Storming Reddit's Moat(floodstate.substack.com)
floodstate.substack.com
Storming Reddit's Moat
https://floodstate.substack.com/p/storming-reddits-moat
161 comments
>Moderators have a lot of power to influence conversations on Reddit in non-obvious ways.
You had the above quote when I was commenting on your post, but may have edited it out. But I think this line right here is also why reddit is becoming unusable and going downhill fast.
Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really. Users can't vote a moderator out for example. Many times, mod abuse is also hidden, so you can't see a log of what they have been removing and hiding. Both of these things would show clear mod abuse in the open, but reddit seems to want to hide this.
Moderators should really only have the power to remove illegal stuff or have clear rules linked for each removal or ban.
Mods should not be able to turn on "filter" features that auto hide or auto delete posts, as they regularly just use it to target posters or topics they don't like, even if it is still on topic and popular in the subreddit.
Also, mods are more and more removing or locking posts mainly because they politically disagree with them. They use excuses or hide this corrupting behavior all the time. Many times a lock posts will be done with a claim "its too hard to keep moderating this post", when reality is they were just removing posts that didn't break rules and were posts the mod simply disagreed with.
Add all the above and more and combine it with clear corrupt interests, and you basically ruin what reddit once was. Which was a place to go to free discussion on many topics. It is not longer that. It is just a place where mods basically abuse their power on most subreddits and astroturfing is more and more the norm.
Its almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button. The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button.
You had the above quote when I was commenting on your post, but may have edited it out. But I think this line right here is also why reddit is becoming unusable and going downhill fast.
Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really. Users can't vote a moderator out for example. Many times, mod abuse is also hidden, so you can't see a log of what they have been removing and hiding. Both of these things would show clear mod abuse in the open, but reddit seems to want to hide this.
Moderators should really only have the power to remove illegal stuff or have clear rules linked for each removal or ban.
Mods should not be able to turn on "filter" features that auto hide or auto delete posts, as they regularly just use it to target posters or topics they don't like, even if it is still on topic and popular in the subreddit.
Also, mods are more and more removing or locking posts mainly because they politically disagree with them. They use excuses or hide this corrupting behavior all the time. Many times a lock posts will be done with a claim "its too hard to keep moderating this post", when reality is they were just removing posts that didn't break rules and were posts the mod simply disagreed with.
Add all the above and more and combine it with clear corrupt interests, and you basically ruin what reddit once was. Which was a place to go to free discussion on many topics. It is not longer that. It is just a place where mods basically abuse their power on most subreddits and astroturfing is more and more the norm.
Its almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button. The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button.
> The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button.
I have to disagree. My counterpoint would be the AskHistorians subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
Admittedly, I'm a history nerd, but it's probably the most interesting subreddit I've found yet. And it's full of deleted comments, because they have a very strict criteria about what can and cannot be posted. The system absolutely works for them. I'm not saying every subreddit should be organised the way theirs is, but I'm glad they are able to do what they do.
IMO, transparency is good. By all means make a public log showing what admins have done. But don't limit what they can do.
I have to disagree. My counterpoint would be the AskHistorians subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
Admittedly, I'm a history nerd, but it's probably the most interesting subreddit I've found yet. And it's full of deleted comments, because they have a very strict criteria about what can and cannot be posted. The system absolutely works for them. I'm not saying every subreddit should be organised the way theirs is, but I'm glad they are able to do what they do.
IMO, transparency is good. By all means make a public log showing what admins have done. But don't limit what they can do.
Thousands of data points suggest GP's claim, and you counter it with one example?
/r/AskHistorians is one of the more unique subreddits, in that it has evolved to become what reddit envisioned a subreddit to be. But running counter to that are a thousand other country subreddits, where if you don't hold a hard line (lefty) view to politics, you will get banned. I have seen Labour shills with premium reddit accounts allowed to post content on r/uk that's downright against the rules, but hey, apparently agreeable to the majority of redditors, so it stays. Likewise I just assume that all of the country subreddits are internally influenced directly by political parties themselves. I have seen fake news being spread by all who have a vested interest (such as Armenians during Nagorno Kharabakh on r/Europe) and mods not even lifting a finger. We all know how r/Conservative and r/The_Donald mods just kicked out people who put forward views that were marginal to the rest of the sub. And why do subs like r/Sino, which openly peddle fake news, even exist? IMO reddit site moderators are largely sleeping and only wake up if something hits the newsstands.
Moderators should be empowered with the ability to censor and delete/flag comments, and to ban people with repeated infractions. But to ban somebody from a country sub and/or letting mods ban people with one or no infractions, while selectively applying the rules? No way. They should not even get filters imo. If it makes their job harder, then so be it.
That being said, one sub that I've found really nicely monitored is the r/casualuk sub. Politics is a strict no no, and they have some sort of bot to filter out such content based on keywords. The mods aren't some silent grandstanding keyboard warriors but people actively involved in the community who actually go so far as to organize real world events.
/r/AskHistorians is one of the more unique subreddits, in that it has evolved to become what reddit envisioned a subreddit to be. But running counter to that are a thousand other country subreddits, where if you don't hold a hard line (lefty) view to politics, you will get banned. I have seen Labour shills with premium reddit accounts allowed to post content on r/uk that's downright against the rules, but hey, apparently agreeable to the majority of redditors, so it stays. Likewise I just assume that all of the country subreddits are internally influenced directly by political parties themselves. I have seen fake news being spread by all who have a vested interest (such as Armenians during Nagorno Kharabakh on r/Europe) and mods not even lifting a finger. We all know how r/Conservative and r/The_Donald mods just kicked out people who put forward views that were marginal to the rest of the sub. And why do subs like r/Sino, which openly peddle fake news, even exist? IMO reddit site moderators are largely sleeping and only wake up if something hits the newsstands.
Moderators should be empowered with the ability to censor and delete/flag comments, and to ban people with repeated infractions. But to ban somebody from a country sub and/or letting mods ban people with one or no infractions, while selectively applying the rules? No way. They should not even get filters imo. If it makes their job harder, then so be it.
That being said, one sub that I've found really nicely monitored is the r/casualuk sub. Politics is a strict no no, and they have some sort of bot to filter out such content based on keywords. The mods aren't some silent grandstanding keyboard warriors but people actively involved in the community who actually go so far as to organize real world events.
"Thousands of data points" sounds awfully scientific. Can you show me the dataset? Or are you using the word "data" in a more abstract sense here?
I'm not well versed enough to know if what you say about /r/uk or /r/europe is true, but I'm quite sure /r/askhistorians is not the only well run subreddit on the site. You're just picking examples of subreddits you say are badly run and using them as evidence that all other subs should suffer because of them. Doesn't sound scientific at all.
> They should not even get filters imo. If it makes their job harder, then so be it.
> That being said, one sub that I've found really nicely monitored is the r/casualuk sub. Politics is a strict no no, and they have some sort of bot to filter out such content based on keywords.
You don't see the incoherence in these two statements? It sounds a lot like your actual complaint here is that you don't like perceived persecution of your personal politics, and if moderation doesn't touch that then you have no problem with it at all.
I'm not well versed enough to know if what you say about /r/uk or /r/europe is true, but I'm quite sure /r/askhistorians is not the only well run subreddit on the site. You're just picking examples of subreddits you say are badly run and using them as evidence that all other subs should suffer because of them. Doesn't sound scientific at all.
> They should not even get filters imo. If it makes their job harder, then so be it.
> That being said, one sub that I've found really nicely monitored is the r/casualuk sub. Politics is a strict no no, and they have some sort of bot to filter out such content based on keywords.
You don't see the incoherence in these two statements? It sounds a lot like your actual complaint here is that you don't like perceived persecution of your personal politics, and if moderation doesn't touch that then you have no problem with it at all.
I was using data in the abstract.
AskHistorians is still a niche sub for history nerds, and is well run, like most of the niche subs. I don't disagree, reddit is my goto for niche topics.
But if you look at all major country subs, or major subs such as politics, news, world news, etc., all are badly run, with a hard bent to the left.
> It sounds a lot like your actual complaint here is that you don't like perceived persecution of your personal politics, and if moderation doesn't touch that then you have no problem with it at all.
Ah, how nice to toss baseless allegations at me. For one, I do stand aligned with most subs' political views. But I also stand for letting the other side state their views politely without demagoguery. I do not agree with subs brigading users who come from a different political shade, and have even taken the hammer from the mods for pointing out their hypocrisy in implementing the same. It doesn't take an idiot to see how neutral country subs have been taken over by a lot of far-left or far-right premium accounts, presumably paid for by party funds (I know a bunch of r/uk mods who are part of Momentum, the far-left branch within Labour, for instance). There isn't a place for centrist leaning folks on reddit anywhere on the main subs.
Not to mention the effective dictatorships that mods run, regardless of political leaning: you call out a mod for partiality and/or bias or bad behavior, instaban.
AskHistorians is still a niche sub for history nerds, and is well run, like most of the niche subs. I don't disagree, reddit is my goto for niche topics.
But if you look at all major country subs, or major subs such as politics, news, world news, etc., all are badly run, with a hard bent to the left.
> It sounds a lot like your actual complaint here is that you don't like perceived persecution of your personal politics, and if moderation doesn't touch that then you have no problem with it at all.
Ah, how nice to toss baseless allegations at me. For one, I do stand aligned with most subs' political views. But I also stand for letting the other side state their views politely without demagoguery. I do not agree with subs brigading users who come from a different political shade, and have even taken the hammer from the mods for pointing out their hypocrisy in implementing the same. It doesn't take an idiot to see how neutral country subs have been taken over by a lot of far-left or far-right premium accounts, presumably paid for by party funds (I know a bunch of r/uk mods who are part of Momentum, the far-left branch within Labour, for instance). There isn't a place for centrist leaning folks on reddit anywhere on the main subs.
Not to mention the effective dictatorships that mods run, regardless of political leaning: you call out a mod for partiality and/or bias or bad behavior, instaban.
A gentle correction. You and I view them as hard left, but they seem to regard themselves as centrists. If I am correct, they feel they are doing a public service. I prefer vigorous debate but they feel that certain views are so destructive that they should not be aired publicly.
> But if you look at all major country subs, or major subs such as politics, news, world news, etc., all are badly run, with a hard bent to the left.
Not exactly the left's fault if the right on the internet tends to be, you know, literal nazis and people calling for hatred. If /r/Conservative is representative of the average right wing user, yeah, it's normal they're getting banned, as they are absolutely incapable of reasonable discourse.
You also conveniently forget the local subreddits absolutely overrun by the far right. /r/canada was so bad that /r/onguardforthee had to be created. /r/metacanada regularly calls for eugenism. /r/france has the far right coming out of the woods every day.
