[HN Gopher] Reddit: One of social media's oldest companies is al...
___________________________________________________________________
Reddit: One of social media's oldest companies is also its most
undervalued
Author : hubraumhugo
Score : 110 points
Date : 2021-02-21 18:06 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (latecheckout.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (latecheckout.substack.com)
| CMay wrote:
| Definitely agree with a few of the suggestions in the article.
| Personally, the mobile-first UI changes they made a long time ago
| with new Reddit were so tragically bad that you could almost
| consider them a canary. My Reddit usage dropped significantly
| after that change even with old.reddit.com hanging around.
|
| On a desktop or a laptop when you visit reddit.com it still
| resets to their card layout every time unless you login and you
| still have to click through twice to get to comments even if you
| explicitly click the comments link. Majority of my usage was
| logged out and that was not going to change.
|
| Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook are also bad about this. Being
| logged out is dissatisfying on those sites, so I rarely visit
| them and don't like when they're returned in search results. HN,
| Flickr, Pluto.TV, YouTube, Zoom and others don't punish you so
| much for that.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| This article tantalises with the last word of its headline,
| "undervalued", but never rises to the challenge that word screams
| out.
|
| After an entertaining George Carlin introduction, the section
| "r/Value" says boldy and starkly "$6 billion? That's it?"
|
| Sounds like $6 billion is just chump change compared to the real
| value of Reddit, right? I can't wait to read more...
|
| If you make it to the last section, "r/GalaxyBrain", you come
| face to face with "The Galaxy Brain moves to take it to the next
| level"
|
| Are you ready to go to the next level? Here it is:
|
| "Reddit should make it easy for subreddits to pay-gate their
| community, sell merchandise (physical and digital), and post
| jobs."
|
| That's it?
|
| Did I miss something?
| dhagz wrote:
| You missed the bits where Reddit should start trying to occupy
| the space of other content-hosting sites to generate more ad
| revenue and harvest more data from users.
|
| It comes down to the fact that Reddit isn't really a social
| media site - it's a link aggregator with the trappings of
| social media, or a slightly fancier network of forums (fora?
| fori? I forget the declension...). I think it is perfectly
| valued, and fits a niche that maybe only Pinterest comes close
| to filling. If it tries to expand its social media elements, it
| will be trying to be something it isn't and users will respond
| accordingly (one would hope).
| Accujack wrote:
| Reddit's main product at this point is their userbase...
| information on them, the ability to influence them via echo
| chambers and censorship, the ability to sell things to
| them...
| moistbar wrote:
| >fora? fori? I forget the declension...
|
| I think it'd be "fora" in this instance. I'm judging this
| from the word "medium/media" and I know how many linguistic
| exceptions Latin had, though, so I'm probably wrong.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| In this _particular_ case, we might prefer "fororum", the
| _genitive_ plural.
| moistbar wrote:
| Ah shit, here I go back down the Latin-hole again.
| [deleted]
| olivierestsage wrote:
| It's hard not to sense that Reddit's at the beginning of a (very
| long, slow) decline in relevance. Almost every day I see some
| comment by an "ex-Redditor," "Reddit refugee," etc. on HN and
| similar sites. Obviously this is not representative of The
| General Public, but it might be an indicator of where they're
| going.
| hoseja wrote:
| I think they really want to turn it into more of a Pinterest
| and get rid of the opinionated techie.
| tester34 wrote:
| For every HNer that "leaves" Reddit there's probably hundreds
| of thousands people that just found about this site, they
| probably come from non-US.
|
| but I think they'd decline hard if they turned off old.reddit
| e.g now.
| larvaetron wrote:
| > Almost every day I see some comment by an "ex-Redditor,"
| "Reddit refugee," etc. on HN and similar sites.
|
| I wonder if this has anything to do with the "downvoting
| comments I don't like" phenomenon that seems to have taken over
| HN these past few years.
| dageshi wrote:
| I run a small niche regional subreddit and I can tell you it is
| greatly more popular and active today than it was for the past
| 5+ years of its life. Through no action of my own, reddit is
| simply doing a better job of driving people who would be
| interested in it to the sub.
|
| HN always moans about reddit, they've moaned about it for near
| a decade at this point, it still just grows bigger.
| elicash wrote:
| When some people leave, the community _improves_ and the site
| gets more popular as a result.
|
| Now, are those the people you're talking about? No idea, I
| haven't seen who you're referring to and it'd be case-by-case.
| But point being, the existence of "ex-Redditors" isn't
| necessarily a bad thing.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| According to Alexa, Reddit gets more visitors than Wikipedia. I
| doubt they're going anywhere.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Some loud people will always leave, but reddit just this months
| got a lot of free ads (gamestop) which certainly will counter
| the leavers.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Yes. Beware the "vocal minority" and the tendency for their
| behavior to badly distort the signal to noise ratio and
| potentially even make it look like the opposite of what it
| really is.
| sadgrip wrote:
| I think in the case of Reddit though that vocal minority
| could account for some non negligible amount of the content
| the site relies on. The site needs its power users or it
| has nothing to deliver to the casual user.
| villgax wrote:
| If only search on reddit was fixed...
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Reddit's search being broken is a feature.
|
| If you make the search functionality work efficiently then it
| is easy to see that many common questions on hundreds of
| subreddits have already been answered in detail so that anyone
| who can find that post only needs to engage long enough to read
| one post and its comments.
|
| If search works, there is less need for anyone to become a
| redditor and to remain engaged with the site. It becomes like a
| blog post that gave you the information you needed but offered
| no incentive to read earlier entries or to subscribe for
| updates.
|
| So, if Search really worked a majority of the time, there would
| be less need for new posts and therefore less user engagement
| and fewer eyeballs on the ads they push.
|
| New users come because they heard that there is a subreddit
| where lots of knowledgeable people discuss the product, hobby,
| etc that they are interested in.
|
| Subreddits in general are that bomb pizza joint that everyone
| raves about where the pies are burned at 600* in a wood-fired
| oven to produce that awesome thin crusty goodness with just the
| right amount of char. Reddit itself is the soggy disappointment
| that you get when the middle of the slice slumps flaccidly on
| the way to your taste buds because the vegetable pieces were
| too thick and moist and under-cooked for that delicious thin
| crust to support.
