
Reddit - gatsby
http://blog.samaltman.com/reddit
======
kyro
Exciting news. One thing I sincerely hope reddit will do with the new
injection is to increase the level of quality of content and discussion across
the board. Often the advice given is "you've got to find the smaller
subreddits" and while that's true, I think having the first few layers filled
with terrible content and hive-minded, often racist/sexist discussion is
incredibly detrimental to both the site's image and new user experiences.

I know there's great content there, and great people having great discussions,
but it's not terribly easy to find. I'm thoroughly convinced that reddit could
be an incredibly valuable source of reliable news, discussion, and
entertainment, but the way it's structured highlights its more juvenile
aspects.

And if it can find a way to establish legitimacy, it'll be worth far more than
it is today.

~~~
silencio
I'm a default (twoxchromosomes) mod.

I would love to see better moderation tools. Most of the shitty content I've
had to deal with are from newer/multiple accounts, as well as the older
accounts that are sick of the trolls. Our AutoModerator shadowban list and our
ban list is so ridiculously long I can barely scroll it. It'd be amazing if we
didn't have to rely on a bunch of other tools (toolbox, RES, AutoModerator) or
consider building our own tools (subreddit history scraper). It'd also be
amazing if there was some site-wide automatic action against certain throwaway
accounts so we don't have to clean up _after_ the 4th attempt at some idiot
trolling us.

I would also love to see a better take on Reddit 101 too. We still get
comments like "I'm a male and why is this on my reddit page" and people that
just barge in without reading rules to post things against our rules (like a
ton of misogyny _and_ misandry). Some of this is inevitable but it's pretty
annoying that there isn't much we can do here either other than deleting
things after the fact.

I don't think that those two alone will improve the site significantly, but it
would be a burden lifted for default mods, and that might help clean up parts
of the front page. Maybe. I don't even want to think about how much time we
spend on everything from figuring out trolls to writing warning notes for each
other, to discussing some idiot user trying to dox one of the mods. It'd be
time we can spend doing other things for the subreddit. That would be nice.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>"I'm a male and why is this on my reddit page" and people that just barge in
without reading rules to post things against our rules

I think its asking way too much of someone who wants to join a casual site
known for cat pics and meme jokes to read through the couple dozen default sub
rules. There's no practical educational solution here. The volume of new users
and the labor of understanding all these rules is huge and its impractical to
expect people to digest it all, especially for a topic most users, being male,
aren't into. Lets also not be ignorant of the massive feminist thought that
dominates subs like 2x. To you, its mainstream, if not conservative, to others
its very different from what they're used to. Why do you think subjecting
random people to that and not expecting some kind of reaction?

Reddit's idea of default subs seems flawed to me. Perhaps it should have
suggested defaults when you make an account and you choose what you're
interested in. Non-logged in users should get, maybe, randomized top 500 or so
subs. Hand-picking subs, many of which are instantly polarizing (atheism,
worldnews, politics, 2X, etc) is really an insane way to run that site.

Worse, once a sub is made a default, its quantity goes up but its quality goes
down. /r/writingprompts was once a fun place for authors to get some practice.
The highest rated stories were usually good for a read, but now its a default
sub, and its unreadable. The top comments tend to be half-assed efforts
usually ending in a joke or even a reddit in-joke because the guy who posts
something silly immediately will dominate while the guy still working on his
story and posts after an hour of writing ends up being comment 78 and no one
scrolls that far down to read. Heck, that sub is so bad, that if you want to
read a decent story you start at the bottom, with the lowest ranked items, and
scroll up. Talk about failure of design!

/r/books was an okay resource for the casual reader and now is dominated by
items that are, imo, much more lowest common denominator. I'm sure there are
more examples.

I really think reddit is about ready to have its disruptive MySpace moment
when some Facebook-like competitor moves in. The default subs are unrreadable
dreck, the politics a mix of the ugliest libertarian meets social justice
warrior crap, and the mod policy a schizophrenic per sub mess that pleases no
one. Most subs seem completely overwhelmed and just resort to strict rules and
'self post only' policies to keep some level of sanity. This isn't a sign of a
healthy system.

~~~
convoces
>Worse, once a sub is made a default, its quantity goes up but its quality
goes down.

This seems to be almost universally true for any online community. As a
userbase widens, content quality and even social dynamics become diluted to
some extent towards a general population baseline.