Not exactly the left's fault if the right on the internet tends to be, you know, literal nazis and people calling for hatred. If /r/Conservative is representative of the average right wing user, yeah, it's normal they're getting banned, as they are absolutely incapable of reasonable discourse.
You also conveniently forget the local subreddits absolutely overrun by the far right. /r/canada was so bad that /r/onguardforthee had to be created. /r/metacanada regularly calls for eugenism. /r/france has the far right coming out of the woods every day.
In fact, I don't disagree with you. I stated that too, that subs are literally being taken over by either far-right but mostly far-left trolls. I specifically included far-right hijacking to take into account what happened to r/France and r/Canada.
I've seen libertarian folks being hounded out of r/conservative just as much as I've seen centrists being hounded out of r/politics. Not to mention, most comments seem like they were written by people with zero world view, and who haven't gone anywhere beyond a 100 miles from home, regardless of political leanings. Reddit general (I.e. Reddit minus the niche subs), the subs that come on Popular, is basically a diorama of the lowest possible denominator of man.
I've seen libertarian folks being hounded out of r/conservative just as much as I've seen centrists being hounded out of r/politics. Not to mention, most comments seem like they were written by people with zero world view, and who haven't gone anywhere beyond a 100 miles from home, regardless of political leanings. Reddit general (I.e. Reddit minus the niche subs), the subs that come on Popular, is basically a diorama of the lowest possible denominator of man.
I disagree, for small subreddits, mods should have all the power they want to curate and garden and develop their community in the way they see fit. The great thing about Reddit is that if a mod is abusive and most users agree, there's absolutely nothing preventing you starting a new subreddit.
Perhaps larger less niche subreddits should have a greater amount of accountability, though, because something like /r/canada can't easily be replaced.
With greater power should come greater accountability. Think a sort of public/private model for subreddits.
Perhaps larger less niche subreddits should have a greater amount of accountability, though, because something like /r/canada can't easily be replaced.
With greater power should come greater accountability. Think a sort of public/private model for subreddits.
>...there's absolutely nothing preventing you starting a new subreddit.
Except for discovery. If you want to talk about, say, Python, you'll probably go to /r/python. But what if /r/python's mods start sending the sub down the drain? Go to /r/python2? /r/python3? /r/python_lang? New users are still going to go to /r/python and be sucked into a bad community. If they're really invested in discussing Python, maybe they'll find /r/python_lang, but if they're not they'll just bounce off and the entire community won't grow.
IMO reddit needs namespaces. Back in the beginning, there weren't subreddits, just reddit.com (like HN is now), and as reddit grew they created subreddits to divide discussion. I think it's time for another subdivision. This might work well with their attempts to become more of a people-focused social media company: a person can start a subreddit and appoint their own moderators: /r/ranger207/python would be an entirely different subreddit from /r/antihero/python. This reduces the "default name" problem: if you want to discuss Python and search "python subreddit" you'll get both results. You won't automatically assume /r/ranger207/python is better than /r/antihero/python like you would assume /r/python is better than /r/python_lang. Anyway, that's a big digression...
IMO reddit needs namespaces. Back in the beginning, there weren't subreddits, just reddit.com (like HN is now), and as reddit grew they created subreddits to divide discussion. I think it's time for another subdivision. This might work well with their attempts to become more of a people-focused social media company: a person can start a subreddit and appoint their own moderators: /r/ranger207/python would be an entirely different subreddit from /r/antihero/python. This reduces the "default name" problem: if you want to discuss Python and search "python subreddit" you'll get both results. You won't automatically assume /r/ranger207/python is better than /r/antihero/python like you would assume /r/python is better than /r/python_lang. Anyway, that's a big digression...
This didn't use to be a problem. Famously people moved out of r/marijuana to r/trees because they had issues with the mod.
This was subreddit splitting/budding. Which has stopped because of automation.
Thats the tradeoff. Automation allows you to moderate and stop the hate speech.
It also means you can stop people from using the name of the new sub, so discovery is stalled.
So even your solution won't stop it, because we can't survive without automod.
Enjoy!
This was subreddit splitting/budding. Which has stopped because of automation.
Thats the tradeoff. Automation allows you to moderate and stop the hate speech.
It also means you can stop people from using the name of the new sub, so discovery is stalled.
So even your solution won't stop it, because we can't survive without automod.
Enjoy!
What would happen when that moderator inevitably dies or steps down from a vibrant community?
Large subs like your r/canada example can and do split. r/unitedkingdom has basically been replaced by r/casualuk in size because a substantial part of its userbase was tired of its constant misery and moaning.
> tired of its constant misery and moaning
This reason to depart the UK predates the existence of Reddit by some centuries.
This reason to depart the UK predates the existence of Reddit by some centuries.
> because something like /r/canada can't easily be replaced.
Yeah. As it became more and more clear that /r/canada was modded by reactionary bigots, a lot of people started moving to /r/canadapolitics and /r/onguardforthee.
Yeah. As it became more and more clear that /r/canada was modded by reactionary bigots, a lot of people started moving to /r/canadapolitics and /r/onguardforthee.
You still have the issue that r/canada is the default place to go if you're new and want to talk about Canada. To make matters worse, r/canadapolitics isn't advertised on r/canada, so how are new users supposed to find out about it?
Exactly this! You can create new subreddits as and when you like it, but country subs are the issue. You can't just simply create a new sub when the old subreddit is the default a person visits.
I disagree. Giving them too much power puts them into power trip mode. And defeats the purpose of reddit: curated content from the userbase.
If I wanted to be told what articles to read by a bunch of mods I'd go to CNN or Fox news.
Reddit mods should let their communities decide and have most of the power. This is the spirit of reddit. Not auto-bans and IP sniffers. They should only be responsible for removing illegal or threatening content such as doxxing.
Mods are very clearly abusing their power. Reddit is alienating some of its core most loyal userbase.
And RPAN also sucks while i'm on my soapbox.
If I wanted to be told what articles to read by a bunch of mods I'd go to CNN or Fox news.
Reddit mods should let their communities decide and have most of the power. This is the spirit of reddit. Not auto-bans and IP sniffers. They should only be responsible for removing illegal or threatening content such as doxxing.
Mods are very clearly abusing their power. Reddit is alienating some of its core most loyal userbase.
And RPAN also sucks while i'm on my soapbox.
>...curated content from the userbase.
The key word there is "curated". Just upvotes/downvotes is not sustainable for quality discussion. It just leads to low quality easy effort content like memes. Moderators are important to keep discussion on track and prevent the sub from becoming a cesspool. Of course, they can and do still power trip, so still a problem.
I don’t think there’s really a good solution here... Anyone can go rogue anytime.
Stack Exchange attempts to solve this using three methods: their “reputation” method (gamification), elections, and paid moderators. If you can prove to the community you’d be good, you and a few others are “elected” community moderators (happens once a year?). If you get 10k reputation on a single site, you get access to those moderator tools as well.
And for those with less, you get a smaller set of the tools. For example, IIRC, the “close votes queue” is unlocked at 3k(?). It seems to work well enough.
Stack Exchange attempts to solve this using three methods: their “reputation” method (gamification), elections, and paid moderators. If you can prove to the community you’d be good, you and a few others are “elected” community moderators (happens once a year?). If you get 10k reputation on a single site, you get access to those moderator tools as well.
And for those with less, you get a smaller set of the tools. For example, IIRC, the “close votes queue” is unlocked at 3k(?). It seems to work well enough.
Paying your mods. There's a novel idea!
Absolutely agree these systems can work when designed the right way. Reddit has designed its system as punitive.
Absolutely agree these systems can work when designed the right way. Reddit has designed its system as punitive.
Yep. AFAIK, some of SE’s employees are assigned to work as mods
Plenty of high-quality subreddits are high-quality because they do moderate and don't succumb to the lowest common denominator of more mainstream subs. You'd be killing the IMHO most valuable parts of reddit with that rule.
I completely agree. In my opinion, the best subreddits all tend to ban memes or other low effort content, or at the very least restrict them to a weekly thread of some sort. If users were able to vote on mods, the ones that did this sort of stuff would probably all be removed.
Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history.
Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider others concerns but your own).
However, reality is that is never seems to play out that way. Even if it plays out that way for a little while, someone always inevitably joins the higher ranks and abuses that power for their own interests and selfishness.
The same reason this fails in countries is the same reason it fails in online communities where the content is community created. Eventually, someone joins the moderator ranks (if they aren't already their) and starts pushing their own agenda when it comes to removing posts or locking posts.
I think reddit has crossed over into this stage of things on most subreddits at this point. It is clearly a cultural issue with the admins who seem to encourage this behavior, as well as no way for the user base to have any recourse against this abuse of mod power.
Thus, you get endless censorship now on most subreddits now, and no more open discussion on topics where USERS actually get to decide what they get to read or comment on. After all, what is the point of an upvote/downvote button if mods can just override it endlessly and often do?
Sure, you can make an argument that maybe the leaders (in this case mods) will be benevolent and lead fairly and for the betterment of all efficiently. After all, dictatorships are more "efficient" at getting stuff done than democracy (note, not saying GOOD is done, just more efficient when you don't have to consider others concerns but your own).
However, reality is that is never seems to play out that way. Even if it plays out that way for a little while, someone always inevitably joins the higher ranks and abuses that power for their own interests and selfishness.
The same reason this fails in countries is the same reason it fails in online communities where the content is community created. Eventually, someone joins the moderator ranks (if they aren't already their) and starts pushing their own agenda when it comes to removing posts or locking posts.
I think reddit has crossed over into this stage of things on most subreddits at this point. It is clearly a cultural issue with the admins who seem to encourage this behavior, as well as no way for the user base to have any recourse against this abuse of mod power.
Thus, you get endless censorship now on most subreddits now, and no more open discussion on topics where USERS actually get to decide what they get to read or comment on. After all, what is the point of an upvote/downvote button if mods can just override it endlessly and often do?
This comparison is silly since you have a lot more power to leave a subreddit than to leave a country.
If you think most subreddit is being mis-moderated in the same way, across all those different moderators... is it possible the problem lies on your end?
And even then, there seems to be easy recourse: start your own subreddit?
If you think most subreddit is being mis-moderated in the same way, across all those different moderators... is it possible the problem lies on your end?
And even then, there seems to be easy recourse: start your own subreddit?
There are plenty of subreddits that work just fine (I can't say I see moderation issues in most subreddits I frequent, and if I do it's more often "spam gets through"), and if they stop doing so the user base has a trivial recourse: fork and move. (Indeed it's not unheard of for there to be multiple subreddits for one topic, with different levels of strictness regarding content). That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy.
