
Reddit's user uprising against China because Tencent will invest in the platform - subsonico
https://china-underground.com/2019/02/09/reddit-is-experiencing-a-user-uprising-against-china-because-tencent-will-invest-heavily-in-the-platform/
======
jumbopapa
Reddit has long been plagued with censorship. The CEO edited the post of a
user because they criticized him or something. I can't believe how quickly
that's been forgotten.

The Reddit situation reminds me of the post about failing to build a billion
dollar company a few days ago. Reddit is trying to make VCs happy and continue
to grow the business, but a platform like Reddit is best as a less reliant on
growth, but stable platform. That allows the most ideas to be shared and the
most natural interaction between users. I really think there is space for a
competitor, but the switching costs will be high.

~~~
newsbinator
Can you imagine the reaction if a _user 's_ post on HN were edited by YC?

I guess it'd be the instant death of the network.

That this action a) happened on Reddit + b) was mostly/quickly forgotten says
a lot about the different demographics.

Audiences who largely come for cat pictures and political snark don't have to
worry about CEOs breaking the 4th wall.

I've been a Redditor for 9+ years and I still am one. But today's Reddit isn't
the one I signed up for.

~~~
ppseafield
Indeed. I think the comment editing (and immediate capitulation afterwards)
was horrible, but the fact that they allowed the_donald to continue to break
their own rules was way worse. They constantly would dox, harass, downvote
brigade (in posts stickied by mods), and in general act entirely in bad faith.
Other subreddits were banned for much, much less.

Either they wanted their advertising money or were simply supportive of their
platform/actions, but eventually it was enough for me to leave Reddit
entirely.

~~~
dpau
I wonder if the presence of a controversial subreddit like the_donald is good
for business, increasing discussion, site traffic and thus revenue? Perhaps
Reddit has a financial incentive to encourage (or at least not punish)
subreddit drama.

~~~
CM30
Most probably. It's about the current US president after all, and it's the
closest thing to an official forum/social network his fanbase/supporters have.

If Reddit banned it, then they'd likely drive said users to a competitor (like
Voat) and divert all that media attention from Reddit to said competitor in
the process.

~~~
thelasthuman
T_D went to voat already back when I still used it (I gave up because they
refused to add the ability to mute users), they couldn't handle it for even a
week.

------
skilled
I smiled on the inside when I noticed this -- people posting all kinds of
content exposing China -- earlier in my r/all feed. Great effort by the
community.

~~~
DivestTrump
Protesting a site by engaging with it more. Excellent work, reddit.

~~~
skilled
You can always create an account and _join the party_.

~~~
DivestTrump
I deleted my accounts a while back and don't regret it at all.
[https://archive.fo/qIDX7](https://archive.fo/qIDX7)

------
JohnJamesRambo
Are there examples of companies that said “this is enough money” and stopped
concentrating on having ever increasing profits every quarter to satisfy VC or
stock investors? I think of this a lot lately. It seems companies don’t want
to just do what they do well anymore and be satisfied with that. Can someone
give me some inspiration? Companies that have such pride in their work that
they aren’t constantly looking for the next thing they can take on to grow and
instead just focus on being the best and most ethical at what they do? Are
there examples that this business model is actually more sustainable than the
one where you are constantly trying to grow to more more more?

~~~
da_chicken
> _Are there examples of companies that said “this is enough money” and
> stopped concentrating on having ever increasing profits every quarter to
> satisfy VC or stock investors?_

Yes, except they're most often private companies and not publicly traded. Many
of these inspirational companies are family owned and operated. Eventually,
however, someone will get in charge of the company who isn't satisfied with
"good enough" and they'll take the company public or accept investors and
choose to place profit over concerns like customer satisfaction and employee
well being. In other words, eventually someone will decide, "My pocket book is
more important than the community I live in."

If you want inspiration, look at the Chelsea Milling Company, makers of Jiffy
mix. It's nearly 90 years old, has approximately 65 percent of the pre-mixed
cornbread market in the United States, and has never had a marketing
department and does not advertise.

