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Reddit files to go public

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Re: Reddit files to go public

#741

Post by BitwiseFool »

dagurp wrote: post #338
Freskis wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit a grotesque toxic website, that makes money by creating conflict, divisiveness, fake news and the deliberate degradation of society. Like Facebook, but so so much worse. I hope that going public gives it the scrutiny it needs. In a few years time you won't be able to find anyone admitting to have ever worked for this company (in fact it's almost impossible to find people admitting it today). Some of the smalle…

I think that's a very unfair assessment. Reddit is as diverse as the internet itself. There are plenty of good subreddits there and the toxic stuff is easy to avoid. Do yourself a favour and unsubscribe to any subreddit that deals with the news or politics. Some subreddits have become too big to properly moderate, unsubscribe to them too.

The vast majority of people browsing reddit do not leave the default subs or filter news and political posts. Individually opting out of the toxicity and astroturfing does not address the problem on the website as a whole.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#742

Post by skinnymuch »

Mezzie wrote: post #699
skinnymuch wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve done posts before. As have others. The scope, popularity, and longevity of the fallen past top sites like Friendster, MySpace, Digg, Slashdot, Altavista, Excite. Or web builders like Geocities, Angelfire. Other social networks like Bebo, Hi5. Other messaging apps like Viber. Or older ones like AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ. Finally people stopped bringing up the old messengers. They had such tiny userbases. The compariso…

I think you're missing something important in this analysis: Awareness of the cycle and outside interference. I'm one of the first people to bail when a platform or service becomes unusable and a new one becomes viable. I have zero loyalty: I started out in Usenet servers and with individual webpages and moved through to blogs/forums, then to Myspace and LiveJournal, and so on. (Including the Digg to Reddit migration…

I believe you and some other HNers are exceptions to the vast norms of how people operate.

I didn’t include the bit in my other comment where Discord and Reddit do ban major communities. So portions of those userbases are forced to at least partially leave. We have seen what that has done to both platforms. Nothing.

Yes platform death can still happen of course. There are many reasons they haven’t happened. Many reasons they did in the Digg days. Not all of the platforms have done equivalent “anti-cavalry” tactics the way some have. Still there is at most one example of a platform death in the past decade. Versus so many before that.

My entire point was to not use the platform deaths of the 00s as a reasonable direct retort to the shakiness of current web giant platforms. Especially when it includes things like wondering if others remember internet history. As if people who remember Digg’s fall are wise to something.

—

Totally agree with your general vibe, sentiment, and your final paragraph.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#743

Post by prashantsengar »

tenpies wrote: post #616
wonderwonder wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg has proven extremely effective at predicting future trends. Look at Instagram and Whatsapp, perfectly timed investments. Zuck has taken long term bets on the metaverse starting with Occulus and now seemingly betting the whole company on it. He could very well be wrong but there are a lot of very smart people at Facebook and on their board I have to think they did some very intensive validation before doing…

I always say that if you're interested in the Metaverse, I have many acres of land in Second Life for sale, and as many Linden Dollars as you'd like. This whole Metaverse thing reminds me of when IBM purchased 12 islands and opened a virtual office in Second Life. Of course, as was tradition at the time, someone inevitably showed up with a flying gentlemen's sausage. Eventually IBM decided the whole thing was too cos…

There's a difference in Second Life and the whole "metaverse" just as there is a difference between the time and tech then and now.

Not every tech is going to be successful at every time. The same solution can fail once and succeed some other time when there's a change in the market and/or the underlying technology.

There's a much larger number of human beings on the internet now. And they are not just on the internet, but they actively use it for a large amount of time. That's the chance in market right now and what will drive the adoption of metaverse soon.

The thing that we should focus on right now is whether we want a metaverse owned by Facebook or something that is defined by open protocols.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#744

Post by thinkingemote »

skinnymuch wrote: post #736
thinkingemote wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the early adopters that move, not the masses that eventually follow a few years later. It's a small community that shapes crowds.

My best argument to this that I would gladly be proven wrong so I don’t look silly being wrong. Is there any example in the past ~7 years, even ~10 years of any major cultural user content sites that had precedence like Digg, losing influence the way Digg and other contemporaries did? The only examples that I can think of is Tumblr. If there’s so many examples before 10 years ago. And maybe 1 example in recent times.…

Yeah I think also that we underestimate these massive sites by thinking they have not learned from Digg etc.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#745

Post by BitwiseFool »

boringg wrote: post #690

What happens to all the work from the moderators once they realize they are working for a public traded company for free? Doesn't this break peoples willingness to build those communities once they realize their hard worked time is getting squeezed to investor dollars? I understand it was a private company beforehand but now it must really feel bad to know how much people are making off your goodwill. Totally effed u…

I think a substantial number of powermods are either paid by some influence agency, or they do it for free because they're activists who believe they're fighting for a righteous cause.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#746

Post by the_doctah »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #164

Half the comments in here boil down to "I would stop using Reddit if they discontinued old.reddit.com" and it really rubs me the wrong way. It's like saying "Facebook will die if they start charging users to post to their wall". Like, okay, sure. But Reddit has repeatedly said that they will not depreciate old.reddit.com. They have zero reason to, as many of their powerusers rely on it. In fact, I don't think Reddit…

Reddit used to support free speech on it's platform too...

