Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

china-underground.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 353 posts

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#111

Post by devoply »

tcd wrote: post #104
devoply wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Digg found out many years ago. There is nothing stopping Reddit users from leaving. The question is which straw breaks the camel's back... and also lack of viable alternatives, a la Reddit to Digg.

Apart from the fact there is no decent reddit alternative. That is after reddit offered their entire product free with the source code and data (and the data is still offered for free...) If there was going to be an alternative, it would be here by now. People just don't care that much, contrary to what you may believe.

I believe their open source copy is no longer maintained. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6xh3xp/reddits...

But a code base is not an alternative, an alternative is an actual community with a similar focus. You could potentially build it on Reddit's code base if you wanted... but you have to build that somehow. Network effects prevent that from forming and from people leaving existing communities.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#112

Post by Pxtl »

jumbopapa wrote: post #9

Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The Reddit situation reminds me of the post about failing to build a billion dollar company a few days ago. Reddit is trying to make VCs happy and continue to grow the business, but a platform like Reddit is best as a less reliant on growth, but s…

Well, can you blame them for developing a habit of censorship when the laissez-faire approach gave them a huge problem with kiddie-porn trading, extreme racism, destructive conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, misogyny, pro-rape communities, etc?

They tried the hands-off approach and it failed spectacularly. The site spent its boom years with basically negligible community-management while it spent its efforts doing damage-control on its overwhelmed servers.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#113

Post by ardy42 »

jmknoll wrote: post #96

There have been a number of planned exoduses from Reddit over the years (the banning of FatPeopleHate, some kind of succession crisis with the CEO, and the banning of the AMA mod, to name some off the top of my head), but none of them has actually materialized into anything. My question is - What is preventing this? Is it just a matter of getting enough critical mass onto the new platform? Or is there some other logi…

> My question is - What is preventing this? Is it just a matter of getting enough critical mass onto the new platform? Or is there some other logistical or engineering challenge that I'm not considering?

I think there are a few factors:

1) Is there a similar site already out there that's ready to take thee exodus? Voat doesn't count.

2) Nothing political can effectively drive a migration, because politics are too fragmented. If people are tuned into any issues at all, they're probably only tuned in to one or two, and each issue only has a minority of people tuned into it.

Reddit's smart enough to avoid political positions that are so widely reviled that they could drive an exodus.

3) Regressions in functionality that affect everyone, or a critical set of users, could drive an exodus, I think. But only as long as #1 can be answered in the affirmative.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#114

Post by intopieces »

jumbopapa wrote: post #9

Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The Reddit situation reminds me of the post about failing to build a billion dollar company a few days ago. Reddit is trying to make VCs happy and continue to grow the business, but a platform like Reddit is best as a less reliant on growth, but s…

>The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten.

The CEO changed a single post from "fuck " to "fuck " for an hour. While certainly this action was not received well, the drama it caused is way overblown and isn't evidence of being 'plagued with censorship.'

If anything it's plagued with shills from governments and corporations.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#115

Post by tehwebguy »

jmknoll wrote: post #96

There have been a number of planned exoduses from Reddit over the years (the banning of FatPeopleHate, some kind of succession crisis with the CEO, and the banning of the AMA mod, to name some off the top of my head), but none of them has actually materialized into anything. My question is - What is preventing this? Is it just a matter of getting enough critical mass onto the new platform? Or is there some other logi…

The answer is simple: community. Reddit is where the community is.

Digg presumably had more traffic at some point but it was always a voteable link dump with a comment section. It was never really a community.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#116

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Pxtl wrote: post #112
jumbopapa wrote: post #9

Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly that's been forgotten. The Reddit situation reminds me of the post about failing to build a billion dollar company a few days ago. Reddit is trying to make VCs happy and continue to grow the business, but a platform like Reddit is best as a less reliant on growth, but s…

Well, can you blame them for developing a habit of censorship when the laissez-faire approach gave them a huge problem with kiddie-porn trading, extreme racism, destructive conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, misogyny, pro-rape communities, etc? They tried the hands-off approach and it failed spectacularly. The site spent its boom years with basically negligible community-management while it spent its efforts doing d…

If the hands-off approach coincides with the site's "boom years", then an alternative view is that it was, in fact, a huge benefit.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#117

Post by da_chicken »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #66

Are there examples of companies that said “this is enough money” and stopped concentrating on having ever increasing profits every quarter to satisfy VC or stock investors? I think of this a lot lately. It seems companies don’t want to just do what they do well anymore and be satisfied with that. Can someone give me some inspiration? Companies that have such pride in their work that they aren’t constantly looking for…

> Are there examples of companies that said “this is enough money” and stopped concentrating on having ever increasing profits every quarter to satisfy VC or stock investors?

Yes, except they're most often private companies and not publicly traded. Many of these inspirational companies are family owned and operated. Eventually, however, someone will get in charge of the company who isn't satisfied with "good enough" and they'll take the company public or accept investors and choose to place profit over concerns like customer satisfaction and employee well being. In other words, eventually someone will decide, "My pocket book is more important than the community I live in."

If you want inspiration, look at the Chelsea Milling Company, makers of Jiffy mix. It's nearly 90 years old, has approximately 65 percent of the pre-mixed cornbread market in the United States, and has never had a marketing department and does not advertise.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#118

Post by intopieces »

mistermann wrote: post #80
fxfan wrote: post #68

I think the concern shouldn't just be about censorship but also about political interference. First Russia and now China. Foreign ownership of media is a national security concern.

What direct, trustworthy evidence is there of Russia political interference? Not a criminal charge, but the most convincing evidence ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#119

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

saagarjha wrote: post #93
tehwebguy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that won’t let that prank go have no business in any discussion about the platform. It’s a completely disingenuous argument.

The issue was that the "prank" demonstrated the amount of power the Reddit admins had over the site, and created discussion as to whether it could be abused.

> and created discussion as to whether it could be abused.

But the conversation was kicked off by it being abused. The conclusion is already there.

Re: Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform

#120

Post by devmunchies »

sergiotapia wrote: post #43
sodosopa wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Editing one post is bad, but also consider that they've become a massive safe harbor for the alt-right. Reddit admins routinely dismiss threats, quick to hide accounts from people like Elliott Rodgers, etc. They edited a the_donald post all while allowing bigotry and hate speech flourish on Reddit.

> consider that they've become a massive safe harbor for the alt-right. I would say 95% of the website is firmly liberal. Try saying anything conservative anywhere on the platform and you'll be either: - Banned - Downvoted - Shadowbanned

Seriously. I’ve read some pretty extreme right wing views around the internet and NONE of them can be found on reddit (e.g. Charles Lindbergh’s views on ecofascism) (I’m a conservationist). It’s not a right wing haven. They’ve allowed a sub for the sitting president, but censored everything else that isn’t really tame.
Post reply on HN