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Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

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Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#161

Post by waste_monk »

sixQuarks wrote: post #10
fermienrico wrote: post #8

I've seen Reddit degrade painfully over last 8-10 years. It was full of intelligent comments, insight and unique perspective from people all over the world. Browsing the front page and reading the comments makes me sad that instead of intellectual discourse, we have a 3 billion dollar meme making machine. I wish to keep HN away from the masses as much as I'd like a broader perspective in the light of how things go wi…

I’m a 13-year reddit user. The quality of the site going down is simply a symptom of its popularity. Think how dumb the average joe is, then realize that 50% of the population is dumber than him. You can still find intelligent discussion on reddit, you just have to do a lot more work filtering.

>Think how dumb the average joe is, then realize that 50% of the population is dumber than him.

The median Joe.

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#162

Post by doorbellguy »

theNJR wrote: post #109
icelancer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? Wasn't aware that it had a significant hold in US society. Thought Instagram and Snapchat still dominated quick engagement.

Yes, it's big and growing quickly. The structure of kids memeing kids (who are told to do so by the TikTok AI and marketing team) plays well and spreads quickly.

I agree, apps like these and previously musically (sp?) are extremely shallow and promote narcissistic traits in gullible teenagers. Glad I was not a teen in 2019.

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#164

Post by calibas »

scottydelta wrote: post #149

Reddit was outraged when the users heard that Reddit was going to take $150M from Tencent but now there is not a single mention of it on the frontpage even after they took double the earlier reported amount. I cannot help but think if it's the Reddit's censorship is in play here.

Well there's a deep conflict of interest and no accountability...

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#165

Post by crowbahr »

waste_monk wrote: post #161
sixQuarks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a 13-year reddit user. The quality of the site going down is simply a symptom of its popularity. Think how dumb the average joe is, then realize that 50% of the population is dumber than him. You can still find intelligent discussion on reddit, you just have to do a lot more work filtering.

>Think how dumb the average joe is, then realize that 50% of the population is dumber than him. The median Joe.

You'd expect a site dedicated to software engineers to have a better grasp on how a bell curve works.

Even the median Joe in this case is relatively similar to most other Joe's because 2/3 of the population is within 1 standard deviation of intelligence.

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#166

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

derefr wrote: post #13
fermienrico wrote: post #8

I've seen Reddit degrade painfully over last 8-10 years. It was full of intelligent comments, insight and unique perspective from people all over the world. Browsing the front page and reading the comments makes me sad that instead of intellectual discourse, we have a 3 billion dollar meme making machine. I wish to keep HN away from the masses as much as I'd like a broader perspective in the light of how things go wi…

Reddit, like Usenet, or IRC, is just a collection of individual communities that happen to share an identity system. Expecting the (not-logged-in) Reddit front page to be “intellectual discourse” would be like expecting a random selection of Usenet posts or IRC chat-lines to be “intellectual discourse.” Try just visiting specific Reddit communities, rather than looking askew at the entire menagerie as if there was va…

Reading through all these responses, I have to wonder if there is a business opportunity for a company that provides "best content" recommendations, targeted to your interests, on these platforms.

"But wait, why don't the platforms just do that themselves?!!" I'd argue the economic incentives for the platforms to recommend "brain-candy" lobotomizing content is too high to go against this trend, but a third party with a lot less to lose could actually do a better job at recommending more useful, thoughtful content.

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#167

Post by hk-mars »

gruez wrote: post #103
jorblumesea wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China "owns" them in the investment sense, but is hardly responsible for creating it or the culture that birthed the ideas. That's the real key here. If many home grown Chinese apps or concepts take off (ala TikTok), you may be right. But at the moment, like everything in China it seems they are just keen to buy/cheat/steal. The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform.

>The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform. I doubt they'll do any overt censoring (eg. "no talking about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989), but I wouldn't be surprised if they do subtle manipulation like silently deemphasizing anti-China content, or emphasizing anti-westnern content (eg. infighting, failure of western democracy). The latter probably would probably even…

Tiananmen event is really terrible

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#168

Post by baroffoos »

bluetwo wrote: post #133

Where are the youth of this generation and why are they not creating the next killer platform?

Could it be that this generation of new programmers will never see their new tech invention become meaningful?

If someone creates a new idea and it takes off they either get huge offers from existing companies to buy it or those companies use their huge resources to build a bigger and better version.

In the age of the start of facebook and reddit there were no mega corps taking interest or possessing the talent in these areas.

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#169

Post by komali2 »

gruez wrote: post #103
jorblumesea wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China "owns" them in the investment sense, but is hardly responsible for creating it or the culture that birthed the ideas. That's the real key here. If many home grown Chinese apps or concepts take off (ala TikTok), you may be right. But at the moment, like everything in China it seems they are just keen to buy/cheat/steal. The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform.

>The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform. I doubt they'll do any overt censoring (eg. "no talking about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989), but I wouldn't be surprised if they do subtle manipulation like silently deemphasizing anti-China content, or emphasizing anti-westnern content (eg. infighting, failure of western democracy). The latter probably would probably even…

The Chinese government forced USA airlines to remove mention of the sovereign nation of Taiwan.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-44948599

They also forced GAP to remove a proper map of China that accurately displays its sovereign borders off a sweater, and then, heinously, forced it to release a map that incorrectly displays Taiwan as a portion of Chinese territory through GAP marketing channels. (Incidentally, if anybody has the correct map in male's M, I'm buying, and willing to pay dearly)

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/business/2018/05/15/gap-...

China will go to overt lengths to push their lies on the world.

Re: Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value

#170

Post by hk-mars »

_bxg1 wrote: post #106
adventured wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does it mean for America when it's no longer the owner or creator of culture? That premise is no more valid today with China than it was at the height of Japan-takes-over-the-world mania. Japan via Sony accumulated a large ownership position in US music. Sony acquired Columbia Pictures in 1989 for $3.4 billion, a huge deal at the time. Nintendo and Sega took over US video gaming from Atari. What did it mean? N…

The difference is that China has an expressly anti-democratic ideology, and its government has so far been enthusiastic about weaponizing the private sector to further its influence. That's a terrifying thing when combined with ownership over American companies, especially media companies.

Good insight, this is the fact as I known
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