
AMA with Barack Obama - duck
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obama_president_of_the_united_states/
======
untog
Can't wait for the top post to be another asinine "comment phrased as a
question" about legalising marijuana!

Joking aside, I predict disappointment. Reddit users will want hard-hitting
answers, Obama will definitely not give them (already the internet freedom
question has been fluffy-answered). In all honestly, no-one should expect
anything else- the POTUS is not going to unveil new thoughts and strategies
through Reddit.

That said, it shows how far they've come from the "jailbait" scandal a few
months ago, but I strongly suspect Republicans will refer back to it in good
time.

EDIT: Hey, at least PresidentObama bought Reddit Gold. Somehow I doubt it'll
be enough to cover the bandwidth, though.

~~~
revorad
The President of United States is doing a Reddit AMA and all you can do is
_predict disappointment_? Really?

Why bother?

If you're wrong, your comment will seem too negative and cynical (which it
is).

If you're right, well, that'd be disappointing, right?

Comments like yours make me want to rename this site Hater News.

~~~
hooande
"In all honestly, no-one should expect anything else- the POTUS is not going
to unveil new thoughts and strategies through Reddit." <\-- cold, hard common
sense

If understanding how the world works and telling others makes you a hater,
then sign me up.

~~~
Alex3917
This reminds me, in Chris Hedges' book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning,
there is a great section on why everyone always hates reality-based thinkers.

Essentially before and during when the war crimes (or whatever) are being
committed, everyone hates the truth-tellers because they think they are wrong
and they are challenging their worldview or whatever. And then afterwards,
everyone hates the truth-tellers because they remind them that they were
wrong. That's why you will never read an article about prominent Republicans
coming forward and apologizing to Michael Moore or whatever.

~~~
twoodfin
Michael Moore, truth teller? Ha.

~~~
Alex3917
Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find those WMDs any day now.

------
boredguy8
I was really hoping he'd respond to the law school student along these lines:
"Well, where in your class did you graduate, and why did you think you'd have
job prospects as a lawyer? Unless you're in the top 1/3 of your class at a
good law school or top 5% of your class at an OK school, getting a job is hard
in today's market. Part of the reason law school (and school in general) is so
expensive is because we've removed a lot of the risk from the loan side of the
equation. We give you 7% money, guaranteed against default, and the schools
jack up the prices. That combines with faulty transparency in which some law
schools hide employment rates. My guess is that a lot more people are going to
law school than should be, and we need to fix the incentives to keep all
parties honest about their prospects."

~~~
timsally
Yup. I don't have much sympathy for him, considering he took out $160,000 in
debt with only a 50/50 shot to pay it back (that's your chance to get a high
enough salary coming out of a top law school to service that debt, outside of
Harvard and Yale). His poor decision is further compounded by the fact that he
decided to go to law school after the legal market crashed in 2008 and people
started to realize how ridiculous first year associate compensation was
getting. I'm not really sure why my tax dollars should be bailing out a guy
with a college degree who took a six figure gamble (though I suppose we've
already set the standard by bailing out those who took gambles much larger
than that).

~~~
elliottcarlson
I don't disagree with a single thing you said - but I do find some irony in
the fact that this community for the most part is centered around startups -
some taking huge risks with either bootstrapped money, or angel money - and
the failure rate is often estimated between 30% to 40%.

~~~
SilasX
Sure, and the "woe is me" rate is estimated between 0% and "why don't you fire
up that bong again" -- much lower than that of the (formerly) wealthy students
that gambled on an expensive education.

~~~
pjscott
The difference is who takes on the risk. With startup investment, the
investors risk their money, and if the company dies, the investors take that
loss. They do this because they can make a lot of money from the startups that
make it big. With student loans, the risk lies with the student.

~~~
13rules
With the number of government-backed education loans that are defaulted on,
you could also say the risk lies with the taxpayers.

------
ashray
It looks like the Obama AMA has really caused some serious fires in reddit's
backend infrastructure. The site's been down for the last 10 minutes.

I would've thought that they'd have brought in some additional computing power
for such an event, should've been easy for them considering they have a cloud
deployment. Maybe this gives them greater reason to hire more engineers. I
found it impressive that they served billions of impressions with just 2
engineers a short while ago..

Also, it says a lot about the "Come Cloud with us, we'll help you scale"
marketing bandwagon. We've seen time and again issues with EC2s infrastructure
and if EC2 doesn't have issues right now (<http://status.aws.amazon.com/>)
then it's just sad that they can't order a gazillion instances for this event
and have it scale easily.