|
| The highly focused subs are the crust, the main subs are the
| disappointment.
|
| EDIT: Downvoted. Pretty funny. I have been a redditor since
| 2006. Reddit today is a fantastic but disorganized accumulation
| of the knowledge and experiences of people from all over the
| world. Search has never worked reliably though they have had
| more than a decade to fix or improve it. That's all the
| evidence that I need to conclude that broken search is a
| feature intended to drive new content creation. Functional
| search would make many new posts and comments unnecessary.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Well, I spend most of my Internet time there but I'd say that
| forum web pages like that are generally overvalued, so perhaps
| Reddit isn't undervalued after all and other companies are
| overvalued. Also, their ads only work for limited type of content
| like software and web apps. I tried an ad for a book there once
| and it had zero effect. My girlfriend always receives ads for
| military drones by Lockheed Martin, which is strange since she's
| only interested in cats and r/food.
|
| I guess one of the reasons why reddit is so popular is that it
| doesn't really work for this commercial stuff too well (and their
| website also breaks down from time to time). It's as charming as
| the cat gifs we watch on it.
| estacado wrote:
| Though big subreddits are too big for their own good, it has its
| unique value. It's serves as a battleground for people with
| agendas and a bellwether to what topics are hot right now in. The
| big subs as a collective are similar to what Digg was, but on a
| larger scale. It's more about influencing people than engaging
| them. I remember when almost 90% of Digg's frontage was submitted
| by MrBabyMan and there were complaints about that. The one-man
| show is impossible now on reddit, but groups with the similar
| agendas where it's at now on reddit.
| zeronine wrote:
| I'm sure George Carlin would love knowing one of his quotes
| prefaced an article about how a company can squeeze more
| advertising money out of it's user base.
|
| While I'm still complaining:
|
| "You now need an email to sign up..." You don't, you can just
| click 'next' without entering one.
|
| "The mobile experience was improved" It wasn't. It's designed to
| be so frustrating you just download the app.
| corobo wrote:
| > "The mobile experience was improved" It wasn't. It's designed
| to be so frustrating you just download the app.
|
| This is an absolute joke yeah. The page even has a button
| overlay "This looks better in the app" which I would take as an
| insult if I was their web dev but each to their own.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| Sometimes the click detection on the continue button is off
| so it pretends I clicked "Open in app" which is beyond
| frustrating.
|
| I would just use another website but I can't find one that
| has a similar mixture of cat gifs, old memes, far left
| propaganda, and occasional science news.
| RankingMember wrote:
| > Sometimes the click detection on the continue button is
| off
|
| The way that it only does that with that button really
| makes it hard for me to believe it's not intentional
| xNeil wrote:
| This might help:
| https://www.theverge.com/22275453/reddit-app-pop-up-turn-
| off...
| kitd wrote:
| Settings on the mobile page has an option to switch off "Ask
| to open in app". I don't see the "Use app" button now.
| monocasa wrote:
| It pretty regularly forgets that setting for me.
| baxtr wrote:
| Anyone why they try to get users into their app so hard? I
| mean if people are logging anyway tracking them is feasible
| on the web too.
| WhyCause wrote:
| Monetization.
|
| You can't use an ad blocker (easily) in an app, so they get
| to show you ads.
|
| If you decide to buy reddit gold (or whatever they're
| calling it now), then they get the money from that instead.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Yes, it's because an app lets them get more information
| about you than a website. Even if you don't give an app any
| permissions (which many people will do anyway).
| alasdair_ wrote:
| The mobile experience is atrocious. It's exactly what happens
| when you optimize for short-term value. Forcing people to
| download the app when they _clearly_ don 't want to is a great
| way to lose long-term users.
|
| I hate the new layout. I find the video player abysmal and I
| _loathe_ the mobile experience.
|
| Some of the content is still very good, but I feel like it's
| lessening as the anti-user hostility intensifies. It's a damn
| shame.
| villgax wrote:
| Worst is the lack of attention paid to saved posts, you can
| only scroll back to latest 1000 until you un-save or offload it
| you can't view older saved posts
| InvisibleUp wrote:
| https://i.reddit.com is the old mobile layout, and it still
| works fine for basic browsing and commenting.
| Guthur wrote:
| +1 on the mobile, the constant push and underhanded tactics to
| get me to download app is exceedingly annoying. Reddit is not
| the only guilty one there, though feel more insistent than
| many.
| everdrive wrote:
| I don't even use Reddit on mobile, solely because of this.
| throwaway-8c93 wrote:
| On Android, Reddit client RedReader is a great showcase of
| how pleasant and responsive modern applications could be, had
| they not been hobbled by tracking, ads, in-app purchase
| nudging, useless client-server roundtrips, etc.
|
| Minimalistic, but clear UI. Subreddits open nearly instantly.
| Discussion threads open instantly. Comments arranged by
| upvotes, not by Reddit's opaque scoring algorithm. No visual
| clutter. Minimal battery usage.
| petepete wrote:
| I've been a Sync user for years but I have a feeling that
| Reddit's API is going to be pulled in the not-too-distant
| future.
|
| Having an ad-free, clean, sensible UI isn't aligned with
| their current vision.
| executesorder66 wrote:
| > the constant push and underhanded tactics to get me to
| download app
|
| The worst one I ever saw said something like "Use the app to
| avoid tracking"
|
| Like how fucking retarded are you? How is the tracking not
| 10000 times worse on the app, you lying assholes!?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The situation with mobile reddit got out of control. It is
| impossible to browse anything without the app unless it is a
| post on r/popular or r/all.
|
| Out of spite I downloaded 'a' free reddit client and bought
| the full version. The constant stream of useless
| notifications of the official app is just disgusting.
| harryf wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com is still out there and everything
| seems to work
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Everything seems to work on the surface, until you
| actually start using it.
|
| Many newer features are half-implemented or not
| implemented at all.
|
| Some features which previously worked are broken.
|
| The setting for preference of the old.reddit interface is
| not stable, and gets reset sometimes.
|
| Even when the setting is preserved, there are nag
| messages to switch to the new one and/or the app.
|
| Also, I think just calling it "old." feels a bit
| condescending and patronizing to the user. It certainly
| communicates that its days are numbered, so why would I
| want to invest any more of my time into it?