As a mod of /r/changemyview (153k subscribers), we have discussed opting out
of becoming a default sub if we were approached by the reddit admins. We
already continuously struggle to maintain sub quality, given 50k subscriber
growth in the last 9 months, though we have seen some success with our small
set of very well-defined, strict, and heavily enforced rules.

~~~
golemotron
There should be a reddit of subreddits - a way to vote them up and down in
order to determine the defaults.

~~~
majani
the same effect can be had by making trending subs the defaults. Part of me
thinks this could be the solution, but another part of me thinks there's no
way they've gone nine years without having tried that already...

~~~
sltkr
I think the problem with that is that subs like /r/thefappening popping up by
default is kind of a PR nightmare. From the perspective of attracting new
users it's great, though.

------
minimaxir
I like Reddit. I recently obtained a data dump of every single submission and
comment so I could perform interesting data analysis and may just determine
what make a post on Reddit viral.

The problem I have with Reddit is that I'm still unsure if it's a positive
externality. There's a lot of good aspects of Reddit (discovery, community),
but there's so much _bad_ about Reddit that it's impossible to overlook it
(abusive subreddits, abusive users, no administrator transparency, etc.)

There's free speech, and then there's the ethics of promoting and profiting
off of abusive/illegal content.

My dream startup would be a Reddit-esque link aggregator, which favors the
actual _quality_ of submissions, instead of submissions which are lowest-
common-denominator which are optimized for the hive mind.

~~~
alexis
That's one big reason why Steve & I wanted it to be open-source!
[http://code.reddit.com](http://code.reddit.com)

It's not like all forum-software-innovation stopped in June 2005 when the 2 of
us launched reddit to the world.

The hard part is going to be quantifying "quality of submissions" in a
scalable way. We thought a lot about this and while it's not perfect, the vast
majority of content on reddit across those half million communities is indeed
good.

It's a fascinating problem that I hope someone can solve -- improve on Steve's
hotness algorithm!

~~~
noir_lord
I would agree with you that the vast majority of the content is indeed good
unfortunately the bad is _often_ concentrated into a few sub-reddits and at
reddit scale that still is a lot of bad unfortunately.

~~~
walden42
I think it's an interesting issue because the primary issue is what interests
people, not the website itself. If a majority of people want to concentrate on
the bad, then the bad shows up more. If the mods or admins make the site such
that it's impossible to concentrate on the bad, then that would involve some
kind of censorship that could be very biased towards _someone 's_ definition
of good.

The issue is the people, not with Reddit.

~~~
noir_lord
> The issue is the people, not with Reddit.

That is always true, in fact I'd go as far as to formulate Waldens Law, "if
the issue is either people or X, it's people" ;).

------
giulianob
As a long time Reddit user, I've been really disappointed lately with Reddits
"battle" against content creators and the little recourse you have if you are
marked as a spammer or shadow banned. See the recent /r/indiegaming debacle
for example, where a subreddit where mainly indie devs would post about their
games now allows very little self promotion (
[http://redd.it/2fdwyv](http://redd.it/2fdwyv) ). Some of these rules are
Reddit wide so theres nothing they can do but it essentially discourages
content creators from being close to their audience on Reddit.

On top of that, if you are banned from a subreddit (even a default one) the
moderators can basically choose to ignore you and you are SOL. There's the
whole 90/10 rule where if you are posting something from the same source too
often, you can be seen as a spammer and banned. It's very easy to break this
rule. For example, if you make a few self posts, make tons of comments, post
links to 5 different websites, then post 1 link to your website, you are
breaking the rule and if a mod sees it you can be banned (comments/self posts
don't count towards the 90/10 rule so your 5 posts to 1 self promotion post is
breaking the rules). I wish they would just let the upvote/downvote system do
its job and weed out content people don't want instead of forcing people to
post a bunch of crap they wouldn't normally post just to make their profile
look good so they can post about their own projects once in a while.

~~~
Semaphor
You are confusing mods and admins.

> For example, if you make a few self posts, make tons of comments, post links
> to 5 different websites, then post 1 link to your website, you are breaking
> the rule and if a mod sees it you can be banned (comments/self posts don't
> count towards the 90/10 rule so your 5 posts to 1 self promotion post is
> breaking the rules).

