
Reddit is still in turmoil - minimaxir
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/21/reddit-is-still-in-turmoil/
======
twblalock
I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early
failure to manage expectations.

It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an
anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment
policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when
the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The
mistake was ever allowing that kind of freedom in the first place, because
people developed an expectation that it would persist.

Compounding that problem, the fact that the site was unregulated for so long
caused it to attract the kind of people who need to be regulated the most. In
other words, it's no surprise that the most tolerant communities attract
people who are difficult to tolerate.

I suspect Twitter is having similar issues dealing with harassment, after
letting it happen for so long. If there is a lesson in this, it is that online
communities which plan to implement anti-harassment policies ought to do so
from the beginning, and develop the expectation among the users that such
policies exist, and will continue to exist. Don't just tack them on after
several years, and don't enforce them inconsistently and arbitrarily as Reddit
has done.

It will be difficult for Condé Nast to get its money's worth out of Reddit
now. I doubt it will ever shake its negative reputation.

~~~
CM30
Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is
incredibly inconsistent with its moderation.

If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the
boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is/isn't acceptable.

Twitter doesn't really do this well. If you agree with the staff political
stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you're popular enough
(or a large company), you can often get away with things that would get a less
popular user banned.

For example, contrast what happens when a left wing user breaks the rules and
attacks people and what happens when a right wing one does it. It seems like
the former will get punished a lot less harshly for the same offence.

Twitter needs to stop this, and enforce the rules for everyone in every
situation.

~~~
skj
If you ask us to compare between two examples, you are required to provide two
actual examples instead of having us just imagine a scenario that fits your
claim.

~~~
didgeoridoo
Perhaps I can assist: Shaun King calls Jason Whitlock a "coon". He keeps his
verified check and account. If that isn't personal, racial abuse and
harassment, I'm not sure what is.

EDIT: Not being tremendously familiar with this spat, it took me a while to
figure out what Milo got banned for. Best I can figure out, it was for calling
a Ghostbusters actress "barely literate". Since that's a bit of a weak-tea
insult, I imagine the real offense was not stopping (how?) his army of
followers from tweeting other vile things at the woman. Is that our standard?
Should we hold peaceful BLM leaders responsible for tweets from their
followers promoting cop-killing?

~~~
fredfoobar42
What happened with Milo is less about him attacking Leslie Jones, and more
about his _followers_ attacking Leslie Jones. Milo knows full well that if he
identifies someone for his heckling, he'll have thousands of trolls and their
sockpuppets do the heavy lifting for him.

~~~
dudul
I personally don't think people should be accountable for their followers
behavior, but let's suppose it is so.

Then, should we ban people such as Shanley, Randi Harper and their likes when
they "unleash" their followers on some guy?

And this is actually different. While Milo did not explicitly call for the
attacks, Shanley and Randi routinely do call for a target to be abused, for
their companies to be harassed until the target is terminated, etc.

I don't support any side, I'm just trying to show that the first comment
regarding _consistency_ is indeed accurate, Twitter has none.

~~~
fredfoobar42
>I don't support any side, I'm just trying to show that the first comment
regarding consistency is indeed accurate, Twitter has none.

No argument here. Twitter's inconsistent, if not outright apathetic about
abuse no matter where it comes from. It's been pointed out there's no shortage
of harassment and abuse from people on the left on Twitter. Maybe not at the
rate and volume of the "alt-right" types, but it doesn't matter. Twitter needs
to clean house.

~~~
dudul
The thing is they're not really apathetic. They seem to pick a target once in
a while and go overboard with the retaliation. And it seems to be just out of
the blue for no specific reason other than the mood of the day.

------
Iv
Here is a good time to repost a paragraph about why one should not trust
Reddit, by Reddit's then CEO, Yishan Wong:

> I am continually astounded that people sort of trust corporations like they
> trust people. We can talk all day about how the current team is trustworthy
> and we're not in the business of screwing you, but I also have to say that
> you can never predict what happens. reddit could be subject to some kind of
> hostile takeover, or we go bankrupt (Please buy reddit gold) and our assets
> are sold to some creditor. The owners of corporations can change - look what
> happened to MySQL, who sold to Sun Microsystems, who they trusted to support
> its open source ethos - and then Sun failed and now it's all owned by
> Oracle. Or LiveJournal, which was very user-loyal but then sold itself to
> SixApart (still kinda loyal) which failed and then was bought by some
> Russian company. I am working hard to make sure that reddit is successful on
> its own and can protect its values and do right by its users but please, you
> should protect yourselves by being prudent. The terms of our User Agreement
> are written to be broad enough to give us flexibility because we don't know
> what mediums reddit may evolve on to, and they are sufficiently standard in
> the legal world in that way so that we can leverage legal precedents to
> protect our rights, but much of what happens in practice depends on the
> intentions of the parties involved.

> The User Agreement is intended to protect us by outlining what rights we
> claim. But it cannot protect you - you must protect yourself, by acting
> wisely.

~~~
RubyPinch
isn't that more "don't trust any company"? what he says applies to way more
than reddit

~~~
Iv
Well, yes. His main point is to not trust reddit because it is a company.

------
qwertyuiop924
Reddit is a crossroads: It's an intersection between the cultures of 4chan
(which is in itself an intersection of japanese and american sensibilities),
and the culture of usenet, and internet forums, and a dozen other cultures
besides.

None of these cultures handle censorship well. They all originated in an
environment where, to some extent, you could say whatever the hell you like.

Many of Reddit's early users came from these cultures, and they were
responsible for the early culture of the site.

And now, Reddit is desparately trying to adapt itself, and attract people from
Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, whose cultures are radically different, and
perhaps even to some degree less toxic than the pre-September usenet, whilst
also being more toxic. I don't know how.

The point is, a culture that previously only dealt with unacceptability in
relative terms - this is unacceptable in this context - is now dealing with
absolute unacceptability - this is not acceptable, ever. This isn't a change
that people will likely adapt to well. This is prompting a migration to sites
like Voat, and others.

The problem is, Reddit is introducing censorship which is incredibly
inconsistant to a site where the concept of censorship is anathema - Bans,
yes, people get punished for breaking the rules. But having your posts quietly
vanish without warning?

No wonder the userbase is pissed.

Unless I got it completely wrong, which is possible.