| techer wrote:
| I regard it as "Old Faithful".
| oldHN wrote:
| Just use the old reddit extension for Firefox.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| a) I don't use Firefox. I use a particular browser with
| accessibility accommodations which Firefox does not
| offer.
|
| b) I doubt that the extension you reference solves most
| of the issues I mentioned, in particular the broken
| features.
|
| c) I think beginning your advice with the word "Just"
| makes it sound condescending and dismissive.
|
| Please consider reading this article:
| http://archive.is/J2ODQ
| jcims wrote:
| I'm guessing it was coming from a place of frustration,
| but as an impartial observer I found your response just
| as condescending. They should add 'a bullet-list of
| critiques' to the article.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Thank you for telling me, I'm going to review my post and
| try to improve my communication in the future.
|
| Yes, I am quite frustrated with frequently being told
| that I'm using the wrong browser or have it improperly
| configured.
| jcims wrote:
| It's just a limitation of the medium, all I ask is that
| you call me out when I inevitably do the same. :)
| gruez wrote:
| >Some features which previously worked are broken.
|
| Examples?
|
| >Also, I think just calling it "old." feels a bit
| condescending and patronizing to the user. It certainly
| communicates that its days are numbered, so why would I
| want to invest any more of my time into it?
|
| I guess they could call it "classic", but that'd be
| longer to type in the address bar.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| >Examples?
|
| Image galleries.
|
| Mod mail, rules list, and other mod features.
|
| A few others I can't remember and don't care enough to go
| digging for.
|
| Generally speaking, in the last couple of years, the more
| I use reddit, the less I want to use it. I've been pretty
| involved in it for 10+ years and used to love it. Reddit
| used to be a pretty important part of my life. It took a
| long time to de-train me from coming back to it, but
| they've done it. I hardly ever open it anymore, and I've
| routed www.reddit.com to localhost so that I wouldn't end
| up on the new design by accident. I've only done that for
| less than a dozen addresses.
| Diederich wrote:
| I've been using old.reddit.com since it was introduced,
| and a large fraction of that use is on mobile.
|
| > Image galleries.
|
| I don't have any trouble with these.
|
| > Mod mail, rules list, and other mod features.
|
| I don't do any moderation on reddit, so I'll take your
| word for it here.
|
| The biggest, frequent pain point I have with using reddit
| is their v.reddit.com videos. That is a garbage
| experience, but from what I understand, that experience
| is across old and new.
| gruez wrote:
| >Image galleries.
|
| seems to work fine with RES
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, when they follow Twitter and lock down third party
| apps will end half my Reddit usage and turning off old
| Reddit the other half.
|
| I would have said in the past that users like me who are
| resistant to introducing engagement mechanics/monetisation
| are why they're valued less than the likes of Twitter but
| recent stats I saw indicated old Reddit was like 15% of
| desktop users and the official app also had the majority of
| mobile users so looks like their plan to wait our the
| dilution of the long term user base is working so maybe
| that all changes in a few years.
|
| The unbundling suggestions seem like it'd hurt the long
| tail, a lot of the value that Reddit has to me is the
| smaller specialised communities which are able to get users
| because people can eventually get introduced to smaller
| subreddits from larger subreddits. Cut off that traffic
| growth path and many of these communities have a much
| reduced reason to set up on Reddit Vs elsewhere.
|
| The suggestions to move the focus from subreddits to users
| - it's something Reddit are subtly trying with redesigned
| profiles and more emphasis on people posting to profiles or
| following them, but to me it seems counter productive to
| what I like about Reddit. A subreddit can be kept on topic
| in a way a user cannot, and actually in many social circles
| there are pressures on people to make their views known on
| e.g. politics in twitter, where staying on whatever topic
| is actually discouraged
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I too am one of those users. I migrated to hackernews,
| but as you said, reddit offers much more in terms of
| communities around topics. These communities are absolute
| goldmines and, to me, it appears that they are the
| remnants of late 90s to late 2000s internet. I really
| liked the warez, infosec and hacker* communities of those
| times, unfortunately, I was too young and to be honest, I
| haven't gotten around to looking for such communities
| again.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Reddit is a monetization of Usenet.
|
| The farther they drift away from admitting that, the more
| tenuous their value proposition is going to be.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > The constant stream of useless notifications of the
| official app is just disgusting.
|
| I cannot imagine a world where I would allow reddit to send
| me _any_ push notifications _ever._
| Guthur wrote:
| I've no idea what the official app is like, but they're
| pushing it so hard that I can't imagine it's for my benefit
| :)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I just assumed because most people don't be able to block
| ads. Is the app anything more than a webview that doesn't
| get sent the 'make it crappy' parts from the server?
| trey-jones wrote:
| I'm not a heavy reddit user - I don't subscribe to any
| subreddits or anything like that. But I do have an
| account and I occasionally post and comment.
|
| I had the mobile app installed for a few months and I
| thought it was pretty good. I uninstalled it because I
| was using it to kill time on my phone, and it was
| becoming habitual (nothing going on? open reddit app). My
| solution to those types of things is to cut the cord, and
| I don't ever miss them.
|
| I would call it an upside actually, that I don't even
| want to browse the site on my phone.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| My cynicism backed hypothesis is that they want
| telemetry, location tracking and all that kind of stuff.
| Also knowing Tencent has a stake on Reddit [1], I am even
| more inclined to avoid it.
|
| [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/08/tencent-
| invests-so...
