
Can Steve Huffman Save Reddit from Itself? - cryptoz
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/reddit-founder-steve-huffman.html
======
codingdave
I think reddit has the potential to turn into something really worthwhile, if
they let it. But my personal opinion is they need to let the current culture
go, and think more about what they want this site to be in 5 years, 10 years,
50 years.

What is their vision for social communications for the short, mid, and long-
term future? Is it superficial communications and small discussions around
niche interests? Or is more like the discussion boards as they existed, for
example, in Ender's game, where where leaders of the world have serious talks
about policy, politics, and philosophy, and invoke real change?

I mention the Ender's game boards specifically because it seems so easy to
start to transition reddit towards something like that. Make karma worth
something. Have karma split into types for entertainment vs. insightful
commentary, and earn your way onto "serious" boards. Let the current site just
be the starting point, but build a new tier above it, of more serious talk.
Build your way up into a multi-faceted communication tool that can be taken
seriously by all levels of society, while still leaving the light-hearted,
superficial nature of its current culture intact for those who want it.

I have no idea what the reddit leadership desires... I am sure there are 1000
other directions it can be taken. But they need to pick a direction and start
going there. Because right now, the site is growing in numbers, but stagnating
by all other metrics.

~~~
36erhefg
What we're missing is a serious change in mentality. Internet Points/Karma and
a different UI won't change that. We already have all the technology for such
discussions, but no one is interested. The closest thing to serious public
political discussions is happening in the House and Senate floor debates, or
whatever is equivalent in your country, and nobody watches that.

~~~
pjc50
Ironically if you watch UK Prime Minister's Questions it consists primarily of
point-scoring and jeering, with occasional excursions into triviality.

On occasion in Parliament you will find people delivering impassioned,
carefully researched speeches .. to an empty room.

The prerequisite for discussion has to be willingness to listen and finding a
commonality of view, both of which are in very short supply these days.

~~~
dropit_sphere
Much of that is due to incentives and not an inescapable aspect of public
fora. Two notable examples that stand out in my mind of "people I probably
disagree with about some things but trust highly" are HN's very own gwern, for
exhaustive research, and Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex. Somehow they
have hacked, avoided, or self-disciplined their way into good-faith engagement
without giving up ground to do so.

Integrated fact-checking would go a long way in political debates; gwern
provides his own and S. Alexander, while less exhaustive, is relentless in
analyzing his own biases and hewing to rhetorical charity. They would be less
remarkable in a world where political debates had integrated fact-checking, as
politicians would have to adapt.

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MIKarlsen
I think the first mistake here would be to consider Reddit as a one entity.
Reddit is a weird place where content grow out of distinct subreddits, and
sometimes, that content end up on the front-page (which I bet is the most
commonly visited on Reddit). The discussions and "We are the Reddit army" is
often a big fat joke (or circlejerk as Reddit calls it). People get eachother
riled up, and start to believe that they have "a right" to dictate anything
and everything regarding to the site politics. Just watch the whole fat-
shaming incident. People were acting like someone was put on death-row, while
pretty much all the management of the site did was take down a few horrible
sub-reddits that made a laughing stock of people with serious problems. People
started arguing that "condoning fat people was wrong" as if that was ever an
argument. I think Reddit is beyond management. Last night I read that they're
working on a new algorithm for the front-page which is probably the closest
you get to control the "community" at this point.

~~~
rodgerd
It says a lot about a chunk of the population that being a small, fairly
obscure subreddit will generally result in Good Things, but becoming a default
will quickly result in being overrun by racists, gay-haters, mysoginists, and
suchlike.

Heaven help you if your small subreddit attracts the attention of KiA,
redpill, or the like, unless you enjoy a constant stream of filth from rape
apologists.

~~~
anjc
> It says a lot about a chunk of the population that being a small, fairly
> obscure subreddit will generally result in Good Things, but becoming a
> default will quickly result in being overrun by racists, gay-haters,
> mysoginists, and suchlike.

The dynamic on Reddit has been the exact opposite, whereby subreddits that
become popular are taken over by "SJWs", for want of a better description.

Can you name a single popular subreddit that's been overrun by gay-hate and
misogyny through becoming a default?

~~~
JulianMorrison
To sane people, "social justice warrior" translates as "not awful, has
respect, a humane human being".

~~~
Kristine1975
I agree with you. However some people use social justice as an excuse to be
awful to others. Combine that with the fact(?) that loud minorities are often
generalized to be representative of the whole (especially when that minority
confirms prejudices about the whole), and "social justice warrior" takes on a
negative meaning.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> However some people use social justice as an excuse to be awful to others.

And to the degree they do that, they're not fighting for social justice.

> loud minorities are often generalized to be representative of the whole

Though often obsessedly so by people who don't seem to give much of a crap
either way, anyway, and gloss over their own mute accompliceship in rather
serious evils by pointing out things that are kind of peanuts in comparison.
You know, when instead of criticizing people for hurting their own cause, or
merely paying lip service to a cause that is actually worthy, unlike the petty
games they use it for, they just go "Hah! See? that's what those SJW types are
like".

I don't see any serious people of high caliber using that abbreviation, that's
for sure. And it's not like people criticize "tumblr-SJW" generally have their
own serious websites or at least posts screaming bloody murder: for me someone
without a solution getting mad and overshooting the goal is still preferable
to someone completely numb, motionless, and maybe even gloating and proud of
that. I know it's not a dichotomy, that there are many alternatives preferable
to both, but in the given situation of that one group criticizing that other
group, I know where my sympathies lie.

> _There 's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes
> you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively
> take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the
> wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it
> stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who
> own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working
> at all!_

\-- Mario Savo (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhFvZRT7Ds0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhFvZRT7Ds0)
)

^ To me that's not pathos, that's the baseline, and we all fall short of it,
which doesn't move it one inch. If some kiddos on the interwebs discover a
slice of that and do their own stuff, _good for them_. Godspeed to them. And
in so far they make asses of themselves, I hope they learn to pick themselves
up and fail better in the future, but I can't say they are doing anything so
horribly wrong their parents did or their peers are doing so much better.

As Assata Shakur said, only the strong go crazy, the weak just go along; and
that's why they build bubbles and communities in which they can have the
appearance of being strong, and hide behind each other and their memes. That
there is a grain of truth to some of them, that people indeed do use serious
issues to get attention or money, doesn't really change that, it just means
even a broken clock is right twice a day.

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pervycreeper
>the list of an individual user’s idiosyncratic sub-Reddit subscriptions is
nothing if not a precise psychographic profile of his interests.

Not to mention voting habits, which specify a user's tastes much more finely.
The value of that information is potentially astronomical. More honest and
finely grained info than facebook likes could be, for instance, similarly for
ad tracking. Also reaches some hard to target demos.