~~~
FilterSweep
> Bans, yes, people get punished for breaking the rules. But having your posts
> quietly vanish without warning?

This comment particularly stuck out to me.

Very few other communication platforms of Reddit's ilk will go through the
process of _shadowbanning_ users - that is - the user still has full
functionality of the site, however their comments are not visible to other
users; only themselves. To an unknowing user, it appears no action has been
taken on their account.

It is a shockingly effective means of silencing dissenters or those who
disagree with the majority; and this punishment has extended far beyond those
who speak abusively/offensively. The nefarious part is wasting the user's time
as well.

~~~
toss1941
If only game makers would build this kind of system into their Anti-cheats,
make the cheater think for as long as possible they are ruining other people's
day only to find out that the last hour has been against AI with canned
outrage responses from the AI.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I think most game makers just put cheaters into a cheater-only pool of
players.

~~~
retox
I like this idea; let's see who has the best and biggest cheats. A comedian
once suggested we have the Olympics and we do today, and a no-holds-barred
Cheaters Olympics where those competing can take any substance they like, to
really see how far the human body can be pushed.

I wonder how long until we have to have a regular and an augmented Olympics.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
That sounds like Quake. It isn't quite, but Quake is the closest thing.

Quake's metagame has evolved around extreme dexterity, complicated scripting,
and an obsessive desire to use every trick in the book to push youself beyond
the game's intended limits. This is why things like the bunnyhop, the
rocketjump, and wallrunning are not only accepted, but expected.

------
xnull2guest
Reddit's content curation has come at a time when social media writ large
(Facebook, Twitter) has become linked into State Department and DoD programs.
Counter-intelligence objectives are fought on the 'private property' of social
media servers that host the content of individuals. Fighting the 'War of
Ideas' in the 'cognitive domain of warfare', the effort to starve unwanted
ideas for a place to roost and feed others to maturity is certainly useful,
but it comes at a cost.

There is some value in ungoverned spaces, where advertisements, political
astroturfing, politicized content curation ("no 'RT' allowed, but we'll allow
VoA and Sky") play a secondary role to the contributions of individuals.

The internet was supposed to be an ungoverned space - a 'piazza' or 'forum' \-
but when it wasn't and when the 'Web' wasn't social media was supposed to fill
this gap. Behind the cry of those protesting the take down of 'revenge porn'
and 'fat hate' postings, I hear the more sober voice that adknowledges that
there's one less place that's a safe and free place for expression - as
unpopular as some of it may be.

~~~
afarrell
I too long for the days of the ARPAnet, when the Internet was not associated
with DoD programs.

------
grandalf
Why does Reddit have to become a media empire?

The formula for doing that is pretty well-known by this point:

We'll see a ban on throwaway accounts and a push for real names, then a ban on
third party URL shorteners, then interruption ads, and finally some sort of
paywall.

Reddit is a useful piece of internet infrastructure, and I'd be pleased if it
would stay that way. It doesn't need to become its own media empire with its
own Rupert Murdoch, etc.

Some things that could be improved:

\- opt-in home pages that are tailored at specific audiences. The standard one
is pretty low quality.

\- more detection/policing of voting rings and vote fraud in general.

~~~
mbesto
> Why does Reddit have to become a media empire?

Because investors have poured a ton of money into it expecting it to be a
media empire.

~~~
flashman
This is what I detect in Reddit's new ideas: the fear that the existing site
is _good enough_ for most people and its population has therefore
stabilised... which would be pretty bad for certain kinds of investor looking
for a big one-off return instead of a consistent dividend.

~~~
blahi
Oh god. There are no "investors". Reddit is owned by Conde Nast's parent
company. The only other shareholders are employees.

~~~
morgante
Wrong.

Reddit has recently received substantial outside investments:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/01/reddit-
se...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/01/reddit-
secures-50m-fundraising-investors-snoop-dogg)

~~~
blahi
I stand corrected.

------
minimaxir
Reddit, from a business perspective, baffles me. During the Yishan Wong/Ellen
Pao era, we had Reddit-Made and Reddit TV, both of which bombed especially.
Under Alexis Ohanian, we had Upvoted and Formative which as the article notes
were killed silently.

Reddit released a native app and an image host _years_ too late. (I just
checked the data and it is not killing Imgur: Reddit image usage was 18% in
the top image subreddits at beginning of June, today it is 25%).

The biggest fundamental change Reddit has made in the time since is...making
self-posts count for karma. And tracking outbound links.

It really shouldn't be that impossible to have a successful business with
hundreds of millions of users. Especially with the wealth of data available to
Reddit.

~~~
LA_Banker
It's not. Reddit could easily sell targeted ads based on subreddits (e.g.
inking a deal with Uniqlo to advertise on /r/malefashionadvice or
/r/femalefashionadvice).

It chooses to pursue other monetization means to preserve the Reddit
experience.

We'll see if it's able to stumble onto another sustainable business model.

~~~
olegious
The problem is most high quality advertisers don't want to have their brand
promoted along side user generated content. So while Reddit has a ton of
traffic, much of that traffic is worthless to the most desirable advertisers.

~~~
caf
Isn't that exactly Facebook's business model?

