Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by DanBC » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:09 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #498

bashinator wrote: post #318

Top comment from that gizmodo article: "Reddit is legitimately full of the most self important toxic people ever. It’s also home to a huge variety of all manners of genius and hilarity." I will miss it. As an Old Person™, reddit was the closest the modern Internet has come to replicating the heyday of Usenet in the 80s/90s. But because it's controlled by a single corporation instead of federating among all internet s…

Why did usenet decline?

Eternal september; lack of moderation combined with massive trolling / spam / sporge / hipcrime flooding, etc; ISPs stopped offering Usenet access as part of their packages; to most users it's baffling in comparison to something like Imgur or Reddit.

An nntp2 / nntp3 could be brilliant.

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

#502

Post by pervycreeper » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:12 AM UTC

adaml_623 wrote: post #444

go1dfish wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying that the Scarlet Letter Administration of Pao are "paper tigers swimming in a barrel of incompetence" But today's tone deafness astounds even me. They have no allies left. They also immediately destroyed the narrative that reddit just hates Pao because she's a woman. Victoria was one of the most popular and well respected admins ever. Even the tinfoil hats at /r/conspiracy trusted her not to manipula…

Your post seems quite accurate but I'd like to point out that one thing often mentioned about misogyny on the internet is that it's 'powerful' women that get the most hate. 'Powerful' women and authority figures get grief. And women in helper roles do not. So your statement is correct but perhaps people's attitudes to gender still influences their response to Pao. Food for thought

> it's 'powerful' women that get the most hate

On the contrary, compare her reception to that of powerful men who behave badly, and she seems to be benefiting from favorable treatment. Powerful men who have attracted the internet's ire by abusing the legal system with frivolous lawsuits, such as Darl McBride, Jack Thompson, or Charles Carreon, have attracted a lot more hate than Pao, and that's just for their legal hijinks, not to mention that they didn't do anything approaching what's happening to Reddit.

Furthermore, I have a hard time seeing why the powerful deserve special sympathy, especially when compared to the non-powerful.

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

#503

Post by jamespo » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:12 AM UTC

lagadu wrote: post #435

geofft wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment I replied to was trying to say that this isn't about the firing, and is about the process of limiting free speech and restricting subs in a non-transparent manner. I see none of that in the /r/askscience post. It seems to me that there are two major, unrelated tensions in Reddit at the moment: 1. Certain people want Reddit to be a haven for free speech, including speech that coordinates abusive actions. T…

> but they are fundamentally unrelated complaints They don't sound unrelated: both complaints seem to point towards a fundamental disconnect between reddit's management and its userbase.

the userbase affected by or overly concerned by [1] is a fraction of the overall userbase, and not one they care for

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

#504

Post by pervycreeper » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:31 AM UTC

fit2rule wrote: post #419

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…

We've seen this happen time and time again : USENET, Compuserve, to some degree .. AOL .. slashdot .. kuro5hin .. etc. etc. Those who fail to study their Internet history are doomed to repeat it, it seems. I've never been content with the centralized nature of Reddit as an Internet forum - for me this moment of truth has been bound to occur.

>We've seen this happen time and time again : USENET, Compuserve, to some degree .. AOL .. slashdot .. kuro5hin

What exactly is the same about what happened to those forums? All I can think of is that they declined in popularity, but maybe I'm missing some history.

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

#505

Post by Shivetya » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:36 AM UTC

kefka wrote: post #193

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…

Reddit has gone from someone who understood 'The Internet' : “We will not ban questionable subreddits,” Reddit’s CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote in the aftermath of that catastrophe. “You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere — not because we don’t care, but because we care that you make your choices betw…

Her wording should be.

We want to be a profitable platform and some of you have to go for that to happen.

The timing of the iAMA admin's removal coincides all to well with the recent Jesse Jackson AMA that went exactly as AMAs do and not how politicians want things.