>That alone breaks the dictatorship analogy.
It does not when you factor in their appears to be power mod users who moderate multiple subreddits and have power over most of the site now. Your assumption also assumes that this isn't a site wide issue and going to another subreddit solves this.
Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you. Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.
Are there still some subs that don't have this abuse? Yes. But is it clear at this point the model that reddit is using is open for abuse and eventually it seems many (if not most) subreddits eventually fall into this abuse problem? Yes.
It does not when you factor in their appears to be power mod users who moderate multiple subreddits and have power over most of the site now. Your assumption also assumes that this isn't a site wide issue and going to another subreddit solves this.
Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you. Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.
Are there still some subs that don't have this abuse? Yes. But is it clear at this point the model that reddit is using is open for abuse and eventually it seems many (if not most) subreddits eventually fall into this abuse problem? Yes.
> Again, the fact that power user mods exist ruins that claim for you.
It's a far jump from "users who moderate to multiple subreddits" to "have power over most of the site". And if they mod one or multiple subreddits doesn't have much of an impact on other subs they are not involved with.
> Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.
doesn't mesh with what I'm seeing, so "citation needed" on it being the norm.
It's a far jump from "users who moderate to multiple subreddits" to "have power over most of the site". And if they mod one or multiple subreddits doesn't have much of an impact on other subs they are not involved with.
> Also, the fact that this power tripping seems to be a norm across much of the site now also shows this is not the case.
doesn't mesh with what I'm seeing, so "citation needed" on it being the norm.
Well, communities haven't also existed at the scale and pace they do online. Plus in the real world people had to go eat, and could come back with cooler heads. Online you end up seeing that incendiary piece of text and lose your mind all over again.
As someone mentioned elsewhere - like the media and news industry, there is a Gentleman's agreement in moderation to do "good". There are few ways to punish people for breaking that rule.
Subs with strict moderation end up doing "good" for their communities. The measurement everyone lacks is whether the good of creating insular communities is offset by the harm done to the larger ability to share ideas.
And people really can go ahead and try to prove this - the whole corpus of reddit data is available, if you can come up with the toolkit to test this people could put empirical evidence to these questions.
It is also a question on how you can create balancing forces for moderator overreach. However that sounds laughably expensive. Reddit sure as heck would not want to become a court of judgement where bad mods are censured (even though they have to do it every day).
Fact is you need humans to handle humans, and humans are expensive. No one wants to pay, and debugging deception in human interactions is painful.
Far easier to talk about the marketplace of ideas and put a lid on the whole mess.
As someone mentioned elsewhere - like the media and news industry, there is a Gentleman's agreement in moderation to do "good". There are few ways to punish people for breaking that rule.
Subs with strict moderation end up doing "good" for their communities. The measurement everyone lacks is whether the good of creating insular communities is offset by the harm done to the larger ability to share ideas.
And people really can go ahead and try to prove this - the whole corpus of reddit data is available, if you can come up with the toolkit to test this people could put empirical evidence to these questions.
It is also a question on how you can create balancing forces for moderator overreach. However that sounds laughably expensive. Reddit sure as heck would not want to become a court of judgement where bad mods are censured (even though they have to do it every day).
Fact is you need humans to handle humans, and humans are expensive. No one wants to pay, and debugging deception in human interactions is painful.
Far easier to talk about the marketplace of ideas and put a lid on the whole mess.
[citation needed] on the most subreddits pushing agenda part.
> Sorry, but this argument is the same reason that dictatorships fails endlessly throughout history.
Dictatorships have been the status quo for the world, for ~98% of recorded history. World history did not begin in 1708, 1776, 1918, or 1920.
Dictatorships fail, but they are usually replaced by other dictatorships.
Dictatorships have been the status quo for the world, for ~98% of recorded history. World history did not begin in 1708, 1776, 1918, or 1920.
Dictatorships fail, but they are usually replaced by other dictatorships.
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> almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button
They forgot this within a few weeks of seeing rule breaking behavior.
I recently went through some old logs and discussions from 7/8 years ago. People actually talked about how important it was to upvote content and follow rediquette.
That discussion died because you have to enforce rediquette and the "honor code" fails when people see that abusing the code goes unpunished. This means that upvote downvote become like/dislike.
This logically implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to really prune your community for rule compliance. My favored example of this is badecon.
------------------------
The other issue really fascinating issue is how automation results in better filter bubbles.
Before automod, people couldn't ban alt accounts fast enough. Ban bigot_1, and 10 minutes later you would have bigot_2. Until automation, banning was a fools errand.
Later, bots could target words, so now your regexes would stop variations of N*er and other coded hate speech - which also meant that you could stop users from using the names of alternate subs.
Now this may be a great thing. You ban bigot_2 and he can't speak anymore so he goes to create his own sub, where they say they will be a free speech zone (and vehemently downvote opposing ideas).
Of course, these bastions also use the same tools, and they maintain their ideological purity.
Leading to the final conclusion - that moderation is innately a question of morals and ethical leadership. Not of technological design.
They forgot this within a few weeks of seeing rule breaking behavior.
I recently went through some old logs and discussions from 7/8 years ago. People actually talked about how important it was to upvote content and follow rediquette.
That discussion died because you have to enforce rediquette and the "honor code" fails when people see that abusing the code goes unpunished. This means that upvote downvote become like/dislike.
This logically implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to really prune your community for rule compliance. My favored example of this is badecon.
------------------------
The other issue really fascinating issue is how automation results in better filter bubbles.
Before automod, people couldn't ban alt accounts fast enough. Ban bigot_1, and 10 minutes later you would have bigot_2. Until automation, banning was a fools errand.
Later, bots could target words, so now your regexes would stop variations of N*er and other coded hate speech - which also meant that you could stop users from using the names of alternate subs.
Now this may be a great thing. You ban bigot_2 and he can't speak anymore so he goes to create his own sub, where they say they will be a free speech zone (and vehemently downvote opposing ideas).
Of course, these bastions also use the same tools, and they maintain their ideological purity.
Leading to the final conclusion - that moderation is innately a question of morals and ethical leadership. Not of technological design.
> Basically, moderators are given way too much power and users have no recourse against mod abuse really.
A statement made on HN, a site with significantly more extensive moderation than all but the most restrictive subreddits. I mean, obviously moderator abuse exists. In fact, reddit has whole subreddits devoted to pointing it out and discussing it!
Virtually everyone wants moderation. And, sure, we tolerate some level of abuse as part of that bargain; in the expectation that we always have a large choice of forums.
Note that there really isn't much discussion space in the intermedia area between "moderated like reddit" and "open like 4chan". And that's for a reason: any attempt to loosen the moderation valve leads rapidly to a descent into loud-and-viral-but-unsavory content. That's what just happened with Parler, for example.
A statement made on HN, a site with significantly more extensive moderation than all but the most restrictive subreddits. I mean, obviously moderator abuse exists. In fact, reddit has whole subreddits devoted to pointing it out and discussing it!
Virtually everyone wants moderation. And, sure, we tolerate some level of abuse as part of that bargain; in the expectation that we always have a large choice of forums.
Note that there really isn't much discussion space in the intermedia area between "moderated like reddit" and "open like 4chan". And that's for a reason: any attempt to loosen the moderation valve leads rapidly to a descent into loud-and-viral-but-unsavory content. That's what just happened with Parler, for example.
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> Moderators should really only have the power to remove illegal stuff or have clear rules linked for each removal or ban.
Imagine HN without moderation other than the removal of illegal stuff. You have no idea how hard mods work to keep subreddits on topic and non-toxic.
> Its almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button. The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button.
70M US citizens voted for Donald Trump. You cannot trust anonymous users to keep a subreddit a decent place.
Imagine HN without moderation other than the removal of illegal stuff. You have no idea how hard mods work to keep subreddits on topic and non-toxic.
> Its almost like people forgot their was a an upvote and downvote button. The mods really have no reason removing posts, outside of clear violating posts that may break laws, since the users can choose what they want to see with the upvote and downvote button.
70M US citizens voted for Donald Trump. You cannot trust anonymous users to keep a subreddit a decent place.
I couldn't agree with this more.
As someone who has gotten to the top of Reddit front page twice with my free (no ads) web app I now cannot. It's all but impossible.
Mods are so over protective they will ban you for practically nothing.
If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out.
I think Reddit's mod tools are disgusting and foster censorship and make Reddit a more negative and critical place.
A new post type as the OP suggests like IMGUR? This point is laughable OP. Good luck getting passed mods. They don't let you do shit like that anymore.
Mods rule with an iron fist on Reddit even to the chagrin of their communities. Shame on reddit and its handlers for taking Reddit in this direction.
I have since left reddit and only very casually browse it from time to time. Lots of group think. You will get banned simply for disagreeing with mods in some extreme cases.
Reddit didn't used to be this way. I had been a user there for over a decade. They so casually banned me it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Reddit has gone to the dogs or in this case the mods. It's embarrassing how far Reddit has fallen.
I met Steve and Alexis at MIT startup bootcamp. They were awesome. The reddit they created is no more.
As someone who has gotten to the top of Reddit front page twice with my free (no ads) web app I now cannot. It's all but impossible.
Mods are so over protective they will ban you for practically nothing.
If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out.
I think Reddit's mod tools are disgusting and foster censorship and make Reddit a more negative and critical place.
A new post type as the OP suggests like IMGUR? This point is laughable OP. Good luck getting passed mods. They don't let you do shit like that anymore.
Mods rule with an iron fist on Reddit even to the chagrin of their communities. Shame on reddit and its handlers for taking Reddit in this direction.
I have since left reddit and only very casually browse it from time to time. Lots of group think. You will get banned simply for disagreeing with mods in some extreme cases.
Reddit didn't used to be this way. I had been a user there for over a decade. They so casually banned me it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Reddit has gone to the dogs or in this case the mods. It's embarrassing how far Reddit has fallen.
I met Steve and Alexis at MIT startup bootcamp. They were awesome. The reddit they created is no more.
I love these conversations. As I've said in about 3 other places now - these are the side effects of automation. It didn't use to be like this because it was not possible - and reddit was in many ways MUCH worse. You couldn't ban known bigots or racists because they would be back with an alt.
The presence of harassment and hate speech has a chilling effect on normal users - they aren't here to engage or fight nazism.
Without effective moderation, you will end up with Godwin's law applied to all convos.
But with automation you can ban hate speech! Awesome! You can stop bigotry and harassment! Brilliant!
You can enforce ideological views over your sub and crush dissent - whoops?
No, you cannot escape this conundrum - tools will be misused. The issue then becomes one of ethics and the appropriateness of the force used.
