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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

#541

Post by narrator »

AUmrysh wrote: post #153
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...

What's really sad is that reddit and Alexis were, arguably, the most successful Y-Combinator startup, and now they've fallen by the wayside as cronyism and personal agendas take over. Alexis let this happen, though. Not that I blame him, I'd have taken the money too.

Seems another business model for the internet is : Create authentic community, sell out community to corporate highest bidder who can then eliminate unwanted controversial discussion. Reddit could have monetized like craigslist and made tons of money. Idiots.

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

#542

Post by kchoudhu »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #533
madeofpalk wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have to think it's a problem of her making to think that she is singularly incapable of solving it. This is, after all, a person so far removed from the reddit community that she posted a link to her own inbox.[0] I think she's singularly incapable of solving it, but that's fine. I don't think it's reasonable to expect her to be. She should be running a company and building a team that can solve it. Yes,…

What was that about CEOs being responsible for building culture? Pao may or may not be an idiot in the same league as Fiorina, Apotheker, and - arguably - Whitman and Ballmer. But I think the Reddit flareup is part of a more general disgust with emotionally damaged management culture which is devoted to profits before people, but is so bad at people that profits tank too. There's a point beyond which being rich and p…

> on a profit production line

Dude, what profit?

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

#543

Post by sudioStudio64 »

The people claiming that Reddit needs to be more consistent keep saying that they only censor something when it bubbles up to the top. That's pretty much the only content moderation model that has EVER worked. No one likes it, and it seems hypocritical, but its what the entire internet does.

Look at Google. France complains about Nazi related material. They block Nazi material in France. They index massive amounts of porn, and take down individual images that offend people. It's sub-optimal, but it largely works.

Now, the thing that has changed is that normal people have started getting a dose of the kind of speech that they consider "hate speech" IRL from sites like Reddit. What they are demanding is that fringe positions remain fringe positions.

Something as mainstream as Reddit will not be allowed to serve up red pill/racist/homophobe/far-right content. They will keep doing this stuff until that content goes somewhere else. Maybe that's a good thing...I don't know, but at least having it in one place made it easy to see what crazy people are up to these days. Know your enemy, etc.

As for the corporate thing...that's always going to seem schizophrenic...corporations aren't rational people. They make snap decisions that seem reasonable in the moment because they lack functional memories. Fuck em.

Want something different? Find a way to spread the cost of running something like Reddit over a larger group of people in a decentralized model. And then get ready for the us vs them to move to "inner circle" vs "outer circle"...

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

#544

Post by AndrewKemendo »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #539

The intense vitriol about Ellen Pao makes me very suspicious of most complaints from vocal redditors. I'm not even really sure why the anti-fem crowd hates her so much. But man...wow. If some of the things that I've read today are to be believed, the firing of this admin was a stupid act. Reddit and several other "web 2.0" companies made it big on "user generated content" which always seemed like it had the potential…

As a long time redditor I think I can help shine some light here. When Yishong Wang left abruptly there was a real pull from the community to bring Alexis back - or if not him then someone who was "from reddit." When Pao was announced the thought was "why is a lawyer taking over?" She reeks of 1%ers which redditors love to bash on when they see one bleeding (not Elon Musk of course).

Within just a few months Pao made some major moves that directly impacted reddit staff and could be attributed to her presence - namely eliminating salary negotiations, which caused a big stir. The banning of specific hate-speech subreddits at her direction pushed large segments of the community against her for a variety of reasons - some cause they were just mad they lost a platform and other stating that it was anti-democratic censorship.

Her massive public lawsuit, which was panned as frivolous across the web, basically killed any remaining credibility she did have with the community. When she lost the suit it was like fuel to the fire.

Now pretty much anything she does is toxic.

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

#545

Post by sudioStudio64 »

orbitur wrote: post #540
sudioStudio64 wrote: post #539

The intense vitriol about Ellen Pao makes me very suspicious of most complaints from vocal redditors. I'm not even really sure why the anti-fem crowd hates her so much. But man...wow. If some of the things that I've read today are to be believed, the firing of this admin was a stupid act. Reddit and several other "web 2.0" companies made it big on "user generated content" which always seemed like it had the potential…

A large subset of vocal redditors hated Pao the moment she walked through the door. Now everything that happens on her watch is considered evidence of her awfulness. Goes to show you just how powerful the MRA subreddits are. I used to be staunchly "free speech above all", but seeing how blind hatred can fester and spread has filled me with a lot of doubts about us, as a group of humans.

I'm with you there.

A couple of years ago a group of people that I was attracted to due to their professed reliance on reason and scientific method turned out to be virulently anti-female.

And then this fringe hatefulness just seems to have pervaded everything...even computing forums that are dedicated to what I thought were relatively dispassionate topics that are quite arcane have had death threats lobbed at people who just have a different opinion. It's fucking weird.

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

#546

Post by ArtB »

jamespo wrote: post #503
lagadu wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Libertarians care about [1] and are a significant percentage of the user base and a worthwhile demographic for advertising etc.

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

#547

Post by termain »

leod wrote: post #449
termain wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest directed acyclic graph comments, too, so that a comment can reply to more than one other comment. Potentially super nice, but I haven't seen anyone implement them yet.

That's certainly an interesting idea, but wouldn't some people just "reply all" for more visibility?

That's a good point. I was thinking along the lines of something that's essentially like reddit or HN, but had a field where you could add additional parent comment ids, so that the parent poster was notified of the reply.

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

#548

Post by pjc50 »

kefka wrote: post #524
termain wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest directed acyclic graph comments, too, so that a comment can reply to more than one other comment. Potentially super nice, but I haven't seen anyone implement them yet.

You mean "Bring back Usenet". Because that is what Reddit is serving, as well as the previous board sites the people came from. Usenet was decentralized, no logins, and some were moderated. But this is what the people want, yet they do not know the name. Most NG servers are shut down.

Usenet was decentralised, and therefore utterly unable to deal with spam and abuse. That's a problem any distributed system will have to face too.

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

#550

Post by Gigablah »

pron wrote: post #484
rodgerd wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot ethics in game journalism.

LOL (I think this is the first time I've ever written that word, but I really laughed this time). Well done! :) But hey, kids need to feel important too, and nothing gives you a sense of belonging as a manufactured conspiracy and a sense of persecution.

> But hey, kids need to feel important too

This is a basic emotional need, why are you mocking it?

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