Some admin recently said that something like that has never happened. Only
flagrant violators of that rule get shadowbanned by the admins.

~~~
giulianob
A mod can ban you from their subreddit and that happens a lot based on a
fairly subjective basis. There are even times where you just get caught by
moderating bots then if the moderators don't bother to reply to you, there is
little recourse. I have heard of cases from friends who have been banned for
fairly bizarre reasons. I'm not saying you will be banned the first time you
break the rule but people who post about content they create have to be
extremely careful or they can be banned either from a subreddit or globally.
When you are a moderator of a subreddit that has millions of viewers, I think
it shouldn't be so subjective.

------
gatsby
"It’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like
reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of
our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we
increase community ownership over time. We have some creative thoughts about
the mechanics of this, but it’ll take us awhile to sort through all the
issues. If it works as we hope, it’s going to be really cool and hopefully a
new way to think about community ownership."

This is awesome. Curious to see how this plays out. What's the approximate
timing for announcing if reddit is able to do this or not?

~~~
ufmace
I don't understand this. How does "the reddit community" own shares in a
company? What does that even mean? Are board votes going to be held on reddit
posts or something?

~~~
benmathes
likely some kind of cryptocurrency. Given YC's involvement in Stripe, nonzero
chance it will be done with Stellar.

------
cryoshon
Mod/admin censorship, government manipulation (out of Eglin AFB most likely),
and corporate advertising/shilling are pretty blatantly huge in reddit right
now, with many users openly looking for alternative websites. The admin team
has shown again and again that they're willing to tolerate anything until
there's bad PR.

One of the founders (Alexis) has a PR firm, Antique Jetpack, which is on
record [1] as cooperating with Stratfor of wikileaks fame. I can't quite see
how the two are unconnected.

A couple of years ago, one of the admins there tacitly admitted that he was
under a National Security letter complete with gag order to give up user
information.

A few months ago, reddit changed its voting system in order to completely
obfuscate user detection of large scale vote manipulation. The community was
unanimously against this change, and has been overruled.

I don't see a great future for reddit, honestly. I'll continue to use it until
whoaverse or another alternative is populated enough.

[1]:
[https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=277352](https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=277352)

~~~
alexis
Seriously? I debunked that stratfor conspiracy with a deluge of sunlight -
even getting top-voted comment on the r/conspiracy post

[http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1l4aiq/reddit_is...](http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1l4aiq/reddit_is_censoring_the_recent_wikileaks_leak/cbvovm4)

~~~
minimaxir
> _even getting top-voted comment on the r /conspiracy post_

To be perfectly fair, any comment posted by a founder of Reddit would become a
top-voted comment.

~~~
alexis
Totally false. Check my comment history:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20r4o8/talking_bitc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20r4o8/talking_bitcoin_and_rbitcoin_on_bloomberg_tv/)

~~~
anonbanker
Went through four pages, and didn't see a single zero-point comment. That's
pretty rare for reddit.

~~~
ryanmerket
Comments start at 1 point.

------
hammock
It's a good time to invest in reddit. Not because it will become cooler over
the coming years, but because it will become more valuable as it monetizes
itself and sells off it's goodwill/equity.

Reddit as a platform peaked in 2013- quantitatively[1] and qualitatively. It's
mainstream now, and will soon be passe (something like SomethingAwful).

If reddit has any value as an investment, it's for advertising and personal
(pseudonymous or not) data. Facebook peaked a few years ago in the way I've
described, and since their IPO has grown in market value[2] but declined in
cultural value[3] (even as its MAU continue to grow!). They are slowly selling
off piece by piece, literally to the highest bidder, the equity, trust and
attention that it has built up over the years. It's not a sustainable model,
it's in a mature phase by now, and it generates a whole lot of cash while it
lasts.

Wouldn't be surprised to watch reddit do the same.

[1] [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/09/28/the-most-upvoted-
post-...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/09/28/the-most-upvoted-post-on-
reddit-every-day/) [2]
[http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FB&t=2y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FB&t=2y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=)
[3]
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook)

~~~
BrandonM
Your '[1]' link doesn't make the point that you claim it does. That post says
that 2014 data isn't available yet.

------
wasd
Sorry if this is obvious but how does this work if Conde Nast/Advanced
Publications is the primary shareholder?