~~~
36erhefg
Speaking of voting. I cannot find any _terms of service_ for hacker news when
you create an account. Can our information legally sold to advertisers?

~~~
icebraining
IANAL, but I'd say they can't sell the comments - they're copyrighted, and
since they don't ask for an explicit license, the implied one is probably
limited to displaying them on the site - but they could sell the
votes/flags/karma information.

------
devit
Not sure: he continued Ellen Pao's job in destroying the massive goodwill they
had, and being a founder he was immune to calls to step down and effectively
made the changes permanent.

Reddit used to be loved and trusted as a place that cared about its community
and free speech, but now most users probably stay on Reddit only because it's
popular, and would jump ship as soon as a more popular alternative, even in
just a niche, shows up.

But of course, thanks to funding, possible good management and inertia, Reddit
might just be able to out-innovate and out-compete anyone else and keep its
current position.

~~~
rodgerd
> cared about its community and free speech

I'm sure we're all weeping over the demise of /r/coontown and other
Stormfront-affiliated subreddits. What a sad loss, and what a valuable group
of users to alienate!

~~~
hugh4
If you want to say something, say it. Don't say the opposite in a sarcastic
tone.

~~~
pjc50
So you're in favour of all forms of free speech except _sarcasm_?

Edit: ok, evidently jokes aren't a popular mode of speech either.

~~~
tdylan
This isn't about surpressing free speech. It's about basic communication and
debate.

~~~
reitanqild
Sarcasm used to be a effective and totally valid way to make a point, -I mean
it was even part of basic reading/writing education when I grew up 20 years
ago.

Of course you can easily overdo it but I think banning sarcasm has a
significant downside and we should rather teach people to use it correctly.

~~~
tdylan
Once again, this isn't about banning anything. This is about productive
conversation. A value which makes HN unique out of all the internet
communities.

What the commenter was doing was insinuating a conclusion based upon a straw
man, so as not to be scrutinised for the underlying conclusion.

~~~
reitanqild
Didn't downvote (ok, even gave you an upvote while commenting) but I think you
misinterpreted the situation I/we reacted to.

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JanneVee
Reddits problem is not the small communities people barely know that they
exist until someone points them out. It is the shift in attitude in the bigger
communities. I can spend hours finding specific examples but the gist of it is
becoming more US-centric and "nerd dismissing" place by the day.

------
ChuckFrank
When we applied to YC, Steve was nice enough to meet with us at Hipmunk, and
as with what he did there, I think he's going to do a great job at Reddit,
where I've become an increasingly invested participant, once I learned how to
dig deeper into the subreddits, such as /r/oakland or /r/vandwellers etc. I
think, based upon my experience on the site, compared to those on fb and
elsewhere, that Reddit continues to have incredible growth opportunities,
because there are hundreds, nay thousands, of subreddits that we can't even
imagine, people will create, once people discover their power, like
/r/camelracing or /r/swatvalley, or who knows what. 10 years from now, I think
Reddit will be (one of) the biggest site on the whole of the internet. And if
not Reddit, than its many copy cats. I just wish there was some way that I
could help, aside from what little moderating I do.

~~~
tdobson
/r/vandwellers represent! :D

------
lumberjack
Reddit has just grown too big and important. Neither the links nor the
discussions feel genuine anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this
way. I wonder what will replace it.

And of course I'm talking about the popular subreddits mostly concerning news
and politics. Subreddits about classical music and such, still work fine.
However any political subreddit seems compromised in some form or another.

------
snorrah
Does reddit have funding issues currently? I ask because subjectively I've
started getting more and more "too busy" HTTP 503's while browsing, which
hints at a lack of capacity but surely that could be scaled out fairly easily
if financies permit?

------
mattlutze
People seem to like lots of new content, and feeling like they have small,
personal places to share content and have conversations with each other.

If Huffamn et.al. can further refine that feeling of Reddit being a small
community and also a massive community at the same time, I see no reason for
the platform to not continue being a dominant player in the social space.

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ChuckFrank
Terrible reporting. I dug into those unsavory subreddits, and a huge number of
them were mostly inactive, with hardly a posting for the last couple of years,
and otherwise, like the fashion police one, they are hardly like what was
described.

I'm tired of this 'look how bad reddit is' reporting. It's boring and
inaccurate.

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odiroot
How do we save Reddit from the people who aggressively try to change it?

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ljk
Been using Reddit since before the "Digg Exodus" phase; The recent changes on
reddit really doesn't look promising, with the front page suddenly feeling
sluggish and other issues popping up... but I hope the Betteridge's law
doesn't apply here -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