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| I was a relatively happy user of the app until they started
| making text blink in comments. The endless stream of awards
| was bad enough, but blinking text is where I draw thr line.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Yes, the blocking of AskHistorians unless you install the app
| borders on copyright infringement IMO.
|
| If I were that subreddit I'd have my own website with
| blackjack[ _] and ... the whole share of the ad revenue. And
| use the money to promote History rather than just to make
| Conde, or whoever 's, shareholders more wealthy.
|
| * but not actually blackjack, gambling advertising is awful._
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > the blocking of AskHistorians
|
| What are you referring to here?
| fumblebee wrote:
| On the bright side, for me at least, the repulsive mobile web
| experience has meant I spend drastically less time on Reddit.
| Shivetya wrote:
| At least on iOS the Apollo app is a true alternative to the
| reddit site/etc
| anothernewdude wrote:
| rif is still the better app, as is offline reddit.
| spinningarrow wrote:
| On iOS the Apollo app is truly fantastic. Also one of the
| best iOS apps I've used in general in terms of user
| experience.
| melomal wrote:
| Growth hacker of 8 years here.
|
| This smells like the brilliant plan of endless A/B testing that
| a unicorn did once, wrote about it on their company blog once
| it was used up, then everyone else followed.
|
| These are all growth 'levers' which on paper can drastically
| improve metrics which is what is needed to get those crazy
| valuations and huge funding rounds. In reality they make the
| experience poor for the user, however, outside of the tech
| world most people are not bothered by these tricks.
| bulibuta wrote:
| I use teddit.net now. Especially on mobile. Reddit has fallen
| pretty badly :(
| villgax wrote:
| Anyone interested in using an exporter for saved posts on your
| reddit account? Mine has a goldmine of stuff from over the years.
| neuronic wrote:
| The subversive marketing and political astroturfing really annoy
| me as a long time reddit user.
|
| Nowadays there are companies which sport hundreds or thousands of
| alt accounts to drive marketing or political agendas. Posts like
| the Enchroma (scam) advertising on r/pics last week are just the
| obvious tip of the ice berg.
|
| Companies share post _templates_ to just fill and spread in
| targeted subreddits. Many mods are paid for channeling the
| "right" content just like Instagram/YT influencers are paid for
| product placements.
|
| It's not some hobbyist forum for the more popular subs. It's a
| marketing engine.
| cirgue wrote:
| I feel like Reddit is evolving toward convergence with a chum
| box. It seems as though it was intentionally designed to be
| vulnerable to bad faith commercial activity, and its popularity
| is sort of sickening. Watching a bunch of kids sink their
| personal cash into a moribund pink sheet stock as part of a
| pump and dump and the subsequent David vs Goliath astroturfing
| was among the most depressing things I've ever witnessed on the
| internet.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The real money is in capturing subreddit moderators.
|
| It's an open secret in the PR industry that if you can get
| moderators of popular subreddits (for your market) on your
| side, then it's easy to throw the conversation in your favor.
|
| Moderators are the invisible hand the sway the conversation on
| Reddit. They have immense power to remove posts and comments
| that they disagree with.
|
| PR companies are more than happy to arrange for subreddit
| moderators to receive free product, chats with company
| executives, even trips for office or factory tours. It makes
| the moderators feel like they're "in" with the company, and
| they began moderating accordingly.
|
| In some cases, popular subreddit moderators simply start their
| own businesses selling to particular subreddits. Some of them
| truly are honest, but others are looking to make a quick buck
| selling courses, putting affiliate links in subreddit Wikis and
| other activities.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| /r/redditminusmods
| tpmx wrote:
| In the semi-official national subreddits for e.g. small-ish
| European countries you mostly see politics being pushed from
| moderators rather than products. I've grown quite suspicious
| of that lately, for the same reason.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| All the $LOCATION subs have a strong political leaning,
| mostly in the same direction, with some $LOCATION specific
| variance generally permitted.
| neuronic wrote:
| Yes, r/de for Germany is a heavily left leaning sub which
| routinely bans right opinion (note, I am not saying right
| extreme).
|
| Don't dare criticizing communism either, it's especially
| fun having West German 18yo students yell at me for
| disliking socialism as a former Soviet Union citizen.
| [deleted]
| neverminder wrote:
| Exactly the same can be said about r/uk with it's trigger
| happy mods. Their bashing of "fascists" is rather ironic,
| considering their heavy handed tactics.
| krtkush wrote:
| Add r/india to the list too.
| [deleted]
| troyvit wrote:
| I haven't read the article yet but I'm pretty sure the awful
| practices you and the parent post are describing are the real
| reasons why reddit is undervalued.
| neuronic wrote:
| Correct that's why I called it marketing engine. It's not
| open about it though.
| romanovcode wrote:
| To add to your posts. Around 50 most popular sub-reddits are
| moderated by the same people.
| jseliger wrote:
| The moderator problem was noticeable years ago:
| https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/16/the-moderator-problem-
| how... and has become more evident today.
| Accujack wrote:
| >The real money is in capturing subreddit moderators.
|
| Right. This also leads to some of the clearest evidence that
| Reddit (the corporation) isn't interested in actually being a
| discussion board, but has completely given itself over to
| leveraging its user base for money.
|
| Despite years of issues with subreddit mods selling out,
| taking over, censoring users, in general behaving badly and a
| complete lack of transparency, Reddit has changed nothing
| about how that system works.
| neverminder wrote:
| > Reddit has changed nothing about how that system works
|
| I'd say they have changed for the worse. In recent years
| they have quarantined or banned many even remotely
| controversial subreddits. Reddit admins are increasingly
| forcing SV's political ideology onto it's users. Ramping up
| censorship will be the end of Reddit, as users leave to
| look for alternatives.
| novok wrote:
| If they did, then they would have to pay them for their
| free labor and thats a can they do not want to open.
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| > The subversive marketing and political astroturfing really
| annoy me as a long time reddit user.
|
| It's not as if Hacker News is immune to this. Pay attention to
| some of the posts being pushed to the front page and the
| associated comments and you may notice similar shenanigans
| occuring here. This applies doubly so if the post is made
| during the weekend.[1]
|
| Considering the fact that many users on HN are reddit
| transplants, there is the inevitable spillover effect. Comments
| of the lowbrow variety have become more commonplace (e.g.
| comment threads made of low-hanging puns).
|
| Without strict moderation, this site too will devolve. After
| all, you can take the redditor out of reddit but you can't take
| the reddit out of the redditor.
|
| [1]: As one example, a couple weeks ago there was a new account
| created by a user for the sole purpose of selling their book on
| HN; they've only been active on that account for that one
| single post and (I strongly suspect) they used alts to
| artificially boost their post to the front page.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| At least here, we can flag-kill spam. On Reddit, flags go to
| the moderators to deal with. I will give you that: if @dang
| or @sctb are paid off, we'd be in trouble.