The presence of harassment and hate speech has a chilling effect on normal users - they aren't here to engage or fight nazism.
Without effective moderation, you will end up with Godwin's law applied to all convos.
But with automation you can ban hate speech! Awesome! You can stop bigotry and harassment! Brilliant!
You can enforce ideological views over your sub and crush dissent - whoops?
No, you cannot escape this conundrum - tools will be misused. The issue then becomes one of ethics and the appropriateness of the force used.
I'm obviously not arguing for zero moderation. You would trade one Nazi for another. I believe you are incorrect. That's what the downvote button is for.
What good is karma is it's not adhered to? If you can just remove things because you disagree with them?
Perhaps you should read Aesop's fable: The Wind and the Sun. I believe you would have something to learn from this fable about motivating people in the right direction.
What good is karma is it's not adhered to? If you can just remove things because you disagree with them?
Perhaps you should read Aesop's fable: The Wind and the Sun. I believe you would have something to learn from this fable about motivating people in the right direction.
I addressed what happened to the downvote button elsewhere:
---------
I recently went through some old logs and discussions from 7/8 years ago. People actually talked about how important it was to upvote content and follow rediquette.
That discussion died because you have to enforce rediquette and the "honor code" fails when people see that abusing the code goes unpunished. This means that upvote downvote become like/dislike.
To me this implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to select your community for rule compliance.
---------
I recently went through some old logs and discussions from 7/8 years ago. People actually talked about how important it was to upvote content and follow rediquette.
That discussion died because you have to enforce rediquette and the "honor code" fails when people see that abusing the code goes unpunished. This means that upvote downvote become like/dislike.
To me this implies that if you want to make upvotes work, then you need to select your community for rule compliance.
I appreciate that you've framed a logical argument. There is definitely some sound logic in what you are saying.
I think of it a bit differently.
Reddit could have its 10 commandments and adhere to that. That would be clear and transparent and it should apply both to mods and users alike. There should be no cider house rules. A community is given power by its userbase. Mods should respect their userbase more than they do.
Mods can simply not be trusted to be good faith actors. They constantly abuse their power and Reddit enables it. They are encouraged by the (cult)ture there.
Every mod is free to act as they wish and Reddit will support it. They act like bullies is more like it. Do as I say not as I do.
I then take a step back and wonder. Are crowds truly wise? Or are we simply watching groupthink play out at massive scale?
The crowd is not a crowd anymore. It is a herd.
I think of it a bit differently.
Reddit could have its 10 commandments and adhere to that. That would be clear and transparent and it should apply both to mods and users alike. There should be no cider house rules. A community is given power by its userbase. Mods should respect their userbase more than they do.
Mods can simply not be trusted to be good faith actors. They constantly abuse their power and Reddit enables it. They are encouraged by the (cult)ture there.
Every mod is free to act as they wish and Reddit will support it. They act like bullies is more like it. Do as I say not as I do.
I then take a step back and wonder. Are crowds truly wise? Or are we simply watching groupthink play out at massive scale?
The crowd is not a crowd anymore. It is a herd.
I wish this were possible too.
I want to engage with my users and explain things. But look at this conversation, it is going to take me hours to walk through the whole thing with you, and I am luckily a policy/forum history wonk.
I thrive on figuring this stuff out.
Doing this for ALL users who are angry or disagree with our moderation? Goddamn man, this is a volunteer role, and we are already tired from dealing with even worse users.
While you may respect your users as community members, on moderation your knowledge and peoples assumptions diverge far too much. Which means you stop taking them seriously.
It sucks, it creates a wall between users and mods, and a sense of working with lords and ladies. Most mods don’t want it, but its fated to happen.
I honestly urge everyone who is unhappy with moderation to try it out themselves. I think there is no faster way for people to start working on this problem than having their own experience to drive new solutions.
I want to engage with my users and explain things. But look at this conversation, it is going to take me hours to walk through the whole thing with you, and I am luckily a policy/forum history wonk.
I thrive on figuring this stuff out.
Doing this for ALL users who are angry or disagree with our moderation? Goddamn man, this is a volunteer role, and we are already tired from dealing with even worse users.
While you may respect your users as community members, on moderation your knowledge and peoples assumptions diverge far too much. Which means you stop taking them seriously.
It sucks, it creates a wall between users and mods, and a sense of working with lords and ladies. Most mods don’t want it, but its fated to happen.
I honestly urge everyone who is unhappy with moderation to try it out themselves. I think there is no faster way for people to start working on this problem than having their own experience to drive new solutions.
Perhaps the underlying system is flawed in some fundamental 'unfixable' way. Maybe there's a better way.
I agree. This is volunteer work. And despite the bad apples there's quite a few good mods out there! I just wonder about the ways in which Reddit motivates its moderators. It certainly isn't positive.
As I said I don't believe in the wisdom of crowds. I think we become a herd easily and forget the crowd.
I think the entire system of upvoting/liking is flawed. It encourages our worst behavior. At least the way PG and friends have designed it.
It only works for tight use cases like HN. It doesn't work for Reddit IMHO. It's too big. It's become a herd.
We are not witnessing the wisdom of Crowds. We are witnessing the chaos of herds.
I agree. This is volunteer work. And despite the bad apples there's quite a few good mods out there! I just wonder about the ways in which Reddit motivates its moderators. It certainly isn't positive.
As I said I don't believe in the wisdom of crowds. I think we become a herd easily and forget the crowd.
I think the entire system of upvoting/liking is flawed. It encourages our worst behavior. At least the way PG and friends have designed it.
It only works for tight use cases like HN. It doesn't work for Reddit IMHO. It's too big. It's become a herd.
We are not witnessing the wisdom of Crowds. We are witnessing the chaos of herds.
> If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out.
How exactly do you "innocently" attempt to evade a ban?
How exactly do you "innocently" attempt to evade a ban?
I created another account. Logged in. Forgot I was logged in on another account. Forgot I got banned in that sub ages ago.
But not Reddit. Reddit mods don't forget. Reddit gives them the tools they need to sniff you out.
Kinda creepy reddit has become.
But not Reddit. Reddit mods don't forget. Reddit gives them the tools they need to sniff you out.
Kinda creepy reddit has become.
The whole concept of a ban is to follow a person not an account though... This has been true for every single forum I've ever frequented (including HN). The fact that this isn't always true is due to an (necessarily for both ethical and technological reasons) imperfect implementation.
It's pretty terrible they would go these lengths to ban an individual for disagreeing with them politically.
The punishment does not fit the crime. I think it's disgusting that they are sniffing out IPs for such low level offenses.
I made no threats. I simply disagreed with the wrong person on r/politics.
The punishment does not fit the crime. I think it's disgusting that they are sniffing out IPs for such low level offenses.
I made no threats. I simply disagreed with the wrong person on r/politics.
> I think it's disgusting that they are sniffing out IPs for such low level offenses.
Moderators on Reddit have absolutely zero access to IP addresses. You are misinformed.
Moderators on Reddit have absolutely zero access to IP addresses. You are misinformed.
And the robo mod? The auto-ban?
They have zero access to IPs too right?
Mods human or otherwise is what I'm referring to.
They have zero access to IPs too right?
Mods human or otherwise is what I'm referring to.
I have left reddit mostly at this point as well, with some exceptions with some subreddits. The entire site is garbage at this point and filled with groupthink and mod abuse at this point.
I'm curious, what alternative sites have you found at this point, besides this one, that seem to have what Reddit used to be? Or maybe even if it isn't exactly what reddit used to be, at least some good alternative for sites to go to now?
I'm curious, what alternative sites have you found at this point, besides this one, that seem to have what Reddit used to be? Or maybe even if it isn't exactly what reddit used to be, at least some good alternative for sites to go to now?
> besides this one
You do realize how far from "moderators only remove illegal posts" HN is, and how much that shapes what HN is?
You do realize how far from "moderators only remove illegal posts" HN is, and how much that shapes what HN is?
Yes there maybe some common sense approaches to curating things but Reddit has gone too far IMHO.
I think HN is a separate use case than is reddit. Which is why HN will never become Reddit nor does it want to. It's always been a niche site. Even though it's gained quite a bit of notoriety in the last decade. Most people outside of tech circles have no idea what HN is.
I think HN is a separate use case than is reddit. Which is why HN will never become Reddit nor does it want to. It's always been a niche site. Even though it's gained quite a bit of notoriety in the last decade. Most people outside of tech circles have no idea what HN is.
It's less of a separate case from a single subreddit in many ways. (although of course a subreddit can't influence a lot of the things that are differently designed on HN, so it's not like you could turn it into one and it'd just work)
It’s interesting how Reddit‘s failure to effectively monetize and cut their most important users in on the action, the way YouTube and Twitch have done, seems to have led to a grey market. This hurts Reddit (obviously, since they’re cut out of the market) but it also hurts users due to a lack of transparency. This exposes users to all kinds of astroturfing, shilling, and other misinformation.
In a way, it’s quite similar to the issue of Amazon product reviews. Amazon tried to push off a core cost centre from their business onto the backs of volunteers. Now the system is totally corrupted by manufacturers and their paid shills.
In a way, it’s quite similar to the issue of Amazon product reviews. Amazon tried to push off a core cost centre from their business onto the backs of volunteers. Now the system is totally corrupted by manufacturers and their paid shills.
>Amazon tried to push off a core cost centre from their business
This is absolutely not true.
Customer reviews were conceived of as a barrier to entry that could not be trivially recreated by competitors. They were also conceived (naively, as it turned out) as inherently more trustworthy than anything created by company editorial/review staff.
There was never any question of "well, we could do reviews ourselves, but ... nah, let the customer do it". The goal was to harness a subtle kind of network effort to do both of (1) improve the usefulness of the site for users (2) create barriers to entry.
[ EDIT; s/others/users/ ] (#2 amzn employee)
This is absolutely not true.
Customer reviews were conceived of as a barrier to entry that could not be trivially recreated by competitors. They were also conceived (naively, as it turned out) as inherently more trustworthy than anything created by company editorial/review staff.
There was never any question of "well, we could do reviews ourselves, but ... nah, let the customer do it". The goal was to harness a subtle kind of network effort to do both of (1) improve the usefulness of the site for users (2) create barriers to entry.
[ EDIT; s/others/users/ ] (#2 amzn employee)
Gave up on reddit a long time ago because of the moderation problems.
Me as well for the same reasons. I get curious about what's happening there sometimes, and at this point it's just a wasteland.
It's difficult to find a thread that isn't politicized in some way, or does not have at least some toxic elements to it. I've been told sometimes that it's 'just the mainstream communities', however the most toxic encounters I have had were always in the more niche threads. It devolves into downright vitriolic flame wars if you disagree with someone, and generally "agree to disagree" just inspires more wrath.
