
‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’ - smacktoward
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/dan-mccomas-reddit-product-svp-and-imzy-founder-interview.html
======
Karrot_Kream
Many of the comments here are picking apart pieces of subreddit drama or are
discussing specific Reddit positions, but I think that's missing the forest
for the trees. The VC grow-at-all-costs model seems to be resulting in
monopolistic business practices and more negative externalities than positive
ones.

Msatodon/GNU Social/Qvitter right now is a thriving social network run by
instance owners that federate their instances. Or you can run your own
instance if you want total control of everything. Secure Scuttlebutt is a
growing social network run in a fully distributed (as opposed to federated)
model.

The cat is out of the bag, and if you're complaining about social media today
I see no reason not to embrace modern social networks.

~~~
skybrian
Some programmers see a problem and say "I know, I'll add federation". Now you
have 7 problems.

More seriously, I'm not seeing how federation solves any social network
problem better than subreddits did? In either case, the quality of the
discussion will depend on the moderators, who can be good, bad, or evil.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Federated social networks give you the ability to change allegiance or fork.
Don't like a particular moderator on an instance? Leave to another instance,
or start your own. Things can get problematic if other instances refuse to
federate your own, but if you maintain even a bit of social capital, most
instances will not block an instance with a single user. There's a growing
culture (and a set of actions in the ecosystem) of letting people know when
you've changed instances, because instances are becoming easier and easier to
run and more and more people are trying to run their own. But if you don't
want to deal with it, join one of the large already existing instances.

~~~
skybrian
But the problem with Reddit doesn't seem to be that subreddits don't have
enough independence and ability to make their own choices?

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Federation makes a lot of moderation decisions easier. If an instance chooses
to stop federating with another instance, it's not like the entire other
instance disappears and those users now do not have a place to discuss their
ideas, all that happens is that their ideas cannot spread into the Federated
network they were cut off from. Likewise if an individual is banned from one
Fediverse, then they can join one more hospitable to their beliefs. Probably
the worst case scenario would be if an instance were to go down (or get
hacked), in which case the users would have to find another instance to go to,
but they could probably sign up at another instance that they were previously
federated with.

~~~
skybrian
That's a good point. But this sounds a lot like user blocking tools?

At one time, making sure that users could block other users on the same social
network might have seemed like it might enough to prevent abuse and keep
social networks out of the moderation business. Users that don't get along can
just block each other. Good enough?

Maybe not. You say you know the "worst case" but that might not be imaginative
enough? There are apparently people nastier than that, and they're creative,
and they gang up.

I suspect that if federation really got going, there would be plenty of abuse.
Not sure what form it would take. Chain mail? Phishing? Something new? Who is
going to be in a position to fix it? How much drama will this cause?

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Phishing combined with botnet attacks across multiple instances could probably
pose a big problem for the network, but here's where the second facet comes in
to play: instance operators are not incentivized to grow their userbase at all
costs. Performing actions that might please their core userbase but may make
it harder for new users to sign up, or other hurdles are something that
instance operators won't shy away from, when Reddit (as evidenced in TFA)
would probably tread more lightly in fear of angering users.

Even in the above botnet+phishing situation, nothing is stopping instances
from cutting federation off completely and then banning suspected users, a
move that a growth-oriented network would think many times before instituting.

~~~
skybrian
Cutting your users off from communicating with their friends seems kind of
drastic? Suppose that happened with email, the original federated network?

Though there are email blacklists for known spammers, and it can be hard to
administer a new email server. You wouldn't want to block Gmail, though.

Speaking of which, I'm not seeing why every instance operator would decide not
to grow. It seems like, if the federated protocol is successful and allows it,
new large providers would spring up like Gmail and Hotmail.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
> Cutting your users off from communicating with their friends seems kind of
> drastic? Suppose that happened with email, the original federated network?

> Though there are email blacklists for known spammers, and it can be hard to
> administer a new email server. You wouldn't want to block Gmail, though.

Most people typically find an instance with people similar to them. Most of my
followers/followees are on the same instance as me. While blacklisting an
instance can be problematic, it's also probably not that big of a deal for
most. Moderators are more willing to take actions like this when each user
does not contribute to their bottom line.

> Speaking of which, I'm not seeing why every instance operator would decide
> not to grow. It seems like, if the federated protocol is successful and
> allows it, new large providers would spring up like Gmail and Hotmail.

Hotmail and Gmail came about because running your own email is difficult (I
used to run my own email). You have to setup SPF records, DKIM records, on top
of which many mailers send non-standard mail out, which you have to make sure
your rules accept these non-standard pieces of mail. Right now the ActivityPub
standard is well defined, and most instances already follow the server-to-
server API. Spam is also a huge problem in the email world because of the ease
of sending an email. You don't need a mailserver to send mail to an address,
but you need to setup an instance and have other users specifically follow you
to send spam toots, or Fediverse messages. On top of this is a community
interest in creating software (like Pleroma) that is easy to install and
administer. All of these combined decrease the friction for lay (for multiple
definitions of lay) users to run their own instance, which makes the gulf
between a (not-yet-existent) commercial instance and a personal instance a lot
smaller. While there will be a space for commercial providers which use ads or
subscriptions to pay for their instances, the ease of personal setup makes
centralization a lot less of a tendency for the Fediverse than it did for
email.

------
md224
I still can't get over the fact that their official mobile app stops rendering
comments past a certain level of nesting. There's no indication that anything
is missing, no "continue this thread" link, nothing... the comments just
aren't there. I don't understand how one of the world's largest social media
platforms could have a mobile app that silently hides content from the user.
Just blows my mind.

~~~
shostack
It feels like increasingly they are shifting away from focusing on the
comments and discussion, to trying to get readers to click, consume, leave and
keep scrolling (to generate more impressions).

I'm saddened by this, and in digital battlegrounds (and I'm not using that
term lightly) like /r/politics or /r/worldnews where it has been very obvious
for a long time that hostile foreign nations are conducting operations there,
it can result in a lot of the important meta-chatter being pushed down, or
troll comments being gamed to the top without the accurate counter-response
being visible anymore. This results in further distortion of the truth (or at
the very least exposure to multiple sides of an argument).

