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Reddit is still in turmoil

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Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#231

Post by dingo_bat »

dang wrote: post #178
dingo_bat wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reddit isn't Internet infrastructure. It is a startup. The plan from day one was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard, get acquired, and make the founders rich. Can you point out the specific words that "demean" the work of others? All I see is the assertion that reddit is a startup (which is factual) and the founders wanted to get rich (which is true for every founder I know, and is not demeaning in any way).

"The plan from day one was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard [and] get acquired". This superciliously presumes to know what the founders were thinking, makes it sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit since "from day one" they supposedly had something more trivial in mind, and implies that they were merely in it for a quick flip. In reality they were almost certainly more genuine about it than that; they…

>makes it sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit

So the inference made by the commenter conflicts with the inference made by you. So what? Maybe they (reddit founders) really didn't care, maybe they did. Cases can be made for both, with varying degrees of conviction.

The whole thing is highly subjective. I don't agree with the conclusion either, but it's not a mindless personal attack. To me it's an opinion, and even the language used to express the opinion was structured in a civil manner.

I am defending the comment because I can see myself making a similar comment in another context without any intent in my mind to offend anybody or poison the discussion.

Honestly, I feel censoring these sort of comments is extremely childish. I am not the moderator, you are. So the final decision rests with you. I hope I have made my case and you will consider my comments in future.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#232

Post by cLeEOGPw »

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

> the most tolerant communities attract people who are difficult to tolerate

This is very insightful line. And it applies not just to internet communities, but any real life communities as well.

> I suspect Twitter is having similar issues dealing with harassment, after letting it happen for so long.

> Don't just tack them on after several years, and don't enforce them inconsistently and arbitrarily as Reddit has done.

Twitter is well on the same path. The inconsistency is what makes many furious. When you ban harassment from one political end, but allow from other, it doesn't paint the company as fighting harassment. It paints a company as fighting one political end.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#233

Post by CM30 »

ben_jones wrote: post #147
a_small_island wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"The future is probably something where people pay a small amount to access a forum that's somehow distributed on their machines (phones, PCs, etc) and not controlled by any organization. Data transfer (even mobile) and storage are getting cheaper. It'll be like bitcoin, but for discussions." No. The future is the next Digg, the next Reddit, etc. Just like a torrent site, when one goes down (for whatever reason), th…

Here's the problem (IMO): Reddit has too many features and too big a userbase to replicate as Reddit itself did a decade ago. voat.co has been in development for years and still lacks crucial systems for things like content moderation, monetization, scaling, etc. Essentially for a coup of Reddit to occur you have to take a large chunk of Reddit at once. That is very hard to do.

Voat's issue is that it managed to get users from the most controversial communities... and that's about it. If you're not interested in Donald Trump, GamerGate or something similarly controversial, then Voat is simply a really empty forum that doesn't have enough members or posts to keep people returning.

It's having the issue a lot of 'free speech' centric services have; it appeals to a minority who feel censored, but not the mass market that simply want to discuss less controversial topics.

And until there's enough people able to talk about a variety of subjects, the site is basically pigeonholed as the 'place people banned from Reddit might go'.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#234

Post by CM30 »

bane wrote: post #39

Why the hell is Reddit trying to make their own content when the entire point of the site is for the users to create the content? Don't make a Reddit podcast, make Reddit a podcast hosting network. Don't make a Reddit video show, make Reddit a video hosting site. Don't make a Reddit magazine, make Reddit a source for anybody to publish their own magazines. Why does Reddit have writers and editors and creative directo…

> Want to increase quality and revenue? Give a cut of advertising revenue to the mods of successful, high quality subs.

I've seen a lot of sites try this, and I'm trying it myself on my own site.

However, it can very easily go wrong. If you restrict it to mods (like said here), you incentivise them to only allow topics that advertisers might like (at the expense of the community). Or only topics which can get clicks from average Joes that pass by every now and then.

