[HN Gopher] Storming Reddit's Moat
___________________________________________________________________
Storming Reddit's Moat
Author : mjmayank
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-01-19 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (floodstate.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (floodstate.substack.com)
| jedberg wrote:
| > 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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?
| stretchcat wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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.
| jedberg wrote:
| 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.
| highfrequency wrote:
| Fascinating stuff! Any other simple tweaks that made a
| surprisingly big difference?
| jedberg wrote:
| Off the top of my head I can't think of anything that was
| nearly as effective.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| 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.
| aspaceman wrote:
| 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.
| konschubert wrote:
| Because these urls are effectively "locked" to the content
| and the website can't play a switcheroo on site visitors (and
| google), maybe?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| 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.
| kevincox wrote:
| 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.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| 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.
| rozab wrote:
| 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.
| mbgerring wrote:
| 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.
| bredren wrote:
| 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.
| hehehaha wrote:
| 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.
| paganel wrote:
| 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.
| jedberg wrote:
| Does it really count as unbundling if reddit stops providing
| the same functionality?
| Miner49er wrote:
| Some banned political subs have spun up their own sites as
| well. I wouldn't call it unbundling. I guess maybe forced
| unbundling?
| paxys wrote:
| 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.
| orange_tee wrote:
| 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.
| buro9 wrote:
| > 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.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Imgur seems like an interesting case study.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| 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.
| cfors wrote:
| 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
| jedberg wrote:
| 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.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Lucky for them, the reddit implementation is as-of-now still
| pretty awful.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah but that's the sad part. People still use reddit's
| built in system because it's there, despite the
| inferiority.
| dageshi wrote:
| 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?
| markdown wrote:
| 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.
| RankingMember wrote:
| True, it's the path of least resistance, particularly if
| you're a new user.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Many popular subreddits are quietly operated by moderators with
| industry connections.
|
| 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.
| grecy wrote:
| 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.
| r00fus wrote:
| 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.
| thefz wrote:
| > 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".
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Gave up on reddit a long time ago because of the moderation
| problems.
| jefurii wrote:
| 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.
| abcdjdjd wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| 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.
| 430scuderia wrote:
| 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.
| x86ARMsRace wrote:
| 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.
| detaro wrote:
| The answer to flame wars because of too much politicization
| is fairly certainly not "we need less moderator powers!".
| abcdjdjd wrote:
| 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.
| x86ARMsRace wrote:
| 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.
| abcdjdjd wrote:
| 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?
| random5634 wrote:
| 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.
| abcdjdjd wrote:
| >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.
| markdown wrote:
| > 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.
| fjabre wrote:
| 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.
| abcdjdjd wrote:
| 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?
| detaro wrote:
| > _besides this one_
|
| You do realize how far from "moderators only remove
| illegal posts" HN is, and how much that shapes what HN
| is?
| fjabre wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| detaro wrote:
| 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.
| p_j_w wrote:
| 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.
| abcdjdjd wrote:
| 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?
| detaro wrote:
| 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.
| abcdjdjd wrote:
| >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.
| detaro wrote:
| > _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.
| vkou wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| prox wrote:
| [citation needed] on the most subreddits pushing agenda
| part.
| majormajor wrote:
| 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?
| antihero wrote:
| 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.
| fjabre wrote:
| 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.
| dageshi wrote:
| 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.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > 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.
| inopinatus wrote:
| > tired of its constant misery and moaning
|
| This reason to depart the UK predates the existence of
| Reddit by some centuries.
| afavour wrote:
| > 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.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > 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.
| chongli wrote:
| 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.
| blantonl wrote:
| 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.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| 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.
| ah27182 wrote:
| >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.
| klank wrote:
| Generally, I've not encountered the term "lurker" to mean
| account-less. Only that these people don't actively contribute
| to content or discussion.
| madrox wrote:
| 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.
| mst wrote:
| > 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.
| mjmayank wrote:
| Haha whoops... I will add a correction for this.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Wikipedia says the word has been used online with that
| definition since the 1980's:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker
| INTPenis wrote:
| 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.
| ndiddy wrote:
| 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.
| nostromo wrote:
| "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.
| paxys wrote:
| 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..
| frenchy wrote:
| > I can't imagine people use the chat function either.
|
| Spammers do.
| orange_tee wrote:
| 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.
| markdown wrote:
| > 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.
| cylde_frog wrote:
| >Reddit is great for lurkers
|
| Their mobile site is now completely unusable unless I sign in.
| rednerrus wrote:
| 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.
| mjmayank wrote:
| Totally agree! This is something I want to talk about in my
| next post. CreditKarma and YNAB are great examples.
| tlianza wrote:
| > 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?
| ballenf wrote:
| 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.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| 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?
| paxys wrote:
| 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...).
| maxk42 wrote:
| 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.
| mjmayank wrote:
| 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?
| maxk42 wrote:
| > 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.
| mjmayank wrote:
| 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
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| (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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-19 23:01 UTC)