~~~
r00fus
Next thing you know they'll have a UI "refresh" a la Digg.

------
LordHumungous
>Were there moments in which Reddit chose to double down on something and made
it that much harder to work toward a solution?

>> I don’t know. I’m trying to think about your question.

>Is there something recent that you’re thinking of?

>> I can’t remember the specific instances right now, but there was a bunch of
press about things that were going on on Reddit and Discord, and they both
reacted and banned the subreddit.

>> I’ve got a lot of advice for start-ups, and it’s not very fucking
complicated. It’s just: Think about the impact that you want to have on your
users and on the people consuming your content and do the right thing. They
know what the right thing is.

Sounds like this guy has a lot of vague complaints but not much in the way of
concrete solutions, other than "do the right thing" which in his mind is
extremely obvious and yet undefined.

~~~
munificent
That's an uncharitable interpretation of what are, I think, pretty clear words
on his part.

He says he doesn't know how to fix existing broken entrenched sites like
Reddit and Twitter but does have suggestions for sites that are just getting
started.

~~~
VectorLock
How well did those things work out for him?

------
austincheney
Reddit wouldn't be so toxic if the vote counts were hidden, but echo chamber
validation is the ultimate badge of honor there. There is so much in this
document that applies to all things Reddit _(please note that I wrote it
inspired by my time on Reddit)_ :
[https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...](https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Trolls.md)

~~~
SeanLuke
Fundamentally the problem, I think is anonymity. On the Internet no one knows
you're a dog.

I have both pseudonymous handles on reddit and also I go by my own name. On
Hacker News I _only_ go by my own name. And I have found that it made me a
much, MUCH better person when posting. So now I post on reddit about 95% of
the time under my own name as well.

When you have no skin in the game -- such as your reputation to uphold, no
superego to hold yourself in check -- a person's id reveals itself. And it's
not pretty.

~~~
rjtavares
We've seen with facebook that have real names doesn't improve the level of
discourse that much.

I think it's the protection (or at least the apparent protection): you can't
be a jerk in person in a public place without exposing yourself to immediate
negative repercussions. That's why online forums with harsher moderation are
usually much better (one of the best examples being /r/askhistorians).

~~~
SeanLuke
> We've seen with facebook that have real names doesn't improve the level of
> discourse that much.

Yeah, okay. How about: real names + no private gardens.

~~~
emodendroket
What does "private garden" mean here? People have no problem showing up on
public Facebook groups, visible to all, and posting racist stuff in their real
names.

~~~
hcknwscommenter
I think, and totally admit it is pure speculation, that the hate foments in
the private garden until the person is brainwashed enough to believe their
hate is a normal and acceptable viewpoint. It is at that point that it leaks
out into the public groups, visible to all.

------
naasking
> I had conversations with Jason [Citron] a year ago about the problem of
> white supremacy on his site, and he said, “I don’t want to invade their
> privacy by going into their channels and reading what they’re doing.” And I
> said, “They’re gonna cause deaths because you’re not doing that.” And he
> said, “You really think so?” And I said, “Yeah.” And sure enough they didn’t
> do anything, and sure enough deaths were caused because of the shit going on
> in their channels.

I'm not sure I can agree with this kind of moralizing. It's the same argument
that blames gun manufacturers for school shootings. Clearly the latter
argument is absurd, and yet very intelligent people subscribe to the former
argument. So either some step is missing here that differentiates these two
arguments, or we should be focusing on the real problem.

~~~
ctlby
The idea that these "hate speech" venues have caused deaths is thrown around
quite often, but I wonder if a connection has been found in even a single
case. Gaping chasm between rhetoric and reality.

~~~
DavidVoid
>I wonder if a connection has been found in even a single case.

I'd argue that the psychopaths who're attracted to such forums have their
hateful beliefs reinforced and amplified by them. Whether or not they would've
ended up killing people even if they'd never started hanging out on those
forums is hard to say, but it seems pretty naïve to me to assume that those
"hate speech" venues didn't have an effect on them.

See the many murderers who've been active on Stormfront for example.

White Homicide Worldwide, SPLC (2014) [pdf]:
[https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_file...](https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_filesW/downloads/publication/white-
homicide-worldwide.pdf)

~~~
ameister14
You could argue that, but there's no real evidence for it and it's been
studied with music, television and video games. All have been blamed, using
the argument that you'd have to be naive to assume that killing people in a
video game doesn't have an effect on someone's likelihood of killing people in
real life, or listening to angry music makes you more likely to hurt people.

The list of murderers who've listened to 2Pac is quite long, for example.

~~~
loup-vaillant
I don't know about the other media, but the effects of TV are both disastrous
and thoroughly demonstrated. IQ, SAT scores, obesity, teen pregnancy,
violence, tobacco… Depending on what you watch and how often, all can be
increased. All won't show on each individual, but the statistical effect is
far from negligible.

As for video games… that's a tricky one. I recall an anecdote about two teens
holding up a bakery at gun point. The baker at some point made a move that was
a bit too sudden, and the teen shot him in the forehead. One possible
facilitator is very similar to a soldier's training: simple conditioning about
shooting the bad guys as soon as they threaten your avatar in your favourite
FPS. For all I know the teen didn't even intend to shoot.

Of course, it takes more than a lifetime of violent video games to actually
point a gun at someone. But a tiny nudge can sometimes push you over the edge.
By the way, I expect the nudge will get bigger with VR. (So will the benefits,
I expect.)

~~~
ameister14
While awful, one of the problems with that facilitator is that you don't shoot
the enemy when they threaten you in an FPS. You shoot them when you see them.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Correct, I'm not sure how well that would translate. Probably not very well.

