
Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation - e1ven
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/raiseit/
======
minimaxir
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
users to the app:
[https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1086002848926593025](https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1086002848926593025)
)

That said, it seems like the _really bad_ dark patterns I reported 7 months
ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446841))
no longer appear to be in place.

~~~
komali2
Re: "Download the app!" gates, banners, etc. Medium does this too.

Why? What's the business reason? What does a native app provide the business
that a mobile website doesn't?

~~~
ageitgey
The prevailing "business person" thought is that app users are more loyal
(high value) while web users are temporary users that Google will eventually
steal away from you when they decide they want to be in your market and want
to stop putting you at the top of search result pages. See Yelp's decline as
Google started putting their own local results above Yelp and the resulting
lawsuits.

As a result, most Silicon Valley product managers are trained to think that
websites are nothing more than the top of a funnel to eventually convert low-
value search engine users into high-value app users. Once you realize this,
almost every stupid thing websites do suddenly makes sense. They will do
almost anything possible to grow app installs even if it makes the website
nearly useless.

Sure, it's terrible if you care about the web and user experience. But most
PMs only stick around a company for 1-2 years and they'd rather be able to
show a hockey stick graph of "high value" app user growth to get promoted or
get a new job then worry about what makes for a good user experience.

~~~
gowld
It's not the PMs being rogue evil; they (and the engineers) are serving their
employers faithfully.

Another reason is that a local app can spy on you more (track your location,
for example) to collect data to sell, harass you with notification spam, and
display non-blockable ads.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
I think the non-blockable ads is a big one. In my browser Facebook has no ads,
the app on my phone is full of them.

------
rubyn00bie
I actually hate Reddit these days. I've never really been into their various
communities/subredits- and on occasion they're really useful spots of
information or entertainment.

But...

Their current "force you into app" (which appears to leave you logged in, able
to make account changes, even if you change your password) approach is fucking
horrible. Their mobile navigation is broken by design and.... for what? What
incentive do I have to sign up? Why should when its in such a hostile way. The
incentive clearly is for them the organization to get new funding and not for
me as a user since functionality has been reduced for NO reason. It's like
Quora... that worked great for funding but has really done a lot to develop a
mature business, eh?

... I'm gonna go pour out some coffee in memory of Digg.

~~~
jhedwards
> What incentive do I have to sign up?

Arguably the best Reddit experience is only available when you are signed in.
Reddit's greatest value come from niche communities. Personally I enjoy things
like r/savagegarden, r/mycology and r/askhistorians, so when I log in I see
pictures of mushrooms and carnivorous plants, and get to read interesting
articles about history and science. If you don't log in and subscribe to
things you're interested in then you will see memes, jokes, pictures of
people's pets etc, it's a totally different experience.

Disclaimer: work for Reddit.

~~~
breck
Yes we all know the logged in experience is terrific.

However, the _anonymous_ experience is (was) also terrific for very different
reasons. Reddit is next to unusable on mobile safari in incognito mode.
Sometimes I don’t want to be tracked. I want to read whatever I want to at the
moment, without having that be associated to my name in a database somewhere,
and without having related ads follow me around. It’s an intellectual freedom
that to many people is non-negotiable.

Reddit is now taking money from a Chinese company, where this kind of
anonymity is not possible. That’s frightening to me as a longtime reddit user,
both logged in and anon.

~~~
SquirrelOnFire
Uh, you know you can make multiple accounts and don't need to even associate
an email, right? You can browse just as anonymously logged in as out.

~~~
breck
I'm specifically talking about Reddit mobile on incognito mode. You are
bombarded by App ads and even dark pattern modals trying to get you to install
the app. Compare it to HN, which is a great experience in normal or incognito
mode.

I get that I can create an anon account, but I don’t want to spend 5 minutes
doing that every time I open an incognito tab.

------
anonytrary
The HackerNews community is more appreciative of these problems than Reddit's.
But Reddit _will_ suffer from the same problems that Facebook and Twitter
suffer from, if not already. Reddit users are easily manipulated by engineered
content and engineering content on Reddit is not hard if you know what you're
doing. Evidently, there are power-users on Reddit (e.g. /u/GallowBoob) who
know exactly how Reddit ticks and can get practically anything to the front
page in front of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

Reddit is huge -- I suspect they will be bigger than Facebook (maybe not in
valuation, but usage) in the next 7 years and these problems will only be
exacerbated. Facebook isn't what 12-13 year olds today are interested in.
Reddit is a more apt model for online discourse and culture than Facebook ever
was.

~~~
vvillena
Reddit played a big part in the 2016 USA elections that crowned Trump. Reddit
had to change its front page algorithm to avoid having Trump content near the
top of the page for almost the whole time. The subreddit in question organized
itself to mass-upvote certain posts at certain times, and Reddit wasn't
prepared for such massive, non-organic influence.

I wonder how big of a part the Russian bots and trolls played. I'd love to
read an in-depth book about it.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Reddit is _still_ a haven for the far-right. It really leaves a bad taste in
my mouth that they are tolerated there.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
While this may be true, Reddit's "free speech" ethos has been part of its DNA
from day 1. Reddit has also gone a long way to getting rid of the most
egregious content (I mean, jailbait???)

What would you suggest the alternative is? I think the real problem is that
society is coming to terms with the fact that anonymous free speech isn't all
it's cracked up to be.

~~~
lostlogin
> What would you suggest the alternative is?

Does there need to be one? This site seems to manage to avoid it. Quite how
you get into the situation reddit did is mystifying to me.

I completely agree that anonymous free speech is not the ideal it sounds.

~~~
figgis
> This site seems to manage to avoid it.

If we are going to be reasonable a better comparison would be comparing this
site to a single heavily moderated subreddit.

As an extreme you have subreddits like
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/)
if you look into the comments you will see a lot of " _[ Removed ]_ " threads.
[https://i.imgur.com/Q7mXkPd.png](https://i.imgur.com/Q7mXkPd.png)

Other subreddits are purposefully not moderated as heavily. It's entirely up
to whoever runs it to moderate how they see fit.

------
replicatorblog
It might soon be time for The Oatmeal to add a new panel to his famous "Digg
vs. Reddit" cartoon:

[https://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/reddit_digg](https://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/reddit_digg)

I love Reddit and have no problem with this move in principle, though I do
wish there was at least one social platform that would try to follow the
Craigslist ethos and stay "proudly independent."