Definitely makes me think that we still have a long way to go to compute in a
truly 'elastic' way.

reddit definitely does have some crazy infrastructure in place but this
would've been one of the most important moments in reddit history (so far..)
and I'm sad to see that their engineers are probably going to get blamed for
this..

EDIT: Okay, they're back in read only mode.. I wonder how they'll hack in some
write access for the AMA while keeping everything else read only. Time for
some app server redeployments! Funsies!

EDIT2: And they're gone again _sigh_

~~~
pippy
Stupid question: is the because reddits backend is in python?

I often hear that PHP + varnish is only limited by the size of the pipe. Can
this scale on cloud platforms?

~~~
forensic
It's a stupid question because the particular dialect of assembler this was
written in is completely irrelevant for performance considerations.

You've been brainwashed by the idiotic pop culture language wars that pretend
a question like Ruby vs Python vs whatever has any meaning. These are debates
over buzzwords, not reality.

All that matters is the database configuration and associated architecture.
Not some buzzword drama.

~~~
xtracto
Wow, news.ycombinator surely has become very offensive and attacking. So much
that a person cannot ask questions about IT.

~~~
forensic
"become" ?

4 years ago, stupid comments were brutally discouraged. People with stupid
things to say would be dogpiled by negative comments.

It is pop culture that thinks asking stupid questions is a virtue.

Most people are just too tactful to tell the truth.

------
porterhaney
I think it's particularly interesting to watch some internet event go
"mainstream" and watch even large services like reddit strain under the load.
Put some perspective around how many people true mainstream media services
reach.

~~~
mindcrime
Weird... I am guessing that if Obama was going to be on Reddit, they would
have given the Reddit staff some early notice, in order to add some extra
preparations for the load. Or maybe not, does anybody know if there's any sort
of normal protocol around this sort of thing?

~~~
ChiperSoft
The reddit admins knew. Heuypriest himself confirmed the validity of the AMA.

~~~
_delirium
Since I'm not up on the Reddit staff, in case anyone else is wondering,
Hueypriest is Erik Martin, Reddit's General Manager (formerly Community
manager) <https://www.twitter.com/hueypriest>

------
001sky
Glad too see the peanut gallery keeping it light

_____________________________

demaney 69 points 28 minutes ago

For proof, did he send you a picture of him holding a dated index card? Or did
the Secret Service land a helicopter on your house?

yishan 183 points 25 minutes ago

He faxed a copy of his birth certificate.

~~~
brown9-2
yishan is the CEO of Reddit.

~~~
swalsh
yeah... that's what makes it amazing :D

------
brown9-2
I imagine the emotions at Reddit HQ must be all over the place for employees
right now:

\- This is so cool, the President of the United States is going to use our
website to answer questions!

\- OMG, the site is down and the President wants to use our site, fix this
now!

~~~
waterlesscloud
I can't imagine this hasn't been negotiated by the White House ahead of time.

~~~
brown9-2
Still, I imagine the pressure of getting a down site back up is somewhat
elevated by knowing that the head of state wants to use it.

~~~
mparlane
Especially considering the president only has a 30 minute window.

------
waterlesscloud
I would be very much in favor of political leaders doing AMAs on a regular
basis. Monthly, or heck, weekly like PMQTs.

Connect with the people more often and more directly. Eventually those
politicians who made genuine connections would perform better on AMAs than
those that simply regurgitated the usual talking points.

That kind of thing could make a real difference.

I think the odds are against it since it would remove some of the buffer that
the current style of message-controlled, divide-and-conquer, us-v-them
politics absolutely depends on.

But we can dream.

------
ConstantineXVI
No flying cars or moon bases; just average people off the street able to talk
directly to the "leader of the free world" on level ground.

Not the future we were expecting, but I'll take it.

~~~
learc83
While, cool, this is no different than town hall meetings we've had since the
inception of the Republic.

~~~
Lukeas14
It's also very different since our population is now 300+ million as opposed
to 3+ million at the inception. Any one of those 300 million could potentially
have asked the president a question, not limited by geography or
social/financial status.

~~~
freehunter
Reddit doesn't track or verify geographical location, so in reality someone
from Iran could be asking the President a question just the same as someone
from Virginia. That's awesome.

------
Dirlewanger
This is pretty cool...if you like canned PR replies that haven't been repeated
ad nausaem (sp?) elsewhere.