~~~
eon1
Sort of. Facebook also pours money into making its platform family-friendly
through moderation teams, auto-detection of obscene/inappropriate content,
etc. Not to mention all the analytics and targeting capabilities of their
advertising programs. Being a household name, they're also so huge that it's
impossible to ignore - grandma's not on Reddit but there's a pretty good
chance she's on Facebook.

------
jokoon
I like reddit. I don't really care so much about the frontpage. I like other
subreddits where discussion is central (bestof, subredditdrama, changemyview,
self, ask<insert-subject>), or content subreddit (games, wallpapers, military,
photos). The default subreddits feel like google news.

What's important is the users and how there is room for them to exchange both
ways, unlike standard medias.

There also are many people watching for bias, would it come from moderation,
brigade, corporate, etc. You will often reads posts about actual professional
in a field explaining you something, and it often is enlightening (granted
that I would not trust reddit for a decision that implies my own existence).

Generally, reddit works because the users can see and feel that people are
exchanging, talking, sharing, reacting. It's "alive". Even facebook cannot
really pretend being that lively place, that "bazaar".

What must be really tough is how you manage that many teams of moderators.
That must be a nightmare, but to me it seems that it's vital. Fortunately it
seems that they will always find people for that, because their subreddit
revolves around something they like, and they will often do a good job (it
seems) because they want to promote that hobby, not that it will directly
benefit them financially (example, moderator of askhistorians).

~~~
ansible
_Fortunately it seems that they will always find people for that, because
their subreddit revolves around something they like, and they will often do a
good job (it seems) because they want to promote that hobby, not that it will
directly benefit them financially (example, moderator of askhistorians)._

Yup. I'm one of the mods for /r/AskEngineers. I want to promote engineering in
general: designing things, fixing things, learning how things work. I'm glad
to do this, and to encourage good and useful discussions.

I especially like when we've got questions from engineers who are working
outside their own discipline, and just need a little nudge in the right
direction. Getting just a paragraph from an expert can save days or weeks of
effort.

------
retox
The human race is comprised of horrible people, any website that accepts user
contributions will attract contributions from horrible people. As a service
owner you have a decision; either you say that everyone's opinion is valid,
horrible and all, or you say no; these are the rules around what you can post
and anything outside those boundaries is subject to removal.

What you absolutely should _not_ do is build a brand around being in the first
category and then transition to the second. Especially if all your content is
user contributed.

Of course, no one thinks of themselves or their in-group as horrible. You
could substitute horrible for flawed if it makes you feel better.

~~~
alanwatts
>Of course, no one thinks of themselves or their in-group as horrible. You
could substitute horrible for flawed if it makes you feel better.

If everyone is flawed, then whats the point of having an arbitrarily selected
group of flawed people censor all the other flawed people? That logic seems
flawed, unless it is purely from a monetary interest.

Moreover, deeming people "horrible" is completely subjective. All of the great
pioneers of human rights were considered "horrible people" by the majority.

>Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be
opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light,
injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the
light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be
cured. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an
extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a
measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love:
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos
an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness
like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian
gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther
an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John
Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of
my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave
and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self
evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether
we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be
extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of
injustice or for the extension of justice?

-Dr. King, Letter From a Birmingham Jail

~~~
res0nat0r
> If everyone is flawed, then whats the point of having an arbitrarily
> selected group of flawed people censor all the other flawed people? That
> logic seems flawed, unless it is purely from a monetary interest.

It seems reasonable that the people who put the time and effort into creating
and maintaining a discussion site are perfectly valid to pick and choose what
type of content they see fit no matter how arbitrary their rules.

If their rules are too harsh or unliked people will just go elsewhere.

------
jfoutz
I didn't realize drinking on the job was a thing. I've had the odd company
party with beer in the late afternoon, but that's perhaps twice a year.

I'm not a teetotaler by any stretch of the imagination, but drinking at work
seems counterproductive.

~~~
matwood
We have beer in the fridge and a keg at work. Sometimes it's nice to have a
beer at the end of the day, but after a working all day I usually just want to
go home.

~~~
jfoutz
Yeah, i can see that. Finish a big project and have a beer with your team. I
have a hard time seeing that as a daily or even weekly thing.

~~~
existencebox
I'd like to give a counter-perspective, since those who drink at work are
often grouped as "brogrammers" when I don't feel like the term encapsulates
the environment I'm seeking at all; I have a group of mixed engineer/PM peers
accumulated from multiple past jobs who perhaps once a month after work on a
friday go to a bar for happy hour and just shoot the shit about work. We have
non-drinkers there (we'd glady have more but by no planning of my own many of
my coworkers happen to drink) and I've never heard any murmur of pressure to
participate beyond being a grumpy engineer :)

Sometimes, as the parent said, this happens out of the work fridge, as going
to the bar isn't feasible, and it's nice to take 30m or so out of a long
afternoon to be slightly less heads down, as said above, the fact that beer is
involved is more just that it's a common source of enjoyment than any
intrinsic ties to the hanging out. Coffee, video games, etc are all other ways
of doing this, and I think if the culture is natural and very laid back you
can avoid the peer pressure that naysayers like to bring up.

To your earlier point of being counterproductive, by 4 on a friday, I am so
far from my peak of engineering productivity that a casual chat that spawns
some interesting conversations is probably far more work-beneficial than my
banging my head further on the same thing I've been doing for the prior 79
hours of the week, if I'm being honest with my workflow.