------
gottam
The comments here have this mentality of "there are people with different
opinions from me, why don't these websites deal with these opinions". It's
dangerous thinking that can be applied to your opinions.

The internet always worked this way. There are the cesspools, maybe things you
don't like, but if you don't feel like engaging with these communities you
simply keep going. Problem with these social media forum sites is that as much
as you don't want to engage/debate with these communities they still use the
same website as you so its unavoidable.

This is why centralizing these forums onto one website was a bad idea, blame
that. Because now, there's too much money involved and excluding people of
certain political ideas or whatever means you lose a substantial chunk of
userbase, which means users would depart to another website.

~~~
projektir
> The comments here have this mentality of "there are people with different
> opinions from me, why don't these websites deal with these opinions". It's
> dangerous thinking that can be applied to your opinions.

It has nothing to do with opinions. It has never been about opinions, and you
know it.

It has to do with _antisocial behavior_. Antisocial behavior is inherently
hostile and doesn't deserve a platform, which has been known to anyone who has
ever ran any kind of social space for a long time. If you don't moderate
antisocial behavior, you create a community where only that behavior thrives.

This is not news, and the real dangerous trend that I'm seeing is that
antisocial behavior doesn't matter and should be protected. No, it shouldn't.

> There are the cesspools, maybe things you don't like, but if you don't feel
> like engaging with these communities you simply keep going.

Yes, except thanks to aggregators all the communities got, well, aggregated,
and now there's really nowhere else to go. A cesspool used to compete with
other non-cesspools, now we're all in just one big cesspool, because the
quality of trash is that it affects everything it's in.

Thank god for programming IRC communities.

~~~
naasking
> It has to do with antisocial behavior. Antisocial behavior is inherently
> hostile and doesn't deserve a platform

Can you define "antisocial behaviour"?

~~~
projektir
There's a wealth of literature on the topic that you could examine at your
leisure.

~~~
naasking
So you're suggesting reddit admins, mods or some algorithm should diagnose
antisocial behaviour using the DSM-V based only on a user's written words?
This is genuinely what you believe?

~~~
projektir
I think I genuinely believe only things I claim to genuinely believe, not
things someone's attempting to put into my mouth.

~~~
naasking
Then point to this copious literature of which you speak, and describe how you
would employ it impartially in a forum setting to diagnose antisocial
behaviour. Frankly, I think I've been more than charitable to your claims so
far, and you're just avoiding answering the question.

~~~
projektir
You've asked me to define what is anti-social behavior. That is an existing
term on which lots of study have been performed. Because people don't owe you
answers to a question you could research yourself.

People also do not owe you solutions to hypotheticals they never suggested in
the first place.

> I've been more than charitable to your claims so far, and you're just
> avoiding answering the question.

[http://wondermark.com/1k62/](http://wondermark.com/1k62/)

~~~
naasking
> You've asked me to define what is anti-social behavior. That is an existing
> term on which lots of study have been performed.

So you're still not defining it or referencing it. I asked you specifically in
a previous question if you're talking about the DSM-V criteria, or perhaps the
DSM-IV. There are many more definitions of anti-social behaviour than you seem
to be aware of.

> People also do not owe you solutions to hypotheticals they never suggested
> in the first place.

Except policing antisocial behaviour is exactly what you suggested, and that's
specifically what I'm asking you about. So answer the question, or you have no
idea what you're talking about.

------
tomcam
Reddit has been a completely positive force in my life. I subscribe to
hundreds of subreddits and they all seem quite well-moderated. If I want to
ask a question of doctors, engineers, lawyers, or manufacturers, I can. If I
want to spend some time look at cute baby elephant pictures, I can. If I want
to learn about a new GarageBand feature, it's easy. I literally didn't know
about the things like jailbait until they became national controversies.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I’ve seen absolute junk science on gun control posted in reddit science.
Comments that questioned the “study” were flat out removed. Millions of
subscribers on that sub, at the time it was a default.

No one is implying that gonewild or programmerhumor are bad forces... but news
censors, worldnews is manipulated, politics is beyond a joke. Those three
particularly are almost certainly bought and paid for.

Reddit is pretty bad, particular subreddits can be great. You need to
understand the content vs the company.

~~~
UncleMeat
I used to be a mod of r/science. There is an _incredible_ amount of garbage in
the comment section. This makes precise moderation very very hard. In general,
I think the sub is far too lenient about leaving up comments. Far too often
the top comments are pointing out some "flaw" in the study that is either
irrelevant to the paper or addressed in the paper body.

------
minimaxir
As many on Hacker News know, I've been an avid fan of Reddit and believe that
their data and community, and there's still a lot more that can be done that
can be derived from that data that can't be found anywhere else.

That said, from an administrative perspective, the intense hands-free policies
are baffling. You'd expect a company based off the nature of community would
engage with their community and their needs. Admittingly, that's not very
_profitable_.

~~~
rockostrich
But they did get engaged! They banned all subreddits related to the
trading/purchasing of firearms and alcohol. /r/beertrade, a subreddit for
trading beer, had a strict policy that users were not allowed to sell beer for
money (something that's actually illegal) and only allowed people to post
about trading beer. Even someone like me, who doesn't ship beer and only
trades in-person, is no longer allowed to talk about trading.

~~~
Spooky23
They did after realizing they would be facing lots of regulatory problems.

Organizationally, it should be very obvious to anyone who thinks that things
like facilitating anonymous gun and alcohol sales, etc is probably not a good
idea.

~~~
rockostrich
Except they banned trading as well as sales. Trading beer is legal.