~~~
pav3l
This is supposed to be him live
[http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/240909486234161152/pho...](http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/240909486234161152/photo/1)

~~~
Dirlewanger
You really must not understand how PR works for public figures.

~~~
pav3l
>supposed to be

------
pilom
Just his responses. Clicking "context" gives you the previous message:
<http://www.reddit.com/user/PresidentObama>

------
gfodor
Gotta admit, found this hilarious: "By the way, if you want to know what I
think about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD!"

~~~
pav3l
Which further confirms that this whole AMA is a carefully crafted PR stunt.

~~~
arrrg
And?

I’m really not sure what you expect. The President has a busy schedule, plus
(as the guy running for office) enough money to hire people to do stuff for
him.

We all nearly always plan what we say and do. The stakes might not be quite so
high for us most of the time – but the principle behind it is the same.

The only difference is that the President can afford people whom he can
delegate some of that planning to. It’s very simply not possible to do this
any other way.

~~~
noobface
If the Woody Harrelson AMA has taught us anything.

Do a legit AMA or don't do one at all.

Although I'm surprised more people aren't calling him out on completely
dodging the questions.

~~~
arrrg
No, from that we can only learn to plan your AMA better. His PR people sucked,
that’s all.

------
swalsh
Reddit Admins, When you get a chance to read this. Please write a blog post on
the traffic story from today... I'm sure I'm not the only one who's interested
to see statistics on "new users" and hits. I'd also be interested to see the
long tail effect as well.

------
001sky
CLIFF NOTES: 10x

______________________

REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER - if you need to know how to register, go to
Gottaregister.com.

It's hard - truthfully the main thing other than work is just making sure that
I'm spending enough time with michelle and the girls. ...

I understand how tough it is out there for recent grads....

Money has always been a factor in politics....

The decision to surge our forces in afghanistan. Any time you send our brave
men and women into battle, you know that not everyone will come home safely,
and that necessarily weighs heavily on you. ...

Win or lose, I'll be thanking everybody who is working so hard - especially
all the volunteers in field offices all across the country, and the amazing
young people in our campaign offices.

We've really focused on this since I came into office - 18 tax cuts for small
business, easier funding from the SBA. Going forward, I want to keep taxes low
for the 98 percent of small businesses that have $250,000 ......

Jordan - I'm a Bulls guy.

Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do
too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum
for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to
start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the
details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle -
and it will be reflected in the platform.

Making sure we stay at the forefront of space exploration is a big priority
for my administration. ......

__________________________

------
irollboozers
The reddit team must be absolutely shitting themselves right now under strain.
How the hell do you accurately predict the load when the President is using
your site?

~~~
dominicmauro
I don't know, but I hope they post a graph of the traffic spike.