~~~
telchar
Off topic: I love the Jiffy Mix except last I checked it has trans fats in it.
I wish they would remove that.

~~~
tuxxy
IIRC, trans fats were banned in the US. I don't think it works be legal for
them to contain them anymore.

~~~
extra88
Partially hydrogenated oils, a major source of artificial trans fats, have
been banned. Not all trans fats have been banned and they are not all
artificial, they are also naturally occurring.

Jiffy corn muffin mix doesn't contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils
and contains zero grams of trans fats per serving (I have seen it claimed that
products may have less than 0.5 grams per serving and round down to zero).

[https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodad...](https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodadditivesingredients/ucm449162.htm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat)

[https://site.jiffymix.com/product/](https://site.jiffymix.com/product/)

~~~
telchar
I believe it did last time I looked at a box of it that I had in my kitchen.
Maybe they removed them a little while back?

~~~
extra88
That's very possible. However, looking at 3rd party site that lists
ingredients and nutritional information, Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix did not contain
partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and listed zero grams of trans fats [0].
The site doesn't list when the information was added but the comment history
goes back to 2011.

They do also have a page for a Jiffy Baking Mix (no corn, sounds similar to
Bisquick) that did contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, enough for
one gram trans fats per serving.

[0]
[https://www.fooducate.com/app#!page=product&id=43DBDE62-E10F...](https://www.fooducate.com/app#!page=product&id=43DBDE62-E10F-11DF-A102-FEFD45A4D471)

[1]
[https://www.fooducate.com/app#!page=product&id=43BFE144-E10F...](https://www.fooducate.com/app#!page=product&id=43BFE144-E10F-11DF-A102-FEFD45A4D471)

------
yuxt
I am surprised no one mentioned Digg here. It was the original Reddit.
Arguably its demise is attributed by inflow of VCs capital following by
pivoting direction. Which resulted in community leaving for Reddit.

P.S. found this old article
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/13/reddit-
didn...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/13/reddit-didnt-kill-
digg-digg-killed-digg/#b9400ca336ff)

~~~
CydeWeys
I'm still amazed by how ill-conceived everything having to do with that
redesign was, including the new design itself, the rollout plan, apparent lack
of load testing, and no ability to roll back. Contrast with reddit's redesign,
which was rolled out slowly and incrementally.

More recently Snap had a redesign that was received almost as poorly, but at
least they executed it competently.

~~~
hi5eyes
>but at least they executed it competently.

and gave all their users to IG

~~~
snarkyturtle
They're doing fine, their Daily Active Users is higher than Twitter even.

------
analyst74
How would tencent owning a minor stake in reddit allow it to censor the site?
Or is this outrage mostly because tencent is a Chinese firm?

I mean, censorship only works if you have the government backing you, are
people legitimately fear the US government is going to bow down to a Chinese
company?

~~~
asdff
There was a very similar reaction years ago when Conde Nast bought reddit
about how things would now be censored by the corporate overlord and the
platform would be inundated by ads and sponsored posts pushed to the top just
like what happened with Digg. It never happened and the outrage came to pass.

As an aside: how does reddit look like a good investment for tencent? The size
of the site alone? I bet 9/10 reddit users use an adblocker, and even top top
comments and posts from massive subreddits might only be guilded a couple
times.

~~~
dehrmann
At least Condé Nast is a privately held magazine publisher. Separation of
church and state is already part of their DNA.

> how does reddit look like a good investment for tencent? The size of the
> site alone?

Good question. It's either user count, betting than an IPO is soon, a bet that
it can have Facebook-level appeal (and ad targeting), or dumb money that's
tired of sitting on the sidelines. Not sure if I buy any of those stories.

------
luckylion
Reddit already does some of the most aggressive tracking for surveillance,
censors content they don't like, uses shadow bans, is run in an authoritarian
way and has a score system that shows how good of a user you are - and reddit
users are afraid of China because ...?

