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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

#521

Post by joefkelley »

nostromo wrote: post #260
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 dark patten in my view is 1) growing an online community around a set of values 2) growing so big you eclipse all competitors 3) suddenly changing your values to appeal to advertisers. Reddit is in good company here, notably with YouTube and Twitter.

I agree that this process sucks. Do you think it's possible to do 1 and 2 without 3? How could a business that remains focused on benefiting free users compete/profit?

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

#522

Post by rhcom2 »

crowdpleaser wrote: post #520
rhcom2 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see people as less than human without thinking it is okay for you to hunt them as animals. Advocating to let people die, instead of treat them, because they aren't here legally is putting their immigration status above them as a person and to me absolutely lessening their humanity. If someone is hurt and comes to me for help, I don't ask to see their papers.

>You can see people as less than human without thinking it is okay for you to hunt them as animals. Please keep reading my mind - why do I think this way? What status do I think illegals have if I want to treat them better than animals but worse than fellow citizens? >Advocating to let people die, instead of treat them, because they aren't here illegal is putting their immigration status above them as a person and to…

> I'm saying that I don't want to pay for it and I'd rather they suffer than I do.

Glad to hear you admit it. Money > humanity.

You can advocate for whatever you want, just like I'm free to tell you that it's a horrible idea that's only justification is to "punish" people you think deserve it.

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

#523

Post by lostlogin »

ilaksh wrote: post #386
lostlogin wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it remains. I find it extremely useful for solving niche problems. A recent example of mine was Docker on Synology. It’s a weird interface with some niggling bugs. It turns out Reddit has this nicely covered and I’ve found this repeatedly. It’s way less technical than Stack Overflow but sometimes that’s what I need. The toxic stew can be avoided while the little subs have solved hours of pain.

Which subreddit had that information?

r/synology I think, but I was into the sonarr and radarr subs too. The Synology GUI is initially helpful, but quite quickly gets frustrating as some actions can’t be undone without starting from scratch. As an entry into the world of Docker, reddit was by far the best resource for me and there are lots of links to helpful blogs. Between permissions, ports and paths it’s more than a touch complicated.

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

#524

Post by ndnxhs »

HNLurker2 wrote: post #507
ndnxhs wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They dont need to throw huge amounts of money at it. Reddit was much much better a few years ago. Its next to useless now.

Can you elaborate? I was, kid you not searching for good subreddits and then cane to HN for suggestions and found this on front page.

Reddit changed for the worse when they shifted from community focus to business focussed. There are so many ways that changed the website and everyone will tell you the same. The redesign was the last straw that got me to leave the website. These days the website is packed with adverts, incredibly slow (it takes about 15 seconds to load on mobile) and its packed with an incredible amount of tracking.

The content quality has gone down as well but I can't ever say reddit was known for high quality content.

Also the fact it has so many users has caused its decline. Reddit today has so many obvious shill/advert posts.

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

#525

Post by x15 »

NegativeK wrote: post #234
brettgriffin wrote: post #5

I've given up most social media but have become obsessed with Reddit. No matter how much I use it, I'm constantly amazed that I can be immediately connected with the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic people on virtually any subject I care about. I'm not a fan of the redesign or their push to look at other social media platforms, but I understand the direction they have to go to build revenue.

Reddit convinced me that showing topics based on time-decay does not promote in-depth conversation. Facebook semi-proved it.

Well, they lock threads after 6 months, probably to save moderation time. It's always possible for someone to re-create a discussion topic and get new responses going.

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

#526

Post by HNLurker2 »

[deleted] wrote: post #334
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…

[deleted]

Can you elaborate more about the part of being messy? Is it really like the open sourced of lobste.rs with messy code that just works? Also I am sorry for your job experience.

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

#527

Post by StellarTabi »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #194
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.

It’s funny, the web app used to be really good. Much better than the native app. Since then they have been making the web app increasingly worse over time, actively degrading its functionality and pleasantness to use.

If you're interested in a web app (not downloaded). you could try Redusa. It's still early in development though. It's built in vuejs.

https://github.com/redusa/redusa

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

#528

Post by rchaud »

solarkraft wrote: post #469
saalweachter wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is ~1 year younger than Facebook, and ~1 year older than Twitter.

That is amazing. While Facebook has reached world domination and died again (spawning an empire and catapulting its owner to be one of the world's richest people), Reddit still seems to be slugging around in the "we have something, maybe we can monetize it idk" phase. While admire that CN is not squeezing them to death, it appears like Reddit is vastly under-managed.

Reddit was a like a bridge between old-school vBulletin forums and nascent 'social media' when it launched; it explains why a lot of newer users find its UI hard to deal with. It never even seemed like they cared about revenue, because they didn't mess with API access for third party app developers, and didn't even have a responsive website until relatively recently.

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

#529

Post by wvenable »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #145
GordonS wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 things about Reddit's "use our app instead!" buttons: 1. They cycle through a couple of different messages, and the buttons get switched around 2. The wording is such that you read it twice and still aren't sure which button will just take you to the damn website I don't mind them promoting their app, but these dark patterns truely rile me

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.

They bought the best Reddit iOS app and then scrapped it. Although the 3rd party APIs still exist I imagine they will eventually disappear.

It's already frustrating to view v.reddit content in 3rd party apps.

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

#530

Post by hart_russell »

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.

the_donald subreddit is basically not allowed on the front page from what I understand
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