~~~
veb
I hope they frame it!

~~~
irollboozers
'and this spike right here was our happiest DDOS in company history...'

------
brittohalloran
When Obama refreshes and gets the "You broke reddit" error 500 page it's
actually true

------
aaronpk
I wonder how many new user accounts Reddit is going to get today given that
Barack posted a link to that thread on his Twitter account.

------
akulbe
__YAWN __

Seriously. He won't answer anything in a _meanful_ way.... and only safe
questions will get answered. Next?

------
hodder
For those who can't get access to the site, here are his answers so far. I
hope you can deduce the questions, jeopardy style:

I am Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain
IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 4 points5 points6 points 2 minutes ago (0 children)
[–]PresidentObama[S] 4 points5 points6 points 2 minutes ago

It's hard - truthfully the main thing other than work is just making sure that
I'm spending enough time with michelle and the girls. The big advantage I have
is that I live above the store - so I have no commute! So we make sure that
when I'm in DC I never miss dinner with them at 6:30 pm - even if I have to go
back down to the Oval for work later in the evening. I do work out every
morning as well, and try to get a basketball or golf game in on the weekends
just to get out of the bubble. Speaking of balance, though, I need to get
going so I'm back in DC in time for dinner. But I want to thank everybody at
reddit for participating - this is an example of how technology and the
internet can empower the sorts of conversations that strengthen our democracy
over the long run. AND REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER - if you need to know how
to register, go to Gottaregister.com. By the way, if you want to know what I
think about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD! permalinkcontextfull
commentsI am Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA by
PresidentObamain IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 21 points22 points23 points 10 minutes ago (0 children)
[–]PresidentObama[S] 21 points22 points23 points 10 minutes ago

I understand how tough it is out there for recent grads. You're right - your
long term prospects are great, but that doesn't help in the short term.
Obviously some of the steps we have taken already help young people at the
start of their careers. Because of the health care bill, you can stay on your
parent's plan until you're twenty six. Because of our student loan bill, we
are lowering the debt burdens that young people have to carry. But the key for
your future, and all our futures, is an economy that is growing and creating
solid middle class jobs - and that's why the choice in this election is so
important. The other party has two ideas for growth - more taxs cuts for the
wealthy (paid for by raising tax burdens on the middle class and gutting
investments like education) and getting rid of regulations we've put in place
to control the excesses on wall street and help consumers. These ideas have
been tried, they didnt work, and will make the economy worse. I want to keep
promoting advanced manufacturing that will bring jobs back to America, promote
all-American energy sources (including wind and solar), keep investing in
education and make college more affordable, rebuild our infrastructure, invest
in science, and reduce our deficit in a balanced way with prudent spending
cuts and higher taxes on folks making more than $250,000/year. I don't promise
that this will solve all our immediate economic challenges, but my plans will
lay the foundation for long term growth for your generation, and for
generations to follow. So don't be discouraged - we didn't get into this fix
overnight, and we won't get out overnight, but we are making progress and with
your help will make more. permalinkcontextfull commentsI am Barack Obama,
President of the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 631 points632 points633 points 24 minutes ago (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 631 points632 points633 points 24 minutes ago

It will be out soon! I can tell from first hand experience, it is tasty.
permalinkcontextfull commentsI am Barack Obama, President of the United States
-- AMA by PresidentObamain IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 242 points243 points244 points 25 minutes ago (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 242 points243 points244 points 25 minutes ago

Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in
the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed,
into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political
process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We
need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been
sponsored in Congress - to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who.
We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign
contributions from lobbyists. Over the longer term, I think we need to
seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn
Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it). Even if the
amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC
phenomenon and help apply pressure for change. permalinkcontextfull commentsI
am Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain
IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 557 points558 points559 points 31 minutes ago (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 557 points558 points559 points 31 minutes ago

The decision to surge our forces in afghanistan. Any time you send our brave
men and women into battle, you know that not everyone will come home safely,
and that necessarily weighs heavily on you. The decision did help us blunt the
taliban's momentum, and is allowing us to transition to afghan lead - so we
will have recovered that surge at the end of this month, and will end the war
at the end of 2014. But knowing of the heroes that have fallen is something
you never forget. permalinkcontextfull commentsI am Barack Obama, President of
the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 809 points810 points811 points 35 minutes ago (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 809 points810 points811 points 35 minutes ago

Win or lose, I'll be thanking everybody who is working so hard - especially
all the volunteers in field offices all across the country, and the amazing
young people in our campaign offices. permalinkcontextfull commentsI am Barack
Obama, President of the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 199 points200 points201 points 36 minutes ago (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 199 points200 points201 points 36 minutes ago

We've really focused on this since I came into office - 18 tax cuts for small
business, easier funding from the SBA. Going forward, I want to keep taxes low
for the 98 percent of small businesses that have $250,000 or less in income,
make it easier for small business to access financing, and expand their
opportunities to export. And we will be implementing the Jobs Act bill that I
signed that will make it easier for startups to access crowd-funding and
reduce their tax burden at the start-up stage. permalinkcontextfull commentsI
am Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain
IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 765 points766 points767 points 39 minutes ago (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 765 points766 points767 points 39 minutes ago

Jordan - I'm a Bulls guy. permalinkcontextfull commentsI am Barack Obama,
President of the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 1527 points1528 points1529 points 40 minutes ago* (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 1527 points1528 points1529 points 40 minutes
ago*

Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do
too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum
for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to
start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the
details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle -
and it will be reflected in the platform. permalinkcontextfull commentsI am
Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA by PresidentObamain IAmA

[+]PresidentObama[S] 1810 points1811 points1812 points 43 minutes ago (0
children) [–]PresidentObama[S] 1810 points1811 points1812 points 43 minutes
ago

Making sure we stay at the forefront of space exploration is a big priority
for my administration. The passing of Neil Armstrong this week is a reminder
of the inspiration and wonder that our space program has provided in the past;
the curiosity probe on mars is a reminder of what remains to be discovered.
The key is to make sure that we invest in cutting edge research that can take
us to the next level - so even as we continue work with the international
space station, we are focused on a potential mission to a asteroid as a
prelude to a manned Mars flight.