~~~
Cypher
Because the media says so. But they forget China increased their quality of
life for the last 2 decades by producing cheap products like their iphones.

~~~
vezycash
The word cheap and iPhones don't go together.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Just because iPhones are expensive compared to competing brands doesn't mean
the hardware isn't vastly less expensive than it would be without China's
inexpensive labor and lax environmental regulations.

------
Quequau
I think calling what's going on a "user uprising" is a wild exaggeration. This
is some users who are predisposed to whinge about this sort of topic seizing
the chance to do so and a bunch of other users jumping on the bandwagon.

~~~
flanbiscuit
Going through my personal feed or /r/all it seems like nothing even happened.
How quickly it evaporated

------
lgats
cache of the site: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190209121623/https://china-
und...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190209121623/https://china-
underground.com/2019/02/09/reddit-is-experiencing-a-user-uprising-against-
china-because-tencent-will-invest-heavily-in-the-platform/)

------
jmknoll
There have been a number of planned exoduses from Reddit over the years (the
banning of FatPeopleHate, some kind of succession crisis with the CEO, and the
banning of the AMA mod, to name some off the top of my head), but none of them
has actually materialized into anything.

My question is - What is preventing this? Is it just a matter of getting
enough critical mass onto the new platform? Or is there some other logistical
or engineering challenge that I'm not considering?

The way that Reddit is structured seems like it would be very vulnerable to a
coordinated attempt to move users. In my experience, most subreddits have a
heavily skewed distribution where a handful of users post most of the content,
especially for the long-tail hobby and region-specific subreddits.

Intuitively, it feels like there are probably clusters of Reddit users who are
subscribed to largely overlapping sets of subreddits, and who derive most of
their utility from content generated by the same small-ish set of power users.

Depending on the terms of the investment, I wonder if some of these users
might become very amenable to a migration to a new platform.

A quick aside. For those unfamiliar with Tencent, the Chinese government
essentially has direct access to, and control over, all communication on
Tencent's platforms. Nothing about the company in particular, its just part of
doing business as a media company in China. But the fact of the matter is that
you can be jailed for things you say in private group chats, and any chat can
be arbitrarily censored, with no notification to the sender or recipient that
the message was caught in a filter.

~~~
devoply
As Digg found out many years ago. There is nothing stopping Reddit users from
leaving. The question is which straw breaks the camel's back... and also lack
of viable alternatives, a la Reddit to Digg.

~~~
tcd
Apart from the fact there is no decent reddit alternative. That is after
reddit offered their entire product free with the source code and data (and
the data is still offered for free...)

If there was going to be an alternative, it would be here by now.

People just don't care that much, contrary to what you may believe.

~~~
devoply
I believe their open source copy is no longer maintained.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6xh3xp/reddits...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6xh3xp/reddits_main_code_is_no_longer_opensource/)

But a code base is not an alternative, an alternative is an actual community
with a similar focus. You could potentially build it on Reddit's code base if
you wanted... but you have to build that somehow. Network effects prevent that
from forming and from people leaving existing communities.

------
fxfan
I think the concern shouldn't just be about censorship but also about
political interference. First Russia and now China. Foreign ownership of media
is a national security concern.

~~~
mistermann
What direct, trustworthy evidence is there of Russia political interference?
Not a criminal charge, but the most convincing _evidence_?

~~~
intopieces
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections)

~~~
mistermann
> First, the Internet Research Agency "troll farm", based in Saint Petersburg,
> created hundreds of social media accounts impersonating Americans supporting
> radical groups, planning and promoting rallies, and reaching millions of
> social media users between 2013 and 2017.

Is there any proof for this claim? Writing it on a piece of paper or web page
is not proof.

Was the proof perhaps IP addresses?

I don't think I've ever had anyone even try to answer this question.

~~~
intopieces
I could offer you the numerous citations around the web, but I have a feeling
I'll get tired of following the goalpost before you get tired of moving it.

~~~
mistermann
Citations of evidence?

You could try once, but keep in mind the goalposts in this case are actual
_evidence_ , not an impressive story.

------
rayhendricks
Deleted my reddit account. They can take their $150 million, but freedom of
speech and more specifically being able to criticize the state is more
important than your daily dose of catpics.

~~~
sodosopa
it's a private company, there's no freedom of speech involved. You want a
baker to create a cake that says an offensive message, the baker doesn't' have
to comply.

