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

china-underground.com

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

#171

Post by nabla9 »

asaph wrote: post #67
yuxt wrote: post #31

I am surprised no one mentioned Digg here. It was the original Reddit. Arguably its demise is attributed by inflow of VCs capital following by pivoting direction. Which resulted in community leaving for Reddit. P.S. found this old article https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/13/reddit-didn...

> Digg ... was the original Reddit. And Slashdot was the original Digg.

And the Usenet was the original Slashdot and the original social media.

Oh, and moderators were pigs and fascists even in the Usenet that was not controlled by any greedy corporation.

Any Meow War veterans here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meow_Wars

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

#172

Post by beaner »

intopieces wrote: post #114
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.

Even if the user got it wrong, you can't edit a user's speech and claim to be a place for free speech. Speaking incorrectly is a part of free speech.

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

#173

Post by bdcravens »

supercanuck wrote: post #30
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…

I wish Reddit could be run as a non-profit. Its benefit to society is immense.

It only has that benefit because of investment, and that investment would have never come had it been a non-profit.

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

#174

Post by ganeshkrishnan »

debaserab2 wrote: post #105
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…

I work at a SaaS product that hasn’t taken any VC money. We have a modest staff, everyone gets paid very adequately, and we slowly are growing our business as our margin allows us to. It’s not glamorous, it’s not explosive, but it does create a great work life balance. I have little fear of losing my job because we’re running out of funding, or having to build something we don’t believe in to appease shareholders. I…

I would love to run such a saas business. Unfortunately, we have to hire and increase revenues just to be cash flow positive and for that we have to hit the streets with our VC pitch bowls.

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

#175

Post by acct1771 »

supercanuck wrote: post #30
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…

I wish Reddit could be run as a non-profit. Its benefit to society is immense.

So was Slashdot, Digg, etc.

There will be other places.

Stop enabling centralization, and promote decentralised options =D

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

#176

Post by stronglikedan »

rospaya wrote: post #50
qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked digg. A lot. Then v2.0 came, and I left to Reddit. A few months ago, I had a script write over all my comments, and deleted the account. Reddit is the new digg v3.0.

Ah, so you're one of the people that makes reading older threads on reddit a pain. Hope you know you directly made my internet experience worse.

> so you're one of the people...

I am too. I'm happy you're happy. You got exactly what I owed you.

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

#177

Post by kibwen »

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.

It's a sign of how rightward the Overton window has shifted that people could think that you have to be full-blown Stormfront before you leave the realm of "really tame". Against my own better interest I spend a significant amount of my day surfing reddit, and I claim that the current trend of right-sympathetic talking points (e.g. anti-immigrant and anti-feminist sentiment) on the front page is seeing a steady and significant rise in 2019 after falling off heavily in 2017 and remaining relatively flat in 2018. Here's a comment thread that reached the front page yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/aogcjg/opini... . You don't need a dedicated /r/nazi when it's far more effective from a propagandist standpoint to diffuse through the site to ostensibly "neutral" subreddits to shift discourse in a given direction.

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

#178

Post by moojd »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #150

I feel like it would be incredibly easy for 1 person to make a reddit clone with what's available today. Reddit's advantage is its network but a competitor's platform would sky rocket in situations like these.

There is one (voat) but unfortunately it turned into a cesspool. What I would like to see is the concept of sub-reddits decentralized. Each subreddit could be it's own instance and you peer with the ones you like. It could even be API compatible with Reddit so app developers could just let users enter all of the domains they want to follow. If Reddit bans a subreddit they could just move to their own server and users could just add the domain to relay, sync, Apollo, baconreader or whatever

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

#179

Post by beaner »

IvyMike wrote: post #168
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).

> If the admins can edit comments without any indication to the users... I feel like this is possible on every website ever made.

But in how many cases has a CEO of a multi-million-user site done it themselves, off the cuff? It means there's no oversight. Oversight isn't expected if you're using Joe Schmoe's 2 person game forum. It's expected at Reddit.

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

#180

Post by ddingus »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #169
ddingus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it is not. Users need to know the conversation is coherent. Real. Reddit is not always casual chat. There is hide, delete and edit with a clear history for all involved. Touching the database changes the record of reality without leaving history of it happening. The database edit is what drove the spez controversy.

Again, this is always possible, its possible on HN, its possible on gmail, its possible on every single site on the internet, that is how the technology works. This isn't some kind of dark secret backdoor spez built into the reddit codebase. Immature and stupid action maybe, but some kind of scary sentinel of how admin power can be uniquely abused at reddit, it isn't.

And again, being possible is not the issue.

Of course it is possible.

That it was done, and why is a big issue.

And it did not need to be done, nor that way.

A direct edit can make sense, and when it does, there is also every reason to communicate why.

The why of what spez did is a significant contributor to the controversy. Lack of a record and no communication, until forced is another significant contributor.

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