I'm not a big believer in crypto, but Reddit seems like one of the few
platforms that would allow a crypto economy to develop and provide an
alternative to the dominant money-making models.

~~~
Deimorz
> I do wish there was at least one social platform that would try to follow
> the Craigslist ethos and stay "proudly independent."

I worked at reddit for 4 years, but quit in 2016, largely because they were
clearly beginning to switch from a small, fairly independent company (despite
being owned by Advance/Conde) to one that was going to become completely
dependent on venture capital and I knew what that would end up doing to the
site.

A few months later, I decided to start a non-profit and start working on a
site that would be able to address a lot of the issues that I think are
hurting online communities: [https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-
tildes](https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes) (HN discussion of the
announcement here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093))

It's in private alpha and is still fairly small, but it gets several hundred
posts/comments a day and is progressing steadily. If you (or anyone else) is
interested in an invite, send me an email at the address listed in the blog
post and I'll be happy to give you one.

~~~
drankula3
It looks interesting. Your blog says it has "Limited tolerance, especially for
assholes." I'd like to ask you a question that would help elucidate this
ethos. Let's say a user makes a comment about how illegal immigrants should be
deported, and another user calls the first racist in response. How would the
site respond & why?

~~~
Deimorz
It's impossible to answer questions like that. Depending on a lot of factors,
the response could be anything from "do absolutely nothing" to "ban both
users".

Community management and moderation aren't simple, black-and-white decisions.
Anyone that claims they are has never been involved in doing it at a
meaningful level.

~~~
explainplease
What if there are no other factors?

User A, new account, posts a single comment: "Illegal immigrants should be
deported."

User B, new account, posts a single comment in reply: "You're a racist."

What does Tildes do?

It's not impossible to answer that. And the answer will tell us a lot about
what Tildes wants to be.

------
brettgriffin
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.

~~~
wowzap
Seriously? I just assume most people on there are in high school, it seems
like a place where the lowest common denominator ideas get upvoted and
everything else gets nailed.

~~~
rconti
I've also yet to find a subreddit I like. I admit I haven't tried recently,
but the "high school" vibe is very much the one I get. I don't even mean in a
bad way, I just mean in a very naïve way. I came of age on the internet, as a
teen in the mid-90s, and I just feel like, 20+ years later, I've moved beyond
the "everything is new" phase, and reddit still feels like everyone
discovering things for the first time. Whether it's a car subreddit where
nobody knows how cars work, or a tech-specific subreddit where nobody has the
background of my peers.. I'm all for helping people along, but on every topic
it feels like 95% rehashing the same old things I rehashed as a teenager.

I think it's just that, ultimately, younger people have more time for online
community than middle-aged folks, and the average tone of most subreddits
clearly shows this.

Perhaps I'd have a different perspective if _I_ was pursuing a new hobby, so I
was the n00b, but I'm.. not.

~~~
newen
Agreed. I've seen cases where you had niche subreddits containing people who
are somewhat experts, but when the sub gets remotely popular, it gets
bombarded by people who don't know anything but feel like they can post
whatever useless crap they want that has been posted a million times before.
Eventually the moderators give up trying to control quality due to posts and
upvotes by beginners, the experts leave in disgust, and the sub devolves into
dumb conversations about the topic because now it's just beginners talking to
beginners.

------
debaserab2
It amazes me the kind of sheer incompetency their product team has
demonstrated over the past 2-3 years. (Edit - as pointed out in replies to
this post, this is an unfair characterization fueled by my recent frustrations
with the direction the site is going. I don't think it is unreasonable to
point out that reddit is failing the expectations of their users, but I don't
doubt for a minute that the individuals working at reddit are very talented)

10 years ago when reddit would go down, you rooted for them as the underdog to
figure it out. Now when it happens, it's just sad. They still can't even
handle the kind of traffic that the super bowl brings them. They've had years
to figure this out.

What has the focus been if not stabilizing their infrastructure? It appears to
be the introduction of a single page application that feels clunky, conceals
ads better, and implements all kinds of dark UX patterns.

Meanwhile, there are still bugs that have existed for years that still aren't
fixed. There's even a redirect loop that you can get stuck in during
authentication in certain scenarios that will completely break the site and
bring you back to the same page until your session expires. It's been there
for at least a year now.

Reddit has gone full digg v4

EDIT: After thinking about this more, I'm not sure that reddit going full digg
v4 means that they'll share the same outcome as digg. The internet now seems
to be a small set of companies so entrenched in their position due to
swallowing mass amount of users and raising enough funds to optimize all the
various little corners that can be optimized. Reddit might not actually be
dead, but as they continue to optimize the weird and cool ways that people
used to use the site, I know it will be for me.

~~~
arcticfox
They've totally broken "quarantined" subreddits as well. I used to
occasionally visit /r/watchpeopledie as a reminder of my own mortality and
some of the horrors of the world, but apparently NSFW wasn't enough for people
visiting "watchpeopledie" to realize they might see something bad. So they
"quarantined" it, which actually means totally breaking it, in my browser at
least. RIP.

Discussion by others here [0] "I'm a senior mod at /r/watchpeopledie, and we
can all see through Reddit's bullshit and hypocrisy" and here [1] "Just a few
thoughts on the hypocrisy of Reddit's quarantine"

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/9js8gf/im_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/subredditcancer/comments/9js8gf/im_a_senior_mod_at_rwatchpeopledie_and_we_can_all/)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/watchpeopledie/comments/9js9j4/just...](https://www.reddit.com/r/watchpeopledie/comments/9js9j4/just_a_few_thoughts_on_the_hypocrisy_of_reddits/)

~~~
ssnistfajen
Yeah the horde of edgelords in WPD totally isn't one of the reasons the sub
got quarantined.

Gore will always be considered shock content, but the comments in WPD are
almost always downright repulsive.

~~~
irrational
Dare I ask what an edgelord is?

~~~
rchaud
It's when you behave online like you are 15 years old. Everything about you
has to scream 'enlightened contrarian' or 'devil's advocate' otherwise you'll
become one of those conformists clicking their fingers to Taylor Swift and
Imagine Dragons.

Conversations with them are impossible and frustrating because they aren't
looking to talk to someone, they're looking to talk AT someone and collect as
many upvotes as possible.

~~~
calvinmorrison
so the entirety of /r/politics?

~~~
rchaud
I was thinking more like r/unpopularopinion. r/politics is wall to wall with
Trump posts, gets tiring within the first few minutes.

------
aluminussoma
Ever since the site redesign in May, popularity has been falling (source:
Alexa Top Websites):
[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com)

I hope that affected the amount of money they raised. As a reddit fan, the
site redesign has not been pleasant. The mobile experience, too.