| surge wrote:
| Yeah, reddit has suffered it's Eternal September several times
| over. The astroturfing and low value content/commentary makes
| the default front page with the default sub-reddits like
| looking at a magazine rack at the check out counter. The niche
| sub-reddits (non-default) are sometimes worth going to but have
| their own issues with being echo chambers. In either case, I've
| reduced my usage of the site and been looking for other
| alternatives (besides this one) that I can kind of get in on
| the ground floor with.
| edrxty wrote:
| And in the vein of Eternal September, they're accidentally
| created a moat to prevent anyone from creating a board with
| its own unique culture because:
|
| A) everyone assumes reddit culture is internet culture and
| will transplant it everywhere (see HN over the years)
|
| B) reddit is big enough to have captured a large portion of
| internet discourse and therefore people who are deemed
| unwelcome are a significant portion of those who _aren 't_ on
| the platform. If you attempt to start a board, you'll quickly
| find that those individuals will descend on it and destroy it
| with hate unless you have exceptional moderation capacity.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Current internet model for products like that is ads revenue.
| Reddit ads are very irrelevant and most of the time straight out
| bad.
|
| Getting ads to work isn't easy. It's very competitive space, and
| barrier to entry is really high (you won't get serious money
| spent with you, if you don't deliver ROI).
|
| While Reddit does provide a lot of unique utility, as a business
| its is still questionable.
| romanovcode wrote:
| > While Reddit does provide a lot of unique utility, as a
| business its is still questionable.
|
| With paid-off moderators, astrosurfing and propaganda I'd say
| it's unethical at best.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| All social media sites except 4chan and Facebook die after a
| while being the #1 spot. I think the reality is that its not
| undervalued. Reddit is reaching its peak and inevitable collapse.
|
| Seems to me like either you become the #1 and stay there ie
| Facebook; or you make a complete disposable cluster'fk ie 4chan.
| There does not seem to be room for a middle ground.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| It might not be undervalued if the mobile app wasn't trash.
| yunruse wrote:
| As interesting as these data are, I'm not sure if there's
| necessarily anything wrong with the value of reddit's MAU. As the
| post lays out, it has a liminal feel to it, but that sorta loses
| its punch if you put all thrusters into redesigning without any
| clear goal.
|
| As it stands, I find reddit's award system nice in principle, but
| in practice it feels so obnoxious that, ironically, I paid for a
| third-party client that smooths over the UI weirdnesses and hides
| this layer. But it ultimately remains a layer on top of things
| that can be hidden. Change that up, and it becomes something the
| user can't ignore, and you risk damaging community at the expense
| of profit.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| FYI, Reddit doesn't care if you complain about the site, as long
| as you still use it.
| cwhiz wrote:
| No better place to build your own bubble and insulate yourself
| from any thoughts, opinions, or ideas that might make you
| uncomfortable.
|
| And don't forget the massive astroturfing, corporate bots, paid
| off moderators, and karma system that is designed to be
| addictive.
|
| It's definitely undervalued in terms of how great of a place it
| is to sow division and push people to more extreme political
| thoughts.
| buttholesurfer wrote:
| It's a shame reddit has become an echo chamber for the far left.
|
| For example try posting anything right of extreme left on the
| wrongly named subreddit /r/politics. You will get banned
| instantly and if you don't get banned you'll be met with hundreds
| of downvotes in a matter of minutes. The sub /r/pics might as
| well be /r/liberalpropaganda, /r/news should be /r/leftnews.
| These are just a few examples.
|
| Let's not forget the part where the CEO changes users comments.
|
| Reddit should be avoided.
| williesleg wrote:
| Welcome to digg. That's what happened to them right before they
| went out. It's been fun.
| jC6fhrfHRLM9b3 wrote:
| Reddit is a leftist echo chamber
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| What _is_ Reddit 's value? There's no secret sauce, its
| popularity just comes from the network effect. The UI/UX post-
| redesign is horrible and slow, and the site is bombarded with
| politics and hatred.
|
| I've had a few Reddit accounts over the years and always deleted
| them after a few posts. Nobody is capable of having a decent
| debate without ad hominems, strawman arguments, and downvote
| bombing. Any opinion against the grain will be silenced and
| probably just banned. For this reason I actually think Reddit is
| one of the worse social media sites. I only use it to consume
| content now and try to stay away from the main subreddits.
| lrem wrote:
| Huh? Well, Reddit is a platform, not a community. A sane usage
| pattern is to come for a sub, create an account and immediately
| unsubscribe from all the other subs. I find the communities I
| participate in not as bad as you describe. But a community
| defined as "everyone who cares about politics" is simply
| doomed.
|
| Now, to answer your original question: the value Reddit
| provides is having a single account for all my communities,
| instead of registering to umpteen PhpBB. This allows for a much
| more efficient antispam. Also more efficient ads, so they do
| have a business out of this.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Nobody is capable of having a decent debate without ad
| hominems, strawman arguments, and downvote bombing.
|
| Definitely the same experience here. Holding a conversation on
| reddit is usually not a pleasant experience. There's tons of
| great information on reddit, but it's a diamond in the rough
| sort of situation.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| My experience hasn't been so rough, but I agree overall.
| Discussions are REALLY hit or miss. I've commented a fair
| amount there, and some of the conversations are pretty great.
| It's like a 33%-33%-33%. You get a good conversation, a
| terrible one, or nobody notices.
|
| I agree about reddit's value being elusive. AFAIK this is
| because it arguably isn't so valuable. They don't seem to
| monetize excessively. It's not like Facebook that really feels
| like an advertising and data shilling firm. There's just a jpeg
| on the side panel. I imagine they sell some data, maybe even
| pay to win? (or they will soon)
|
| Reddit is very valuable in that it essentially controls society
| and "influences" people's behavior. It remains to be seen how
| much of that can be turned into money, and how it'll effect the
| site. I wouldn't be shocked to see another exodus, sale, and
| rebranding as a new media company, like Digg in the next 5-10
| years... I wouldn't predict it, but I wouldn't be surprised
| either.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >What is Reddit's value
|
| Reputation.
|
| If Toyota and Kitchenaid started selling dead bloated racoons
| with their respective badges on them people would still be
| buying them 20yr from now because a bunch of people on Reddit
| (who already bought in based on prior Redditors' commentary)
| and don't want to feel like fools) told them to buy that brand.
