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Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

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Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#281

Post by 6cd6beb »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #259

I know someone worked for reddit for a while last year (they don't anymore because they hated every second of it) and from what I understand the engineering teams there are a nightmare of groups that don't talk to each other, constantly write the same code in completely different ways, have no common style and just shoehorn in whatever they want. Everything breaks pretty much all the time. All of that is aside from t…

>the platform itself hosts tons of alt-right, incel, racist, sexist, and violent content.

This is despite being pretty ban-happy in general about topics they don't like. So now they've got the worst of a censorship-heavy platform and the worst of a censorship-free platform.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#282

Post by xiphias2 »

minimaxir wrote: post #16

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

The worst thing in promoting their app is that I would gladly use it if it was faster than a web site, but it loads so much slower that it's just a much worse experience.

Google realized that load times are critical 20 years ago. Facebook realized it when Google was launching G+.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#283

Post by bsder »

josteink wrote: post #271
ChrisSD wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the AMP pages give them preferential treatment in Google search results. I doubt they'd want to give that up.

So you are saying Google is blackmailing websites into having a terrible user-experience? I guess everbody sucks on this new, modern and JS-USB-enabled (thanks again Google!) web.

> So you are saying Google is blackmailing websites into having a terrible user-experience?

Pretty much, yes.

AMP compliance gets you a better Google search placement. So, every site is going to make sure they get their AMP placement and then funnel you to something non-Google.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#284

Post by travisoneill1 »

minimaxir wrote: post #16

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

> incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem.

But Reddit is only one of those things.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#285

Post by stevekemp »

jandrese wrote: post #177
nopriorarrests wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a few cases. - you want to advertise B2B software to small/medium business owners. - you want to advertise expensive fashion items to 20-35 y.o. women in NY/CT. Will you pick FB or reddit? And then yes, lack of brand safety for non-targeted ads.

Can you not pick specific subreddits to advertise in (or have your ad appear next to on the home page)? Seems like your userbase self-segments pretty quickly on Reddit, although it's no doubt a fulltime job for several engineers to keep up with the classifications on subreddits. I guess the biggest problem is that so many users don't log in and just browse the default, which is pretty generic. Reddit could track the…

Yes, you can target subreddits.

I used to post my DNS-host (dns-api.com) on /r/sysadmin, for example.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#286

Post by deminature »

benbristow wrote: post #249
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do mind them promoting their app, it’s a horrible app and they’ve continually ruined their website. The only way I can stand to use reddit anymore is through Narwhal, at least until they kill their 3rd party apps API.

If their API is killed I think Reddit's done for. I wouldn't use it if I were forced to use the official app myself, sure many others wouldn't either. Folk would probably move over to something like voat.co

Voat is appalling and revels in its terribleness. There has to be something better to migrate to.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#287

Post by 6cd6beb »

Liru wrote: post #203
blotter_paper wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another clear red line was when spez started editing comments.[0] It was childish and non-consequential, but should have resulted in an immediate exodus from the platform. I'm not politically aligned with r/The_Donald, but I think this sort of petty power abuse should not be forgiven; the platform needs to die, as an example to other platforms. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admi...

Also, when they created comments and manipulated their timestamps to make it seem like they were created far earlier than they actually were, for advertising purposes.

They also obfuscate the real upvote/downvote numbers, purportedly to stop vote manipulation but I don't really see how it does anything but provide a mask of plausible deniability for editing the up/down figures for advertisements, subversive posts, etc.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#288

Post by vkou »

6cd6beb wrote: post #281
ryanmcbride wrote: post #259

I know someone worked for reddit for a while last year (they don't anymore because they hated every second of it) and from what I understand the engineering teams there are a nightmare of groups that don't talk to each other, constantly write the same code in completely different ways, have no common style and just shoehorn in whatever they want. Everything breaks pretty much all the time. All of that is aside from t…

>the platform itself hosts tons of alt-right, incel, racist, sexist, and violent content. This is despite being pretty ban-happy in general about topics they don't like. So now they've got the worst of a censorship-heavy platform and the worst of a censorship-free platform.

That's because at first appearances, the Reddit hive mind would make Karl Marx blush red.

Dig a little past the front page, though, and all the problems of having those groups share the same space with everyone else become evident.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#289

Post by bsder »

nisuni wrote: post #193
ppod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought that the day they crossed the line was when they arbitrarily changed which subreddits were default, removing some (such as /r/atheism) with no real reason. At the very early days of reddit, discussing atheism positively was still kind of unusual in the news. Then, over time, it became a very popular position and advocacy case especially among developers, and new users found the stridency and repet…

/r/atheism was absolutely obnoxious, to the point that the obnoxiousness of some of the users is still a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-this-moment-i-am-euphoric > a community that is still one of the most hated As far as I can see in the USA and in most of Europe it’s way more socially acceptable to declare to be atheists, rather than observing Christians.

> As far as I can see in the USA and in most of Europe it’s way more socially acceptable to declare to be atheists, rather than observing Christians.

If you believe that, I don't even know where to begin.

People in the US Bible Belt get death threats if they declare their atheism.

Online isn't offline. And most people still exist more in the offline world.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#290

Post by ForHackernews »

jules-jules wrote: post #181
bduerst wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why not mine bitcoins client-side with millions of mobile users? (/s)

If that would mean staying independent and free from economic/political interference, why not?

Because users like their batteries?

Because trying to do crypto properly in a language without integers is recipe for disaster?

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