~~~
jakebasile
At least we can continue to use old.reddit.com for now on desktop. On mobile,
I refuse to use their own app since it's hot garbage and stick to Apollo,
which works pretty well so far.

~~~
wyldfire
Unfortunately the way that comments are rendered depends on which view you
use. There's probably a subset that works for both but many [new.]reddit.com
users won't realize that their post doesn't render correctly for
old.reddit.com.

Given this design, I suppose one must suffer: [new.]reddit.com adoption or the
experience for old.reddit.com.

~~~
0xffff2
Could you elaborate? I've managed to avoid the redesign completely, and I
haven't noticed any comments that appear to be rendered incorrectly.

~~~
wyldfire
The one that keeps coming up is how 'code' is rendered. Old reddit uses four
leading spaces for a code block and IIRC new reddit uses triple-backtick. It's
probably slightly different, not-quite-100% compatible markdown dialects.

Admittedly it's a problem more common on the more technical subreddits.

~~~
0xffff2
Ah. I have noticed that one actually, but I chalked it up to someone confusing
Github/SO/Reddit markdown. Didn't realize that Reddit itself was inconsistent.

------
ryanmcbride
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 the fact that the workforce acted
like a bunch of teens that just arrived at college and are going crazy due to
lack of supervision (Every project had to be tiptoed around because of
complicated interpersonal relationships). Not to mention the CEO offering
drugs to people in his cabin at camp Reddit (the yearly retreat they do) Oh,
and the fact that the platform itself hosts tons of alt-right, incel, racist,
sexist, and violent content. Apparently last year Steve (ceo) told everyone to
enact a hiring freeze while he figures some stuff out, and then after a month
or two, when managers informed him of all the candidates they passed up, Steve
freaks out and tells them that they should have hired them. During the hiring
freeze. That he enacted.

The app also sucks. They try to make everything play embedded, so that if you
want to share it, you pretty much have to share the reddit link, because the
link to the actual content is hidden. That's bad enough but the embedded stuff
also barely works. More often than not I have to go directly to the source for
an embedded video or giphycat thing to play.

Every story I've heard about reddit sounds like a nightmare. It really sucks
that it's become the defacto repository for so many hobbies.

~~~
6cd6beb
>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.

~~~
this_user
> 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.

I think you have to separate the admins, who are reddit employees, and the
subreddit moderators, who are mostly not.

The admins are ultimately accountable to the CEO, who is accountable to the
board and, by extension, the investors. The admins want to maximise traffic,
because that maximises their ability to monetise the users. A certain degree
of controversial content is actually good for that as long as it remains below
the threshold where you start losing advertisers (see 4chan).

Meanwhile, the moderators are usually volunteers, but there are a few very
active "powermods" (or groups thereof) who have control over one or more large
default subs. This has allowed them to carve out their own personal fiefdoms.
Some of them are abusing this power to enforce their own idea of how things
should work, or to push their ideology and narratives. Some others (like the
infamous GallowBoob) have even found ways to monetise their influence by
getting paid to promote content for 3rd parties without disclosing that fact.
This often goes hand in hand with abusing their moderator privileges in order
to increase visibility of their own posts (e.g. by removing highly upvoted
posts from users, so their own posts can take the top spot in that sub).

This is a real problem, but reddit are mostly unwilling to intervene unless
there is a large degree of external pressure, like we saw with the "creepshot"
subs that got banned in 2013 after the media picked up on their existence and
the one user behind a lot of them.

~~~
TheOperator
I see reddit as having three levels of censorship. User (downvotes),
moderator, and administrator. The users can give a sort of "wisdom of the
crowd" analysis that lets them evaluate subjective/borderline decisions better
than moderators. Moderators deal with more clear rule violations like spam.
Admins take a minimalistic hands off approach only getting involved when
communities are bringing bad press to the site, bothering other communities,
posting illegal content, that sort of stuff

The problems Reddit is facing now are largely a result of the admins getting
more activist as Reddit is more visible than ever. They're not just merely
banning subs now. They're quarantining them. They've systemically changed
their algorithms to stop controversial content from being seen by most users.
They're saber rattling against mod teams more and stacking mod teams. The
users have gone from a core of mostly geek to well your typical eternal
september users. The moderators are censor-happy and seriously don't know how
to fuck off.

Reddit will never be as good as it once was because its size is such a
liability. This is a site which went from a founding member risking jail to
post stuff from JSTOR to the internet to founders who decided they've "Grown
up" ($$$) and don't care about free speech anymore.

~~~
xiongchiamiov
> The problems Reddit is facing now are largely a result of the admins getting
> more activist as Reddit is more visible than ever.

Really? It seems to me that the problems come from _not_ banning things,
still: see all the complaints about racism and other "undesirable content" on
the site.

------
ltbarcly3
Reddit has been raising money for almost 15 years! I wish I had the
connections to VC's that reddit apparently does. I can definitely spend all
the money a VC gives me, then raise more money, and then spend all that money,
and never turn a profit for 15 or 20 years.

~~~
tambourine_man
It's easy to get such connections with half a billion active users.

~~~
growlist
I'm actually quite amazed at this. I thought Reddit had gone the way of Digg
some time ago. Isn't it mostly manufactured content these days? I certainly
remember it had that feel about it at certain times in the past when they were
trying to paper over a mass exodus.

~~~
taurath
Its really not - I can't think of a single game community site of which a
subreddit isn't the better/more popular option - ditto with all sorts of
interests (other than programming/entrepreneurship which HN has a pretty good
slice of).

------
EnFinlay
Fun, I deleted my 9 year old account last night. It's wasn't out of some high-
minded thing about how they're turning more into Facebook or privacy or
anything. That site just hits my dopamine so effectively I had to quit and
block it in my /etc/hosts.

I am spending more time on HN though...

~~~
komali2
>I am spending more time on HN though...

Same boat. Twitter as well.

Snipped reddit, went to twitter. Snipped twitter, came to here. Seems I just
can't get enough of "talking with people on the internet."

GF says I should try to find a book club. She's probably right.

~~~
rconti
Twitter is the absolute worst of all of them, though. Of all of the platforms,
it creates the _greatest_ incentives for antisocial behavior, prioritizing
shouting, content-less attention-whoring-for-clicks over everything else.

If you want to be an "influencer" on twitter (which most folks seem to want to
be), you just shout the most outrageous things you can to try to cast a wider
net.