------
lechiffre10
I've significantly reduced my time on Reddit. Used to pull up the website out
of curiosity every day but the atmosphere is incredibly toxic. My front page
was riddled with Russiagate stuff too for some reason and every time you'd
bring up an argument that isn't the norm you get a mob after you.

~~~
rockostrich
The default/popular subreddits are toxic. The smaller, niche subreddits are
rarely toxic and usually good communities.

As for the Russiagate stuff, the front page is riddled with it because it's a
very important subject in the US, Reddit's user base is primarily people from
the US, and there are bombshells dropping every day.

~~~
notMick
Still a nothing burger, it's paid political propaganda on those default
reddits, paid teams pushing bs and noise.

Share blue for example was given a budget of 40+ million a year to do just
that. (Over 100k a day)

The other paid campaign is 'deplatforming' (their term). They do your best to
silence opinions which don't match the paid script.

~~~
streb-lo
I'm sure it's being brigaded by both sides for political points/fire control.

But you'd have to be willfully blind to describe the events up to now as a
"nothing burger."

~~~
notMick
There is nothing, except a large paid hoax propaganda campaign. With the same
team we could make mother Teresa seem like an imperialist religious nut. But
anyway, let's agree to disagree. Because the world is nicer that way.

~~~
scrollaway
Your attitude of batching everything not matching the "side" you happened to
pick and calling it a "large paid propaganda campaign" is dangerous and the
world is certainy not "nicer that way".

This attitude is something you find everywhere because it's simpler for people
who believe something strongly, to also believe that anyone who disagrees has
been paid to do so. So it's attractive to dismiss anti-trump articles as "paid
propaganda", and dismiss people like you as russian bots.

But you're going to have to wake up from that attitude at one point or another
because it's going to catch up with you. As others have said, arrests and
indictments aren't a "nothing burger". You won't get to the truth by
dismissing sources you've been told not to like.

~~~
pathseeker
> As others have said, arrests and indictments aren't a "nothing burger"

Arrests and indictments for things unrelated to illegal dealings with Russia,
except for maybe failing to renew registration as a foreign agent but that's a
stretch.

------
abnry
I think there is a very important distinction that needs to be made. The
popular reddit experience is vastly worse than the customized reddit. It took
me a while to realize that my reddit experience was vastly improved once I was
very picky about which subreddits I follow.

~~~
psychometry
True, but The_Donald is always leaking. I've seen plenty of sexist/racist
content on subreddits for cities, sports teams, memes, etc. Reddit has allowed
itself to be a platform used in part for really despicable content, and the
despicable people who generate that content regularly venture outside their
cesspools.

~~~
nabc45
There's a certain sub I like that is full of sexist and racist stuff and
nobody there likes Trump at all. What I mean to say with this is, when you see
stuff you don't like on Reddit, that does not mean it's coming from T_D, or
that getting rid of T_D would get rid of stuff you don't like.

~~~
alayne
You're just asserting that though. There was a study done on the removal of
two of the racist/hate subreddits on reddit that indicated a positive affect.

"In this paper, we studied the 2015 ban of two hate communities on Reddit,
r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown. Looking at the causal effects of the ban on
both participating users and affected communities, we found that the ban
served a number of useful purposes for Reddit. Users participating in the
banned subreddits either left the site or (for those who remained)
dramatically reduced their hate speech usage. Communities that inherited the
displaced activity of these users did not suffer from an increase in hate
speech. While the philosophical issues surrounding moderation (and banning
specifically) are complex, the present work seeks to inform the discussion
with results on the efficacy of banning deviant hate groups from internet
platforms."

[http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-
hate.pdf](http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf)

~~~
2bitencryption
I've always been skeptical of this study, mostly because of how fluid reddit
accounts are.

I have at least three accounts that I know of (I've probably forgotten about
others).

I'm sure people who participate in terrible behavior like that probably also
have multiple accounts.

How does the study account for those users simply abandoning the accounts they
used for those hateful subreddits? I find it far more likely that they didn't
"leave the site entirely", and instead just migrated to their other accounts
not associated to the banned subreddit.

~~~
nabc45
I only use one account and I’ve been called off multiple times in the
“mainstream” subs for posting to the right-wing ones, sometimes when not even
talking about politics. I’m sure most people who post to right-wing subs keep
two accounts or even more to keep their activity “segregated”.

------
Reedx
This is going to be an increasingly common realization, especially in Silicon
Valley. Which got way too caught up in the idea that everything was making The
World a Better Place.

But Zynga and Facebook are like fast food companies.

This realization started really kicking in with Free to Play mobile games a
few years ago (also mostly here in the Bay Area). I worked in F2P early on,
left and moved to a non-F2P company. One of the most common things we heard
from interviewees is that they were looking to get out of the F2P side of the
games industry.

------
douglaswlance
Reddit is the only popular website where rational discourse can actually
happen, thanks to the infinitely threaded conversations and complete markdown.

While there is objective rude comments on there, this is why some people call
it, "toxic," because their ideas are challenged, and they'd rather preserve
their ideological bubble than seek to understand reality.

~~~
wvenable
It's toxic because a relatively small number of mentally ill people can
effectively overrun any conversation. These people are not interested in
rational discourse. You can't spin that as "the challenging of ideas".

Reddit has been fully gamed at this point and engaging in the most popular
areas is just frustrating.

~~~
bfuller
>It's toxic because a relatively small number of mentally ill people can
effectively overrun any conversation. These people are not interested in
rational discourse. You can't spin that as "the challenging of ideas".

you know what is truly toxic? internet armchair psychologists.

~~~
wvenable
I run a forum and I've had to deal with mentally ill individuals, you don't
understand frightening that can be.

They have all the time in the world to hack your software, doxx you, create
entire blogs to attempt to publicly ruin your reputation, call your family,
your employers, etc. You give them a podium to post their views and they will
use it. Internet armchair psychologists more toxic than that? You should only
hope so.