Most celebrities can handle abuse and such, but there are certain one's and definitely more politicians who will not tolerate it from the rabble. To them they are royalty and damn if they will suffer humiliation, rudeness, or the like, from anyone. So likely we will soon have amusement park reddit, where there is a hint of roughness but everything is policed, scripted, and shadowbans go out like candy on halloween. AMA will likely come back as service to "the important people" Ellen and her like want to associate with to the point all posts will be so filtered it should be renamed "Ask Me Approved Questions"

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

#506

Post by caminante » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:38 AM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #227

"You'll get over it" Many HN readers should recognize that as the words a certain admin of fark.com. For those that don't recognize it, the short version of the story was the admins had developed a new front-end to Fark, but they didn't make a general announcement an update was going to happen. The just deployed it one morning... and left for a convention. When the change was discovered a little while later... well..…

I remember the Fark 2.0 backlash for Jeff's comment.

Yesterday, Ohanian appears to have made a similar comment, beginning to snowball in infamy:

  Ohanian: "Popcorn tastes good."[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...

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

#507

Post by arfliw » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:40 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #347

Malician wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're trying to make a sarcastic point here (unless I'm mistaken,) but that's probably quite true as written. Even /r/askscience supports this move [1]. It is one of the most heavily moderated subreddits on the site, with professional staff. These aren't rabblerousers, they are very hard-working volunteers who are fed up with the administration. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3by2nk/a_messa…

The comment I replied to was trying to say that this isn't about the firing, and is about the process of limiting free speech and restricting subs in a non-transparent manner. I see none of that in the /r/askscience post. It seems to me that there are two major, unrelated tensions in Reddit at the moment: 1. Certain people want Reddit to be a haven for free speech, including speech that coordinates abusive actions. T…

Nailed it. This was all about 2, not 1.

>tension 2 can fester as organizational debt for years before exploding

It has festered for years, we're watching it explode right now.

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

#508

Post by maxerickson » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:45 AM UTC

sentenza wrote: post #450

beedogs wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, before they started hellbanning all of those subreddits (TrayvonMartin, fatpeoplehate, etc.) I had no idea they even existed. For 8 years I've been blissfully unaware of all the garbage subreddits popping up.

Well then consider yourself lucky that your favourite subreddits weren't targets. I spend way too much time on reddit and I have had to retreat from a few subreddits because of the FPH brigaders (using RES to tag them so I could see when a wave of them hit a sub). I was close to losing all hope just before they banned it. It would not have surprised me to see Conde Nast pull the plug on reddit before the end of 2015…

Conde Nast is not part of the ownership structure of reddit. Conde Nast is owned by the major owner of reddit, Advance Publications, but reddit has not been part of Conde Nast for years. The ownership also got more diffuse last year:

http://recode.net/2014/09/30/reddit-raises-50m-plans-to-shar...

Advance notes that they are affiliated with reddit, but that is aboot it:

http://www.advance.net/

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

#509

Post by pervycreeper » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:46 AM UTC

sentenza wrote: post #457

pyre wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite your own image / plans being your own responsibility, it's not like there aren't people with public profiles (celebs, politicians, etc) out there who are vindictive over failed PR events.

I think I have a plausible explanation (please beware, this is 100% conjecture). Hypothesis 1: Jackson's AMA went badly, he/his team was specifically pissed at Victoria and demanded consequences, threatening a public campaign against reddit. Hypothesis 2: Conde Nast is not happy about the public perception of reddit as the biggest blob of hate on the Internet. So they might have given them a "one more headline news s…

>Jackson's AMA went badly, he/his team was specifically pissed at Victoria and demanded consequences, threatening a public campaign against reddit.

This is a very plausible conjecture, especially in view of admins' comments in wake of the fatpeoplehate ban explicitly permitting racist anti-black subreddits to continue to operate. This could have become an existential threat to reddit. In view of that, and their apparent weathering of past anti-user controversies, a user revolt would seem like the lesser evil from a short-sighted perspective.

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

#510

Post by simonswords82 » Fri, Jul 03, 2015, 11:48 AM UTC

HappyTypist wrote: post #291

pdkl95 wrote: post #227

"You'll get over it" Many HN readers should recognize that as the words a certain admin of fark.com. For those that don't recognize it, the short version of the story was the admins had developed a new front-end to Fark, but they didn't make a general announcement an update was going to happen. The just deployed it one morning... and left for a convention. When the change was discovered a little while later... well..…

This is a great talk for anyone managing communities. Reddit's current situation does bear many resemblances, especially with kn0thing's "Thank you for the feedback. I hope you change your mind about reddit, but if not, you're entitled to your opinion." response.

That statement from kn0thing made me think "pride does indeed come before a fall". Let's see!