~~~
mesaframe
You get what you look for.

In my experience twitter has been an educational journey.

------
CryoLogic
This works with most user script plugins like GreaseMonkey, ViolentMonkey or
TamperMonkey:

    
    
      // ==UserScript==
      // @name BackToOldReddit
      // @namespace Reddit
      // @match *://www.reddit.com/*
      // @grant none
      // @run-at document-start
      // ==/UserScript==
      const currentURL = window.document.location.toString();
      
      if(currentURL.includes('//www')) {
        const newURL = currentURL.replace('//www','//old');
        window.document.location.replace(newURL);
      }

~~~
Klonoar
Uhhh, you don't need a plugin... you can just set this to happen in your
Reddit profile.

~~~
Sendotsh
This lets you do it without an account though. An order of magnitude more
people use reddit logged out with no account, than those that have an account.

------
YeahSureWhyNot
last round was 200 million in July of 2017. if we assume they had around 30
million left of it in bank today that puts them in 10 million negative every
month. how does an online community/discussion website that makes money from
ads and with not a lot of staff and no other expenses lose 10 million per
month? when are they going to become profitable and how? Is it just a tax
write off thingy? I never understood these things.

~~~
Someone1234
Reddit has 230 staff (as of July 2017).

edit (removed wrong maths): $1.9m per month in staffing costs @ 230
employees/100K each. Although a reply below says the staff may have almost
doubled and $100K may be a low guestimate for the area (inc. benefits, etc).

My question would be: Why does Reddit have 230+ staff? What do most of them
do?

~~~
YeahSureWhyNot
thats crazy. yeah exactly. what do 230 people do there?

~~~
gristle
Engineering: \- Infrastructure (500M MAU) \- Web Dev \- iOS Dev \- Android Dev
\- Design \- UX \- Localization

Data: \- Ranking timelines \- Ad performance \- Recommendations \- Business
analytics \- R&D

Product: \- Coordinating across the above 2 and adding/measuring (new)
features

Sales: \- Ads

Finance/HR/Admin/Accounting/Office Manager(s)/Recruiting: \- Running a company

------
covercash
Reddit is still great if you take the time to curate subreddits that pertain
to your interests and you use a 3rd party app (Apollo is really fantastic.)

I mostly spend my time moderating r/CrohnsDisease and making sure the people
who post there get at least one thoughtful reply. I browse r/all most days but
rarely do I post content or comments outside of my main subs because there’s
just so much toxicity on the platform.

I wish Alexis had been able to influence the core values of the company before
leaving the second time, he seems like one of the few genuinely good people at
that level of major tech companies these days. It’s a shame he’s moved on to
other things.

~~~
DanTheManPR
I find the front page basically without value... ...but individual subreddits
for can be quite valuable global public spaces for specific topics. They're
centralized, searchable, and generally don't put any walls in front of non-
registered users. A lot of internet searches will lead you to years-old posts
on a subreddit dedicated to the subject, with a long discussion thread, and
links to more of that same content on that same subject. Forums previously
filled this function (and usenet before), but Reddit has the advantage of a
more modern and consistent interface. Facebook groups could have potentially
filled this role, but are totally opaque to outside searches, and so are not
easily discovered.

------
tinco
Reddit isn't worth $3B, and management trying to justify the validation and
provide returns to the investors will kill it. Just a quick peek on `/r/beta`
will show you the weird things Reddit is doing to maximize value and how it is
alienating users.

Unobtrusive ads don't make investors enough money, Facebook has already shown
that. To derive maximum revenue per user, you need to drive your users to the
edge of not enjoying the site anymore. With these investments Reddit will be
walking that line, and who knows if Reddit is too big to digg?

~~~
zachlatta
What about Instagram? People seem to like their ads, at least from the friends
I've talked to.

------
tdees40
It amazes me that a fourteen year old company with a mature business model
requires equity financing. I'll never really understand how tech companies
work, I guess.

~~~
dcole2929
That's mostly because they DO NOT have a mature business model. Reddit
struggles because their main source of revenue, ads, performs poorly on the
generally tech savvy audience that makes up the core of their platform. They
have been trying to figure out for literally the entire life of the company
how to turn a top 10 visited website into actual consistent and repeatable
revenue. You'd think it be pretty simple but look how much push back they've
gotten on even relatively benign monetization strategies.

------
ggregoire
Interesting that most of the comments here are about Reddit itself (the
product) and almost nothing about Tencent.

For reminder, Tencent owns

\- Riot Games (League of Legends, one of the most played game in the west)

\- Epic Games (Fortnite, another one of the most played game in the west)

\- and now Reddit (one of the most visited social network in the west)

~~~
thirdplanet
So just purely based off investments, Saudi Arabia owns Twitter. Russia has
had its hands in Facebook since 2009. Now China has a big stake in Reddit.
Genuinely curious where this will lead.

------
jlarocco
Must be .com bubble 2.0 if VCs will throw that much money at a company who
can't monetize that many users after this many years.

Not my money, so I don't care, but I do really have to wonder what their plan
is.

The way I see it, Google, Apple, and Facebook won't buy them because they're
not competitors and they already have more users. And 99% of Reddit users
probably use 1 or more of those 3 already anyway.

An IPO seems unlikely because they're not making enough money.

So maybe they're hoping for a buyout from a media company?

~~~
umeshunni
> So maybe they're hoping for a buyout from a media company?

For the second time, of course: [https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/31/breaking-
news-conde-nastwi...](https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/31/breaking-news-conde-
nastwired-acquires-reddit/)

Reddit has an interesting corporate history of being a startup --> acquisition
--> subsidiary --> spinout --> "startup" \--> ??

~~~
jlarocco
Huh, I vaguely remember them getting bought, but didn't know about the
subsidiary and spinout parts.

I guess they're all playing hot potato until it goes bust.

------
yalogin
Reddit is the only social media I use. Never used any other services at all.
The only annoyance is the redesign. It completely sucks. Very much reminds of
the digg 4.0 redesign before it died. I don't know why all these aggregation
sites go to that look and feel but its very bad to use. Hope they don't
abandon supporting the old design. That would definitely make scale back my
time on there significantly.