|
| It's no different than any other company selling out its brand
| name.
|
| I fully agree that the userbase is just politness colored
| lipstick on the old 4chan pig (every "platform" where riff raff
| from one niche can easily show up and crap all over another
| niche has this problem) but that doesn't really impact their
| ability to make money as a business.
| screye wrote:
| Reddit is the only all encompassing hobbyist forum still
| remaining on the internet.
|
| I follow my favorite youtubers on their subreddit. I have spent
| countless hours discussing manga, cars, soccer, politics (in a
| civil way), find prog bands, food science and so much more.
|
| I can say this confidently: "None of those activities would be
| as much fun if I did not have my fellow redditors to enjoy it
| with."
|
| The main subreddits are trash, but that's the point. Reddit
| might just be able to rapidly scale up to letting normies in,
| without letting the first-adopters feel like reddit has lost
| its charm. Specifically, there will be 2 reddits. One would be
| the front page with a tiktok-esque stream of memes, outrage and
| short videos; and the other would be the niche subreddits that
| function similarly to hacker news in terms of strict moderation
| and deliberate inaccessibility.
|
| Now I am not sure if this genius of reddit is intentional or if
| the founders stumbled into what is probably the only survival
| plan for a business where scaling up inevitably leads to a huge
| drop in the value proposition of the platform itself.
|
| Conde Nast made an incredible acquisition; and not having the
| market pressures of a public company might have something to do
| with Reddit's success.
|
| _________
|
| edit: because I must shill for them some more
|
| Reddit is also THE PLACE on the internet for the best surreal
| humour and organic decentralized art as social experiences.
| Subreddits like r/196, r/2meirl42meirl4meirl and r/kenm are
| completely inaccessible without knowing the meta-story around
| them, but have me rolling on the floor like nothing else.
| r/place is the most well known reddit decentralized art
| experience, but r/hqg, and r/youdontsurf create humor and art
| from a constrained format that can be so meta that the entire
| front page could be purely self-referential.
| colineartheta wrote:
| As a fellow redditor, I just wanted to say that your final
| paragraph perfectly puts to words my enjoyment of those
| wildly strange and wonderfully creative self-referential
| subreddits. So, thanks, for your words.
| screye wrote:
| :)
|
| I edited it in later. I felt an urge to say it, because it
| is an aspect of reddit that often goes unappreciated.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| The bigger question is: why must hobbyist forums be all-
| encompassing? Setting up a phpbb is trivial, so what is the
| advantage to me the user having a single identity linking my
| professional conversations about software with my more casual
| conversations about unicycle rally racing?
| screye wrote:
| Convenience and consistency.
|
| I was a big user of forums before reddit, and I am glad it
| has centralized.
|
| IMO, it is pretty obvious. It is the same reason any social
| media website has 1 identity for everything on it.
|
| > linking professional conversations and casual
| conversations
|
| You know you can alt accounts right ?
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| "Having a single identity for all of your interests is
| more convenient" and "you can have multiple identities to
| keep your interests separate" seem like pretty
| contradictory statements.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Yes they are, and yes some users want both at the same
| time. Users are complicated.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I can think of many reasons, but I'll limit them to:
|
| 1. visibility - it is easier for users to find the
| community on reddit. Both from search engines, and
| "organically" on reddit.
|
| 2. foot traffic - users don't need to remember that you
| exist to visit, once a sub is in a user's feed, they will
| see all of the new posts.
|
| 3. Setting up a server and installing forum software might
| be "easy," but it is still much more difficult than setting
| up a subreddit.
|
| The only real benefit to setting up a phpbb server is that
| you might get some revenue from ad traffic once the
| userbase grows up some.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I think the difficulty in setting up a server and
| installing forum software is eclipsed by the time,
| effort, and liability stress from moderating the content
| and dealing with illegal or undesireable content /
| malware.
|
| To me, one of the impressive things about Reddit is how
| they have managed to be a mainstream site with porn, and
| how they manage to keep it off their front page.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Probably true, but people don't learn that until after
| they've set up a subreddit and it's gotten somewhat
| successful.
|
| For their own site, they're immediately hit with a wall
| of pain as they try to figure out what all they need to
| know just to get their first user. And there's nothing
| driving those users to their new forum, either.
| opportune wrote:
| I think the easiest way to implement the "2 Reddits" idea
| would to just have old.reddit.com's contents be exclusive to
| old Reddit. I doubt many long time users like the facebook-
| ish UI which is designed to serve you full screen ads
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Reddit is a good example of "tyranny by majority" in my
| opinion. You can see it in action with downvoting opinions
| people simply don't agree with. It doesn't matter if you have a
| dozen sources if the 51% simply downvote it for disagreeing.
|
| And Reddit's UI design is truly terrible. I know it's for
| fitting in more ads, but going from seeing 20 posts per page,
| and an ad mixed in, to see 2 (sometimes even 1) post that may
| be an ad is insane.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| IME reddit isn't that bad, but it is bad. I can get a good
| comment upvoted, but not 100% of the time. It's like 50-75%
| of my comments depending on the tone or disagreement.
|
| Some really batty and bigoted stuff gets upvoted all the
| time, but IMO the platform is overall very left leaning. It
| can be pretty inconsistent.
|
| Communities like HN are better, but elsewhere on social media
| it can get really bad. Digg was horrendous. I don't think I
| saw a single unpopular opinion not get buried into oblivion.
| Then I switched to reddit and it's that solid 50-75% I
| mentioned. You might have to pander or sugar coat it, but you
| can get the idea out there. It was a big improvement. I think
| reddit is a cesspool for other reasons.
| neutronicus wrote:
| It is a good platform for hobby communities, because it is:
|
| 1. Pseudonymous
|
| 2. Location-agnostic
|
| 3. Comments are structured as a tree instead of a flattened
| list, and nodes at the same level are sorted by popularity
|
| Old-school message boards met the first two requirements, but I
| think the third characteristic is a huge improvement over
| trying to pick the discussion out of the multiple simultaneous
| flamewars with which it was interleaved on comp.lang.lisp or
| any of the old phpBB. On a hobby subreddit generally the top
| reply and its highest-ranked comment chain are on-topic and
| informative.