~~~
renlo
What if the telephone company doesn't want to carry your offensive message to
your friend? It's a private company, the telephone company doesn't have to
comply.

In other words, I don't think your analogy entirely fits here, as Reddit is
more of a platform for communication, they're not paying an artist (baker) to
create some art. Jus' sayin'

~~~
atomicUpdate
The telephone company actually does have to carry your message, because they
are a common carrier and regulated by the FCC.

In other words, you argument is a bit ignorant. Reddit is a private forum
that’s allowed to what they want as long as they don’t discriminate against
protected classes.

------
entity345
Ignorant people outraged by something they have no clue about.

This summarises Reddit and social media in 2019.

------
buboard
We need to find ways to untrap people from their online networks. Perhaps a
common friendlist protocol with global identifiers? The market should be able
to offer alternatives to reddit. User uprisings are just proof that the
platform is a monopolistic trap.

------
sabujp
i still use old.reddit.com even on my phone because I like info density

------
clircle
Not according to the first 50 posts on r/all. I don't see anything about
China. Must have blown over already.

~~~
abc-xyz
Still on the frontpage of [https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com)
(for those who subscribe to default subreddits) - /r/pics, /r/videos and
/r/documentaries (maybe more) all occupied the frontpage for many hours with
focus on the Tiananmen Massacre, and seen /r/pcgaming highlighting the
investment as well.

Project idea for activists: a small code snippet that everyone could easily
include on their websites that ran every year from April 15 to June 4 (with
special emphasis on June 4) highlighting the Tienanmen Massacre.

------
smsm42
I wonder how many strings come attached to this investment. I.e. if Reddit
does something offensive to China - for example, publishes some state secret
they'd like to keep hidden, etc., - would Chinese government lean on Tencent
so that they lean on Reddit to change it?

------
teknologist
What irks me about all this is that it’s entirely a one way street – American
companies can’t go buying influence over Chinese social media companies
because that’s simply not possible. These Chinese companies really want to
have their cake and eat it too.

------
Shivetya
Pretty much the front page is purged of the "protest". I air quoted it for the
sheer ridiculousness of it all. Why?

Pretty sure you would find many posting and or reading from their Chinese made
phones in their homes with Chinese made appliances and other such
accouterments all the while having ignored some of these events that occurred
during their adult lifetime but where many occurred long before.

In other words it is a disappointing sign of what constitutes standing up for
one's beliefs. Where posting on a social network, hash tag tweets, and more,
are the only effort they will ever make. Yet they wonder why the world ignores
them for the most part.

Oh I am quite sure there are politicians willing to exploit them, many
willingly will line up for it, if anything to feel as if they make a
difference. Then they forget by the next time they line up for their morning
latte

------
rblion
Reddit has gone downhill a lot in the last 2 years. It's becoming an echo
chamber.

However, there is still enough quality posts and comments to keep me hooked
until something better comes along.

------
kuwze
I will not accept them influencing our affairs with their dirty money that
they earned from being used as our slave labor. When will they learn their
place?

------
wpdev_63
I feel like it would be incredibly easy for 1 person to make a reddit clone
with what's available today. Reddit's advantage is its network but a
competitor's platform would sky rocket in situations like these.

~~~
moojd
There is one (voat) but unfortunately it turned into a cesspool. What I would
like to see is the concept of sub-reddits decentralized. Each subreddit could
be it's own instance and you peer with the ones you like. It could even be API
compatible with Reddit so app developers could just let users enter all of the
domains they want to follow. If Reddit bans a subreddit they could just move
to their own server and users could just add the domain to relay, sync,
Apollo, baconreader or whatever

------
hnacc0
reddit is the best example for jumping into conclusions.

here's a video explaining it :
[https://youtu.be/8BIYsdulTgU](https://youtu.be/8BIYsdulTgU)

------
pwaai
where can the rest of us go? obviously not happy with this decision but
voat.co is just so bad and alt-right crowd moved there.

------
scoot_718
tencent on the dollar is the worth of any company with their stain on the
brand.