It's difficult to find a thread that isn't politicized in some way, or does not have at least some toxic elements to it. I've been told sometimes that it's 'just the mainstream communities', however the most toxic encounters I have had were always in the more niche threads. It devolves into downright vitriolic flame wars if you disagree with someone, and generally "agree to disagree" just inspires more wrath.
The answer to flame wars because of too much politicization is fairly certainly not "we need less moderator powers!".
There's a few sides. Sometimes giving the moderator too much power means they also have too much power of abstention. If they selectively don't enforce rules, toxic behaviour can be enabled. Worse when rules are enforced against one participant but not another. Sometimes vague rules get arbitrarily used against the unpopular.
When those mods are literally playing a role in it and removing posts from one side of the political argument, but not the other side, in that discussion then yes they are part of the problem.
Curious, what alternatives have you found that are similar to what reddit used to be (besides this site)? Also, what alternative sites have you found replaced Reddit for you, even if they are not similar to what Reddit once was?
Ruqqus.com but unfortunately still small. And also infected. I've been on Shroomery lately and I really like that forum.
I think the concept of Karma points is bullshit and punitive. It makes people negative. PG should know that by now and so should Reddit. Karma is inherently toxic.
Anything that encourages vanity is. And karma encourages it more than anything. As do likes / dislikes. Numbers of votes. Numbers of likes. It's all the same. People competing for attention.
And justified by an angry mob because Karma.
I think the concept of Karma points is bullshit and punitive. It makes people negative. PG should know that by now and so should Reddit. Karma is inherently toxic.
Anything that encourages vanity is. And karma encourages it more than anything. As do likes / dislikes. Numbers of votes. Numbers of likes. It's all the same. People competing for attention.
And justified by an angry mob because Karma.
> Ruqqus.com but unfortunately still small. And also infected.
I just went to see what it was. I selected the category 'Hobby' and here's the list of themes of the posts which came up top:
GunsNAmmoDeals, GunsNAmmoDeals, Cannabis, Guns, ProGuns, LASER, TheFirearmBlog, TheFirearmBlog, Plinkn, TheFirearmBlog, bobross, Physical_Removal
I mean, that's some hobby I guess, but a bit monomaniacal :-/
I just went to see what it was. I selected the category 'Hobby' and here's the list of themes of the posts which came up top:
GunsNAmmoDeals, GunsNAmmoDeals, Cannabis, Guns, ProGuns, LASER, TheFirearmBlog, TheFirearmBlog, Plinkn, TheFirearmBlog, bobross, Physical_Removal
I mean, that's some hobby I guess, but a bit monomaniacal :-/
This is what happens when we divide people. People congregate form tribes and fight each other.
We keep calling each other Nazi's and Socialists - every social network online today.
We keep calling each other Nazi's and Socialists - every social network online today.
What's your opinion on the moderation here on HN?
How is this different from other media? It's already common practice with magazines that contain product reviews. There's nothing stopping companies from doing this with bulletin boards and blogs.
Yes, this is true. The problem lies in that they've historically waved the free speech flag in one hand while throwing the banhammer with the other.
Ahhh, yes, and you literally just described Section 230 exemptions vs. being a publisher.
Yes, publishers are able to act as publishers and also get held responsible for what they publish. Social media sites are exempt from this under Section 230 rules, but that assumes they are not unfairly moderating their sites and turning into publishers.
Yes, you literally just described what is a publisher and why their abuse of Section 230 law is not ok. You all who are supporting this overmoderation of Reddit seem to want Reddit to be a publisher.
Well, with becoming a publisher and unfairly moderating the site, you lose Section 230 protections. You can't have your cake and eat it too, but that is what Reddit and many of the supporters of overmoderation want to do.
Yes, publishers are able to act as publishers and also get held responsible for what they publish. Social media sites are exempt from this under Section 230 rules, but that assumes they are not unfairly moderating their sites and turning into publishers.
Yes, you literally just described what is a publisher and why their abuse of Section 230 law is not ok. You all who are supporting this overmoderation of Reddit seem to want Reddit to be a publisher.
Well, with becoming a publisher and unfairly moderating the site, you lose Section 230 protections. You can't have your cake and eat it too, but that is what Reddit and many of the supporters of overmoderation want to do.
> Social media sites are exempt from this under Section 230 rules, but that assumes they are not unfairly moderating their sites and turning into publishers.
No, it doesn't. Section 230 has nothing about “unfair moderation”; it explictly allows online services to act as publishers within certain boundaries (to which the “fairness” of any moderation is not relevant, only whether the content is user-generated rather than first-party) without being legally treated as publishers for most civil liability purposes.
No, it doesn't. Section 230 has nothing about “unfair moderation”; it explictly allows online services to act as publishers within certain boundaries (to which the “fairness” of any moderation is not relevant, only whether the content is user-generated rather than first-party) without being legally treated as publishers for most civil liability purposes.
I mean just look at geographic subreddits like r/canada and r/vancouver they all have people, moderators with extreme alt-right views often banning people for sharing opposing views.
Astroturfing is common as aged reddit accounts are easily obtainable and Reddit algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to detect this.
/u/maxwellhill is also the biggest mystery of all. Even pinging the username results in a ban. This single account has been responsible for almost 70% of what you read on r/worldnews and its not far fetched to suggest that a small group of people actively dictate the world landscape.
Majority of people on reddit do not read beyond the headlines much like other social networks. People simply do not care to objectively ask for truth and are punished for doing so on Reddit.
Viral content is recycled over and over for hoarding karma points. Some users were caught fabricating heart wrenching stories for virtual internet points. I believe that these are farmers, creating thousands of accounts to be sold to people with commercial interest.
Very different than what HN does and it is the right way to maintain meaningful discussions. Too much of Reddit is just trolls and maladjusted individuals creating their own pseudo-realities like r/aznidentity or other Red-Pill subreddits.
Astroturfing is common as aged reddit accounts are easily obtainable and Reddit algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to detect this.
/u/maxwellhill is also the biggest mystery of all. Even pinging the username results in a ban. This single account has been responsible for almost 70% of what you read on r/worldnews and its not far fetched to suggest that a small group of people actively dictate the world landscape.
Majority of people on reddit do not read beyond the headlines much like other social networks. People simply do not care to objectively ask for truth and are punished for doing so on Reddit.
Viral content is recycled over and over for hoarding karma points. Some users were caught fabricating heart wrenching stories for virtual internet points. I believe that these are farmers, creating thousands of accounts to be sold to people with commercial interest.
Very different than what HN does and it is the right way to maintain meaningful discussions. Too much of Reddit is just trolls and maladjusted individuals creating their own pseudo-realities like r/aznidentity or other Red-Pill subreddits.
I would assume bringing up that username results in a ban because it is now unfortunately associated with QAnon belief, and moderators want to stamp out QAnon conspiracies.
The proper metric is not "authentic" but "useful". If a channel's usefulness is outweighed by it's cooption, then it deserves to be ignored.
Take for example some of the Apple related blogs & ecosystem. I don't doubt for one second that Apple monitors them and may even feed them leaks.
Why would a subreddit be somehow immune from this corruptive pressure? Better to know the system is corruptible rather than look at reddit as somehow above the fray.
Take for example some of the Apple related blogs & ecosystem. I don't doubt for one second that Apple monitors them and may even feed them leaks.
Why would a subreddit be somehow immune from this corruptive pressure? Better to know the system is corruptible rather than look at reddit as somehow above the fray.
For years there were daily posts on /r/movies that got to the top like "Remember how good <80s movie> was? Watch it now on Netflix!"
It wasn't even thinly veiled, but of course you got downvoted to oblivion if you even mentioned dropping a named platform from the title.
It wasn't even thinly veiled, but of course you got downvoted to oblivion if you even mentioned dropping a named platform from the title.
> Many popular subreddits are quietly operated by moderators with industry connections.
There's a dangerous cabal of Reddit "power mods" who rule the great majority of most popular subreddits. Its existence and composition goes way beyond the simple "being in the field".
There's a dangerous cabal of Reddit "power mods" who rule the great majority of most popular subreddits. Its existence and composition goes way beyond the simple "being in the field".
The Nikola subreddit is funny. Instant ban for the slightest questioning of any of Nikola Motors statements.
There are a bunch of other reddits where stuff just silently disappears.
There are a bunch of other reddits where stuff just silently disappears.
I think there should be stricter rules for subreddits whose names sound "official" or "primary".
There is this subreddit: r/india. Which is full of toxicity towards Indian culture. But people are more likely to stumble upon that subreddit. There's also a hard-right subreddit that's equally biased, but at least that's not named r/india.
There is this subreddit: r/india. Which is full of toxicity towards Indian culture. But people are more likely to stumble upon that subreddit. There's also a hard-right subreddit that's equally biased, but at least that's not named r/india.
> Reddit conversations are generally assumed to be authentic.
r/hailcorporate would disagree, but, sadly, their corporate marketing detectors are too sensitive and they can come off as tin-foiled kooks.
Still, more content than you think is astro-turfed on reddit (and I've been claiming this for years).
r/hailcorporate would disagree, but, sadly, their corporate marketing detectors are too sensitive and they can come off as tin-foiled kooks.
Still, more content than you think is astro-turfed on reddit (and I've been claiming this for years).
I've lead two successful community "unbundling" efforts from reddit. Here are a few tips if you're thinking of doing the same:
(1) You HAVE to kill the original community. Otherwise momentum will keep your users using the old community. Our first launch saw a successful small website take off initially after it was launched only to have traffic slowly die down over the next several months. What finally got it off the ground and growing again was killing the original reddit community. There's no way around this.
(2) There WILL be resistance and/or a drop-off in users. The good news is now there are a lot more opportunities to grow your community: Advertising, cross-site collaborations, guest blog posts, etc.
(3) Do not strive for feature parity with reddit. Instead, strive to deliver MORE value. For instance changemyview could add categorization features. Maybe a search function that lets you search for posts that have been tagged as "view changed successfully!" or "view not changed".
(4) You have to have a business model. Selling advertising or taking donations are NOT business models. There was a time when it made sense but many online communities - reddit particularly - are averse to viewing ads. If you're not creating something, selling something, or taking a commission then you haven't got a business model. One model which can be successful for larger communities: Premium membership subscriptions. You just have to make sure the premium features provide sufficient value that people want to subscribe without making non-subscribers feel like you're just limiting features to be greedy.
(5) If you have multiple moderators - incorporate.
(1) You HAVE to kill the original community. Otherwise momentum will keep your users using the old community. Our first launch saw a successful small website take off initially after it was launched only to have traffic slowly die down over the next several months. What finally got it off the ground and growing again was killing the original reddit community. There's no way around this.