~~~
orky56
They were acquired by Conde Nast but have since parted ways to go private:
[http://betabeat.com/2011/09/a-startup-is-reborn-reddit-no-
lo...](http://betabeat.com/2011/09/a-startup-is-reborn-reddit-no-longer-part-
of-conde-nast-seeks-ceo/)

~~~
amha
That article says that they're still owned by Advance Publications, though
(the Conde Nast parent).

I'm confused as well. Is Advance Publications retaining a stake? Are they
spinning it off? ???

------
Major_Grooves
I keep asking this, but it never gets much attention - but why can't reddit
put more effort in to a hierarchical structure.

As others have said some of the best contents is in the smaller sub-reddits,
but they often struggle to get much content because people feel that to get
any "attention" they have to post in a sub-reddit. I feel people would be
encouraged to submit to smaller sub-reddits if there was a hierarchical
structure whereby if a story did well in a sub-reddit, it would get to the
front page of the next sub-reddit above it - so I might submit to /r/Dundee
which leads to /r/Scotland which leans to /r/UnitedKingdom etc

I'm sure there would be some clever way to structure and control this. It
would breathe life in to the smaller sub-reddits.

~~~
raldi
I worked there from 2008-2011 and always wanted to implement exactly this, but
at that time we only had 5 +/\- 1 employees so nobody ever had the time.

Now that they have dozens of employees I wish they'd put this high up on their
roadmap. As a nearby comment points out, it would be the next step on reddit's
journey toward reincarnating the golden age of Usenet.

------
markburns
They are looking at using a crypto-currency backed by the shares.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2hwpmm/fundraising_fo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2hwpmm/fundraising_for_reddit/ckwph30?context=3)

------
SuperKlaus
"...are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit
community..."

How's that supposed to work? Reddit (the company) will own the shares? Some
foundation? A bit more detail would be nice.

~~~
mksm
They will most probably use blockchain technology for the community ownership
distribution:
[https://jobs.lever.co/reddit/6ce6a242-00d1-49c4-9bed-c34f264...](https://jobs.lever.co/reddit/6ce6a242-00d1-49c4-9bed-c34f26445ee7)

~~~
bencxr
this is really the interesting point of the article for me.

it could be the first cryptocoin actively used based for rewards/sponsorships
etc. See [http://ltbcoin.com/](http://ltbcoin.com/) as an example.

------
justaman
One simple way to improve the quality of posts is to remove default
subreddits. Instead, have people pick from a list of common interests:
programming, games, rap, etc. I think that by limiting interaction with trolls
will, over time, reduce the total number of trolls. __It is my assumption that
the majority of trolls tend to stay on the default subreddits. This would also
allow for smaller subreddits to grow by in a sense linking interests into
categories rather than the current method of community discovery.

~~~
thearn4
As a mod of two defaults, I agree that this might be a good way forward. Right
now, adding a popular but non-default sub to the default set is a very quick
way to decrease the quality of the posted content, and can nearly kill the
community unless the mods are extremely proactive. I can't help but think that
there must be a better way.

------
simonblack
I think it's time we re-invented Usenet by making the subreddits tree-
structured. Or at the least, by making a tree-structured list of subreddits.

At the moment there are thousands of subreddits but the only way to find them
is by playing with the 'random' button and hoping for a bit of serendipity.

~~~
jgh
I kind of like this idea.

------
dkokelley
Does anyone know of any precedent for granting equity to a community site's
users? I'm curious to see what sort of dynamic this creates in the site.

~~~
mbillie1
> I'm curious to see what sort of dynamic this creates in the site.

As a daily reddit user for 4+ years, I'd wager that it'll just be an
exaggerated amount of the same. With any internet community it seems, given
enough time, you get saturated by users 'gaming' it for points/karma/post
count/etc. So now the same small number of nothing-else-to-do reddit users
trawling the archives for repostable karma material have one more incentive to
keep up the high-karma-low-content submissions: money. Sorry for the cynicism.

------
lifeisstillgood
Ok, Sam Altman, YC and reedit all just entered my personal mini-hero status
for "we want to give 10% of shares to "the community"

It does more than bother me that community created value is captured by a few
servers in SV - and it's going to take a lot of experimentation to get this
right. I rather like the idea of licensing my location data to Google Traffic,
and rather doubt giving equity to some but not all redditors will ever work
out fairly, but hats off for actually acknowledging the problem publicly and
trying _something_. I expect whatever the normal for community value will be
in twenty years, none of the ideas on this thread even come close - in
beginning to enjoy the ride though :-)

------
opinionedated
They allow shit like /r/greatapes and a entire super racist network of
subreddits like /r/ferguson and shit, but hoo boy if you're Jennifer Lawrence
they'll bend over backwords to shut down /r/TheFappening to get rid of your
nudes... While simultaneously ignoring /r/Photoplunder, which does the same
thing but to people who aren't famous.

And lets not even start on banning /r/creepshots but not
/r/CandidFashionPolice, which is THE SAME FUCKING THING. I mean shit, if
you're going to have standards, at least be consistent.

And don't get me started on /r/netsec and it's shitty anti-disclosure
philosophy.