Just my thoughts. The stated lack of pressure comes from a recognition that
these are just that, MY thoughts; I absolutely believe that this pattern
doesn't work for anyone, but after so long of seeing the anti-drinking
sentiment grow I wanted to chime in a bit with a positive spin; in as mentally
intensive a field as we often have a chance to unwind is so valuable to me.

~~~
jfoutz
> [we...] go to a bar for happy hour and just shoot the shit about work.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense, i do that myself. Absolutely agree with the 4
on Friday point as well. I like drinking.

It's just the _at work_ part that makes me nervous. I see the utility in not
having to move to a different location, and how that is more inclusive to
everyone. I think it takes a very light touch. Because it's at work people
might feel more obligated to participate - even if they don't claim any
feelings of obligation. Because people are drinking, they might be a little
less tactful than normal. These two can compound in ways that aren't great for
everyone.

You and your team sound like smart responsible adults. And i'm sure
organizations that approach it with your level of delicacy will do great.

~~~
matwood
It is definitely much easier in a small company. We hire mature adults and
treat people as mature adults. Drink/don't drink, play a chess game or not,
work at home or not, stay and play some games after work or go pick up your
kids, we do not care as long as the work gets done.

All people are different and value different things. If you hire responsible
adults, you can give a lot of leeway with how the work gets done.

------
anjc
It's bizarre that a company seems to be struggling to administer diversity of
staff, without being certain of its own medium-term success.

There's no point in having your quota of "people of colour", as the article
puts it, if the business model is unsustainable and leads to people being
fired anyway.

Why not focus on creating a successful company first, and then worry about
things that carry an administrative and management overhead.

~~~
RockyMcNuts
It goes to what kind of company and site you want to have. If all you have is
20-something tech bros then that's the kind of company and site you will have.

If you want to appeal beyond that, you may want to broaden your culture.

Sometimes the founding cultural DNA is too strong, or attempts to change the
culture fall short for a variety of reasons.

~~~
cocotino
I don't think hiring women or blacks is going to do much to the community.

~~~
vkou
No, but if your monoculture of tech-bros has not had to deal with half the
internet shit that women and people of color do (Or have, for various reasons,
not been deeply impacted by it,) then what you're going to get is a community
where women and people of color are driven away.

I've never been stalked on the internet. I've never received threatening phone
calls. I've never been personally harassed, or physically threatened. If by
some happenstance, one or two people did any of the above, I'd probably laugh
it off.

A company full of people like me is unlikely to consider those use cases as
seriously as they should.

~~~
anjc
Luckily a company full of people like you will also need to have experienced
marketing and legal staff, who will know that it would be unwise to laugh off
such user issues. Your marketing team doesn't need to be diverse to know this.

------
bane
Why the hell is Reddit trying to make their own content when the entire point
of the site is for the users to create the content?

Don't make a Reddit podcast, make Reddit a podcast hosting network.

Don't make a Reddit video show, make Reddit a video hosting site.

Don't make a Reddit magazine, make Reddit a source for anybody to publish
their own magazines.

Why does Reddit have writers and editors and creative directors? It's like a
rock band having a position for a flower arranger.

Is this the point where Reddit has official jumped the shark? Where to next
for my cat picture memes?

 _edit_

Want to increase quality and revenue? Give a cut of advertising revenue to the
mods of successful, high quality subs.

Incentivize for the behavior you want.

Provide the platform and get the users to provide, mod and benefit from the
content.

~~~
cerrelio
I see why they want to create their own curated content. A friend of mine has
created and run several user-generated content sites and he said: "user
generated content is worthless; largely racism and porn." It's driven by the
lowest common denominator.

As long as content is hosted on company-controlled servers where ad revenue is
the model for survival, you're going to see slow declines and eventual busts
like Digg. Users hate being advertised to and censored.

The future is probably something where people pay a small amount to access a
forum that's somehow distributed on their machines (phones, PCs, etc) and not
controlled by any organization. Data transfer (even mobile) and storage are
getting cheaper. It'll be like bitcoin, but for discussions.

~~~
a_small_island
>"The future is probably something where people pay a small amount to access a
forum that's somehow distributed on their machines (phones, PCs, etc) and not
controlled by any organization. Data transfer (even mobile) and storage are
getting cheaper. It'll be like bitcoin, but for discussions."

No. The future is the next Digg, the next Reddit, etc. Just like a torrent
site, when one goes down (for whatever reason), the next in line pops up to
take its place (and users). The internet does not want to pay money to access
a forum. The internet also does not want to be advertised to. So the cycle
will continue.

~~~
ben_jones
Here's the problem (IMO): Reddit has too many features and too big a userbase
to replicate as Reddit itself did a decade ago. voat.co has been in
development for years and still lacks crucial systems for things like content
moderation, monetization, scaling, etc.

Essentially for a coup of Reddit to occur you have to take a large chunk of
Reddit at once. That is very hard to do.

~~~
chme
voat.co was developed because someone wanted to develop something with
ASP.net.

Reddit, the software platform is open source:
[https://github.com/reddit](https://github.com/reddit)

~~~
piaste
Voat is run on ASP.NET but it's open source as well:

[https://github.com/voat](https://github.com/voat)

------
jeiting
Since Alexis and Huffman returned I've seen more happen with the brand than in
the several years preceding. I don't know who made their mobile app but it is
damn good. I resisted at first but am now using it as my primary means for
consuming content on Reddit.