------
joeyaiello
Only just getting started reading this, but I had to jump into comments to
give a shout-out on how amazing 924 Gilman was for me as a kid growing up in
the East Bay. I wasn't there for the glory days of the 80s/90s, and I have no
idea to what extent Dan played a role in its founding, but as a space for
playing and watching music, I've never found a venue in my life that comes
even close to what they were able to achieve. We actually had a great scene in
the East Bay, with a decent number of spots for young, local
punk/hardcore/metal bands to play. But as a teenager, it was frustrating when
an overzealous security guard would go off on a 15 year old kid for moshing,
or when a skating rink would flip the lights on and kill the power an hour and
a half before the bands had agreed earlier.

924 Gilman had none of that. I remember the first time I saw this sign[1] and
then realizing that there were no security guards to enforce those rules. And
yet, the punk ethos was strong enough that folks were just generally good to
each other.

Or the graffiti all over the walls with a graffiti code of conduct posted
every so often: don't tag over color with black and white, don't put doodles
over real art, that sort of thing. Sure, it wasn't 100% followed, but people
really respected it for the most part.

Or the 25 cent bottles of water and cans of soda. No profit, just kids handing
out there zines and making sure no one goes thirsty.

Anyway, I'm going to go finish the article now, but if this guy got 924
Gilman, and wants to take that ethos into the internet, I couldn't be more
supportive. Godspeed.

[1]:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/61992100@N03/23226226149/in/al...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/61992100@N03/23226226149/in/album-72157660564998867/)

~~~
kickme444
Gilman was a huge part of my life and I played various roles in participating
and helping to manage it over the year, though I don't want to take ANY credit
for this, it's not my place and no person should. But, the experience I had
there showed me what is possible when things are started with good intentions
and managed that way going forward. There were and are rocky times at Gilman,
but overall it's a model that should be studied.

Also, we made and shared a lot of great music with the world, which is the
real upside of gilman. I miss that time in my life.

~~~
joeyaiello
Oh yeah, it certainly wasn't perfect, but the good far outweighed the bad IMO.
Also, I'm now realizing there are probably a lot of parallels in building
those sorts of communities with the Eternal September problem: getting too big
and people betraying the ethics. It'd be a fun historical analogy to
explore...

> I miss that time in my life.

Me too. I'm still in my 20s, but given that I now have a lot more means
working in the tech world than I had when I was a teenager, I've been thinking
a lot about how I might be able to help foster communities like that for
younger generations (opening a venue, starting a small label, patronizing high
school bands that want to record, etc.) Curious if you've thought about the
same?

EDIT: Holy crap, just realized you're the subject of the article. Definitely
didn't mean to imply you didn't play a role, FYI, but I imagine you played a
large part given your humility on the matter. ;) Keep up the good fight, man.
We're rooting for you.

------
motohagiography
The entire Hollywood mythology was built around being "discovered," and
elevated to fame and stardom, and arguably it's main product wasn't movies, it
was hope.

If I were Conde Nast, I would use reddit as a farm team for finding, creating,
and monetizing internet celebrities through its "legit," properties the way
that movie studios created vehicles to profit from actors.

Costs them hardly anything to talent scout redditors and try them out in other
publications, then promote the story back of how success story X was
"discovered," on reddit.

Keeps their monetization platforms hands clean, while bringing a steady stream
of talent to market. The difference between hollywood and Conde Nast is that
now, Conde Nast literally owns that talent source instead of relying on a
bunch of agents.

~~~
maxerickson
Condé Nast doesn't own reddit, the parent company to Condé Nast, Advance
Publications, is the majority owner of reddit, but not the only shareholder.

Block me on Twitter!

~~~
motohagiography
Good color. Single party has control of Conde Nast and Reddit, so while there
is a legal distinction, this isn't a correction to the basic business dynamic.

------
blindwatchmaker
The fundamental problem I have with reddit is that it seems extremely easy to
game and astroturf. Things like /r/politics felt like a Democratic party
propaganda platform around the 2016 election for example.

------
foobaw
One thing that really annoys me from Reddit is the mob mentality.

For instance, a person will make a seemingly "logical" argument and everyone
will just keep adding their own "opinion" agreeing with this argument to be
part of this mob. Later, even if this argument is proven wrong, you will get
insulted, downvoted and threatened if you make any sort of counter-argument. I
hate generalizing but my experience was that most people were unwilling to
take back what they said.

~~~
tedunangst
Not unique to reddit. Once a forum comment has been accepted as right, it will
always be the top post. Child comments only ever see fewer views. The
correction will never be as popular.

------
jpzisme
/r/mma is an absolute gem. /r/BlackPeopleTwitter is great as well.

I'm also getting tired of these apology tours from SV people. The biggest flaw
they have (aside from collecting scary amounts of data) is seemingly taking a
too-rosy view of people. It'd be more refreshing for somebody to stand up and
quote a somewhat notorious fighter by saying, "I'd like to take this chance to
apologize... to absolutely nobody."

------
lsmarigo
Reddit has been overrun by extremists and special interest groups and has
become a dangerous tool for indoctrination and misinformation.

This interview feels disingenuous and a thinly veiled humble brag/promo for
Imzy.

Jailbait Really? How can you mention jailbait but not coontown, KKK,
fatpeoplehate, incels, boston marathon, there are so many worse
communities/incidents that have spilled into general reddit than jailbait.

the cycle is media backlash > ban a few subs > replacements/under the radar
alternatives readily available in the ban announcement comments.

no one seems to fully appreciate the massive influence that reddit has on the
news cycle/national discourse and how the company policies can actually shape
world politics. It's insane we're not studying this and talking about it more.

------
tripplethrendo
He's basically saying that freedom of speech is too risky on the internet for
any platform.

That is scary to me.

~~~
streb-lo
Freedom of speech has nothing to do with Reddit.

~~~
commandlinefan
No, the first amendment of the constitution of the United States (which
describes the US government's responsibilities in regards to freedom of
speech) has nothing to do with Reddit. Freedom of speech as a concept can be
applied to anything: reddit, the government, hacker news, you or I.

