[HN Gopher] Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit...
___________________________________________________________________
Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
Author : jl
Score : 92 points
Date : 2023-04-23 12:50 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pod.link)
(TXT) w3m dump (pod.link)
| earthscienceman wrote:
| This is a nice time to remind everyone that Aaron Swartz died
| while fighting for a freer internet and a freer world. He is, by
| Paul Graham, considered a founder of reddit but is rarely
| mentioned in these stories.
|
| Instead of trying to go for broke and grind till he could cash
| out, Aaron put his skin in the game for what the internet should
| become. Which gets more relevant everyday that the internet
| megacorps consolidate power, control information, and shape the
| public discourse. Reddit is one such site. They should be
| embarrassed by how they dismissed the ethical dilemmas of
| operating reddit in favor of making a profit.
| dangus wrote:
| Well, that's what _sort of_ happened.
|
| He broke in to an MIT networking closet (he was never a student
| there, and MIT is not a public university) and connected his
| equipment to the network.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2013/12/swartz-video/
|
| There are a lot of much more legal ways to make the Internet
| freer. He was a smart guy and knew what he was doing was
| _highly_ illegal. It goes without saying that it 's very tragic
| that he decided to end his life.
|
| I think that this is the major issue with martyrdom. Aaron is
| remembered for "fighting the man" but the real story is a
| significantly muddier than that. A martyr's death makes it seem
| like the martyr did nothing wrong even if they did, so tread
| carefully on idolizing them. (You and I certainly wouldn't
| appreciate a stranger breaking into our homelab closets and
| attaching equipment, and in many states we would be within our
| rights to defend our property with deadly force on sight).
|
| People like Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman make the
| Internet and computing more free while avoiding blatant, stupid
| lawbreaking. Aaron sadly isn't around to make the successor to
| Reddit or do _anything_ to help make the Internet more free.
|
| I'm not trying to say that the feds being intimidating is
| _right_ , but, ya know, Aaron did the _exact_ sort of thing
| that goes _far_ beyond petty crime.
|
| Sorry, I know this is kind of a dumb and not so productive soap
| box. Oh well.
| maister wrote:
| > He broke in to an MIT networking closet (he was never a
| student there) and connected his equipment to the network.
|
| The closet was unlocked and he used a regular guest access to
| the MIT network. Also he was downloading documents that were
| created by using public funds.
|
| > There are a lot of much more legal ways to make the
| Internet freer. He was a smart guy and knew what he was doing
| was highly illegal.
|
| There are always other and more effective ways to everything.
| With this kind of argumentation one always must come to the
| conclusion that it is best to do nothing. Also let's not
| forget that he did much more than downloading documents at
| MIT.
|
| > think that this is the major issue with martyrdom. Aaron is
| remembered for "fighting the man" but the real story is a
| significantly muddier than that. A martyr's death makes it
| seem like the martyr did nothing wrong even if they did.
|
| That's a definition for martyrdom I have not heard before.
| Usually a martyr is simply defined as a person who is willing
| to suffer or even die for a cause, belief, or principle that
| they consider to be of great importance.
|
| > Sorry, I know this is kind of a dumb and not so productive
| soap box. Oh well.
|
| I will simply never understand why people will argument so
| strongly against their self interests.
| dangus wrote:
| I'm not really talking about the definition of martyrdom,
| I'm talking about the effects of martyrdom on the general
| public.
|
| E.g., what would Christianity become had Jesus not died on
| the cross? The central motivation of the Christian faith is
| that Christ died for our sins. It wouldn't be so impactful
| if Jesus died of old age like everyone else.
|
| I'm basically saying that being a martyr is something that
| amplifies a person's image, and that's the reason why Aaron
| came up in the first place.
|
| If he took the six month plea deal and was alive today, he
| would not be part of this discussion.
| nullc wrote:
| I'd agree that people aren't invoking him because they
| care about him personally, people seldom give a darn when
| someone else isn't being given full credit. But I think
| it doesn't have anything to do with martyrdom: People
| were complaining about the reddit thing wrt Aaron while
| he was alive too.
|
| The comments are driven out of concern and feelings of
| loss related to reddit's former perceived public-spirited
| democratic spirit in favor of corporate interests. It's
| only natural that people would highlight an early
| participant who seemed more aligned with their
| perspective and who seems to have been diminished in the
| modern narrative.
|
| Does Aaron's separation with reddit explain its cultural
| changes? Things are seldom that simple. But when talking
| on a forum about our concerns with how reddit has changed
| over the years a simple view is perfectly appropriate--
| so for some people bringing up the missing co-founder, is
| a suitable way to express their views.
| dangus wrote:
| Perhaps you're right...which brings up another point: all
| these people building idealist products need to stop
| selling out to investors and acquiring companies.
|
| The recent news about Imgur violating its original
| purpose of being the anti-photobucket image host for
| Reddit is the same thing, and even worse: Imgur was
| bootstrapped.
|
| A founder can't be said to have an idealist perspective
| if they sell their idealist platform to the highest
| bidder.
|
| Jack Dorsey also comes to mind.
| nullc wrote:
| hah. For Dorsey the point that happened was when he made
| it public, I believe he's said he regretted that! :)
|
| But I think the invocation of imgur brings up a good
| point. Was what we believed imgur to be ever actually
| economically viable? They were "bootstrapped" but $40
| million in 2013, back before almost all of their impact.
|
| At least some of the funded things that 'sell out' were
| just never viable to begin with.
|
| It's far from clear to me that reddit couldn't have
| become more like Wikipedia-- driven by its community and
| funded through public support-- but there are lots of
| things that we could decry for violating their purpose
| that I think couldn't exist economically in their
| original more public-spirited form.