~~~
alexis
The team has really done a remarkable job -- shipping more in the last quarter
alone than over years before.

~~~
dlandis
Totally agree as a long time user. Keep it up.

------
mark_l_watson
I am surprised that the core Reddit functionality is not run mostly on
autopilot.

I only subscribe to a few subreddits (lisp, Ruby, Haskell, AGI, and a few
others) and the user supplied content is plenty good enough for me to visit
the site once a day.

------
GarrisonPrime
"Ooh, lots of people like this thing. It's popular."

"Great! Let's take advantage of that popularity to make a ton of cash!"

"Hm. We'll have to dramatically change pretty much everything about how it
operates."

"What could go wrong?"

------
cocotino
Big chunk of the article gone explaining how the diversity policies have
failed, but I don't see any explanation on how they would have helped the site
or the community.

What if the company is failing because instead of focusing on hiring competent
people (of which they have a severe lack, at least in the engineering side)
they focused on having a diverse team?

------
jsprogrammer
I would like to see some reporting on the 10% of reddit's recent $50 million
raise that will be distributed to the users.

Recent changes (eg. stealth adding link tracking) and comments (eg. Huffman's,
_we know everything about you_ ) have been user hostile and making the
distribution would garner some good will.

~~~
minimaxir
That 10% pledge died when "Reddit Coin" died. (And it likely violated SEC
rules anyways)

~~~
jsprogrammer
Do you know where I can find the announcement of the death of the pledge and
analysis of how it likely violated SEC rules?

I believe Y Combinator was the force behind the pledge, why would they push
for and publicly announce something that they couldn't do?

~~~
minimaxir
There is no announcement of the death, but the project was under Wong and the
blockchain engineer with him, so issue is moot.

You are correct Y Combinator is behind the pledge
([http://www.recode.net/2014/9/30/11631424/reddit-
raises-50m-p...](http://www.recode.net/2014/9/30/11631424/reddit-
raises-50m-plans-to-share-stock-with-community-members)), but it was only a
plan. Plans fail.

~~~
jsprogrammer
The project was under Sam Altman [0], lead investor of the raise:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altma...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman_lead_investor_in_reddits_new/)

[0] [http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/fundraising-for-
reddit.htm...](http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/fundraising-for-reddit.html)

~~~
jsprogrammer
Oops, that should have been an _is_.

------
spaceheeder
If this is related to the problems at Reddit it is only so tangentially, but
my feelings on that site have been very mixed since I deleted my account
there. I think that the subreddit structure and making it "a community of
communities" showcases both the best and the worst of audience bubbles. At
their best, like-minded people share interesting things with each other, build
communities, and even form friendships. At their worst, they become echo
chambers that are almost as liable to turn on themselves as they are on
outsiders.

I've heard people make the case that audience bubbles are bad for society at
large, because they narrow down what kinds of conversations people have. But
ever since leaving Reddit, I've noticed my own outlook on life improving. I
think that audience bubbles cause an individual harm, similar in kind to that
reported by people who de-convert from extremist religious or political
ideologies.

I wonder how much better off people would be if social networks implemented
some kind of "group hug" algorithm that made posts less likely to spread if
they were too in-groupy, and made people more likely to receive posts from
wider and wider venn diagarams of adjascent audience bubbles the more insular
their own posts seemed to be. You wouldn't even have to force people to
confront antagonistic views, just make them more likely to see more moderate
ones.

~~~
cptskippy
I find it strange that people refer to Reddit as a social network because I've
never looked at it that way. To me it's always been a link aggregator with a
social commentary aspect. I've never felt the desire to follow or even
remember people there. Unlike other social networks, Reddit has never struck
me as a platform for self promotion or attention seeking. Sure there are
unsavory subreddits I have no desire to explore, but I generally follow those
that center around hobbies or topics that interest me. I removed many of the
topic subreddits like news and politics from my feed early on because they
tended to be mostly useless posting.

I think in general the way everyone uses social networks is confusing. The
focus always seems to be on who is talking and not on what's being said.

~~~
spaceheeder
As soon as you go from clicking the links to regularly submitting or
moderating them, the social aspects of the platform assert themselves. And
there are a fair number of commenters who engage in that dimension of it
willingly.

To me, Facebook isn't a social network as much as it is a chat application.
Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent use cases.

------
SixSigma
No mention of the battle with The_Donald

[https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4oenqn/uspez_ad...](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4oenqn/uspez_admits_rall_change_was_to_get_rid_of_rthe/)

Reddit shit its pants when the Trump Train came to town and disturbed the
echoes in the chamber.

I have a "Freedom From The Press" Reddit t-shirt. I am embarrased to wear it.

------
thekevan
My use of reddit is way own. I'm tired of going to the front page and seeing
so many submissions about things I don't care about like multiple video games,
dumb inside jokes like r/circlejerk or all those repetitive links about Trump
or Sanders.

I know I can buy gold and customize the front page, but I am a little hesitant
to pay money to make the front page not suck. I have ads turned on in my
adblocker so they do get ad revenue from me, I'm not totally freeloading Also,
there is a limitation to the number of subreddits you can exclude. That is the
nail in the coffin right there for me buying gold.

Finally, I'm not impressed with some of the censorship and social policies
they have and don't really want to support a business who seems to have either
questionable or widely varying policies on things.

The result, I check it maybe once a day, down from several times a day.

~~~
wutbrodo
> My use of reddit is way own. I'm tired of going to the front page and seeing
> so many submissions about things I don't care about

Why on Earth would you go to the Reddit frontpage? I stopped doing that like
four years ago. Why not just create a Reddit account and avoid seeing the
default subs on your frontpage? Reddit Gold has just about nothing to do with
that.

~~~
brokenmachine
It's still called the frontpage even if you're logged in.

