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Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
101–110 of 207 posts
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that's what sort of happened. He broke in to an MIT networking closet (he was never a student there, and MIT is not a public university) and connected his equipment to the network. https://www.wired.com/2013/12/swartz-video/ There are a lot of much more legal ways to make the Internet freer. He was a smart guy and knew what he was doing was highly illegal. It goes without saying that it's very tragic that he de…
> He broke in to an MIT networking closet (he was never a student there) and connected his equipment to the network. The closet was unlocked and he used a regular guest access to the MIT network. Also he was downloading documents that were created by using public funds. > There are a lot of much more legal ways to make the Internet freer. He was a smart guy and knew what he was doing was highly illegal. There are alw…
I’m not really talking about the definition of martyrdom, I’m talking about the effects of martyrdom on the general public.
E.g., what would Christianity become had Jesus not died on the cross? The central motivation of the Christian faith is that Christ died for our sins. It wouldn’t be so impactful if Jesus died of old age like everyone else.
I’m basically saying that being a martyr is something that amplifies a person’s image, and that’s the reason why Aaron came up in the first place.
If he took the six month plea deal and was alive today, he would not be part of this discussion.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people have to listen to a podcast to hear them present a balanced view, clearly they've failed to do so publicly. I'll pass on listening to the podcast, there are thousands of others I'd rather listen to. Thanks anyways.
Well I guess we'll both agree to disagree about the nuances of the early years of Reddit, something neither of us know anything about. Oh well.
I think I understand it pretty well.
Edit: I had to retract what I said here because a lot of things the reddit founders said from 2006-2009 seem to be missing and I couldn't find anything to back it up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20339
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#104When looking up Digg on wikipedia I found this gem: Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open letter to Rose: this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to "give the power back to the people." Apparently nobody can resist the allure of VC meddling.
Funny both Alexis is a VC now, and he actually invested in kevin's NFT 10k PFP (Moonbrids)
The Reddit Mafia
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He broke in to an MIT networking closet (he was never a student there) and connected his equipment to the network. The closet was unlocked and he used a regular guest access to the MIT network. Also he was downloading documents that were created by using public funds. > There are a lot of much more legal ways to make the Internet freer. He was a smart guy and knew what he was doing was highly illegal. There are alw…
I’m not really talking about the definition of martyrdom, I’m talking about the effects of martyrdom on the general public. E.g., what would Christianity become had Jesus not died on the cross? The central motivation of the Christian faith is that Christ died for our sins. It wouldn’t be so impactful if Jesus died of old age like everyone else. I’m basically saying that being a martyr is something that amplifies a pe…
I'd agree that people aren't invoking him because they care about him personally, people seldom give a darn when someone else isn't being given full credit. But I think it doesn't have anything to do with martyrdom: People were complaining about the reddit thing wrt Aaron while he was alive too.
The comments are driven out of concern and feelings of loss related to reddit's former perceived public-spirited democratic spirit in favor of corporate interests. It's only natural that people would highlight an early participant who seemed more aligned with their perspective and who seems to have been diminished in the modern narrative.
Does Aaron's separation with reddit explain its cultural changes? Things are seldom that simple. But when talking on a forum about our concerns with how reddit has changed over the years a simple view is perfectly appropriate-- so for some people bringing up the missing co-founder, is a suitable way to express their views.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some people at Reddit and sadly it's definitely going to happen.
Used Reddit for 14 years as a registered member and longer since before I signed up. The day old.reddit.com stops working is the day I stop using reddit completely, I detest their new UI so much that it’s essentially unusable for me.
yeah, it's pretty wild how bad it is
I ended up having to pay $2 for a Safari iOS extension to auto-redirect reddit links to old.reddit just so I could actually read the site when I got there via web searches. There's no usability whatsoever
I just painstakingly pinch and pan around old.reddit rather than try to wrestle with their dog-awful app or redesign
semi-related: I've been trying to get the WallStreetBets mods to just make their own version of Reddit instead of putting up with the admins' constant bullshit.. they're basically singlehandedly funding that whole shitshow and get nothing out of it but scam ads, users randomly banned for saying a no-no word, etc
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Digg had it first, Reddit was Digg's second cousin. Reddit never took off until Digg shot itself in the kneecap. Digg was where the "fresh content" came from. If Digg hadn't made the v2.0 mistake; Reddit wouldn't be where it was now. The accounts may of not been fake, but reddit for sure had many plants; it was even boasted by the administration team prior Conde Nest. And now it's more blatant than before.
> Digg was where the "fresh content" came from. This is not quite true. StumbleUpon is where fresh content came from. It was popularized on digg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon
Fancy that. Thanks for the update in history.
I guess before that it was Newgrounds.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#108When looking up Digg on wikipedia I found this gem: Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open letter to Rose: this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to "give the power back to the people." Apparently nobody can resist the allure of VC meddling.
Funny both Alexis is a VC now, and he actually invested in kevin's NFT 10k PFP (Moonbrids) The Reddit Mafia
reddit basically became everything the founders mocked when they first started it. https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2.html
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not really talking about the definition of martyrdom, I’m talking about the effects of martyrdom on the general public. E.g., what would Christianity become had Jesus not died on the cross? The central motivation of the Christian faith is that Christ died for our sins. It wouldn’t be so impactful if Jesus died of old age like everyone else. I’m basically saying that being a martyr is something that amplifies a pe…
I'd agree that people aren't invoking him because they care about him personally, people seldom give a darn when someone else isn't being given full credit. But I think it doesn't have anything to do with martyrdom: People were complaining about the reddit thing wrt Aaron while he was alive too. The comments are driven out of concern and feelings of loss related to reddit's former perceived public-spirited democratic…
Perhaps you’re right…which brings up another point: all these people building idealist products need to stop selling out to investors and acquiring companies.
The recent news about Imgur violating its original purpose of being the anti-photobucket image host for Reddit is the same thing, and even worse: Imgur was bootstrapped.
A founder can’t be said to have an idealist perspective if they sell their idealist platform to the highest bidder.
Jack Dorsey also comes to mind.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some people at Reddit and sadly it's definitely going to happen.
That is the day I will quit reddit and never look back. 6 months ago I rarely used old.reddit.com, but now I run into more and more dark patterns all the time. They tried to TikTok my feed and it was an awful experience. I frequently default to it now instead of using it only when I get sick of the dark patterns. Reddit got popular because Digg screwed up their comment threading. It's sad to see reddit is starting to…
> The problem with all of these sites is they start to service the lowest common denominator in the name of next quarters profits. [...] It seems so clear to me that billionaires mean we can't have nice things"
The pressure to increase quarterly profits to the detriment of the long-term emerges from the very nature of short-term investment, particularly as facilitated by stock exchanges. Eliminating billionaires would not eliminate this dynamic.