~~~
baragiola
I use [https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com) since I can't grasp the
new UI

------
buzzert
Something about Reddit that has been really irking me lately is the decline in
quality of the comment threads, which is arguably one of the only reasons to
visit the site nowadays since link aggregators are so common.

People seem to treat commenting like a game instead of a forum for discussion.
I often see the same patterns from Twitter there (i.e., inciting outrage to
get upvotes, virtue signaling, or just pointless jokes on serious articles).
The introduction of Reddit Gold has made this substantially worse, as now
there’s an additional point system which awards single comments instead of
points of discussion.

~~~
protonimitate
I don't disagree, but I think this has been the case for a while now on
reddit. I haven't noticed any drastic change in comment quality over the few
years, and I've been using it almost daily since 2012.

There are communities that moderate very heavily and don't allow the
joke/sarcastic/low-effort comments (askhistorians, politicaldiscussion, etc).

------
koolba
Has Reddit ever had a profitable quarter, let alone year? I thought I saw that
revenue had been rising but they also have significantly ramped up expenses,
doubling employees and lots of new infrastructure (ex: their self-hosted video
platform).

This sounds like greater fool theory if the investors in the latest round
think they'll be able to peddle it for greater than $3 Billion without it ever
bringing a dime of actual profits.

~~~
thirdplanet
They have never had a profitable quarter or year.

------
tapoxi
Is there an ActivityPub or similarly decentralized alternative? I don't want
to get invested in reddit only for them to shut down their API (it'll happen,
always does) and force me to use their garbage mobile client.

~~~
Communitivity
Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter. The Join Mastodon website
[[https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/)] has a good
introduction.

Mastodon is not currently an alternative to Reddit though, but I think it
could be, if it got significant contributions towards forum functionality.
Perhaps by treating each tag, or each of a certain type of tag, as an
individual forum. A 'Trunk'?

On the other hand, Discourse
[[https://www.discourse.org/about](https://www.discourse.org/about)] might be
a better candidate for an alternative, in some ways. With Discourse though
each "Reddit" would be a Discourse board on a specific server. To do a true
Reddit alternative you'd need to plug individual Discourse servers into a P2P
mesh.

Ideally I'd like to see a Discourse-like or Reddit-like UI on top of a
Mastodon back-end (which would be using ActivityPub).

If you want to work on this as well please let me know and maybe we can work
together on it (@BillBarnhill on Mastodon.technology or Twitter).

------
gavman
I've always felt that Reddit would work really well as a non-profit. This
would remove the inherent conflict between keeping the focus on
communities/shared-interests (what drew me to Reddit in the first place) and
the financial incentive pushing towards profiles/gathering personal
information for ads. I would definitely donate to Reddit monthly if it went
that route.

~~~
e1ven
It hasn't launched publicly yet, but that seems to be what Tildes is going
for.

[https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-
tildes](https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes)

~~~
gavman
Hadn't heard of it, but will definitely keep an eye on it. Thanks!

------
chrisper
Sadly I feel like Reddit has become like a Facebook news feed.

That and the fact that now so many comments keep getting deleted and posts
locked makes me wonder who the target audience is these days.

Also the overzealous moderators are annoying.

------
dswalter
I expect this raise to result in a number of enhancements to the user
experience which make it a more pleasant and enjoyab[Open this link in the
Reddit App?]le place to discourse.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
The abundance of AMP links in Google search results, and how they purposely
block actions, feels like some cheap SEO hack ala Experts Exchange in 07/08 or
Quora.

~~~
bluedino
Who's fault is that? They're trying to get you to use Chrome or the Reddit app
to view the AMP links so I wasn't sure who to blame.

------
Theodores
This is a crazy revenue model. It is reminiscent of the dot com era when land
grabs were a thing. But a lot has settled down since the fun days and it is
not possible to get investors onboard with promises when there is a clear
track record.

The track record does look okay:

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=reddit](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=reddit)

There is continued growth in engagement. But still, shouldn't the actual
product - the website - be built out by now with all the content coming from
users, therefore not much of a business case for investment? How can they have
this continually growing audience and not be making enough bucks to pay the
bills and grow organically?

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> It is reminiscent of the dot com era when land grabs were a thing

That's exactly what it is. A land grab of people's attention.

------
screye
I would not be surprised. Reddit is easily my most visited internet community
and go-to for many niche matters as well.

I use it through 3rd party apps or my PC, so have mostly avoided their dark
patterns.

I love HN, but the limited scope of the discussions here (for obvious and good
reasons) makes it far less frequented than reddit.

Reddit is like a slightly worse HN for everything else apart from CS/Tech.

I also love how everyone I meet in the US seems to feign ignorance about
Reddit, despite it being the Alexa #5 website here (behind Google,Amazon,FB
and YT) It is almost as if people don't want to be called a redditor despite
using the website a lot.

It is also the site with the 2nd greatest daily time per visitor (behind only
salesforce), above YT, Facebook, Twitter or ...... pornhub ....

------
ihuman
>But supporting and moderating all that content isn’t cheap

What? Moderators don't get paid at all to moderate.

~~~
gfwhuuku
They have paid site-wide moderators. I've been banned many times by them, even
for posts in very niche subs, and I've also been in many subs that were
banned, so I imagine they have a few paid mods like that.

~~~
leadingthenet
Those are called admins, not moderators (which are all unpaid).

------
sifoobar
I've used Reddit since day 1.

The new website is a usability disaster, and one that they don't mind shoving
down your throat at every turn.

Moderators are increasingly beating anyone who isn't politically correct
enough over the head with their moronic code of conduct and banning users for
simply disagreeing.

Most of the people who still hang around are very negative individuals who
seem to be there more to project their hatred in general than to learn and/or
share. Oppose their abuse and they'll invariable mob up on you and make sure
your posts never see the light of day.

If I was Aaron Swartz, bless him; I would be turning in my grave by now.

------
xemdetia
It's weird to me to see more investment in reddit as it mostly feels like it's
gone downhill. It could be my own interests but most of the subreddits who
don't have an outside feed (around a game like overwatch, or primary/secondary
major city sub) just have been withering away and it's those niches that makes
reddit 'stick.' The new design/company focus seems to feel directly in
contrast to the staying power that the niche-ness provides and I am not sure
how far apart these two points are.

------
wpdev_63
Reddit is worth more just for the political influencing alone. It's known
within certain circles that they manipulate the voting system so that articles
of their choice reach the front page.