Re: Reddit files to go public

#747

Post by Mezzie »

skinnymuch wrote: post #742
Mezzie wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing something important in this analysis: Awareness of the cycle and outside interference. I'm one of the first people to bail when a platform or service becomes unusable and a new one becomes viable. I have zero loyalty: I started out in Usenet servers and with individual webpages and moved through to blogs/forums, then to Myspace and LiveJournal, and so on. (Including the Digg to Reddit migration…

I believe you and some other HNers are exceptions to the vast norms of how people operate. I didn’t include the bit in my other comment where Discord and Reddit do ban major communities. So portions of those userbases are forced to at least partially leave. We have seen what that has done to both platforms. Nothing. Yes platform death can still happen of course. There are many reasons they haven’t happened. Many reas…

> I believe you and some other HNers are exceptions to the vast norms of how people operate.

Absolutely, but in the same way that moderators and admins are also outside the norm but still have a substantial impact on how/if communities grow and develop (provided a community has them). Communities in general rely on a certain percentage of people in them doing community-maintenance work, and at least some of it needs to be done due to love of the community. We're weird, but we're also the people who ran around showing a bunch of people Google in 1998, or who were encouraging people to switch from MySpace to Facebook in the 00s. We're the ones who articulate to the normal people why they should switch platforms, where they should go, and why the new place will solve the problems. Building a platform without us is difficult, and so is maintaining one if you're relying on community spaces.

I definitely think you're right that the situation is more complex than it was, but I think you're overselling the differences. Things are bigger so they take longer now, but that's the main difference. That and the financial interests involved; if anything is constraining platform death I would say it's that platform death costs MONEY now.

> My entire point was to not use the platform deaths of the 00s as a reasonable direct retort to the shakiness of current web giant platforms. Especially when it includes things like wondering if others remember internet history. As if people who remember Digg’s fall are wise to something.

Fair enough. I tend to err on the other side because so much of the Web is built to strip information of context and I adore digital history; there are so many things discussed where anything more than 5 years ago might as well have not happened. Still, there can definitely be an undertone of 'stfu noob' to stuff sometimes that is offputting.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#748

Post by Freskis »

the_doctah wrote: post #739
Freskis wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spot-on about the HackerNews tech criticisms being irrelevant. But I think the points about Reddit being toxic to advertisers because of the hate/porn/gore/mysogny are correct. It just takes one bad story and advertisers will flee the platform. There has been no mainstream examinination and investigation of what Reddit is. Once it starts, it's all over.

Have you been on Reddit lately? They purged all that crap and aggressively censor the entire platform now. The censorship has increased tenfold in the last couple of years.

One of the top stories on Reddit right now is about Nancy Pelosi, and one of the top comments is calling for her death. No moderation, only praise for the murder comment.

It just takes one newspaper to highlight that and it's over for Reddit as an advertising platform. And it can't be stopped because the moderation is local.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#749

Post by lijogdfljk »

modeless wrote: post #171
lijogdfljk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, agreed. I might use it on mobile, but on desktop "new" Reddit is such a massive degrade that i can't put up with it.

I use old reddit on mobile too. It's legitimately a better experience (just make sure to turn off the font size boosting feature of mobile Chrome which interacts poorly with the layout).

Oh i should amend, i say mobile because i use a mobile app on my phone (not the official one!), so the crap UI doesn't affect me on my phone.

Re: Reddit files to go public

#750

Post by ankit219 »

emodendroket wrote: post #712
ankit219 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A definite problem from a company's perspective when their model is ads and gold/donations, both of which require users to be logged in. This directly affects the number of users willing to participate in discussions - both in big subreddits and niche ones - and it risks some active users becoming dormant because they dont see enough reaction/response to what they have posted. Stack Overflow is not the best compariso…

I think it is similar in this sense: those users are in a funnel as long as they visit regularly. Not everybody who walks into a store buys something, but if the store is busy that’s a good sign.

There is a distinct possibility that those users arent visiting regularly. They visit via Google search, explore a bit, don't create an account. Next time they come in, it's again via Google search. Reddit may or may not be able to track them.

And again, you cant see that they are even visiting a page. All the signals - upvotes, comments, etc. are only available when logged in. (except for video views)

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