~~~
T-N-T
American corporatism and singular definition of 'freedom of speech' as being
'the amendment' really polluted the well of any discussion of the topic on
English-speaking platforms. We, in Europe, have limited freedom of speech. You
can't do things like denying the holocaust. But that doesn't mean we don't
recognize the concept of freedom of speech, and that we don't have discussion
platforms that feature freedom of speech -within the limits of our laws-.
Censorship is still censorship, even when it's done by a corporation.

Listening to americans there can be no debate as to whether censorship even
exists if it's done by a corporation because corporation are free to do
anything and we shouldn't even debate what they do and whether we should
boycott a place and move onto something else because corporations can do no
wrong and exerting individual judgement, opinion, and sharing them,
encouraging the growth of freer online platforms and the likes is heavily
discouraged. No, everything has to do with the law and if the law doesn't call
it bad then it's not bad and it shouldn't be judged as bad. That worship of
the law and constitution as the only sacred values in human societies is
disgusting.

------
zaidf
This is the latest flavor of humble bragging in the Valley.

~~~
pessimizer
Speaking from one of his nine yachts over a satellite phone, Spammy
Tachsdodger McScrapyface said "What we did at Zynga was terrible and should be
regulated. My new company is available to consult on how that should be done."

------
nemild
I've been actively working on a media literacy guide for engineers,
contributions welcome:

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer](https://github.com/nemild/hack-
an-engineer)

(Think Reddit influences so much of engineering thought from things like
r/learnprogramming to all the cryptocurrency subs)

~~~
IAmEveryone
This is just a collection of stereotypes of journalism that are already
commonly believed among the tech crowd.

Just one example: it’s insulting and hurtful to any quality journalist (ie at
the NYT, WSJ, or Economist) to suggest that their reporting is motivated by
personal financial incentives, or their employer’s.

~~~
nemild
I'll respectfully disagree. Financial incentives influence everyone, including
the editors at top publications who are constantly looking at what is read,
watched, and shared to decide what to invest in and feature.

You might really like "All the News That's Fit to Sell" which is written by a
media economist that digs into how market incentives influence coverage (he's
the director of the journalism program at Stanford). There's lots of
discussion as well about media coverage decisions in the lead up to the 2016
presidential election at even the national networks.

This Cecil the Lion example at the Washington Post has always been
illuminating to me: [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/business/where-clicks-
rei...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/business/where-clicks-reign-
audience-is-king.html)

Even at the top publications, financial incentives influence choices. It's not
as malevolent as someone paying off a journalist.

For example, at most top tier newspapers, there is an incentive for "if it
bleeds, it leads". This is an economic outcome, as this elicits the most
reader interest and also increases profitability. (See my data analysis on
this in the NY Times: [https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-
films.html](https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html) )

------
empath75
Fundamentally, the problem with the site is that Reddit was happy getting
growth on the back of people searching for jailbait[1] and creepshot porn and
white supremacists for years and they have a user base that reflects that. A
lot of the power mods that run the largest subreddits are just awful human
beings. I don't see how they fix that short of nuking the whole site from
orbit and starting over.

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110429125747/http://www.alexa.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110429125747/http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com)
(check the top search terms)

~~~
2RTZZSro
These people exist and no amount of censorship will eliminate that. Protective
bubbles exist in the form of moderated subreddit and other forums outside of
Reddit.

------
gaius
_And sure enough they didn’t do anything, and sure enough deaths were caused
because of the shit going on in their channels._

Which incident is this referring to?

~~~
smittywerben
Likely this, but perhaps something else...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunil_Tripathi#Misidentificati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunil_Tripathi#Misidentification)

~~~
NotAMoose
No, Discord wasn't around at the time of the Boston Bombing. I believe (though
don't know) that he's referring to some of the white nationalist stuff, like
Charlottesville perhaps.

------
dredmorbius
I was quite disappointed not to see more from McComas on what went wrong with
his so-called kinder, gentler Reddit alternative, Imzy.

He briefly mentions the investors, but not his role in the site, its own group
behaviours, staff, etc. I'd explored it and was impressed by several of its
technical features, but found the net of its founding cohort _and_ technical
design, as well as staff and volunteer management & moderation, hands down the
most toxic online experience I've seen in 30+ years. (Yes, pre-dating the
Web.)

The session-based anonymous identity dynamic in particular gave rise to
dynamics such that every conversation was a single-iteration Prisoners Dilemma
encounter with a strong dose of Zimbardo.

I've been hoping to see a post mortem with some degree of introspection.
That's not happened.

More on my experiences:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imzy_experience_well_that_escalated_quickly/)

------
pessimizer
reddit - anarchic garbage = metafilter

metafilter has 12,000 users, not mansions, yachts and tennis star wives. No
one is asking metafilter mods about reddit, they're asking people who got rich
off reddit, because they respect people who get rich, not people who have
well-run, wisely-moderated forums. This is because well-run forums are common,
and reddit.coms are not.

------
Uhhrrr
>if Reddit, specifically, focused all their efforts on the health of their
platform, on the people that are really the contributors and not the
consumers, they would see growth beyond what they’re getting.

I think Digg tried this, shortly before being crushed by Reddit.

------
wvenable
"They believe that if they have a billion unique visitors a month, that they
have a property that is going to be worth a ton of money in some way
eventually."

This is stupid; users are fickle and visitors mean nothing if you can't
monetize them. And usually attempting to monetize visitors causes them to
leave to the next platform trying to reach a billion unique visitors.

I can't believe intelligent people think this is a valid way to run an
Internet business. It might work for small startups looking to be bought out
by a larger company (who will then try and monetize it, driving away all the
users) but for a company like reddit it's a bit ridiculous.