------
axaxs
The only problem I have with Reddit from a valuation perspective is that it
doesn't really offer much 'secret sauce.' The tech itself is not great, and I
don't really know of anyone who likes the redesign. Point being, the value is
all in the users and content. Users are fickle, and as we saw from Digg (and
lesser extent, StumbleUpon), can flee en masse at any moment. That's a tough
pill for me to swallow as a potential investor.

~~~
jandrese
It seems like their big problem is monetization. They're probably reluctant to
monetize too aggressively given past experience with companies like Digg,
where the users saw the system turning against them and fled.

Somehow Facebook managed to do it, but you still hear grumbling about how big
of a mess the news feed is and people searching for something that can replace
it.

~~~
axaxs
Well, that was kind of my point I should have expanded on. Facebook,
Instagram, Snapchat, et al have a -lot- of interesting tech behind them. From
"creepy" suggestion algorithms, calls/video calls, face filters for pics and
videos...the list goes on and on. Sure another company could do it, but it's
got a higher barrier to entry. Reddit has nothing interesting or proprietary.
An unreliable clone would probably take a single person all of a day or two.

------
nopriorarrests
The forthcoming Series D round is said to be led by Chinese tech giant
Tencent.

150-300mln is probably small amount for Tencent and they are not looking for a
quick return, I guess.

------
rc_kas
Hrm, this smells like another step towards the death of Reddit. The things
they will have to due to justify that valuation will not be pleasant for the
users.

------
sergiotapia
It's spiraling down now. Too transparent that hundreds of thousands of dollars
are being spent to shape public opinion. Shills all over the place, in every
single subreddit. And if they can take over a subreddit, they'll prop up a new
one with the right people in charge by spamming it's content enough that it
reaches /r/all.

The clocks ticking on reddit. It used to be such a different beast back in
2005.

------
vit05
Reddit is quite unknown in Brazil, India and several other countries where
social media are used by millions of people.

This represents an opportunity, but also a risk. Opportunity to grow in these
countries, or see another company offering similar service arise and gain
momentum.

If @spez give me 10 horses with food for 20 days walk I could come back with
more than 30 million users from Brazil alone.

------
companyhen
Remember when reddit said they'd use the money to pay their users and then
stopped talking about it completely? [https://www.inc.com/christine-
lagorio/reddit-notes-plan-payi...](https://www.inc.com/christine-
lagorio/reddit-notes-plan-paying-users.html)

------
ben_jones
Reddit will continue to face decisions between their community and business
goals, often with the community goals being ethically green and the business
goals being ethically grey. I have every faith they will choose the business
goals with every matter of consequence, which is why I want to ween myself off
it.

------
kodablah
I have an idea for Reddit if they want to make money: I know your site is open
source, but it is not an easy setup. The mixture between forum, customizable
subreddits, and almost chat-like threading is tailor made for intra-company
communication. We all feel the pain of ephemeral chat and closed-recipient
email to do business. Employees need a way to show off, communicate, post neat
things, customize their department's subreddit, etc. But you can't keep the
Reddit branding because it is unprofessional.

So...take Reddit, make it easier to install on-prem, charge for this
enterprise version, and change the name and default look of this on-prem
version to distance itself from the traditional Reddit. Then watch the money
roll in as I and others would pay to have more than just a forum (sorry
discourse).

~~~
zozbot123
You know that NNTP is a thing, right? It's not like the "chat-like threading"
was Reddit's invention.

~~~
kodablah
This is like telling someone installing Sharepoint that they know NFS shares
are a thing right? Or a business using Slack that they know IRC is a thing
right? Who is claiming Reddit invented it? They have made it
approachable...hopefully one day all these people pointing out open
alternatives that technically have feature parity will recognize why there's a
difference in adoption.

------
jtwigg
I quit reddit back when I quit facebook. Best choice I ever made, I would
encourage you to do the same.

------
throwaway427
I will often scope google searches for product reviews or
food/recipe/diet/fitness knowledge to reddit. This is not the sole research I
do but it does tend to be pretty high quality data.

I would not be surprised if Reddit is an ML/AI dataset gold mine.

~~~
minimaxir
Reddit's public-facing data is _very_ useful for ML/AI.

On the data science end, you can do a lot to gauge important topics and user
behavior: [https://minimaxir.com/2018/09/modeling-link-
aggregators/](https://minimaxir.com/2018/09/modeling-link-aggregators/)

On the silly AI-end, I made a subreddit consisting only of text-generating
RNNs:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditNN/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditNN/)

Reddit's internal data is even more robust.

~~~
bob_theslob646
>Reddit's public-facing data is very useful for ML/AI.

assuming that the users generating the data are humans and not bots....

------
nabla9
* valued roughly $10 per monthly active user

* Must make something like $0.01 - $0.007 ROI per active user per year to justify that valuation without growth.

* If user base grows, you can reduce those numbers accordingly

* If you take into account the risk that comes with new competition, valuation should go down. 20 years from now Reddit can be as valuable as Slashdot, Myspace or Usenet.

Personally I think Reddit has limited lifespan. $3B valuation is based on dot-
com type hype. World changes and Reddit's is very basic technologically. When
popularity goes away and next big social media innovation comes, Reddit's
value plummets. It's never going to die completely off, of course.

------
zzzeek
I wonder if reddit would consider giving some sizable donations to the many
open source projects (two of which I am the creator of) that have powered
their software platform for many years which has brought them such prosperity.

------
dbg31415
How are they not profitable yet? Every third post seems to be an ad.

Their new design is hideous, but other than that it doesn't seem like they're
doing anything tech-wise.

So is all the money just going into hosting fees? Or am I missing something?

------
joering2
3,000 millions. Not 3 million, not 30 or 300. 3 thousand millions dollars.
Unbelievable. And they barely make and revenue. Think about this for a
moment.. if internet would stay like this for the rest of your grand children
life, then they would make that money back. Bu we are at the tip of an ice
berg. 15 years ago nobody knew half of the world will be using Facebook,
daily. To think that those giants survive in next 25 or 50 years and everyone
will get their money back and then some more.. its staggering!

------
tootahe45
I'm confused why Reddit has gotten a free pass on the fake news thing when
from my observations they're #1 in that department, ahead of Twitter and then
Facebook. Reddit offers the easiest sign-up process making it a haven for
vote-manipulation (and thought manipulation) bots. They only just started
'locking' compromised accounts, which just forces a password reset which bots
totally can't do. Could it be that the fake news & bots on Reddit just support
the correct side?