~~~
JohnsonB
Pretty weak, typical round-about answers that you'd expect from any
politician. Not what AMA has come to expect, and what's the proof that it's
actually Obama writing the answers and not some intern or campaign staffer?

~~~
wamatt
Yeah it's mostly sanitized, but I'm still impressed though at his overall
level of savvyness, deciding to do a Reddit AMA at all. Come on what did we
expect? A heart to heart with a _unicorn_ , err... I mean honest politician?
:p

He seems to be getting credit and generating overall positive impact,
regardless of the depth of his answers.

~~~
panacea
Pretty naive to think the President is the savvy one deciding to do a reddit
AMA, and not one of the many, many people in his reelection campaign PR team.

Anyway, it reminded me that the news of his first election was the highest
voted submission in reddit's history at the time.

~~~
arrrg
So he is good at managing you say?

I mean, that’s one of the most important traits of any President: The ability
to hire the right people and delegate. You cannot administrate a country
alone, it would be truly sad and pathetic if every good idea he ever decided
on implementing came only from himself.

You are naive and have a very simplistic view of the President’s role if you
think this is totally worthless if it wasn’t his own idea.

------
hooande
Does anyone know more about how reddit does booking for their iama? They have
a schedule and consistently book notable people. Do they have a staff
dedicated to it?

~~~
ramidarigaz
AMAs are strictly user-run. The mods of the IAMA subreddit do a lot of work,
although I think they do get a bit of support from the admins.

------
presidentender
It'll be down the entire time he's supposed to be answering questions.

~~~
unreal37
Let the conspiracy theories start. Did the Republicans DDOS the server to stop
the President from connecting with Redditors, or did the Democrats do it so
that the President wouldn't have to really answer any tough questions but just
say he did? Or is it the work of Terrorists? Or Kevin Rose's final revenge?

~~~
lallysingh
I don't think Reddit crashing requires a conspiracy.

------
ScottWhigham
I've read, I don 't know, hundreds of AMAs through the years on reddit and, in
each and every case, I hate the UI experience. I wish there was a way I could
say "Only show me questions that have been answered by OP". Right now, doing a
find for [S] is about as good as it gets. When you get large AMAs though, they
get buried due to the sheer number of comments. Ugh.

~~~
MichaelJW
Check out <http://reddit.com/r/tabled>. Only useful after the AMA is over,
admittedly.

------
wilschroter
Given direct access to the most powerful person in the world, people on Reddit
still act no differently. Yay consistency.

------
mparlane
"reddit is under heavy load right now, sorry. Try again in a few minutes."

Oh dear..

------
iblaine
Reddit.com is down. Pretty poor capacity planning. Having spent the better
part of this month trying to accomodate spikes in traffic up to 100k
concurrent users then receiving just a fraction of that, I am jealous of
Reddit's lazy effort.

------
Codhisattva
Seems to have crashed reddit.com at the moment.

~~~
fumonko
Why does reddit crash so often?

~~~
bgilroy26
It's a tough site to run because hundreds of thousands of people have write
access to the database and reddit attempts to provide the millions of people
reading the comments pages with up-to-the-fraction-of-a-second updates.

It's like running a tenth of a twitter with a 10k char limit, if twitter had
10 people on development/operations

~~~
xxpor
>up-to-the-fraction-of-a-second updates.

I don't think that's true. I believe the comment pages are cached for 1 min.

~~~
_delirium
I've anecdotally noticed an increase in stale pages lately as well, which I
would guess is from more aggressive caching. For example, new submissions used
to show up instantly, but on popular subreddits may now take a few minutes to
show up on the New tab.

~~~
xxpor
If someone really wants to figure it out:

<https://github.com/reddit/reddit>

------
AceJohnny2
Like many, I've unsubscribed from all the default reddits for a more, eh,
'curated' experience.

I was wondering why Reddit was having load trouble. This explains it.

------
001sky
_And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of various
legislative proposals_ [sic]

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

-[engineers everywhere]

Edited: for relevance ;)

Edit2: SIC WTF? - per comments below

Edit3: Downvotes? Wow. POTUS commenting on IP Law, Privacy, Internet Freedom.
etc. PLS Read the context. It was included. Tks.