(Edit fixed typo)

~~~
fudged71
I think the idea of reddit collapsing entirely is much harder than a single
news site for instance. It's not one product, it is hundreds of strong
communities that have gathered from different places on the web. There are
discussions and communities that I would not know how to find elsewhere on the
web.

~~~
wvenable
Reddit is not profitable. Your strong communities are supported by investors
hoping to get a return on their investment. If the growth stops, the
investment stops, and the servers go away.

The fact that the communities are strong matters not.

------
kwelstr
I used to have an reddit account from the first year reddit came out and I
finally decided to delete it this year. I kept going into smaller and smaller
subreddits because the ones I used to like, askscience or askhistorians etc.
grew too much and became non enjoyable for me. At the end even the smaller
subreddits were a waste of my time. I feel good about this and I don't think
I'm going back to reddit.

------
stinger
Can the sentences for this article get any longer?

------
darepublic
What I can never reconcile with is that when mainstream media means 'toxic'
they are never referring to the /r/latestagecapitalism plastered all over the
front page of reddit. They protest the fact that somewhere, hidden from
popular view a minority of people hold a different view from the extreme
leftist one.

~~~
Synroc
What’s wrong with r/latestagecapitalism?

~~~
rightos
Admins do nothing to prevent extreme moderation as occurs on there from
deleting any comment with an alternative viewpoint. Yet it appears quite
consistently on the front page with only agreement in its comments section.

~~~
norealidea
right, because the rules of the subreddit indicate that. The subreddit has its
own mods that follow its own rules. And the Admins of reddit do not get
involved unless they're peventing a lawsuit. Which is kind of how the internet
should be run. Free and safe from mass control, but communities controlling
themselves.

~~~
paulmd
Which would be fine, if the community had a way to control themselves. But
moderators are literally chosen by being the first person to squat on a
particular subreddit name. There is an incredible amount of inertia to
controlling a popular "domain name" (eg popular brand names), and no recourse
if the person who squatted it first turns out to be a huge shithead.

There have been plenty of instances where someone just turns off a subreddit,
now _nobody_ gets to use it, have a nice day. Let alone the more subtle
problem of a toxic person who should not be moderating a sub in the first
place.

~~~
jholloway7
Maybe one should be able to put a subreddit in 'unmoderated' view and see
what's getting moderated out so the community has a little more transparency.
Yeah, you'll have to wade through some sewage, but at least you can opt-in on
occasion to make sure you're not being unwittingly moderated into an echo
chamber.

I think this hits on the underlying problem I see with Reddit and similar
forums, though. Look at the evolution of subs like /r/LateStageCapitalism or
/r/FatPeopleHate or /r/Incels or T_D or TRP or Flat Earth or Broneyism or
whatever. I don't think in all cases the communities started out as extreme as
they eventually became.

I'm not defending their original charters by any means, I just think there's
some kind of sociological reality or formula these subs are tapping into that
allows them to purposefully moderate/evolve into echo chambers and bring a
community of followers along with them, to a point where the community even
starts to self-moderate to the extreme -- but they don't just start out that
way.

It's almost like you can take some ridiculous idea or some interesting but
archaic belief system, build some interest in it using humor or shock value,
then once you have an audience with critical mass slowly turn it into a cult
without anyone noticing, like the boiling frog analogy (hmm, the irony of that
comparison just now struck me). I almost want to try this myself with
something absurd just to prove the theory.

And I'm sure this isn't a new concept in sociology or anthropology and there
are people researching how it works at Internet scale. Can anyone point me to
what it's called?

------
VectorLock
Reddit focused on openness and push growth as hard as possible.

Imzy focused on heavily policing their userbase.

Where is each of them at today?

------
AriaMinaei
With the complaint that VCs are incentivised to favor short-term metrics and
over emphasise growth, how would you go about fixing that? Also, as a founder,
how would you seek investors that wouldn't pressure you to scale too fast?

~~~
fudged71
That's the problem with VCs in general, and it doesn't fit their business
model from a math perspective if you are low-growth. There are some investors
who are trying a new model (see Indie.vc).

The alternative is either to go without funding (at the expense of an ad or
subsciption model), or have your users help fund you through something like an
ICO or equity crowd fund or patreon etc.

Or you find a way to remove infrastructure costs through some technical
decentralization or open-source and treat development/support as a hobby, but
that doesn't scale to this size.

------
Rotdhizon
That confirms the actions of what Spez usually does. He remains silent on the
rampant abusive subreddits UNTIL someone publishes a news article about it,
then he steps in with the whole "We're dedicating ourselves to stepping up
regulating these harmful subreddits, and other blanket PR statements". Like
most, I enjoy the hobby specific subs(tech related for me) like sysadmin,
networking, netsec, etc. Those communities are often very closely monitored by
moderators who don't want off topic things floating in. I do browse the news
sections everyday but it's normally not terrible. Most people have caught on
now to the bot comment structure so those accounts get their comments
downvoted to invisibility.

I think the biggest problem is that Reddit has created a poison with two
perfect ingredients. 1) Having little to no moderation on abusive/illegal
topics due to fear of PR backlash. 2) Creating a platform that allows people
all over the world the communicate.

Mix those together and suddenly you have extremists, criminals, and just
outright mentally sick people joining together to create massive communities
where that behavior and mentality is allowed to prosper. When insane people
have insane views, they typically have them amongst themselves or in a very
small groups. Their not going to go around telling the town about their views
and intentions, so it can be hard to find others to connect with that are in
the same boat. That isolation I think tends to lead to towards those
ideologies to fizzle out, or continue in private but without the backing to do
any harm. When you suddenly have hundreds/thousands of these small groups of
insane people banding together in a place where they can share their views
publicly with anonymity, things get out of hand.