------
m_ke
They've spent the last year fudging their metrics with the new design to make
this happen. The infinite scroll and image first post layout has ruined the
quality of the content.

------
bob_theslob646
> Reddit is raising $150 million to $300 million to keep the front page of the
> Internet running, multiple sources tell TechCrunch.

How much does it cost to run a website like Reddit per year?

------
dexoplex
Tencent, the giant tech company leading the funding round, owns Wechat and is
helping to implement elements of the Chinese Social Credit System.

One such recent feature for the program they are trialing is nicknamed the
"Deadbeat map". [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-24/new-wechat-app-
maps-d...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-24/new-wechat-app-maps-
deadbeat-debtors-in-china/10739016)

~~~
taurath
They also own League of Legends maker Riot Games, have a large stake in
Fortnite maker Epic Games, and a rediculous number of services.

They are putting their money literally anywhere there are eyeballs and
attention.

------
throwmeback
I miss the days of uncensored content on Reddit. This is what drew me to using
it in the first place. Nowadays it's the place I get my porn fix from
sometimes.

------
miguelmota
With a raise that size seems like reddit will be at the mercy of investor
best-interests and revenue generation will be priority one rather than the
interests of the community.

It's easy to block ads on a browser but not as easy on a mobile app so they
keep pushing these dark patterns to get to you to download the mobile app
which personally am not a fan since there's an irrelevant 'promoted' post with
every page scroll.

------
makecheck
The single thing keeping me on Reddit is the existence of “old.reddit.com”.

There has not been one compelling change to the site in years. Quite the
opposite, every change seems to be made by someone hell-bent on driving every
potential visitor away, and frustrating the rest.

It’s frustrating, too, because _content_ shouldn’t be hamstrung by the _way_
you reach it but that’s the “modern” web. User interaction is a crucial part
of any product.

------
mark_l_watson
I read the title wrong, that they were raising 3B. Still, raising $150m is
large.

Reddit has changed so much over the years but I still like Reddit enough to do
an auto-donation every month. I think I support Reddit more out of sentimental
reasons because I don’t spend too much time anymore on their site but I enjoy
it much more than, for example, Facebook that I only spend a few minutes a
month on.

------
zmmmmm
It's weird how I see this as a failure and their surviving so long without
doing this was success. It feels to me like the only reason they could be
pursuing this is because they've given up on their original mission and
vision. I hope all the investors have a good think about Digg to remember how
fickle and transient online communities like this can be.

------
rblion
Reddit is going to challenge Facebook.

I have started to lose interest in Reddit too. I never thought I'd say that
but it's way more noise than signal these days too.

I have also grown to prefer reading books and time away from screens more and
more.

A tech backlash is underway for millions of people in the developed world. A
sense of burnout seems to be common among under 40 year olds.

------
dalbasal
For anyone in the know, what are reddit's big costs? Wikipedia has employees @
230 in 2017, for whatever context/scale that contributes.

The article doesn't mention plans. Are they just getting while the going's
good, or is there something expensive that they plan on doing?

------
jplata
For those commenting about the reddit redesign, I'll shamelessly plug my
alternative web-ui:

[https://lurrker.com](https://lurrker.com)

However, for those who prefer old.reddit you may still not enjoy this more
modern approach.

------
dmode
I am actually surprised that Reddit is only valued at $3B. Given the amount of
traffic and engagement, I thought the valuation would be fairly higher.
Pinterest has a $10B valuation, Reddit definitely feels more popular than
Pinterest.

------
gremlinsinc
I wouldn't mind so much if it was like a platform thing like email... Choose
an app, then all Reddit links default to that. I'm not going to switch from
relay anytime soon. At least then it wouldn't be so annoying.

------
randomsearch
On Paul Graham's topic of "unicorns hiding in plain sight", I think news
aggregation/discussion along the lines of Reddit is today's MySpace
opportunity: an incumbent that could easily be bested 10x.

------
ThomPete
It's still simultaneously a mystery to me that a company like reddit with all
their years behind them and all the traffic still needs to raise rounds and a
wonder that its possible to raise capital for such a company.

------
crispytx
They've really fixed the effectiveness of their ads with the site redesign, so
maybe the increased valuation is worth it. Not really something end consumers
notice, but as an advertiser I definitely have.

------
asdfx
I have a naive question.

All these moderators do spend considerable time and effort on reddit.

And now reddit is going public, do the moderators get paid going forward? why
would someone want to volunteer for a profit making company?

~~~
e1ven
Semi-paid volunteers are legally tricky - [https://priceonomics.com/the-aol-
chat-room-monitor-revolt/](https://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-
revolt/)

People volunteer to moderate communities because they care about the value of
that community. Not dissimilar from running a small forum.

------
chx
Looking at some of my current favorite subreddits (usbchardware, manybaggers)
there are interesting avenues of monetization -- group buys, affiliates etc.
Reddit is not doing any of this.

------
throwaway415415
That explains why they are being so aggressive about using the app. They are
trying to up these numbers for investors. I feel less hatred towards them now
that I understand that.

------
smrtinsert
In an increasingly consolidated social media space, I'm so glad Reddit still
exists as an independent entity. At this point I consider their independence
patriotic.

------
bluecalm
I still can't understand how Reddit needs 150-300 million to keep functioning.
Is there any information about how much money they spend and for what
purposes?

------
cralder
If you want to fix Reddit, come build the replacement with us! Our team of 5
at Upstream is creating a social content platform that combines crowd-sourced
curation with machine learning to map the web by topic and surface relevant
content for your interests. We also provide content recommendations from
friends/influencers and help people create playlists of their favorite finds.
We've built an alpha and are moving toward a public beta.

Email me at chris_alder@berkeley.edu if you're interested in seeing a demo.
We're looking for skilled devs to join the team.

------
cronix
Ah, the great kiss of death. The service will only go downhill from here as
they try to appease investors at the expense of their users.

------
JoshuaRLi
GET NEW REDDIT

No thanks.

If old reddit ever gets taken away, I can only hope that they'll keep the APIs
stable so that 3rd party clients can continue to live on.

------
kingkawn
Seems like the users should get a cut since they are as much part of the
product as the architecture of the site itself.

Is this heresy here?

------
intopieces
I know $3B is a lot for a valuation, but I can’t help but feel like it should
be higher, given how influential the site is.

------
mrnobody_67
... because raising large rounds at high valuations has worked out well for
other media companies like Buzzfeed, et al.