________

[–]SharkGirl 812 points 32 minutes ago

We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet
Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 130 points 10 minutes ago

Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do
too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum
for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to
start a business. And although their will be occasional disagreements on the
details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle -
and it will be reflected in the platform.

load more comments (25 replies)

[–]davidjoho 104 points 29 minutes ago

And when you say "Internet Freedom" do you mean the Republican version
("Freedom for the access provider monopoly") or the version in which the
Internet is free to anyone with an idea or an expression?

~~~
msilenus
> And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of...

One would think that the president of the united states would be able to use
"their" and "there" correctly...

~~~
_delirium
Someone else corrected "a asteroid" in another question as well. Perhaps the
POTUS has discovered that trolling is a art.

~~~
001sky
The grandparent was posted on the merits and relevance of the material. If you
read the context, BO tells Reddit: "I'm all for internet freedom, but don't
sweat it if a couple of details are either here or there." Which in matters
relating engineering and/or IP law, is a bit of a flip answer. That Potus laid
down a [SIC] error is poetic irony, humourus (or not). So your comment, is not
really warranted and should at least be qualified.

------
nchuhoai
for redditors having trouble reading the page:

log out your profile and you will get served the cache for the 99%, at least
thats why theory why it works for me

~~~
skystorm
It's too late now (I presume the AMA is over), but private browsing or
incognito mode has the same effect.

------
arrrg
Very strange that he would wade into this (racist/sexist/…) cesspool.

------
ljd
I'm looking at the sort rank of questions on reddit and they don't exactly
feel right. I can't pin point it except to say that a question with 59 upvotes
posted 58 minutes ago is ranking higher than a question with 620 upvotes
posted 60 minutes ago.

Do reddit moderators step in during these situations to supervote questions?

~~~
MichaelJW
[http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-
sorting-s...](http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-
system.html)

~~~
ljd
Yes, I'm in love with their sorting algorithm. That's why I was particularly
interested in seeing what appears to be deviations in it. However, I'm
probably just seeing things.

~~~
MichaelJW
Ah, gotcha. Did you catch what the downvotes were for each question?

------
RandallBrown
Does this seem like it could be fake to anyone else? Could someone have simply
hacked his twitter?

He only posted it on the @BarackObama twitter. Not any of the other ones
related to his campaing. Reddit didn't advertise this AT ALL. Most big
celebrity AMAs are known for days. The photo of him is just him sitting in
front of a laptop. There's no proof at all that he's doing an AMA.

Reddit is going down HARD. I doubt the Obama campaign spontaneously decided to
do this. Anyone savvy enough to suggest an AMA should know that it would
likely take down the site and they'd probably talk to Reddit first.

His answers seem like answers the president would give though (but he did
reference his NOT BAD meme, which seems too cool to be true). If you were
impersonating the president, it would seem like you would try to wreak some
havoc.

Anyone else feel like this?

~~~
cf0ed2aa-bdf5
There is also his campaign site "Redditors for Obama"
<https://barackobama.com/reddit>

Not definite proof but if someone hacked the POTUS's Twitter Account and
posted a fake IAMA to reddit it would probably have been shut down by now.

~~~
RandallBrown
The Redditors for Obama wasn't there the first time I had the page load. That
definitely helps the legitimacy.

------
jtokoph
Responses so far:

[–]SharkGirl 1504 points 51 minutes ago We know how Republicans feel about
protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to
the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 1185 points 29 minutes ago* Internet freedom is something
I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make
sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody - from those who
are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although
there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative
proposals, I won't stray from that principle - and it will be reflected in the
platform.

\------

[–]ormirian 2350 points 51 minutes ago* Are you considering increasing funds
to the space program?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 1471 points 31 minutes ago Making sure we stay at the
forefront of space exploration is a big priority for my administration. The
passing of Neil Armstrong this week is a reminder of the inspiration and
wonder that our space program has provided in the past; the curiosity probe on
mars is a reminder of what remains to be discovered. The key is to make sure
that we invest in cutting edge research that can take us to the next level -
so even as we continue work with the international space station, we are
focused on a potential mission to a asteroid as a prelude to a manned Mars
flight.

\------

[–]FifthSurprise 762 points 50 minutes ago What was the most difficult
decision that you had to make during this term?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 158 points 20 minutes ago The decision to surge our
forces in afghanistan. Any time you send our brave men and women into battle,
you know that not everyone will come home safely, and that necessarily weighs
heavily on you. The decision did help us blunt the taliban's momentum, and is
allowing us to transition to afghan lead - so we will have recovered that
surge at the end of this month, and will end the war at the end of 2014. But
knowing of the heroes that have fallen is something you never forget.

\------

[–]daveforamerica 319 points 51 minutes ago What is the first thing you'll do
on November 7th, win or lose?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 482 points 24 minutes ago Win or lose, I'll be thanking
everybody who is working so hard - especially all the volunteers in field
offices all across the country, and the amazing young people in our campaign
offices.

\------

[–]silent1mezzo 415 points 47 minutes ago What's the recipe for the White
House's beer?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 158 points 13 minutes ago It will be out soon! I can tell
from first hand experience, it is tasty.

\------

[–]karlfranks 93 points 51 minutes ago Who's your favourite Basketball player?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 433 points 28 minutes ago Jordan - I'm a Bulls guy.

\------

[–]suzmerk 321 points 55 minutes ago What are you going to do to end the
corrupting influence of money in politics during your second term?

[–]PresidentObama[S] 106 points 21 minutes ago Money has always been a factor
in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of
seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they
fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run
and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing
the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress - to
at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass
legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists.
Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a
constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the
Supreme Court doesn't revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short,
it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure
for change.

------
mathieuh
Someone ask Obama how many war crimes he's committed.