(2) There WILL be resistance and/or a drop-off in users. The good news is now there are a lot more opportunities to grow your community: Advertising, cross-site collaborations, guest blog posts, etc.
(3) Do not strive for feature parity with reddit. Instead, strive to deliver MORE value. For instance changemyview could add categorization features. Maybe a search function that lets you search for posts that have been tagged as "view changed successfully!" or "view not changed".
(4) You have to have a business model. Selling advertising or taking donations are NOT business models. There was a time when it made sense but many online communities - reddit particularly - are averse to viewing ads. If you're not creating something, selling something, or taking a commission then you haven't got a business model. One model which can be successful for larger communities: Premium membership subscriptions. You just have to make sure the premium features provide sufficient value that people want to subscribe without making non-subscribers feel like you're just limiting features to be greedy.
(5) If you have multiple moderators - incorporate.
This is really interesting to hear about. Were you the creator of both communities that you unbundled from Reddit? Or did you bring the moderators on board with your business plan? Also how did the users react when you killed the community?
> Were you the creator of both communities that you unbundled from Reddit?
In both cases I was not the original creator but was a longstanding moderator who inherited an active community.
> did you bring the moderators on board with your business plan?
They brought me on board with theirs.
> how did the users react when you killed the community?
Positively. Reddit as a corporation isn't actually well-liked by the majority of the community. Poor administration policies, poor design changes, slow UI - there's a lot to complain about.
There were, of course, a few who loudly complained. But there will be a few who loudly complain about any change or no change at all.
In both cases I was not the original creator but was a longstanding moderator who inherited an active community.
> did you bring the moderators on board with your business plan?
They brought me on board with theirs.
> how did the users react when you killed the community?
Positively. Reddit as a corporation isn't actually well-liked by the majority of the community. Poor administration policies, poor design changes, slow UI - there's a lot to complain about.
There were, of course, a few who loudly complained. But there will be a few who loudly complain about any change or no change at all.
Nice! Would you be willing to share the new sites you operate?
>But there will be a few who loudly complain about any change or no change at all.
Totally agree
>But there will be a few who loudly complain about any change or no change at all.
Totally agree
(1a) Wait for the target subreddit to get big enough so that the quality drops like a rock and gets filled with barely related content from astroturfers and karma farmers.
Jokes aside, it's such a shame to see subreddits explode in popularity and then get filled with low quality content that moderators don't even care to curate.
Jokes aside, it's such a shame to see subreddits explode in popularity and then get filled with low quality content that moderators don't even care to curate.
"Social network envy" will eventually be Reddit's undoing. The fact that they have been trying to position themselves as a social network, unsuccessfully, for several years and they still haven't given up on it is alarming. If Google can't even pull it off with all of their resources and properties (including giants like YouTube and Gmail), I don't see how Reddit will either.
The "me too" features, like the TikTok clone and the chat rooms, are either derided or ignored entirely by the community.
I suppose it's difficult for them to attract dollars and media attention as "just" a message board -- despite seemingly being the world's largest. But that's what their actual users want it to be: the world's best message board. But their product changes keep making it a worse message board in the hope of being more like Facebook.
The "me too" features, like the TikTok clone and the chat rooms, are either derided or ignored entirely by the community.
I suppose it's difficult for them to attract dollars and media attention as "just" a message board -- despite seemingly being the world's largest. But that's what their actual users want it to be: the world's best message board. But their product changes keep making it a worse message board in the hope of being more like Facebook.
I noticed this recently when they redesigned the comments view to make the user's profile picture a prominent part of the design. Except after the last few weeks of scrolling through comments, I have come across less than 10 users sitewide who have actually set a picture. It's now just a sea of default icons and a ton of wasted space.
I can't imagine people use the chat function either. It seems like they are prioritizing features for the sake of ad revenue or product team egos over making much needed infra updates. General latency and error rates while browsing reddit.com are almost unbearable now. And search always was and still is a mess. And don't get me started on the mobile apps..
I can't imagine people use the chat function either. It seems like they are prioritizing features for the sake of ad revenue or product team egos over making much needed infra updates. General latency and error rates while browsing reddit.com are almost unbearable now. And search always was and still is a mess. And don't get me started on the mobile apps..
> I can't imagine people use the chat function either.
Spammers do.
Spammers do.
I agree. Reddit should have kept their "niche" of being the only large only community (besides 4chan) that is pseudo anonymous.
The profiles bullshit really ruins it. But it's probably profitable in the short term. It's what advertisers want.
The profiles bullshit really ruins it. But it's probably profitable in the short term. It's what advertisers want.
I agree. Instead of trying to be a social network, I think they should have focused on their media advantage and kept Victoria, who created trust in the AMA.
But no, they killed it. The thing is, their AMA system captured lightning in a bottle very regularly. Engagement was high, the community was happy and it brought positive press to reddit, at least for the US market.
But like you said, social network envy.
But no, they killed it. The thing is, their AMA system captured lightning in a bottle very regularly. Engagement was high, the community was happy and it brought positive press to reddit, at least for the US market.
But like you said, social network envy.
> the chat rooms, are either derided or ignored entirely by the community.
The chat rooms were/are ignored because the sub mods can't moderate them at all. They end up being filled with spam/self-promotion.
The chat rooms were/are ignored because the sub mods can't moderate them at all. They end up being filled with spam/self-promotion.
> Reddit content ranks really well on Google
The most public contribution I made to reddit's codebase when I was there was the SEO features. I did all the usual stuff like cleaning up title and meta tags, and adding a sitemap. But the change that had the largest effect, by far, was adding the title of the story into the URL. As soon as we launched that, our Google traffic shot up.
The way you know you have truly mastered SEO is when Google takes away your control of the crawl rate on your SEO control panel. Soon after that we had lunch a special set of servers that just serve requests for Google, because they were killing us by crawling years of old posts.
The most public contribution I made to reddit's codebase when I was there was the SEO features. I did all the usual stuff like cleaning up title and meta tags, and adding a sitemap. But the change that had the largest effect, by far, was adding the title of the story into the URL. As soon as we launched that, our Google traffic shot up.
The way you know you have truly mastered SEO is when Google takes away your control of the crawl rate on your SEO control panel. Soon after that we had lunch a special set of servers that just serve requests for Google, because they were killing us by crawling years of old posts.
I never understood why google gives juice to this kind of URLs. It makes URLs longer and is barely useful anymroe but google keeps demanding it.
Because the URL is naturally short so you have to be very selective about what you put in it. So if the URL is "on topic" the page likely is. Just like if the domain is "on topic" it is very likely the site is, because it is short and hard to change.
IIUC some of the biggest factors that Google uses for the page itself (network effects obviously play a huge part) are domain, url then title. If you notice these are fairly space limited and user visible which means that it is harder for the website author to spam these with possibly relevant keywords.
IIUC some of the biggest factors that Google uses for the page itself (network effects obviously play a huge part) are domain, url then title. If you notice these are fairly space limited and user visible which means that it is harder for the website author to spam these with possibly relevant keywords.
Think they wanted to bias against: "it's at http://zs9l.com/860d9fg%fids0a4?249F" and other URLs with alphanumerics since normal people speak them out.
Because these urls are effectively "locked" to the content and the website can't play a switcheroo on site visitors (and google), maybe?
actually the content often changes (usually news articles being updated with different content / title). Google's idea was that it's easier to tell what a URL is about by looking at it, but in the mobile era i don't think it matters anymore.
Reddit archives (making them read only) threads after a year I believe. Why would Google re-visit archived threads? Did you see Google's crawler throttle crawl rate by response times?
Six months, and not back then. Back then you could comment on old threads. I wasn't there when they implement the thread lock, but I suspect it was related.
The reddit codebase is designed for recency. Interacting with old threads really trashed the databases, at least back then.
The reddit codebase is designed for recency. Interacting with old threads really trashed the databases, at least back then.
I'm not certain, but doesn't a 'read only' reddit page still get changed when a user who was in it deletes their account and posts? Often when a search engine sends me to reddit, the comments that probably contained the relevant information are long gone.
You might be right, in which case Google should offer a link to the corresponding Internet Archive wayback page (where the deleted content should still exist).
Failing that, there are browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox that enable this functionality.
Failing that, there are browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox that enable this functionality.
I used IA's browser plugin that does this for a while, but unfortunately had to stop because it had too many false positives (sending me to archive pages for sites that were still live.) An extension that does this properly definitely interests me.
They have it in their cache themselves so they even wouldn't have to link to IA.
Fascinating stuff! Any other simple tweaks that made a surprisingly big difference?
Off the top of my head I can't think of anything that was nearly as effective.
> As the name implies, Reddit is designed to be read. People who only read along, but never participate are so integral to the platform that users coined a new term for them: “lurkers.”
I ... "coined a new term" ... having grown up on usenet, mailing lists and IRC channels, the idea that reddit coined the term "lurkers" doesn't make me mad at the author, it just makes me feel really old.
I ... "coined a new term" ... having grown up on usenet, mailing lists and IRC channels, the idea that reddit coined the term "lurkers" doesn't make me mad at the author, it just makes me feel really old.
Wikipedia says the word has been used online with that definition since the 1980's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker
Yeah, reading that bit was a bit odd.
I went through an unbundling process in my business that turned out to be extremely successful and a wise move.
I own and operate RadioReference.com, which is a reference database source and community mainly for those who own and listen to police scanners (and other radios). I acquired a small startup that was broadcasting police scanners online with the intent to supplement RadioReference.com's community and content with online scanners that you could listen to. At the time, the startup I acquired had about 400 radios online, and when the acquisition closed and we folded the content into RadioReference.com it quickly took off and doubled the amount of feeds within a few months.
At that point, I decided to spin the online feeds off to a separate Web site and business by registering "Broadcastify" (the verb-ify domains were just becoming popular) and the rest was history. Broadcastify has over 7000+ online scanner feeds and has been wildly successful with partnerships with mobile app developers etc.
I own and operate RadioReference.com, which is a reference database source and community mainly for those who own and listen to police scanners (and other radios). I acquired a small startup that was broadcasting police scanners online with the intent to supplement RadioReference.com's community and content with online scanners that you could listen to. At the time, the startup I acquired had about 400 radios online, and when the acquisition closed and we folded the content into RadioReference.com it quickly took off and doubled the amount of feeds within a few months.
At that point, I decided to spin the online feeds off to a separate Web site and business by registering "Broadcastify" (the verb-ify domains were just becoming popular) and the rest was history. Broadcastify has over 7000+ online scanner feeds and has been wildly successful with partnerships with mobile app developers etc.