------
simonsaidit
Reddit was great back when done in lisp and mostly about programming and Paul
Graham essays. Back before Digg died.

------
lazyhummingbird
Ctrl-F for "moat" and found none.

That said, they're the first thing to pop into my browser bar when I press R.

------
VikingCoder
Control-F: distributed (0 results)

Control-F: peer (0 results)

Control-F: p2p (1 result)

Can we seriously not come up with a way to make a distributed reddit?

I imagine running a client on sandstorm.io which is pulling content from
subreddits that are each hosted in a sandstorm.io instance.

Is the problem with that that it becomes too easy to doxx someone? That we
like having a centralized authority that we can "trust" for authentication /
authorization / pseudo-anonymity?

~~~
marcinzm
>Is the problem with that that it becomes too easy to doxx someone? That we
like having a centralized authority that we can "trust" for authentication /
authorization / pseudo-anonymity?

Dox, send child pornography through, use to sell narcotics, plan hitman
assassinations with, etc, etc. Not to mention all the fun stuff organized
bands of miscreants can do to other people. Just look at Wil Wheaton's
adventure with Mastodon for an example.

~~~
VikingCoder
So, I happen to believe in government regulation. Is your assertion that in
the predator-prey relationship of free speech vs speech regulation, that the
government cannot possibly keep up? That any (new?) forms of communication
will enable people to engage in illegal speech, and so therefore are bad?

I'm not trying to egg you on, I'm genuinely curious what you think our
attitude should be.

~~~
marcinzm
My argument is more that people would prefer to not be on a platform where
they are at the mercy of organized miscreants or one that is known for lots of
illegal activity. So centralized platforms provide a layer of safety that
people want. It's really hard to make a platform that allows broad speech, is
actually decentralized/p2p (ie: rather than just federated), and is safe from
organized abuse.

As for the government, I believe the government is fallible, corruptible and
that privacy has value. The government can keep up but in doing so you tend to
lose more freedom than you had before. For example, Australia's new laws on
encryption which would, combined with mass traffic surveillance, lets them
know everything you say. So I'd prefer the government not care enough to
actually solve the speed regulation problem because doing so puts dangerously
much power in it's hands.

------
dnate
The only thing that still keeps me there is old.reddit.com

If support for that ever gets removed, I'll be gone as well.

------
EamonnMR
Reddit's new dark pattern to push the app is "log you out at random intervals
on mobile."

------
killjoywashere
If you think Russian trolls on Facebook is bad, wait till you see what happens
when China owns Reddit.

------
gwynn
$2.7 billion pre-money valuation from Tencent? Really? Sounds like a soft
power overvaluation loan.

------
kumarvvr
As one of the most addictive sites on the internet, Im surprised the valuation
is that much low.

------
jarjoura
OMG, the amount of hate in here, it's so disturbing! I know we're all entitled
to our opinions, but this is quite depressing. Reddit has been such an
incredible space for me to discover myself and adds tremendous value to my
life. I for one celebrate that they are growing and look forward to a long
future together.

------
btbuildem
Oh great.. it will finally become so bad I will stop wasting my time there.
Great!

------
ralusek
Reddit's userbase quality has been in decline for years. The top 10 posts
every day are something like:

[Some snarky oversimplified political tweet]

Top Comment:

"It's almost as if [some snarky oversimplified, edgy-teenager-take they stole
from John Oliver]."

Seeing the news that reddit was bringing in more investors just now made me
want to take a peek at what the competition was up to. I remember Voat.co
being set up when Reddit started banning a bunch of subreddits, so I figured
I'd go check that out...Don't do it. The content is just straight racist
desires for ethno-states, and an extremely popular conspiracy that Democrats
favor abortion because they drink the blood of children. I'm not kidding:
[https://voat.co/v/news/3016128](https://voat.co/v/news/3016128). The top
comment is literally "Every article I've read on this has omitted WHERE THEY
GET THE GODDAMN BLOOD FROM."

So, ya. Guess we're stuck with reddit for now...

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angel_j
How many reddit users here hit the [-] to minimize discussions?

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smpetrey
Why go for a Series D? Why not just IPO or direct list?

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Rainymood
Mark my words, Reddit is going to become the new Digg.

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scoot_718
For what exactly? What would they spend 3 Billion on?

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pl0x
There have been some improvements in reddit since Alexis Ohanian is back but
with this came the popups to install reddit and censorship of many subs.

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_zachs
Planning on making my own Reddit that will have no future plans to be
monetized and will focus on the actual users. Who's in?

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jb3689
All good things must come to an end

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king_magic
Reddit has become a hostile trash fire of a user experience. Can’t figure out
why people subject themselves to it.

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rhegart
Tencent is leading the round, Reddit is one of the best places to get news
trending. Is it concerning the Communist Party might have some control over
what information the public views? Tencent is less beholden to the CCP than
perhaps any major Chinese company, so that’s good. I don’t think it should be
an issue, but it’s good to know.

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trumped
Hopefully that will be the end of reddit and the start of something new.

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wmnwmn
Well, it was fun while it lasted.

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dizzylight
Tecent is evil company collecting all user infos and handles them to communist
party.

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oskkejdjdkjd
Reddit is awful. I used to absolutely love reddit in 2010, 2011. Back then,
reddit was at a stage where it was just starting to be mainstream. Most of the
people who had found reddit on their own or by word of mouth, and who had
liked it, were cool and smart, so to speak. At the same time, reddit was
becoming very popular and being seen more and more as a meme-ey social
movement. As the importance of reddit became more apparent, it galvanized all
those cool, smart people to work very hard to create excellent content and
generally nurture the community. That was the key to the goodness of early
reddit: a very high caliber subset of the user-base being driven to put tons
of effort into content creation and community management — driven by the
intoxicating idea that reddit was the next big thing more or less. I remember
visiting a friend at UCSB in 2011, and everybody talking about _reddit_. One
of his female roommates asked if I browsed reddit. It was just a very exciting
thing back then. But now look at it.

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entity345
"Raising a huge round": spin to say that Tencent is buying a 10% stake.

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monochromatic
Real question: is there any way to short reddit’s stock at this stage?

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SlowRobotAhead
What a great time to point out an example of Reddit behavior just today...

[https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/an6vek/video_from_t...](https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/an6vek/video_from_the_lawyers_has_been_released_in_the/)

You have to be some special sort of special to think Reddit Inc isn't
complicit in the censorship going on. That's not a long term sustainable
position. They're far too obvious about it.