But yes, when you're logged in you only see the subreddits that you're
subscribed to.

~~~
wutbrodo
Right, I thought it was clear from context that I was referring to the
defaults frontpage.

------
a_small_island
>"Reddit’s Upvoted podcast, which Ohanian launched in January 2015, also
appears to be abandoned. Aside from a single episode published in June, the
podcast hasn’t been updated since October 2015. The “Formative” video series
produced in partnership with Google, which aired new episodes roughly once a
month since its launch, has been dark for four months."

Hopefully any employees hired specifically for these ideas were able to find
other groups at the company or future employment.

------
programminggeek
It seems like the tribe that built the site and the tribe that is trying to
run it now are not the same thing. The culture of reddit is not civilized,
equal, or any of the other HR type directives they are going to try and make.

If the people in charge now tried to start reddit back then, with all the
focus on fairness, equality, correctness, and inclusiveness reddit would never
exist.

It would be something else. I'm not sure it would be bigger, smaller, better,
or worse, but I know it wouldn't be reddit.

You can't have a bunch of "bros" build a popular site and then pretend that
they didn't. You can't bring in a bunch of nerds into a community and then
kick them out and take it away from them once it's popular and successful.

Actually you can try and do those things, but it won't work because the tribe
will reject you and go somewhere else. It happened to slashdot, it happened to
digg, it will happen to reddit and Hacker News too.

If you don't understand the tribe, you can't hope to lead them. You don't lead
the tribe by pretending it's not what it is.

Reddit's owners and operators seem to be ashamed by their tribe. That is going
to be their downfall.

~~~
zevyoura
The current CEO of Reddit (Steve Huffman) is one of the co-founders.

------
dbg31415
There's a lot of sloppy censorship on Reddit.

Mods are mods aren't paid, so they use a lot of very broad auto-moderator bots
-- many of which are very poorly written. You can get a permanent ban from a
Subreddit for having a user name the bot finds offensive, for example. You can
have a post removed because you didn't end your question in the syntax the bot
was expecting... and even if you fix it, and appeal to the mods, and they
reverse the decision, your post gets restored as older and without any votes
so nobody will ever see it. It's more that the moderation is an example of bad
automation -- I think this is what reasonable users get up in arms about.

------
fit2rule
Let reddit die, lets all go back to USENET.

~~~
sk8ingdom
A reddit to usenet bridge has been on my TODO list for ages now--I'd be
totally fine if we just went back...

~~~
fit2rule
Lets do this.

------
orionblastar
Well seeing failures in Reddit, are almost the same failures I saw in other
dotcom startups, not having a business plan that works.

When Reddit was formed, it supported free speech of everyone. They didn't have
a plan to earn a profit, they just wanted a better discussion board than
Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Digg, Stumbleupon and others. Digg eventually had to make
changes to their site that went into the paid accounts and paying for
promotion/advertising of links/info.

I first studied computer science and data processing aka information systems
it was later called. Then I went back to college to earn a business management
degree to learn how to make working business plans.

At South Park they had a skit about Underpants Gnomes, that parodied the
startups out there:

Step 1 Steal Underpants!

Step 2 ?

Step 3 Profit!

This is basically a joke, but some companies have an incomplete plan like
that.

Ellen Pao was a patsy for the board of directors to blame when the changes
they wanted to implement would prove to be unpopular but attract better
advertisers that had liberal points of view to support Reddit.

I cite Kuro5hin, because it once was a very good site, and it didn't have a
good working plan or a very good editors or management and eventually spirals
down into a forum controlled by the trolls that chased everyone else away.
Then it was mismanaged and then it went down and went to a new server and was
never recovered from backup. Kuro5hin never had a good working business plan,
it was like an Underpants Gnome business plan. The users created the content,
it got voted up or down, section or front page, and if a story didn't make it
you could always post it as a diary in the 'Ghetto' section as the users
called it.

Reddit is suffering what Kuro5hin did, the trolls start to take over certain
subreddits, and drive people away. They post racist, offensive, and mean
things and all band together to vote it up to the front page. Subreddits like
/r/Ferguson that was about the Ferguson riots and Mike Brown got taken over by
trolls posting racist stuff and so Reddit quarantined that subreddit and gave
warnings to people subscribed to it.

Ellen Pao was a scapegoat who carrier out an agenda by the board of directors.
She was given the job of CEO knowing that she would fail, and make the changes
the board of directors wanted that would make her unpopular to users, but
popular with advertisers.

At that point Reddit was no longer about free speech, but censorship, Reddit
didn't trust the users to create content so they hired editors to create their
own content and blog. Sort of like what Digg did. If they follow Digg they
will take paid promotions of links and try to shut down accounts they don't
agree with and delete and censor them.

I have to say looking at it from a business angle they can't monetize content
if they keep banning and censoring users and try to take control of what
appears on the front page. Either they are for free speech or not, either they
want controlled speech that meets Liberal guidelines and a Social Justice
Agenda, to attract more people like that to provide a safe place on the
Internet, or they let the users decide and vote on it democratically even if
they don't agree with the politics, or speech, and then the trolls get control
of the front page like they did with Kuro5hin.

Actually I like bane's suggestions that Reddit make podcast hosting networks,
video networks, get into e-publishing and other stuff that they can sell
advertising on or use to pay for a membership to remove the advertising.

There has to be some sort of sane way to earn an income, by advertising, or
paying for memberships to avoid seeing the advertising, and making a paywall
to verify accounts for $1 or $5 to keep the spammers and trolls out that want
to use free accounts and bots to control what is on the front page.

They need a Baysian filter to detect the spam and junk, the same way email
programs do it. I've seen a lot of spam and junk posts in /learnprogramming
and other subreddits and I always flag it, but it takes a long time for
someone to look into it.