~~~
jcfrei
I like to believe that due to the anonymity on reddit it provides a much
better reflection of our society - and hence also exposes some of the deeply
ingrained hypocrisy.

------
kyrra
The one downside (as I see it) of Reddit that Facebook, G+, and HN all don't
have is the ability to downvote. Downvoting makes it so larger subreddits will
only have material on their front page that the majority of that group agrees
with. This leads to certain subreddits (like /r/politics/) being heavily
dominated by one side of the subject area.

But I still use reddit daily myself. Getting off some of the default
subreddits and subscribing to ones focused on a specific topic (a video game,
programming language, city, etc...) has replaced specialized/focused forums
for me. It's definitely a great communication platform.

~~~
giarc
With HN, once a user reaches a certain level of "upvotes" they unlock the
ability to downvote.

~~~
kyrra
Ya, I thought about after I wrote it. Though I believe you can only downvote
comments not stories on HN.

~~~
buckbova
You flag posts and they'll drop in the rankings, sometimes right off the front
page.

~~~
hayksaakian
i think the distinction in UX is important

downvote sounds like the opposite of upvote

flagging sounds like a reporting mechanism

they actually do the same thing, but they give totally different impressions
to new users.

------
taylorbuley
Not a YC investment, but I'm interested in how this relates to YC's mitigation
of signaling risk.

> So the new rule is that partners can only invest some amount of time after
> Demo Day (we’ll experiment a little to figure out exactly how long) or as
> part of a Series A.

Reddit seems to qualify under the "some amount of time after Demo Day" caveat.
Does anyone know at what time period YC ended up setting?

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-investment-policy-and-
email-l...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-investment-policy-and-email-list)

~~~
sama
still haven't set it, but 9 years after demo day is certainly going to be over
the bar.

------
foobarqux
Reddit, like all community new sites, is awful and devolves to the mean of
society as the user base grows.

~~~
d0m
Good thing nobody is forcing you to browse it.

------
balor123
Quora looks like a nice iteration on Reddit. Reddit should just do a big
rewrite to make it look and feel more like Quora. The data model should be
able to remain mostly the same, with just some major interface changes, minor
feature changes, and major backend updates. It could probably even be deployed
in parallel to the existing implementation. Some items that'd be nice are
email updates, weekly digests, topic suggestions, anonymous posts, related
topics, etc.

~~~
carlesfe
I honestly don't think so. There is a lot of value on Reddit, but I bet that
90% of the visits and content are basically memes and imgur pictures. The part
that could "become Quora" may die without the other.

------
yuhong
I wish that Reddit would actually copy HN's about box and remove the 10:1 rule
for submissions. This include killing Anonymity Rules from /r/talesfrom*.

~~~
teach
I would like to see a Reddit about box, at least.

------
mmcclellan
Just wanted to say that this is a fascinating thread. It's eye opening to see
just how differently I use reddit than others. I have numerous 6+ year
accounts and I don't know what the hell most of this stuff means: subscribing,
moderator tools, banning, All I know is nearly anything I want to learn about,
there is some passionate group of people on reddit discussing it.

I just type in my address bar: site:reddit.com litecoin rig or site:reddit.com
flask api, and open a half dozen tabs. Because of the compact layout, I can
race through hundreds of comments really quickly and waste like milliseconds
on trolls.

They've probably lost track of how many "How can this thing grow up, without
becoming wack" discussions they've had. I think my answer remains, "it
probably can't."

------
orionblastar
Actually the problem with Reddit are low-functioning people who join
subreddits for the attention and trolling. Most of them a griefers and almost
all of them are looking for porn and other stuff like that.

