talking to me about leaving…

>Tell that to the admins that just cut a beloved person without prior consultation or a continuity plan. Let's think about the fact that this is possible for a company to do this to a full-time employee with several years experience next time an election comes up. Unfortunately, not all of us get the luxury of advance notice on firings/layoffs

You're missing the part about how many things that said person was responsible for are floundering because the admins fired a person that was a single-point-of-failure without any backup plan.

It's like firing someone, then all of the sudden you realize that you need to hire a team of people to replace them, all while your site is down and your servers are on fire (and all of the MBAs are busy looking for someone else to blame so they don't get fired).

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#164

Post by selimthegrim »

dsr_ wrote: post #78
pgrote wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, I just want to talk about Rampart.

(Translation for the reddit-impaired: Woody Harrelson came to IAMA trying to do publicity for his movie Rampart. His cluelessness and apparent entitlement nearly blotted out the sun.)

Did anyone bring up his father?

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#166

Post by orthoganol »

blhack wrote: post #33

It's kindof astonishing what is happening over at reddit right now. "The internet" has it's own culture, and the people running reddit right now (one of the places where this culture is the strongest, imo), seem to have no idea how to interface with it. It honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users ke…

Well, Sam Altman wants Reddit to have a billion users. To me, that means preserving Reddit's culture isn't a top priority. I mean they'll nod at it and say they're trying to keep the culture yada yada, but push come to shove, they really aren't going to defer to it.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#167

Post by ChuckMcM »

This does feel a bit like "Internet" culture meets Sarbanes Oxley (which comes into play when you are publicly traded).

There was a story about how unprofitable Reddit is [1] and given that one would expect it to start running out of cash. And when that happens it has to either get more VC funding or go to the public for additional funding. But if you're going to file an S-1 you really have to get your SOX compliance in order, and generally that has things like executives swearing that there isn't any illegal stuff going on, with jail time penalties if there is. And lawyers tend to be really conservative when it comes to "illegal" (advising against anything even nominally bad).

I, of course, have no inside information, but I'm not the only one wondering about this. An inability to raise funds would kill Reddit, and this "strike" action would seem to just accelerate that (fewer page views, fewer ad clicks).

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/reddit-ceo-admits-once-bowed-1...

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#168

Post by Kranar »

nothis wrote: post #160
blhack wrote: post #33

It's kindof astonishing what is happening over at reddit right now. "The internet" has it's own culture, and the people running reddit right now (one of the places where this culture is the strongest, imo), seem to have no idea how to interface with it. It honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users ke…

Honestly, though... isn't this just a total overreaction? I get that Victoria getting fired was bad for /r/IAMA (which once WASN'T a celebrity PR stop) but how does setting the whole damn subreddit to private help anyone? Like, I'm seriously asking. How? The "solidarity" thing also makes my eyes roll because I don't fully get how a place like /r/AskReddit is affected by this, at all. Reddit's admins have always taken…

Victoria being fired is basically the last straw in what has been close to a year of friction between the people who volunteer to provide and manage reddit's content (the moderators) and the people who profit off of their work (reddit the corporation).

This event basically exemplified the fact that reddit as a corporation doesn't care one bit about their volunteers/moderators and the subs going private is basically the one and only way that moderators have to express that enough is enough.

Firing Victoria on the spot for what seems to have been an AMA gone wrong (Jesse Jackson's) without warning and without considering what the consequences of this termination would be on the moderators was poor form.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#169

Post by MBCook »

stormbeta wrote: post #139
httpagent wrote: post #132

I'm going to offer a wild suggestion - What if reddit is being purposefully dismantled to break up the social hive it represents? Is it possible that current events are he fruition of a purposeful strategy?

Honestly, I wouldn't even be mad if that was actually intentional. Reddit's community in the larger subs has been getting really awful of late.

Here here.

The whole dust up over /r/fph and the few other little subs kinda horrified me. I think reddit has often veered too far into laxness (the LONG existence of /r/jailbait) and there is still an amazing ton of blatant rule violations going on.

The only problem I had with the /r/fph thing was how inconsistently enforced it was. It seemed like a ban against a relatively small group so they wouldn't have to deal with pissing off one of the bigger problem subs. It ended up looking like a fake token gesture.

Re: Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

#170

Post by shock-value »

personjerry wrote: post #71

This seems like an abuse of power to me. The people who have closed the subreddits are the moderators. These moderators should represent the desires of the users . In this case, they are instead caring for their own personal feelings/ease of moderation through communication with the Victoria. As a result, hundreds of thousands of redditors are cut off from their friends and fellow subredditors. Even the AMAs are cut…

I would imagine that users by-and-large support the shut-downs (I do, as a user). Moreover, I don't think Reddit is the sort of site that fosters friendships. A sense of community, yes, but not individual friendships. And anyway, PMs and such are unaffected so you could contact an individual without issue anyway.

> Consider this: What if the redditors, while this protest was going on, found an alternate site and all started posting there instead? Then the mods would've just effectively stripped themselves (and Reddit, Reddit admins, etc.) of power.

Why is that a problem? If the mods are actually acting in the best interests of their communities (which, in your scenario, are able to re-form on another site) then that's a positive result for them (in an altruistic sense).

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