After the Ellen Pao scandal many alternatives to Reddit got founded. They have
to treat their employees as human beings with equal rights, which is what they
are supposed to believe in via liberal values, but instead they fire employees
and don't work with them to settle differences. Reddit seems to be hostile
towards diverse hires, even using some like Ellen Pao as scapegoats and
patsies.

They need to take responsibility for their mistakes, change their business
plan so it works, and find a way to hire more diversely and treat employees
and contractors better so they don't leave or get fired.

~~~
mrweasel
>either they want controlled speech that meets Liberal guidelines and a Social
Justice Agenda, to attract more people like that to provide a safe place on
the Internet

There's a lot of well made points to you post, so I feel bad focusing only on
this one thing, but I really don't believe in creating a "safe place". It's
simply not possible to provide a safe place online, while providing a platform
for any meaningful debate.

Even if Reddit, or others, had the resources to provide a "safe space", the
result would be a place no one goes to. People are offended by everything, and
eliminating content until everyone feels "safe" would leave you in a situation
where most content is never seen.

Reddit is already a mostly left-wing echo-camber. Opinions that diverge from
the norm is pushed to smaller subreddit. Making Reddit "safer" would mean
closing down the subreddits that you disagree with, but you're shrinking the
user base every time you do that.

I understand that it's a terrible thing to tell people, but if you want to be
in a safe space, stay of the Internet.

~~~
DanBC
> but I really don't believe in creating a "safe place". It's simply not
> possible to provide a safe place online, while providing a platform for any
> meaningful debate.

Rape threats and other threats of violence are not part of meaningful debate.

Unsolicited images of genitalia are not part of meaningful debate.

Anti semitism like this [1] isn't part of meaningful debate.

You can safely ban all of these without harm to the robust debate in the
community.

[1]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChH5Va7WkAAktXV.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChH5Va7WkAAktXV.jpg)

~~~
mrweasel
>You can safely ban all of these without harm to the robust debate in the
community.

Of cause you can, my point is that banning these things, all of which is
illegal anyway, won't even get you half-way to creating a safe space.

~~~
orionblastar
Which is what Kiro5hin tried to do. Banned a lot of people and then key users
left the site. The diaties and story articles slowed down as more users
stopped using it. Until nothing was left but a few trolls that controlled the
story que and then FNH and other stories got published.

------
dghughes
My uncle used to say to me nothing ruins a business faster than changing it.
He gave an example of a diner that did well for decades then decided to expand
and very soon after went out of business; bankrupt.

To me reddit has done well because it has stayed the same for years digg is
the diner that expanded.

------
ta12347
Reddit isn't Internet infrastructure. It is a startup. The plan from day one
was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard, get acquired, and make the founders
rich.

~~~
dang
You can't make inflammatory assertions about people without evidence here.

Also, please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is
a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity
that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and
no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140780)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
dingo_bat
I don't agree that the post in question is "inflammatory"in any way. If hn is
going to be so strictly/randomly moderated that you have to think twice before
presenting your reasonable views, it can't be good for the website.

~~~
dang
That's not a "reasonable view", it's a fantasy that purports to read other
people's minds from 10 years ago in order to demean their work.

I'm pretty comfortable saying comments like that don't belong on HN and that
we would all do better to think more and inhibit ourselves before posting
them. If people want to slag others on the internet, there are plenty of
places to do it; here we try for a higher standard.

~~~
dingo_bat
>Reddit isn't Internet infrastructure. It is a startup. The plan from day one
was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard, get acquired, and make the founders
rich.

Can you point out the specific words that "demean" the work of others? All I
see is the assertion that reddit is a startup (which is factual) and the
founders wanted to get rich (which is true for every founder I know, and is
not demeaning in any way).

~~~
dang
"The plan from day one was to make a kinder, gentler imageboard [and] get
acquired".

This superciliously presumes to know what the founders were thinking, makes it
sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit since "from day one" they
supposedly had something more trivial in mind, and implies that they were
merely in it for a quick flip.

In reality they were almost certainly more genuine about it than that; they
sold Reddit early, but they also both went back to it years later, which is
extraordinary. So the above is uncharitable and trivializing, and seems
intended to diminish a.k.a. demean them and their work. Such a low level of
discourse is not welcome on HN, whether it's the Reddit founders being
demeaned or anybody else.

It's also easily disproven by what's publicly known about the origins of
Reddit (pg suggested they make a social news site, not an image board), so the
comment is guilty of intellectual laziness too. It's not surprising that these
poor qualities show up together.

~~~
dingo_bat
>makes it sound like they didn't actually care about Reddit

So the inference made by the commenter conflicts with the inference made by
you. So what? Maybe they (reddit founders) really didn't care, maybe they did.
Cases can be made for both, with varying degrees of conviction.

The whole thing is highly subjective. I don't agree with the conclusion
either, but it's not a mindless personal attack. To me it's an opinion, and
even the language used to express the opinion was structured in a civil
manner.

I am defending the comment because I can see myself making a similar comment
in another context without any intent in my mind to offend anybody or poison
the discussion.

Honestly, I feel censoring these sort of comments is extremely childish. I am
not the moderator, you are. So the final decision rests with you. I hope I
have made my case and you will consider my comments in future.

