
Aliens in the valley: The complete and chaotic history of Reddit (2014) - polm23
https://mashable.com/2014/12/03/history-of-reddit/
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Scapeghost
How and why did "news aggregators" become more popular than regular forums?

Probably because you could talk about any topic. There is a low barrier for
entry (easy signup). Mods take a more hands off approach. And users kinda
moderate each other with upvotes/downvotes.

~~~
dmix
> Mods take a more hands off approach. And users kinda moderate each other
> with upvotes/downvotes.

This is what _originally_ made Reddit awesome but the reversal of which has
been slowly killing the fun. Mods have hijacked Reddit and turned all of the
popular subreddits into their own pet newspapers which they are the chief
editors/owner and only they themselves decide which content the users will
enjoy.

You basically can't post any comment or post which doesn't fit with the
popular opinions/ideology/etc of the sub without getting banned or rejected
from most subreddits these days.

That was entirely unsurprising, especially these days, when it happened on the
various shamelessly partisan political subreddits. But about two or three
years ago I saw it start spreading into other areas like city/country
subreddits or generic news subreddits. Now it's on all the major subreddits
and based on the moderator newsletters and other admin posts the whole hyper-
involved and super careful power-modding approach seems to be encouraged by
the Reddit admins.

~~~
Scapeghost
> This is what originally made Reddit awesome but the reversal of which has
> been slowly killing the fun. Mods have hijacked Reddit and turned all of the
> popular subreddits into their own pet newspapers which they are the chief
> editors/owner and only they themselves decide which content the users will
> enjoy.

That is true and I hate it.

A handful of people should _never_ get to decide what millions can talk about.

But compared to oldschool forums, at least they don't butt into conversations
too often and make things awkward.

It's definitely time for the Fourth Age (counting NNTP as the first), that
combines the best things about oldschool forums with the best things about
Reddit.

~~~
dmix
> It's definitely time for the Fourth Age

Agreed, do you have an ideas which would help push us forward?... this is
clearly a step backwards, pushing us back towards the super-safe bigco
communications world like 5-oclock TV news shows with pre-approved talking
points.

Obviously developing new Reddit and Twitter alternatives that look like
2000s-era PHP shitholes aren't helping the problem.... or worse clones which
merely pander to political extremists on the right or left or fringe groups
which then scares off the moderates or politically disinterested.

~~~
Scapeghost
> Agreed, do you have an ideas which would help push us forward?

I do, as I'm sure most of us do (have ideas).

But even if I manage to make an objectively better alternative, I can't
guarantee that I won't become one of those mods :)

------
paulpauper
Reddit mods and admins have too much power. this has gotten worse since 2014.
so many subs have unpublished user requirements to post that you need an old
Reddit account with at least 100 comment karma and 1000 link karma to have
full use of the site. new reddit accounts are fucking useless

~~~
Zak
Having been a moderator before it was easy to impose such restrictions, I'm
very glad for them. It was effectively impossible to ban anybody because
account creation is so trivial.

And yes, it's important to be able to ban people. Even the subreddit I
moderate that's dedicated to a niche hobby and populated almost entirely by
nice, helpful people has had an incident or two of serious targeted
harassment. Those that touch on more controversial issues or potentially
involve money have a high volume of abusive behavior.