If you provide revenue sharing in general, you often then incentivise spam by giving people a reason to post as quickly as possible to get their ads up there. It's why Digitalpoint scrapped the idea; quality was in the gutter because of it.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#235

Post by anjc »

ben_jones wrote: post #150
nabnob wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a successful company that appeals to a broad range of users is related to having a diverse staff. Reddit has serious problems with blatant racism, sexism, and harassment on many of the larger subreddits. Until they start taking these issues seriously, they will have a hard time expanding their user base to include more women and minorities.

I hear that sentiment echoed a lot, but is their any hard evidence proving that a diverse staff increases the value significantly to the diverse demographics they themselves represent? WhatsApp is incredibly popular in South America and Africa, were their a proportionate number of South Americans and Africans on the WhatsApp team of ~18 people? Genuine question because I hear this preached like the bible whenever div…

Yeah, it's made-up bullshit which sounds like it makes sense. Enforced diversity is only a thing in the past few years, so you only have to think of....almost any mass-market product from before then to know it's untrue.

It's funny to me that someone can say "having a diverse userbase is related to having a diverse workforce" with a straight face, while half the shit in their/everyone's home is Chinese and Japanese.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#236

Post by jules »

rmc wrote: post #213
im4w1l wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Rust leadership tolerates harassment and threats as long as its against the right wing. One of Rust's top people wants to violently purge the tech community. https://archive.is/BtDaA

"right wing" or "far right wing". Remember we're talking about literal neo-nazis here, not just Conservatives.

That's not how it goes in practice. The fact that the people in that twitter thread endorse antifa shows that they are either ignorant of what antifa actually is (as opposed to what it claims to be), or they endorse an organisation that is more fascist than the fascists it purports to fight.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#237

Post by mrweasel »

DanBC wrote: post #225
mrweasel wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>either they want controlled speech that meets Liberal guidelines and a Social Justice Agenda, to attract more people like that to provide a safe place on the Internet There's a lot of well made points to you post, so I feel bad focusing only on this one thing, but I really don't believe in creating a "safe place". It's simply not possible to provide a safe place online, while providing a platform for any meaningful…

> but I really don't believe in creating a "safe place". It's simply not possible to provide a safe place online, while providing a platform for any meaningful debate. Rape threats and other threats of violence are not part of meaningful debate. Unsolicited images of genitalia are not part of meaningful debate. Anti semitism like this [1] isn't part of meaningful debate. You can safely ban all of these without harm t…

>You can safely ban all of these without harm to the robust debate in the community.

Of cause you can, my point is that banning these things, all of which is illegal anyway, won't even get you half-way to creating a safe space.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#238

Post by makomk »

CM30 wrote: post #227
twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation. If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is/isn't acceptable. Twitter doesn't really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you're popular en…

Twitter's other problem is that they cannot be consistent in their moderation, because when they ban someone threatening violence against celebrities in the name of, say, feminism the campaign to reinstate them comes from people in the tech industry and press that they can't ignore.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#239

Post by socket0 »

jib wrote: post #222
twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

I dunno, it seems weird to me to treat reddit as one community. I use reddit a lot, but really 99% of my interactions is on /r/cfb, which is a space far from the descriptions painted here. It is a community (and I do believe it is a community of its own) imo not far away from Hacker News in terms of creating and curating interesting content, and discussing it, for a focused group of interest, except rather than tech…

I think you've nailed it here. Viewed from the outside, Reddit is a very different place than when viewed from the inside. Outsiders tend to go to the default subs, which are the first subs you unsubscribe from when you choose to stay. Once people migrate to a topic-focused sub with decent moderators, they definitely become part of a community.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#240

Post by blahi »

morgante wrote: post #203
blahi wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh god. There are no "investors". Reddit is owned by Conde Nast's parent company. The only other shareholders are employees.

Wrong. Reddit has recently received substantial outside investments: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/01/reddit-se...

I stand corrected.
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