I have a few small subreddits I get on that seem to be free of that:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordianHumanism/](http://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordianHumanism/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/OS2/](http://www.reddit.com/r/OS2/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/](http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/](http://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/ebookdeals/](http://www.reddit.com/r/ebookdeals/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/](http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/](http://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/)

You will find better content on those Subreddits even if they don't have a lot
of members on them like the others that are so popular that they get the low
functioning trolls and attention seekers who cause only trouble.

The DiscordianHumanism subreddit was created because of the trolls on Atheism
and SecurlarHumanism and sort of combines Discordianism with Humanism for a
different take on the world, etc.

A lot of the subreddits where you ask for advice, you often get bad advice and
a groupmind who votes up bad advice and votes down good advice. This is
because the low functioning people outnumber the mid-functioning and high-
functioning people. You will find a lot of the low-functioning people are
under 18, and posting from their parent's basement with no supervision.

------
dimitrideag
I´ts interesting, however the idea of Reddit to allocate 10% of their shares
back to the Reddit community for me it´s more than something "cool" as Sam
Altman said, and beyond the "a new way to think about community ownership".

From another perspective, It´s just a good strategy to do your own IPO (go
public) without the legal/bureaucratic way. It´s creating your own NY Stock
Exchange with the idea to increase your value based on what your users are
doing now (because it will be possible to buy, sell and trade between users).

So, beyond the message that it´s for “giving back to the community”, Is it
more a clever strategy to increase the company value, and even more the
stockholders value? or I´m incorrect?

------
sytelus
How do these people get time for reading reddit, twitter, FB and blogs? Just
reading HN once in a while sips away pretty much all of my "free" time.

------
AndrewKemendo
Just a interesting note: Currently (5PM EST) this news is #16 on the reddit
front page with only 545 comments.

I figured it would have been higher given the gravity.

------
MarkMc
Can anyone recommend a good subreddit? Something where people are thoughtful
and respectful. Perhaps something like HN without the tech...?

~~~
dazmax
[http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit)

"A subreddit for really great, insightful articles, reddiquette, reading
before voting and the hope to generate intelligent discussion on the topics of
these articles."

------
Alex3917
> First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of
> sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are
> giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit
> community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time.

How do you prevent extrinsic motivation from undermining intrinsic motivation
here?

------
rdl
The "giving equity to the community" is interesting -- I remember when VA
Linux, Red Hat, etc. did something similar at IPO (to a much smaller number of
developers, but still).

Seems like a great idea in principle, and hard to make it work, but hopefully
they'll come up with a structure that does.

------
jgalt212
Not to be a prig, but I think Sam leading a VC round outside of Y Combinator
while he's president of Y Combinator at the very least represents a conflict
of interest* and at the worst is an abuse of power.

*conflict of interest is pretty much the standard way of doing biz in the Valley as I understand it.

------
moron4hire
Reddit is barely above 4chan in my mind.

------
forrestthewoods
I wonder if those community shares will benefit the people whose digital
content is infringed upon for profit will be? Giving back to the community is
interesting. Attempting to give back to the content creators upon whose backs
Reddit is built would be even more interesting.

------
rthomas6
So we finally get to redeem our karma.

------
mark_l_watson
I agree that reddit drips in awesomeness. I talked with the co-founder Alexis
Ohanian when he talked at Google last year: really interesting guy, not only
with solid advice on entrepreneurship, but also he talked a lot about public
service.

------
arfliw
Does anybody know of a sub where stuff like this link would make the front
page? And techmeme type stuff (fundraising etc)? I can't find anything like
that. It certainly isn't /r/technology or /r/startups

------
liotier
> First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of
> sites like reddit but don’t own any of it.

If it bothered you that much, you would let users publish their contributions
as cc-by-sa !

------
EGreg
This is excellent! Reddit is closer to the kind of online community I like to
see and I'm happy to see what they have planned. Weren't they also giving away
10% of profits to charity?

------
Angostura
I'm intrigued by the final paragraph:

> Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I’m excited to watch it
> play out.

Has anyone seen him set out his big vision? I'm not sure that I have.

~~~
arfliw
He hasn't, beyond his 'reddit is city-state' thing.

------
septerr
The giving back to community approach would, in my opinion, be more deserved
by a community like StackOverflow. I always feel grateful to and am amazed by
the SO community.