|
| Its biggest competition now is probably something like Facebook
| Groups, but Facebook is constantly trying to push you towards
| real-name-focused, location-aware stuff, and its implementation
| of a comment tree is pretty half-assed because at the end of
| the day it wants you scrolling a feed, not lingering on a
| heavily-ramified comment tree. At the moment my wife and I use
| Facebook for neighborhood groups and Reddit for hobby
| subreddits (and memes).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 3 is absolutely terrible for discussion of topics with even
| the slightest amount of complexity and nuance to them or
| topics where the discussion would occur over more than a
| short time. You get unique top level comments but the up-
| voted stuff is just lowest common denominator and the tree
| below that initial first level winds up highly replicated.
| Then there's the inherent fake consensus problem of the
| upvote/downvote system.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Basically everything that has a chance to show up on /r/all is
| trash.
|
| Checking out what people in /r/country suggests for turists
| before you visit is pretty valuable. So is advice in
| /r/slowcooking, /r/yourhobby and so forth. Basically it allows
| people to create communities even if they have on technical
| skills.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The membership of /r/country subs skews heavily towards
| teenagers and people in their early twenties. They aren't a
| very good source of tourist advice, because they haven't had
| the opportunity in their lives yet to travel much themselves.
| Also, they tend to be a demographic that identifies itself as
| cosmopolitan and English-speaking, to the point where they
| are often ashamed of rural and folkloric traditions that
| tourists would be interested in.
| throwaway-8c93 wrote:
| How much value can you get our of Reddit heavily depends on
| which subreddits you subscribe to. r/news or r/politics is a
| cesspool.
|
| r/askhistorians is pure gold. Hobbyist subreddits are extremely
| valuable - discussions are polite, to the point, high-quality
| posts get consistently upvoted. r/coronavirus and r/COVID19
| have been pivotal in making sense of the situation in early
| March (though r/coronavirus turned into a parody of the former
| self once Covid started spreading in the US). r/nottheonion or
| r/gaming are often hilarious.
|
| There are three important steps to turn Reddit into a useful
| tool:
|
| - Unsubscribe from the subreddits you find toxic
|
| - Learn to use 'Sort by Top - this week/day'
|
| - On PC, visit old.reddit.com instead of reddit.com. On mobile,
| use a third-party client like RedReader or Appolo
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I know a great deal about a few topics. Based on the quality
| of discussion of those topics on Reddit I have zero reason to
| believe that any content of a deeper than "asking questions
| so shallow you could Google them and the blog spam sites
| would have the unambiguously correct answer" is of high
| enough quality to be trustworthy.
| jhedwards wrote:
| > Hobbyist subreddits are extremely valuable
|
| I recently subscribed to r/AskElectronics and I have been
| amazed at the supportiveness of the community. Every time
| I've posted a picture of some stupid noob mistake I made, I
| get a deluge of responses helping me understand in detail
| what I did wrong, along with some good-natured stories of
| people remembering when they made the same mistake. It's
| lovely, I'd bake every one of them a pie if I could.
| jcims wrote:
| For really small subreddits that don't have much activity,
| you can access the most recent comments directly by tagging
| on /comments to the subreddit url, e.g.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/
| kfajdsl wrote:
| > On PC, visit old.reddit.com
|
| There's a setting that makes it so you default to the old UI,
| whether you're on old.reddit.com or just reddit.com.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Yeah, I do the synthesizer sub on reddit and it's pretty
| chill. Running / synthesizers / pianolearning have been
| nothing, but positive. People are on their best behavior
| because they don't want to ruin it or be the bad apple.
| Accujack wrote:
| > r/coronavirus and r/COVID19 have been pivotal in making
| sense of the situation in early March (though r/coronavirus
| turned into a parody of the former self once Covid started
| spreading in the US).
|
| I watched this happen first hand. It went from being a solid
| scientific discussion and sharing of information to being
| another part of Reddit's control system for public opinion.
| It just underwent that transformation faster than most subs
| do because of the impetus of the pandemic.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| For me, the problem isn't the politics. On many special-
| interest subreddits for various hobbies you avoid the politics
| almost entirely. The problem is that gradually over the years,
| the vast majority of people posting on Reddit have been using
| mobile phones.
|
| Because mobile keyboards are so annoying to type on length on,
| that has resulted in posts getting shorter and shorter, down to
| one-line Twitter-like replies that are almost information-free
| and don't provide much of the skillsharing that people used to
| turn to hobby forums for. If you post a couple of solid
| paragraphs, the same length of text that was normal on Reddit
| just a few years ago, you look weird and out of place among the
| one-line posts. You might even get some mockery: "haha wall of
| text bro".
|
| I would love to leave Reddit entirely and return to the phpBB
| forums of yore where substantial conversation could continue.
| The problem is that Reddit has eaten their userbase, leaving
| only a handful of elderly people or cranks, and the feeling of
| a ghost town.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Yeah, I agree it shouldn't take you minutes to read a
| comment, but 0.5-2m is acceptable. You can read 3 paragraphs,
| get that weak shit out of here.
|
| Then people act like they're totally pwning you by not
| participating in conversation (which is fine, but then just
| STFU). This is something I do for fun. It's a hobby, I don't
| care about the time. No need to be a jerk about it. They
| probably kick over people's sandcastles, too.
| [deleted]
| touristtam wrote:
| The same can be said from any media that gives its user a
| voice, from the current website to Twitter.
| opportune wrote:
| Reddit is so popular that the "quality" of users has become
| very poor just by sheer virtue of the number of people using
| it. Also the 25-75%ile ages are probably like 17-24 so there is
| a good chance you're having a conversation with actual
| teenagers
| AJ007 wrote:
| A low quality comment: you don't even know if it a person. In
| 2021 you actually need a coherent multi-paragraph post, and a
| lot of them, to separate a human from a bot. Presumably,
| there are also a tremendous amount of fake accounts
| regurgitating low quality information in order to help bump
| specific posts. That is a perverse incentive of the way their
| system is structured. The same can/does happen on hn but that
| activity has some counterbalances.
|
| Reddit strikes me as being well in to its post-spam usenet
| phase. Instead of being drowned in blatant spam, it is
| drowned in noise.