~~~
cryptoz
That's the nice thing about reddit - if you care about a topic, _you_ can make
a post!

Edit: To clarify, I think it's an excellent question. It's just very lazy of
you to ask someone else to do it.

~~~
logjam
I don't understand how a question with an unsupported/uncited premise
equivalent to "do you still beat your wife?" constitutes "an excellent
question".

~~~
cryptoz
He's free to answer 0/"I have never beaten my wife". It's an excellent
question because Obama has been responsible for the deaths of many people,
some of whom were almost certainly killed illegally.

~~~
danso
Your second statement begs the question: Pres. Obama would argue that none of
those killed were due to an illegal direct order from him (and he may
rationalize this with his own begging of the question).

------
DigitalSea
Looks Barack Obama has proven that cloud infrastructure just isn't quite there
yet, ha. I'm really curious as to what others have asked especially in
relation to 911, Wall Street and the birth certificate fiasco.

This aside and I'm not starting an argument here, but this very AMA bringing
down Reddit pretty badly goes to show that even EC2 isn't the answer to life's
scaling problems nor are other cloud services like Heorku.

------
dumb123
It makes me wonder what some US politicians wouldn't do for a vote. I'm not in
the US at the moment, so I don't know the full extent of what his appearances.
But I can only imagine. I know he was recently on Entertainment Tonight. That
seemed a little peculiar. Now he's on Reddit. What next?

I'd like to see him do Fear Factor.

If you want my vote Barack, you have to go on Fear Factor. Those are my terms.
Non-negotiable.

------
moistgorilla
There are already more than enough questions. What I'm wondering is how the
president is going to answer anything if the website is down.

~~~
corin_
He won't be F5ing the page himself, nor will he be typing in answers, so I'm
sure answers will just appear as and when his staff are able to post them.

------
heyadayo
1\. Check out the up and down votes on reddit! 158,753 up votes 152,631 down
votes with a net difference of 6k or so positive. That's crazy! Are those
partisan lines or something? Why wouldn't everyone on reddit be excited to see
the president?

2\. Why has this had such low rank on HN given the number of votes? It had
200+ in the first hour and never seemed to get in the top 3.

~~~
freehunter
1\. Reddit doesn't show the real numbers, like mentioned. If a post is getting
a lot of upvotes, it will register a handful of downvotes as well. If you look
through the highest ranking posts of all time, you'll notice most of them are
quite old. Some time ago, they implemented an algorithm to keep votes from
getting out of control; as the number of upvotes gets higher, the number of
downvotes does as well. This is to normalize it at a certain level of votes.
There's a ceiling that the votes practically cannot get above.

2\. HN doesn't allow downvotes but it does allow you to flag a post. I don't
know the algorithm for this, but it's possible people were flagging this post.

------
Kilimanjaro
Heavy load? Is there a site in the internets that can handle a billion
connections? Because sooner or later we will get there.

Shame on all of us!

~~~
deno
Akamai handles that billion connections. “All” Reddit has to do is handle the
database transactions. They’re also serving all signed in users directly, from
a secondary cache, but this is the kind of traffic they already handle on
regular basis anyway.

------
cjdrake
I was able to load a few pages, but I can't find any of PresidentObama's
answers to any questions. What a gyp :).

~~~
jessriedel
What slouch said. Also note that it was submitted 22 minutes ago and he has
answered 2 questions, 1 and 3 minutes ago.