------
jokoon
I'm still interested in how moderation really works on reddit...

the "reddit drama" always makes me curious but I don't really know the rules
very well.

~~~
SquareWheel
Users can create their own communities called subreddits. If they do, they are
the first and only moderator of that sub. A sub can be about anything, and if
other users enjoy that type of content they can subscribe.

Ultimately mods can remove or approve any post they desire. Some mods are
hands-off, and others curate content. It depends on their goals for the
subreddit. If users are not happy with the content of the sub or the
moderation style, they can subscribe to a competitor subreddit or start their
own. It's very much an open system.

------
Pxtl
I get that there's a lot to like about Reddit - it's absolutely an impressive
platform and it definitely deserves investment. And I get the libertarian
ideals of the admins, I do.

But yeah, seeing the phrase "First, it’s always bothered me that users ..."
_not_ end in a discussion of the toxic parts of Reddit's culture and the
various high-profile cases of Reddit's admins ignoring ongoing problems of
their most horrifying sub-reddits... that was a bit jarring.

------
lazyant
I suggest giving some shares to the people that have been with Reddit 8+ years
and with over 8k combined link+comment karma :)

------
smrtinsert
And to think, this could have been Digg, had it not been for a n unwanted
design revamp and the Great Exodus.

------
ser_ocelot
The problem with Reddit for awhile now has been the default subreddits. How
about no default subreddits?

------
circuiter
Excellent. The comments here simply further the notion that HN is slowly
turning into reddit.

------
27182818284
Is that 1 billion guess a guess of 1 billion MAU? In other words, as much MAU
as Facebook?

------
wudf
Next I'd like to see Steam as a member-owned platform. Awesome announcement,
sama!

------
mathattack
When I saw this, I was hoping for a "Sam Altman AMA". :-)

~~~
thedaveoflife
you have your wish:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman_lead_investor_in_reddits_new/)

~~~
mathattack
ok. Next I'll wish for a raise and a George Lucas AMA. :-)

------
joshdance
Better community moderation tools would be awesome.

------
n0body
Reddit - full of kids

------
paulhauggis
I wonder what's going to happen when they find out that the majority of the
top users on Reddit are under 18.

------
dogecoinbase
_Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I’m excited to watch it
play out._

Wow, seriously? He's talking about the guy who spewed this nonsense[0]:

 _We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this
theft, and we deeply sympathize.

Having said that, we are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content
policies in response to this specific event.

The reason is because we consider ourselves not just a company running a
website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new
type of community._

If Sam wants to hitch his wagon to this wash-your-hands-of-responsibility-
while-reaping-the-profits attitude, that's his business, but's it's fucking
reprehensible.

0: [http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-
responsible-f...](http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-
for-his-own.html)

~~~
odonnellryan
I'm confused, sorry. Are you for or against the banning?

~~~
dogecoinbase
I am against a site policy that says "we are aware that something horrible
happened, but we aren't willing to make any changes to prevent it from
potentially happening again".

I'd love to get some feedback from the downvoters, because it's hard for me to
reconcile Yishan Wong's statement with Sam's assertion that he's "excited to
watch it play out".

~~~
vasilipupkin
I think he is being very clear. For now, at least, he doesn't want to be the
moral police - he expects each user to exercise their own moral judgement. I
personally prefer reddit to leave moral choices to their users

~~~
dogecoinbase
_he expects each user to exercise their own moral judgement_

It's clear that this is not happening in any meaningful way, so his lack of
action is simply an admission that he can't or won't do anything to prevent
abhorrent behavior on the site he's responsible for. If it's a government,
it's a powerless one, enforcing no laws but collecting taxes regardless.
There's nothing to admire there.

------
sujosh
I enjoy Sam's writing but I am wondering why is he doing this ? Of course, its
his money and he has 100 % right to do with it whatever he wants but still --

1\. Reddit is site which promotes hatred. Radical men hatred is quite common
to find out.

2\. Almost all mods are SJWs. It is almost impossible to find or carry out
rational discussion on reddit. This hatred is so strong that many FEMINAZIs
recommend getting rid of men from planet.

3\. Mods control everything. Free speech is illusion on reddit. #GamerGate
proved that reddit collaborated with un-ethical journalists to promote hidden
propoganda

4\. Reddit ads are most useless things.

5\. Reddit users are mostly illiterate or low wage earners or college students
or BurgerLand workers or IT workers who are stuck at their job. Reddit will
never achieve revenue it is expecting to achieve.

6\. Reddit is owned by mainstream media powerhouse.

7\. Reddit regularly participates in social experiments to modify user views
and conducts social experiments.

If all such things are happening why a partner at YC, who in other posting
talks about morals, ethics, equality would want to invest in something this
filthy.

After all , Money changes everything, doesn't it ?

PS - You can downovote me as you wish, or moderate this post but it won't
change fact that Reddit is shithole and you can't deny it. All interested
parties in Reddit wants to create rage, modify or alter people's opinion/view
in US and outside countries and profit.