I'm a regular user of RR, and an occasional user of B-ify, and I just wanted to say thank you. Both services are incredibly useful.
I don't think reddit is that unique. The main problem is that forums are no longer monetizable, so people don't have an interest in maintaining and moderating separate websites, so not unbundling.
My use of reddit, and what i observe in general (by looking at other people's post history) is to visit a few specific subreddits often, not the homepage, not r/all. It seems there used to be a time when everyone was there for the giggles, r/pics, r/politics etc, when the content was very viral and entertaining. Nowadays all the major generic subs are filled with so much spam (i mean politics) that they're barely useful other than as a place to blow off some steam against the other team.
Topical subreddits could fork off reddit if they wanted to put the effort in it. HN is nothing other than r/technology or r/programming without the politics, and it exists because YC has an interest in maintaining it. Nomadlist exists despite r/digitalnomad/ etc.
Reddit is aging, and it shows. There are subs with the same moderators for more than 10 years, who often end up removing the interesting parts in order to maintain an imaginary "culture" in their heads. And there are a lot of shady moderators too.
My use of reddit, and what i observe in general (by looking at other people's post history) is to visit a few specific subreddits often, not the homepage, not r/all. It seems there used to be a time when everyone was there for the giggles, r/pics, r/politics etc, when the content was very viral and entertaining. Nowadays all the major generic subs are filled with so much spam (i mean politics) that they're barely useful other than as a place to blow off some steam against the other team.
Topical subreddits could fork off reddit if they wanted to put the effort in it. HN is nothing other than r/technology or r/programming without the politics, and it exists because YC has an interest in maintaining it. Nomadlist exists despite r/digitalnomad/ etc.
Reddit is aging, and it shows. There are subs with the same moderators for more than 10 years, who often end up removing the interesting parts in order to maintain an imaginary "culture" in their heads. And there are a lot of shady moderators too.
Reddit is unique in that it allows you to find and connect to a community with very little friction. The other day I was thinking about buying a mini PC. I googled 'mini PC reddit' and immediately find r/MiniPCs and r/sffpc. Now I can sort by top all time and see the lay of the land in the community, see which devices are popular, etc. I can ask questions and get a quick response.
If these communities were on traditional forums, I wouldn't be able to do any of this. I would never bother to make an account specifically for that forum. Some communities benefit from keeping out tourists like me, but not commercially.
If these communities were on traditional forums, I wouldn't be able to do any of this. I would never bother to make an account specifically for that forum. Some communities benefit from keeping out tourists like me, but not commercially.
>HN is nothing other than r/technology or r/programming without the politics
How many front page posts have we had in the last two weeks whining about political censorship?
HN has politics alright, just the other side's politics.
How many front page posts have we had in the last two weeks whining about political censorship?
HN has politics alright, just the other side's politics.
I disagree. HN has actual discussions and is, for the most part, politically neutral. That is, while some discussions will have a political component to them, such as discussing tech censorship, no opinions are being buried for simply existing "on the other side."
While being a free speech advocate is political, it does not fit into the US left/right political structure. So I don't see opposing the censorship of political speech as being "the other side's politics."
It's funny because I clearly remember when it was the other side with a "moral majority" who was trying to silence all opposing views. I was against it then as well. I think we should all be against authoritarianism no matter which political party we support. As I see it authoritarianism has led to suffering of the common people almost every time.
While being a free speech advocate is political, it does not fit into the US left/right political structure. So I don't see opposing the censorship of political speech as being "the other side's politics."
It's funny because I clearly remember when it was the other side with a "moral majority" who was trying to silence all opposing views. I was against it then as well. I think we should all be against authoritarianism no matter which political party we support. As I see it authoritarianism has led to suffering of the common people almost every time.
> is, for the most part, politically neutral.
I thought so too, but in the last few months, I wasn't sure. Comments seemed pretty polarizing, but each "side" was about equal in number.
Prior to the last few months, it seemed like political discussions were actually nuetral/objective. Hopefully it returns that way.
I thought so too, but in the last few months, I wasn't sure. Comments seemed pretty polarizing, but each "side" was about equal in number.
Prior to the last few months, it seemed like political discussions were actually nuetral/objective. Hopefully it returns that way.
If you were old enough (:) everything you've written above could be rewritten by just substituting "[rR]eddit" with "[uU]senet".
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
usenet died out because it did not have moderators. Reddit will do the same because of moderators
The funny thing about using Craigslist as the example for unbundling is that Craigslist, to this day, works better than anything that's attempted to replace or unbundle it. Craigslist remains a stable, profitable company that provides an enormous amount of value.
I dispute this. Craigslist may appear to work better however:
- Many unbundled categories have far better products available now. AirBnB and Trulia are great examples.
- In areas Craigslist still has a hold, such as in rental housing, what we don't see is the cost of Craigslist's failure to provide advanced features. This includes people getting scammed, and bad landlords continuing on without record just like bad taxi drivers prior to Uber/Lyft.
- Many unbundled categories have far better products available now. AirBnB and Trulia are great examples.
- In areas Craigslist still has a hold, such as in rental housing, what we don't see is the cost of Craigslist's failure to provide advanced features. This includes people getting scammed, and bad landlords continuing on without record just like bad taxi drivers prior to Uber/Lyft.
I’d also add that despite the hatred Facebook deservedly gets, I find Facebook Marketplace way better than Craigslist for everything besides the actual product discovery (since it lacks clean-cut categories, but it’s still pretty alright). Since it’s actually moderated either by FB or by buy/sell groups, and people have their identities tied to the things they’re selling there’s way less scams and it makes recognizing people when you meet much more possible. Feels way safer than Craigslist ever did.
There are probably just as many scams on other public sites like facebook marketplace
This author goes on a for a long time but I'm a member of cmv and I can tell you exactly what went wrong in one sentence.
Nobody saw the content.
I vaguely knew about the website when it happened but ignored it. I'm on cmv for one reason, it shows up in my reddit feed. It's not interesting enough to spend time on a separate website/app.
What's good about reddit is the diversity of content you can get.
Nobody saw the content.
I vaguely knew about the website when it happened but ignored it. I'm on cmv for one reason, it shows up in my reddit feed. It's not interesting enough to spend time on a separate website/app.
What's good about reddit is the diversity of content you can get.
I have a lot of admiration for Reddit. They're the only place I can still go to in 2021 that doesn't feel like getting a window into the dumpster fire that is other social networks like Twitter. The author is also quite right that they shut down viral pathways, which prevents the worst offenders. If I don't want to see politics on Reddit, I'll never see politics on Reddit.
That said, I kinda scoff at the author's casual diss of Craigslist and assessment of their advantages. Craigslist has 50 total employees, nearly a billion in revenue, and a strong mission. It's not like people haven't tried to take them on before. Reddit will not be the next Craigslist any more than r/CMV will be the next Reddit. People go to Reddit because it's easy to see good content and not see bad content. I 100% attribute that to the ability to mod, downvote, and have community-based subscriptions. The author has a pretty good sense of what makes Reddit good, but has a horrible sense of what makes Craigslist bad.
That said, I kinda scoff at the author's casual diss of Craigslist and assessment of their advantages. Craigslist has 50 total employees, nearly a billion in revenue, and a strong mission. It's not like people haven't tried to take them on before. Reddit will not be the next Craigslist any more than r/CMV will be the next Reddit. People go to Reddit because it's easy to see good content and not see bad content. I 100% attribute that to the ability to mod, downvote, and have community-based subscriptions. The author has a pretty good sense of what makes Reddit good, but has a horrible sense of what makes Craigslist bad.
One thing I think ignored in the article is the rise of FOSS federated servers. There are a few prominent examples to those who follow these sorts of developments, but there are two in particular that I find interesting: Lemmy and Littr.me.
Lemmy is basically a clone of reddit's functionality that federates over ActivityPub. It is a very high quality piece of software. A single server can host multiple communities and users, just like reddit. You can follow and comment on posts and communities on external servers using your account on whichever server you call home.
Littr.me is more like hackernews, a single community server, but one that will federate with other servers using the ActivityPub protocol, like Lemmy. The development is slower, but it is still interesting and the maintainer seems to be committed to building it out. Something like this allows what the author of this article talks about, single community sites for different niche communities, but also allows for intercommunity interaction.
With either of these, a user can tailor their feed to subscribe to any number of communities on any number of servers, and lurk, or interact if they like. With tools like this, the compromise of eliminating friction by centralizing communities is no longer necessary. I personally believe federating protocols rather than central servers are the future of online social interaction, and I am very excited about it.
One thing I think needs to exist is a message board/forum server that federates. The link aggregator UX paradigm is not optimal for all online communities. Forums are very useful and as of right now I know of no effort to implement federation in an existing FOSS forum server or build one with federation in mind.
Lemmy is basically a clone of reddit's functionality that federates over ActivityPub. It is a very high quality piece of software. A single server can host multiple communities and users, just like reddit. You can follow and comment on posts and communities on external servers using your account on whichever server you call home.
Littr.me is more like hackernews, a single community server, but one that will federate with other servers using the ActivityPub protocol, like Lemmy. The development is slower, but it is still interesting and the maintainer seems to be committed to building it out. Something like this allows what the author of this article talks about, single community sites for different niche communities, but also allows for intercommunity interaction.
With either of these, a user can tailor their feed to subscribe to any number of communities on any number of servers, and lurk, or interact if they like. With tools like this, the compromise of eliminating friction by centralizing communities is no longer necessary. I personally believe federating protocols rather than central servers are the future of online social interaction, and I am very excited about it.
One thing I think needs to exist is a message board/forum server that federates. The link aggregator UX paradigm is not optimal for all online communities. Forums are very useful and as of right now I know of no effort to implement federation in an existing FOSS forum server or build one with federation in mind.
Is this meaningfully different from the user's point of view than just subscribing to a set of different subreddits? What does the user or the host get out of using federated servers?
From my POV this seems to be the same issue that has prevented federated social networks or chat services from taking off: there's no meaningful, concrete advantage to it.
From my POV this seems to be the same issue that has prevented federated social networks or chat services from taking off: there's no meaningful, concrete advantage to it.
I'm the developer behind littr.me. In my mind, the best reasons for migrating to your own service as a reddit community is the fact that you get ownership of it. You can monetize, you can enforce rules that are different to reddit's, you can focus your interface more specifically towards custom UI, etc.
The main downside of moving off reddit would be that you lose access to the larger pool of reddit users and communities. That however is mitigated by the fact that federated communities can still interact with each other despite being independent services.
Personally this would be my main goal for the project: managing to get one of the cool subreddits to leave reddit in favour of starting their own independent community using my code. However some of the things that are made easier by the centralized model of reddit are quite more difficult in the federated case (moderation as an example), and I don't feel confident (yet) to push for this.