Take Incels for example, which is a now banned sub that was made up of
generally unappealing men would very likely never experience intimacy with a
female due to their own shortcomings. It's one thing for a guy to think in a
brief moment "I really want to do X with a female, maybe I should just do it
forcefully". That's just a personal thought and likely to fizzle out because
it has no backing. Now when you have an entire echo chamber of like minded
individuals saying things like that, now it's leading to encouragement and
active planning of those illegal actions. All because Reddit refuses to step
in.

Reddit truly doesn't offer much in terms of positives. Sure the easy going,
user friendly, rolling forum type setup makes it easy for people to discuss
hobbies and interests. However, forums have been doing just that since the
internet began. Sure you can get news, cooking recipes, tech help, etc in a
fast, easy going manner but you can get all of those from plenty of other
sources too.

Think of it like this: In many areas down south in the US, militant groups are
living in the forests. Generally they are white extremist, pro gun nuts who
have small communities being self sufficient in the deep woods. These groups
hate government interference and usually have a shoot on site policy. By
themselves, these groups are nothing. Even the ones who threaten the public,
pretty much never do anything. Now what if these groups had a way to _find_
and _communicate_ with each other in as efficient a manner as Reddit provides?
Now you go from harmless threats to a potential, real world problem that could
lead to violence and destruction since many groups would now have banded
together.

~~~
creaghpatr
>Think of it like this: In many areas down south in the US, militant groups
are living in the forests. Generally they are white extremist, pro gun nuts
who have small communities being self sufficient in the deep woods. These
groups hate government interference and usually have a shoot on site policy.
By themselves, these groups are nothing. Even the ones who threaten the
public, pretty much never do anything. Now what if these groups had a way to
find and communicate with each other in as efficient a manner as Reddit
provides? Now you go from harmless threats to a potential, real world problem
that could lead to violence and destruction since many groups would now have
banded together.

That kind of logic is what leads to events like the internment of Japanese-
Americans during WWII

------
tootie
Bring back Ellen Pao.

------
pfarnsworth
reddit is probably one of the best social sites on the internet. You need to
pick and choose the best ones though. Like everything, there are shitty ones
and great one. The great ones have great mods with a very precise focus.

------
sneak
Bold claim; most people in the world have never heard of Reddit.

------
megaman22
I'm sure that's what most people could say about their time at, or on, Reddit.

~~~
irrational
Reddit is just a reflection of the world. There is both good and bad there. It
is very easy to avoid the bad. Only visit the subreddits that you know are
good. For instance, I'm a boardgamer and r/boardgames is a very friendly
place. Other subreddits I frequent like r/woodworking, r/bodyweightfitness,
r/campingandhiking are likewise places that positively contribute to the
world.

~~~
acdha
The problem is that the site leaks in a way which doesn’t have a real world
analog. Your favorite coffee shop doesn’t have random skinheads show up as
soon as someone starts talking about e.g. sexism or racism. If it did they’d
be limited to who lives nearby and the manager could kick them out when they
started bothering people.

None of that happens on reddit and while intense moderation works (I love
/r/AskHistorians for example) it’s expensive.

~~~
irrational
Except, in the subreddits I frequent nobody brings up sexism, racism,
politics, etc. so the skinheads (or whoever) don't have a toehold to start
bothering people.

~~~
acdha
Lucky for you but that doesn’t help anyone who is targeted for some reason –
remember all of the city subreddits getting “helpful” contributions from
racists highlighting crimes committed by black people? The Internet shouldn’t
just be for white guys even if we’ve gotten used to thinking of ourselves as
the default.

------
digi_owl
As a foreigner, i am massively puzzled by how people seem to want to place all
this on some left-right axis when both "sides" seems to have a massive problem
of authoritarianism and groupthink.

------
TAForObvReasons
> The incentive structure is simply growth at all costs. There was never, in
> any board meeting that I have ever attended, a conversation about the users,
> about things that were going on that were bad, about potential dangers,
> about decisions that might affect potential dangers. There was never a
> conversation about that stuff.

This externality-disregarding culture was idolized in SV for the last decade
or so. It's nice to see some self-reflection, but unfortunately the VC
community, without heavy regulation, is structurally unable to value anything
other than growth.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
Regulation doesn't solve all the problems. In and of itself, regulation can
create just as perverted incentives as the existing VC culture. With the
perceived impact that Facebook had on the election, I'm starting to believe
our culture is evolving into one that won't allow such disregard with or
without laws enforcing it.

------
cookiecaper
The introduction indicates that this is part of a series that NY Mag has been
running called "The Internet Apologizes", where it appears they specifically
seek out influential people willing to say bad things about online communities
and properties.

This series can probably be reasonably interpreted as part of the traditional
media smear campaign against democratized speech platforms -- they quite
prefer speech controlled by their fancy executives and programming directors.

While it doesn't necessarily diminish anything the interviewee states, it's
important to understand the context and framing of the discussion.

------
mozumder
They're suffering the same problem as Facebook & YouTube. They're leaderless,
being driven by and reacting to the mob of users, instead of the producing a
planned product that understands people.

The problem with social media is that they don't have people telling the
public that their ideas are crap, so everyone thinks they're awesome.

Editors get to make sure people understand that, no, they are not awesome.

Social media, like any advertising-driven media, needs editors to tune their
site. They're trying to have it all - the profit of big advertising with the
automation of tech, but advertisers only want something specific, and
automation isn't going to get what advertisers want. No major advertiser wants
their beautiful fashion brand ad nexts to a post of child mutilation on
Reddit. And editors get to tell people that their content is garbage or great.

And editing means people are going to be unhappy. You are officially taking a
certain viewpoint, and are literally filtering out incompatible expression.
The people that get edited out, they'll get mad, but they'll have to deal with
it, like the millions of other people that get edited out by various editors
around the world and deal with it appropriately.

To fix it, Reddit & other social media needs Editors-in-Chief. Just tell the
users: "This is the boss. Keep that person happy. Want to be pissy about it?
Go somewhere else."

YouTube is now trying that with their kids channels.

In the long-run, things work out better with editors.