~~~
makomk
HN is something of a safe space for the Silicon Valley startup industry in the
"forbids discussion" sense - a place protected from ideas that might make them
uncomfortable, that question whether they're actually improving the world or
actually understand the people they claim to be helping.

~~~
dang
That's massively untrue and a good example of the kind of thing people imagine
and then project onto HN.

In fact a plurality of this community is critical and skeptical of Silicon
Valley (which is fine when the criticism is substantive and not when it isn't,
as with anything else). And certainly the vast majority of HN users resides
far away from SV.

------
u238ed
Wow. What a hit piece. I bet their anonymous source happens to be the ex VP of
Product that was fired by Pao, and is now building a 'safer' Reddit. Conflict
much? In their sources quote, it's evident the source knows a lot of the inner
workings of the leadership, is a man, and doesn't work there anymore. Well,
that leaves only the ex VP, seeing as though Pao was a woman.

So they took all of Dan's words as truth? The guy with the competing Reddit?
Come on Techcrunch. That's pretty bad.

Now, for the facts:

1\. None of these people left voluntarily. They were let go. So they need to
stop with the 'people are leaving in droves' nonsense. Reddit has has almost
multiplied in employee count in the last year, and has moved to a new office,
much larger office building.

2\. All of these people, except for Nicole were part of an experimental
product that was cancelled. If this was Google or Facebook, you wouldn't even
know. It happens every day. But because you got a juicy tip from an ex-
employee building a shitty competitor, you run with it. Because, hell, it's
Reddit, and you just might hit the frontpage!

3\. Shit like this, "The plans to overhaul Reddit’s reputation as a hotbed for
harassment and to remake the company as a multi-media publisher have yet to
prove successful — at it seems that the departures of senior employees are
impacting Reddit’s product and performance." \-- WTF does that mean? They
tried Upvoted, it didn't work, and they're folding it back into Reddit.com and
letting go of people that they don't need for the next iteration. That's
business. It has nothing to do with color of skin or your genitals.

4\. Numbers always dip in the summers. Especially for Reddit. The kids are off
for the summer. It would make sense that they peaked right before summer.
According to Alexa, Reddit is the 9th largest site in the US, and up 9 spots
this month on the Global list to #27. So it seems they are definitely growing.

~~~
dang
Going from "I bet" (i.e., you imagine) something about somebody to making
factual-sounding claims ("Dan's words") using that person's name is a big
breach of civility and you can't do it here.

You went even further than that and hounded this guy elsewhere in the thread.
That's unacceptable on HN, so we've banned this account.

~~~
cpncrunch
It's a shame u238ed chose to make unsubstantiated allegations against Dan, but
he/she does have some valid points. A lot of the article itself is
unsubstantiated, and doesn't really give much detail about the actual problems
at reddit. It seems to be talking mostly about problems with trolls on
subreddits, but that doesn't really have anything to do with toxic workplace.
The only somewhat concrete allegation is the sexual harassment at the work
parties, but I'm not quite sure how that translates into people of colour
leaving.

It sounds like u238ed worked or works at reddit, so presumably he/she has some
insight into the culture there.

------
u238ed
You should also disclose that you're the source for the TC article. It's
pretty obvious.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12141496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12141496)).
You can't concoct unfounded charges about what you imagine somebody has done,
let alone pursue them even after they deny it. That crosses into harassment,
and nobody gets to treat anybody else like that here.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140907)
and marked it off-topic.

------
awesomerobot
tirefire keeps on burning

------
gdulli
Reddit is a content management system for spam and stupidity.

~~~
mrweasel
Just like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. When sites with user generated content
grows to big, they seem to degrade to "monkeys with typewriters". The good
content is mostly still there, it just drowns in the bad stuff.

~~~
gdulli
That's a lazy meme. If you spend significant time with a site you can see
through the superficial qualities and learn what makes it unique.

------
revelation
_But re-blogging content from AMAs seems at odds with Upvoted’s mission to
produce original journalism, and many of the writers hired in October 2015
were let go just three months later_

What a joke, a bunch of kids playing startup one more time in their favourite
playground. Utter disgrace.

------
ben_jones
Reddit is, was, and will for the foreseeable future be, a giant pile of porn.
Denial of that fact shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of not only Reddit
but the internet as a whole..

I can understand that this idea would be extremely unpleasant to a lot of
people. And a slow migration to curated content may seem more wholesome. But
it doesn't work that way.

~~~
Karunamon
On what metrics are you making that assumption? Most people who use Reddit are
going to be hitting the "default" communities, which are about as bland and
inoffensive (read: has lowest common denominator appeal) as internet content
can possibly get.

~~~
cptskippy
I believe he's referring to the definition of porn that most people don't
often think of.

"television programs, magazine, books, etc. that are regarded as emphasizing
the sensuous or sensational aspects of a nonsexual subject and stimulating a
compulsive interest in their audience."

There are plenty of subreddits like r/earthporn that fit this definition. In
fact many of the default communities do.

------
beedogs
Still a garbage dump full of racists, misogynists, and low-class trolls, too.
Reddit should be nuked from orbit.

------
intoverflow2
The main problem with Reddit is the users dishonesty to themselves.

Ask a reddit user why they like reddit they'll probably mumble something about
AMAs.

Then visit /r/all and a completely different picture will be painted for you
as the sites most popular content is a mixture of pornography, racist jokes
passed off as being subversive and political ranting.

~~~
RubyPinch
[http://archive.is/uOTnv](http://archive.is/uOTnv) (grabbed latest thing from
archive is, so like, 7 hours ago)

There is... like, less than 10% matches what you describe

and a AmA is in 10th position with near 5000 points

~~~
MustardTiger
It is always amazing how consistently people will lie about what reddit is
"full of" when anyone can just look at the site and see they are lying. Reddit
is overflowing with BLM and islamic terrorist apologists, and we're supposed
to believe reddit is all nazi KKK grand wizards.

~~~
legodt
Black Lives Matter is not a terrorist organization, please take your racist
opinion back to reddit

~~~
jswny
When did he say that it was a terrorist organization?

~~~
legodt
He implied it by placing it next to "islamic terrorist apologists" in his
sentence and gave both equal emphasis. Context is key, language is powerful.