The main downside of moving off reddit would be that you lose access to the larger pool of reddit users and communities. That however is mitigated by the fact that federated communities can still interact with each other despite being independent services.
Personally this would be my main goal for the project: managing to get one of the cool subreddits to leave reddit in favour of starting their own independent community using my code. However some of the things that are made easier by the centralized model of reddit are quite more difficult in the federated case (moderation as an example), and I don't feel confident (yet) to push for this.
Consider as a part of user experience the ability to select your own admin and mod teams and terms of service by choosing a server on which to participate, or even be your own admin and mod team by launching your own server, without having to sacrifice access to a larger userbase. This changes the user experience considerably and is a definite draw.
>Reddit is great for lurkers
I disagree with this, at least for non-account users. Slowly the mobile website has gotten more and more closed for newcomers. It is not always possible to just read a quick reddit thread that comes up on google because of the "Sign-in to read more" that bombards your screen.
I disagree with this, at least for non-account users. Slowly the mobile website has gotten more and more closed for newcomers. It is not always possible to just read a quick reddit thread that comes up on google because of the "Sign-in to read more" that bombards your screen.
Generally, I've not encountered the term "lurker" to mean account-less. Only that these people don't actively contribute to content or discussion.
The only successful examples I've seen of Reddit "unbundling" come from communities that were banned from Reddit. This is because of a quirk of how Reddit handles subreddit bans, where if a subreddit is banned and a new one is created with a completely different moderation team, different rules, etc. it will still get banned for being a "ban evasion" subreddit. This means that banning a subreddit effectively bans any hypothetical future subreddit dedicated to the same topic. Because of this, if the community cares enough to start a new website for the topic it's highly likely that most of the users will move over there.
pcpartpicker.com spun off from /r/buildapc and seems to be doing really well. Of course it isn't a direct competitor, and they are still very heavily involved with the subreddit, so maybe there's some learning there.
There's a fast growing ecosystem of Reddit-adjacent sites and services out there, which I think is a much more interesting business model than direct replacement.
There's a fast growing ecosystem of Reddit-adjacent sites and services out there, which I think is a much more interesting business model than direct replacement.
I remember that. When I first saw it, I thought, surely this won't last, surely, there will be a 101 competitors in no time. Cause it is such a seemingly easy concept to replicate.
Imgur seems like an interesting case study.
Sort of. The provided a functionality that reddit did not, so they weren't really unbundling anything. They smartly realized that reddit would probably eventually provide that same functionality (which they did) so they started down the path of building their own community before that happened.
Lucky for them, the reddit implementation is as-of-now still pretty awful.
Yeah but that's the sad part. People still use reddit's built in system because it's there, despite the inferiority.
True, it's the path of least resistance, particularly if you're a new user.
On the contrary, the sad part is that people still use imgur. Going off-site to be bombarded with off-topic pics (all imgur pics are surrounded by random other (sometimes NSFW) pics isn't a great experience.
I dunno, what really do you need to do other than have your pictures uploaded and displayed on the post?
I kinda figure that's all 90% of the userbase actually wants from the feature?
I kinda figure that's all 90% of the userbase actually wants from the feature?
Does Imgur make money and is it profitable? As far as I know their "business model" (which actually isn't one, or at least not a profitable one) is "growth and engagement".
Their core product isn't something people want to pay for (image hosting itself can be obtained anywhere, including from cloud storage subscriptions people already pay for), and their social side is at odds with the advertising business model - you need ads to survive, but ads revenue is forever decreasing and people will leave if you put too much ads.
Their core product isn't something people want to pay for (image hosting itself can be obtained anywhere, including from cloud storage subscriptions people already pay for), and their social side is at odds with the advertising business model - you need ads to survive, but ads revenue is forever decreasing and people will leave if you put too much ads.
They were profitable for a while, and then got a round of funding from Andreessen-Horowitz. [0] I don't know if they are still profitable, but I recently for some reason was on the founder's (Alan Schaaf) wikipedia page.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schaaf#cite_note-3
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schaaf#cite_note-3
Another community that successfully peeled off reddit is /r/soccerstreams. It's now of course banned on the website but a quick web search gets one to the new dedicated website which even has "reddit" as a sub-domain. The same goes for /r/nbastreams.
The only thing I see reddit as being useful for is its oddly specific questions.
The mentality on that site is "support everything as long as it follows our values as a whole" so you'll see a bunch of a random questions being answered relatively well, personally helping me with those random things I know nothing about.
As a normal place to be though? It's brainwashing. Most people don't spend enough time on these sites to realize but I've worked a job where I had a solid 3 hours out of every day to browse. It's quite literally the same opinions being held at the top of the comment section. If your opinion isn't in line with the standard, it's downvoted, regardless of your fact behind it.
For example, I've had an argument with someone about anxiety and they described their issue as mentally debilitating. They really couldn't handle chatting with someone online, let alone talking with people. I have no issue with that but I did point out that we've been arguing back and forth for maybe 5-6 posts now and they have been growing with aggressiveness. Over this argument, I received close to 100 downvotes, then got banned from the community.
The initial post? It was about a drug to treat anxiety and how groundbreaking it was going to be. I mentioned in my post that, coming from a family of pharmacists and seeing effects firsthand, I know of a lot of people who get significantly worse because of drugs like this. Specifically mentioning that you need to get tested in multiple ways before something like this should be considered (talking about the effects of a similar drug for depression).
Socially it's a terrible place to be. Factually, quite interesting if you ignore karma (but they make it really hard to ignore karma).
The mentality on that site is "support everything as long as it follows our values as a whole" so you'll see a bunch of a random questions being answered relatively well, personally helping me with those random things I know nothing about.
As a normal place to be though? It's brainwashing. Most people don't spend enough time on these sites to realize but I've worked a job where I had a solid 3 hours out of every day to browse. It's quite literally the same opinions being held at the top of the comment section. If your opinion isn't in line with the standard, it's downvoted, regardless of your fact behind it.
For example, I've had an argument with someone about anxiety and they described their issue as mentally debilitating. They really couldn't handle chatting with someone online, let alone talking with people. I have no issue with that but I did point out that we've been arguing back and forth for maybe 5-6 posts now and they have been growing with aggressiveness. Over this argument, I received close to 100 downvotes, then got banned from the community.
The initial post? It was about a drug to treat anxiety and how groundbreaking it was going to be. I mentioned in my post that, coming from a family of pharmacists and seeing effects firsthand, I know of a lot of people who get significantly worse because of drugs like this. Specifically mentioning that you need to get tested in multiple ways before something like this should be considered (talking about the effects of a similar drug for depression).
Socially it's a terrible place to be. Factually, quite interesting if you ignore karma (but they make it really hard to ignore karma).
If anyone is looking for a reddit unbundling idea, it has to be a secondary market place that’s integrated with Reddit. There are a couple of half baked ones but the opportunity is there. Solving the scam issue alone is going to be a big feature. I would also like to see “blind” mailing labels.
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Didn't creditkarma peel off of reddit? The key is to build a service that redditors use and become the default service for a huge sub. Like YNAB has done for r/personalfinance.
Totally agree! This is something I want to talk about in my next post. CreditKarma and YNAB are great examples.
> Really good SEO is one of the truest moats that exist today.
Or not. Every time Google changes its algorithm small businesses get slaughtered. I don’t know if it’s a low or high number, but you see posts about it on SCO or marketing forums every time there’s a change.
Or not. Every time Google changes its algorithm small businesses get slaughtered. I don’t know if it’s a low or high number, but you see posts about it on SCO or marketing forums every time there’s a change.
Notably Reddit have trademarked AMA (and appear to be in a fight with another US organization in the UK to trademark it there too) and I wonder if it's to stop this happening there.
> Because Reddit’s social graph is based on interest rather than friends, it can’t be recreated anywhere else in exactly the same way
This is the recipe for taking on Reddit... interest first.
This is the recipe for taking on Reddit... interest first.
> and “for sale” became Facebook Marketplace.
Ummmm... 1. Does the data suggest that is true? 2. If it were true, would it support the "unbundling" narrative given that it would be a case of something being part of another bundle?
Ummmm... 1. Does the data suggest that is true? 2. If it were true, would it support the "unbundling" narrative given that it would be a case of something being part of another bundle?
FB marketplace is literally the only thing I fb for anymore. It's pretty much the only decent place to buy and sell furniture, lawn equipment, etc. I valiantly tried to stick with craigslist, but it's just become a wasteland of scams and spam where I live.
The fact that Craigslist hasn't done anything to cut down on spam, scams, and duplicate posts is maddening to me. Whenever I do a search I see dozens of phone repair advertisements and completely unrelated posts for cars and trucks. And those posts have the same title and thumbnail!
I simply do not understand why Craigslist refuses to improve in this regard. Look, I get why Craig doesn't want to change the design of his site, but how in the hell do they justify such crap not being removed?
I simply do not understand why Craigslist refuses to improve in this regard. Look, I get why Craig doesn't want to change the design of his site, but how in the hell do they justify such crap not being removed?
Craigslist's unchecked spam, moderation and safety problems have slowly made it unusable. And yes the data does show exactly this. FB Marketplace had 800 million users in 2018 (https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-marketplace-is-used-in-70...) while Craigslist's revenue has been falling year over year (https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/craigslist-revenue-fe...).
I don't see how fb marketplace avoids these issues
Simply having a real Facebook account tied to listings and purchases eliminates 99% of them. Both parties can also see when the account was created.
Also everything you list goes through manual approval, so the most obvious spam never makes it through.
Also everything you list goes through manual approval, so the most obvious spam never makes it through.
It's trivial to make a fake facebook account, and I really doubt most people vet the seller to such lengths. Scams aren't always obvious. I could see how you could generate a fake account, get fake pictures of a fake apartment, and make a fake ad, and not get caught at all.
Some of this occurs naturally. People who were deep enough into a niche to become moderators of a subreddit in the late 2000s and early 2010s are also likely to end up working in that industry or starting business in that industry.
However, many companies have realized that being in the good graces of subreddit moderators can be very good for their business. It's becoming common for brands to reach out to subreddit moderators with offers of free products or even paid job offers to bring them onto the company's side. I know of several companies that routinely send free gear to relevant subreddit moderators. The arrangement is "no strings attached" but it usually results in a favorable moderation outcomes for the company. Moderators have a lot of power to influence conversations on Reddit in non-obvious ways.
In some ways, having a subreddit that champions your products while maintaining an appearance of being impartial is better than explicitly spinning out of Reddit. People know not to trust positive Amazon reviews, but Reddit conversations are generally assumed to be authentic.