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

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

#151

Post by Traster »

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…

One thing to think about is the formation of communities, in Reddit as with other communities 1% of the users are submitted 99% of the content and probably 80% of users are literally not even commenting. I personally think that one of the key things that stops Reddit from being abandoned is that it pisses people off for fairly political reasons (free speech, hate speech etc.) and the people likely to shout "THIS IS TERRIBLE LET'S ALL LEAVE" are those who are least attached to the platform not the most. So sure, they could leave, but the site doesn't suffer when they leave.

If you start to see changes that negatively effect the people driving content and those people losing interest, then that's a much more reliable sign that Reddit is going to suffer. That's really what killed Digg.

What I'm looking forward to see is when Reddit inevitably has to drive revenue to justify this VC capital and the smug quote from Ohanian comes back:

>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."

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

#152

Post by Pharmakon »

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…

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 logistical or engineering challenge that I'm not considering?

The “exodus” happened, it just turned out that the people who left were in fact, massive dicks. They made Voat, which is mostly dead, and where it isn’t dead, it’s a roaring dumpster fire. I guess the major issue is that a lot of the people who make a lot of noise about “free speech” aren’t really sincere, they just want a place to spew. Well, now they have it, but since they only have each other to spew all over, it’s a mess.

The people who contribute something rather than just bitching and cursing at everyone obviously didn’t want to join the worst aspects of their community in an “exodus” either. I’ve just learned to be very suspicious of free speech arguments that exist only in the abstract; it’s often a cover for antisocial assholes. People with genuine grievances, as opposed to them being the grievance, tend to lead with specific and defensible examples; the assholes just make a lot of noise and abstract slippery slopes that never materialize.

Having said all of that, if someone misses Coontown or FatPeopleHate, Voat exists. Of course since those communities existed to troll people, and those people being trolled didn’t follow them, it’s a bit moribund.

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

#153

Post by kadendogthing »

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.

No the user was/is apart of a radical political group that was harassing the admins and other users on a private website, essentially abusing the platform.

Spare me the claims of censorship. We can't even get rid of subreddits that sexualize minors or even safe havens for beastiality.

Free speech has become a thought terminating cliche.

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

#154

Post by throwaway2048 »

deadalus wrote: post #145
intopieces wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> the drama it caused is way overblown People have been arrested because of Reddit posts they made. If the admins can edit comments without any indication to the users... They can falsely accuse you of a crime. They can also identify you and ban you specially if you do or say things not in alignment with the founders of Reddit(criticizing Serina Williams got a subreddit banned recently).

Admins are always 100% going to be capable of editing posts on a website, after all they can just edit the database.

This "proof" they have the ability to do that somehow signaling danger is nothing short of ridiculous.

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

#155

Post by intopieces »

deadalus wrote: post #145
intopieces wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> the drama it caused is way overblown People have been arrested because of Reddit posts they made. If the admins can edit comments without any indication to the users... They can falsely accuse you of a crime. They can also identify you and ban you specially if you do or say things not in alignment with the founders of Reddit(criticizing Serina Williams got a subreddit banned recently).

That moderators can edit posts on Reddit throws into question the validity of state actors using it as evidence to arrest people but doesn't make it any more dangerous than it was from the start.

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

#156

Post by radiator »

rayhendricks wrote: post #5

Deleted my reddit account. They can take their $150 million, but freedom of speech and more specifically being able to criticize the state is more important than your daily dose of catpics.

I am surprised you thought there was previously freedom of speech on Reddit.

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

#157

Post by krapp »

devmunchies wrote: post #120
sergiotapia wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Don't you mean it's not an extremist right-wing haven?

I've seen plenty of ant-left, anti-feminist, anti-liberal, anti-democracy, right wing conspiracy stuff on Reddit, and of course mainstream conservative and right-wing political content.

But I don't necessarily think it's censorship to draw a line in the sand where extremism is concerned. Or if it is, then it's censhorship employed for reasons other than mere politics.

I think it's important to differentiate because the narrative here, as it's often employed, has been to describe social media as censoring "conservative" content en masse, on the premise that social media is engaging in an organized leftist conspiracy of censorship, which itself is an extension of the conspiracy theory that all mainstream media is owned and run by leftist/globalist/DNC operatives pushing a political agenda.

I think that's a misrepresentation of what actually happening, or what the motives actually are.

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

#158

Post by adrianmonk »

analyst74 wrote: post #127

How would tencent owning a minor stake in reddit allow it to censor the site? Or is this outrage mostly because tencent is a Chinese firm? I mean, censorship only works if you have the government backing you, are people legitimately fear the US government is going to bow down to a Chinese company?

I'm not sure I necessarily see it either. It's not majority ownership. They can't just tell Reddit to censor.

On the other hand, you could see it as a conflict of interest. If Reddit thinks they want an additional round of investment later, they might be tempted to do things to ingratiate themselves.

Also, people are just very touchy right now about foreign powers trying to influence American public opinion on social media. It already happened once. It's not just a hypothetical risk.

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

#159

Post by ddingus »

intopieces wrote: post #155
deadalus wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the drama it caused is way overblown People have been arrested because of Reddit posts they made. If the admins can edit comments without any indication to the users... They can falsely accuse you of a crime. They can also identify you and ban you specially if you do or say things not in alignment with the founders of Reddit(criticizing Serina Williams got a subreddit banned recently).

That moderators can edit posts on Reddit throws into question the validity of state actors using it as evidence to arrest people but doesn't make it any more dangerous than it was from the start.

Moderators cannot edit posts. An admin can, and when done with the official tool, the edit is marked, known.

What bothered people was spez editing the actual database, no timestamp, etc...

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

#160

Post by humanrebar »

ajross wrote: post #144
humanrebar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Google isn't responsible for the content of emails, WhatsApp is not responsible for the groups using it to organize, and the monuments in D.C. aren't responsible when some folks decide to yell bigoted language. There needs to be room for public spaces to just be venues. Service providers should be able to just be service providers. There should be limits, but they should mostly align with legal limits and t…

Again, though, that's what you say you want, but it's not what you want. You want moderation, you want focused discussion, you want to be free of objectionable garbage, you want high signal to noise ratio, and the proof of that is that you're having this argument on a heavily moderated discussion forum as we speak . There's no lack of "true" free speech opportunity on the internet. Sites like stormfront and 4chan rem…

I don't want the government to hold platforms accountable for user generated content.

I want private organizations to choose between being objective platforms like libraries or subjective organizations with a voice like The Washington Post. And I want norms, not laws, to enforce that distinction.

I don't want jerks interrupting my conversations with spam, but that's a very different matter than censoring people's thoughts because I don't agree or have unpleasant emotions when exposed to them.

I think HN is overmoderated, for what it's worth. It used to be more interesting but its habit of dinging threads with lots of discussion has a habit of filtering out important discussion in addition to heated discussion.

I definitely don't hold HN accountable for what random people post here.

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