|
| A recurring complaint I've heard from friends - experts on
| narrow topics - is that particular subreddits around a given
| topic are just dominated with incorrect information. This
| isn't political. It isn't opinionated. It is topics that may
| have ranges of correctness, but posters are just repeating
| things that are completely wrong - as if they have no
| personal experience in the subject.
|
| That is a big problem. If you were to look at various more
| political and activist subreddits (including banned ones that
| migrated elsewhere), the conclusion may be that many reddit
| user's lives are far worse off with it. When the blind are
| leading the blind off the side of a cliff, the outcome is
| predictable.
| momento wrote:
| I must agree with the points on the UI/UX. I just opened the
| app and 95% of what I see on the screen I do not care about.
| The fact that only 1 list item is immediately available to me
| as a user is just bizzare.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/YwHTQWa.png: I have highlighted what
| actually matters to me as user.
|
| There's just so much noise in this new UI. All I want to see is
| the title, the source, the subreddit the post belongs to, how
| many comments it has, and MAYBE the upvote count. Put all the
| navigation stuff in a hidden drawer - it doesn't need to be on
| the screen all the time and let me switch off these silly
| awards (or at least tone them down). The rest of the screen is
| taken up by elements that simply don't need to be on the screen
| all the time. The search bar can be put in a menu to free up
| space for more posts. The thumbnails don't need to be there all
| the time. I don't need an immediately available button to buy
| Reddit coins / awards. The new awards system (while lucrative)
| is a complete eyesore and often takes up as much space (if not
| more) than the title of the post itself.
|
| I cannot express how grateful I am that HN as opted to remain
| with this simple UI. It's all we need.
| wombat-man wrote:
| the old reddit UI is a lot better and you can still use it.
| The new reddit UI has been around for a while now, and I
| think it's actually getting slower. I really tried to like
| it, but I opted out a month or two ago.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I have posted elsewhere about the value of Reddit. Even if you
| ignore the massive network effects, the _main_ value is:
|
| 1. Sign up once, log in everywhere
|
| 2. Follow and interact with all of your communities (and groups
| of related communities) all on the same platform.
|
| 3. Better UX for browsing/scanning and text-oriented
| conversations (no avatars/signatures, collapsible threads) than
| traditional bulletin boards.
|
| 4. Greater sense of interactivity and participation through
| upvoting, with a natural flow towards posting. First you read
| logged out, then you make an account just to upvote and
| downvote a few things, and finally you make a comment or two.
| Again, lacking an analogue in other platforms.
|
| No other platform has even come close to this except HN, and HN
| is still _one_ community, not a network of easily-cross-
| linkable thousands.
|
| To disrupt Reddit 7 years ago you just needed to recognize this
| and do the same thing but better. To disrupt Reddit now, IDK
| good luck, inertia is real.
| felix1996 wrote:
| I think Imgur is one of the first unbundling examples which I
| think at one point had alexa rank lower than reddit.
| greg387 wrote:
| Thanks for posting!
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Parts of reddit are of large negative value to the world. But I
| guess those are social externalities from the advertiser's point
| of view.
| est wrote:
| China has an MAU just behind Germany? Is this a glitch in the
| Wall?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| I really hope Greg Isenburg is never given any power over any
| website I care about.
|
| These are all awful ideas.
| ElectricMind wrote:
| Any thing where people are product is not undervalued. Question
| should why they valued non-zero?
| dmos62 wrote:
| I really enjoyed how alien your phrasing seems. I understand it
| and I don't at the same time. It takes some time to realise
| that the order of words is non-standard and some filler words
| are missing. A very pleasant dissonance.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _The mobile experience was improved_
|
| This has already been said, but needs it's own dedicated comment.
|
| In isolation one might think this comment is sarcasm, but seeing
| it in context in the article it seems genuine enough. If so, the
| author has likely never used Reddit, so it's odd to be calling on
| them to write an article on it.
|
| A little bit of research shows the author seems to be known for
| selling a few companies I've never heard of pretty early on after
| they've been founded, so I guess their main expertise is exits.
| One would still think they would've used Reddit once or twice
| though...
| TACIXAT wrote:
| Their mobile site is now a deluge of prompts trying to get you
| to download their app. They've broken the ability to easily
| view comment threads. It is seriously such trash.
|
| I find myself accidentally tapping something that either opens
| something new or closes what I was looking at. The back button
| behavior is bad with the post pop overs. The home page doesn't
| even preserve scroll position when going back from a post
| (Safari iOS)!
|
| It is not a website I visit regularly anymore. Someone should
| do a github1s equivalent for reddit, even if it is read only.
| rakoo wrote:
| > Someone should do a github1s equivalent for reddit, even if
| it is read only
|
| https://teddit.net/
| lucideer wrote:
| I assume you must be talking about the mobile app, rather
| than the "mobile experience" of the Reddit website. And it's
| just occurred to me that the author may have been referring
| to the same.
|
| I've never used the app but I presume it is a lot better than
| the mobile website.
| Firebrand wrote:
| The mobile experience has improved for "normies" looking to
| consume funny pictures and videos on /r/popular, not the power
| users who comment or use niche subreddits.
|
| The Reddit app's push for live-streaming and their recent
| acquisition of DubSmash makes me suspect they're looking to
| compete with TikTok as well.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| Another episode of soy chugger sucks reddit's dick. You're all
| such pathetic unimaginative faggots.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Unbundling the big subreddits is an interesting idea, but further
| meddling with the activity of a subreddit's valuable core users
| is more likely to destroy the value of that community than unlock
| it.
|
| Reddit's enduring quality comes from its supporting of a basic
| platform that allows continuous growth of some niche subreddits
| until they 'fail' and scare away its core users, having those
| core users found new niche subreddits which themselves go
| mainstream and 'fail'. Rinse repeat.
|
| r/WallStreetBets was an enormous social media success story but I
| have huge doubts that Reddit could give a team the job of
| unbundling that sub without that team poisoning the magic.
|
| The "meaningful upgrades" I thought were pretty solid.
| seastonATccs wrote:
| buying stock in /r/wallstreetbets?
|
| Are we now approaching metameme stock?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-23 23:02 UTC)