~~~
darrenkopp
Probably because reddit is dying under the load right now.

------
huntaub
The amazing thing about this is that he was literally (like at 3:30) doing a
rally in Charlottesville! Busy man!

------
MartinodF
It seems the President lives up to its meme: "if you want to know what I think
about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD!"

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obam...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obama_president_of_the_united_states/c60nmtc)

------
staunch
One way to handle this kind of thing would be to setup a separate stack just
for Obama. obama.reddit.com running on a separate web/db/etc. That way even if
everyone else is slowed down he can keep going.

Of course it entirely depends on where the problem was, but this kind of thing
tends to work in a lot of cases.

------
MetricMike
Huffington Post is aggregating questions and answers here:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/barack-obama-
reddit...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/barack-obama-reddit-
ama_n_1840908.html?utm_hp_ref=tw)

------
bierko
I'm 18 years old. I'd consider myself politically indifferent, in part because
I did research at an organization investigating lobbying and money.

No matter how much of a publicity stunt this was, though, I registered to vote
today. Obama was pretty persuasive.

------
awolf
The _multiple_ "aha! I corrected the President's grammar. hahah" posts are
sickening.

~~~
alex_h
Grammar-naziism is a part of reddit culture, and one of the reasons they still
have relatively erudite discourse given the size of their userbase. I think
it's a net positive, and only natural that it would come out in this AMA.

------
fpp
Doing an AMA on Reddit does more for global health than mobilizing the 6th
fleet

------
brianwillis
If I was Steve Huffman or Alexis Ohanian I'd be feeling pretty good about
myself today. You know Reddit's become a fairly important piece of
infrastructure when sitting presidents are conducting interviews using it.

------
ck2
I'm not sure if I am more impressed the President did that, or how people seem
to be on their best behavior in there.

Either that or every moderator on all of Reddit was called to the thread.

Is it true the load took down Reddit for a little while?

------
denniedarko
Aaaaaand the top post is a shitty watercolour as I look at the page right now,
<http://i.imgur.com/Ju94o.png>

Never change Reddit, never change.

~~~
conradfr
I love reddit but I still don't get the appeal of his posts.

~~~
denniedarko
They were pretty shitty back when he first started but they've improved
steadily, and he really does churn them out. And Redditors do love their
novelty accounts.

------
Jem
I love that Reddit humour is prevalent on even the most serious of AMAs.

I can't log in though, which is slightly annoying. Would be interesting to see
the traffic stats for this once it's done.

~~~
MrMember
What does Reddit 'humour' consist of in this case? Tired pun threads? (He did
Nazi that coming, Anne Frankly...) Reddit 'celebrities' posting inane comments
with all of the child comments consisting of people fawning over them? A
Shitty_Watercolor painting? Someone referencing Rampart like it hasn't already
been done in every single IAmA since it happened?

~~~
Jem
I believe that's fairly typical of reddit humour, yes.

Apologies if it wasn't clear my response was tongue in cheek.

~~~
MrMember
I'm normally fairly good at picking up on sarcasm on the internet, but I
missed it in this case. No worries. :)

------
enraged_camel
I didn't expect any real, solid answers from Obama. The reason is simple: he's
not stupid. He knows that the Internet remembers everything, _forever_.

------
grecy
Wow, he only answered 10 questions, and it;s over.

<http://www.reddit.com/user/PresidentObama>

~~~
TomGullen
1 every 3 minutes, not bad.

------
caublestone
This is by far the coolest fucking thing to happen in politics since Kennedy
told everyone that we are putting a man on the moon.

------
astrolabos
obama killed reddit :p

------
MiguelHudnandez
This just in: President Obama shuts down social news site "Reddit"

...by making one thread very, very popular.

------
conradfr
So the site seems to work a bit now and all the great question seem unanswered
:)

------
silent1mezzo
I should have asked a better question. Still happy he answered mine.

------
volandovengo
It's over from what I can tell: He said he needs to get back to DC.

------
rburhum
No patent questions?!? Come on, this was the time to upvote that

------
creativityland
And Reddit becomes inaccessible for the remainder of the week...

------
allforJesse
The President appears to have crashed his AMA.

------
longbirthcert
How do you suppose they will verify identity?

~~~
pav3l
<http://twitter.com/BarackObama>

~~~
longbirthcert
/wooshingsound