~~~
kvl7
I completely agree with your points, and just created this account to post
something similar until I saw your post.

Reddit is indeed a shithole, filled with an extremely radical left-wing hive
mind that is completely devoid of critical thinking skills.

~~~
meowface
I don't completely agree.

I support Gamergate and do not like SJWs or their movement, but Reddit is not
run by or even heavily influenced by SJWs for the most part. The ruthless
shadowbanning of people discussing Gamergate was _mostly_ due to very poor
research and reasoning by the admins, and the misinformed belief that some
subreddits were being raided by 4chan.

SJWs are still mostly a fringe group. In fact, reddit actually fired one of
its admins a few months ago for going full-SJW and being clearly very biased
towards /r/SRS.

Now, some mods in some of the big subreddits lean a little more left or right
politically. The userbase in general is not "extreme left" though, much more
center left. Search reddit for IA's and thunderf00t's latest videos and you'll
see serious support and upvotes in almost all subreddits.

No offense, but this conspiracy theory mongering just makes this whole thing
even harder to debate.

------
ionwake
My money is on SageBump.

Ofcourse I built it, so I am biased.

[http://www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat&intro](http://www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat&intro)

------
atko
We are in the process of raising first round of funds for
[http://whoaverse.com](http://whoaverse.com) and things are starting to get
interesting. We have major plans for both enterprise and private use of the
platform and when it comes to giving back to the community - we plan to use
the same model big players like YouTube and Twitch have for rewarding content
creation (actual money).

This will be a fun ride which currently feels like David vs Goliath, but boy
is it fun :)

~~~
wingerlang
This is literally a reddit clone, what's your edge?

~~~
atko
Bing is a clone of Google and Yahoo is a clone of... DuckDuckGo? Call it what
you want, here are just a few distinctions:

\- built-in night mode (reddit does not have this)

\- responsive design which works great on mobile out of the box (reddit does
not have this)

\- limited voting (new users need to gain a certain amount of points before
they are able to vote without restrictions, reddit does not have this)

\- limited number of owned subs (reddit does not have this, one person can and
does moderate hundreds of subs)

\- youtube-like score bar which graphically shows percentage of
upvotes/downvotes (reddit does not have this)

\- user profiles which show statistics about user activity, for example,
submission distribution and highest-lowest rated submissions (reddit does not
have this)

\- better privacy, users can delete all data stored about them if they decide
to leave and close their account (reddit does not have this, all data is kept
and public even after user deletes his account)

\- youtube-like revenue sharing model (in development) where community is
rewarded with real money (reddit does not have this)

\- based in Switzerland, no censorship policy as long as content is legal
(reddit is like North Korea when it comes to this, censoring thefappening but
leaving sexwithdogs)

\- no blatant ad submissions posing as regular posts policy (examples: a photo
of a starbucks cup with a cute kitten inside which frequently reaches reddit
frontpage or a video titled "look what I filmed with my GoPro")

\- ...constant dialog with community and very open to new ideas and
improvement

I hope this answers your question.

~~~
wingerlang
That sounds good. But what's your plan to convince me (and more) to change my
daily website? I go to these sites for content, and despite reddit not having
the nice features, it does have the content.

Also I think you should go away a bit from the look-like-reddit because most
people will probably go there, see yet another reddit clone and dismiss it.

------
Kequc
Reddit has got to be one of the ugliest popular websites on the internet. And
idealistic, gosh. How can you look at a toilet magazine largely being
contributed to by people on their toilets and think "I bet all those people
want to own a part of it."

This article suggests that in a "couple of years" reddit "could have close to
a billion users". Are all these numbers just being pulled out of thin air?
This person is talking about investing in reddit, a site with so many
pageviews for such a long time which last I heard still somehow was not
turning a profit.

This person is investing in reddit and giving 10% of their investment to
purportedly a billion people. Which is a valuation of 1e-8 percent of his
investment per person.

I don't want that? Can I not have it somehow.