|
| I find myself wondering more how often alternatives that
| are viable but just a little less good are driven out of
| the market or prevented from ever being created by funded
| alternatives which aren't viable... leaving us stuck on a
| bait and switch tread-mill while the services we actually
| need die for lack of support.
| nullc wrote:
| I think your comment manages to be both uncharitable and
| misleading. Until very recently the MIT campus was extremely
| open and accessible to everyone. A great many non-mit
| students have many experiences going places far more dubious,
| including steam tunnels and machine rooms deep under the
| buildings. Can you tell me how many of them have been
| _federally prosecuted_? Can you name even one? If you could
| then perhaps we can have a good faith discussion about
| "highly illegal" and "far beyond petty crime".
|
| Even after the new lockdowns (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33352567 ) the building
| in question is one of the ones _still_ open to the general
| public. Tossing your equipment into an equipment closet, to
| access the exact same network you can access elsewhere but
| with reduced risk of some vagrant walking off with it is the
| same thing most people would do if they needed to leave some
| equipment connected and didn 't have access to a more secure
| location.
|
| There is just no way to deny that what Aaron was being
| prosecuted for was 'downloading too many scientific papers
| while having an anti-monopolist mindset'. Any mere urban
| explorer who arguably trespassed into a school facility would
| at most be facing a local trespassing charge, and in a case
| like this where the facility was expressly open to the
| general public and their unauthorized access was to an
| unlocked wiring closet, those charges likely wouldn't have
| stuck (or wouldn't have resulted in a very consequential
| sentence). Usually trespassers, when caught, are just kicked
| out and not charged at all. Exactly the sort of "petty crime"
| not-"highly-illegal" stuff you argue it wasn't.
|
| Is it unfortunate that the feds had an option to cloak their
| almost nakedly political prosecution behind a complaint of
| dubious deeds? Wouldn't it have been better (for him) if he'd
| asked one of his many friends that had offices at MIT if he
| could leave a computer in their office? Sure. But we don't
| get to pick the cases that are used to defend our rights, the
| prosecutors get to pick... and they pick ones they think they
| have the best odds of winning, or in other words the cases
| with the best chance of letting them erode our rights, the
| best chance of having a chilling effect, the best chance of
| not resulting in a loss for the state that instead
| strengthens the freedoms they're trying to undermine.
|
| So it's almost inevitable that our privacy is defended
| through the lens of accused pedophiles our our freedom of
| speech through obvious racists. The case being unfortunate is
| a _default_. But by comparison with those, prosecuting Aaron
| Swartz over this was like federally prosecuting hippy anti-
| war protesters putting up posters for _littering_. Wouldn't
| it have been better if did nothing that could be accused of
| being littering? Yes but the prosecutor would simply have
| waited for a different case where someone did, and it would
| just be that case being used to chill the public's freedoms.
| We could be a lot worse off than fighting for access to
| (primarily publicly funded!) knowledge through an accused
| trespasser. The choice of case would matter personally to the
| accused, but not to us-- if anything it's not hard to imagine
| a case much more muddled than one against Aaron that they
| could have used, say someone with a arguable commercial angle
| or a connection to a hostile state interest. Whatever case is
| being used as a proxy to attack the rights of all of the rest
| of us will _always_ have some extra angle making it more
| complicated.
|
| Sadly Aaron didn't get the support he needed from the public
| (including myself), he wasn't in the right place to see it
| through, and the intensity of federal prosecution is just out
| of odds with producing justice in the face of potentially
| vulnerable targets. It did end the political aspirations of
| the prosecutor, for whatever its worth.
| kodah wrote:
| It'd be nice if they'd stop trying erase Aaron's work on Reddit
| but that's been underway for some time, and I'm not even really
| sure why. I can't fathom an end-goal where marginalizing
| Aaron's contributions is a benefit to them.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| To my recollection Aaron Swartz was anti-establishment; the
| reddit he was part of was grass-roots, laissez-faire, no
| holds barred, ... whilst reddit today is part of the media
| establishment, much more top-down, heavily modded and
| censored.
|
| Reddit in the post digg-exodus days seemed like a veneer of
| 'news' covering one of _the_ seedy underbellies of the web.
| Not only, but to a large extent _a hive of scum and villainy_
| ; not a chan-site but similarly lacking in societal
| respectability.
|
| ?
| benatkin wrote:
| He was only there for a few months, so I don't think the
| reddit community changed much and drove him off that way.
| It was like it was when it started for several years.
|
| kn0thing and spez seem like they have a lot in common with
| Elon politically. Aaronsw not so much.
|
| Sorry I can't seem to explain how I perceive their
| political differences at the moment and instead am just
| giving an example.
| birken wrote:
| If I had to guess as to why his contributions are
| marginalized, it would be that his contributions were ~16
| years ago to a version of the website that is vastly
| different in scope and scale to the one that exists today.
| Founders are important entities for companies, but just
| having the title of "founder" doesn't also magically mean
| whatever contributions and decisions you made have to be
| memorialized and defended forever after so many things have
| changed.
| [deleted]
| benatkin wrote:
| Hmm. Tesla would be a bad analogy but what you said would
| apply to them as well. To give the founder of Tesla zero
| credit, as Elon does, seems wrong.
|
| He wasn't really like Facebook's other founders either.
| (Unlike Elon and Tesla, Zuckerberg is unquestionably a
| founder of Facebook.) Zuckerberg gave them too little
| credit, but at least one of them demanded too much credit
| IMO. That doesn't make it right for Zuckerberg to give them
| too little credit.
| birken wrote:
| There is a very big difference between giving no credit
| and giving a fair amount of credit, which might be small.
| If you listened to the podcast they talked about Aaron in
| a non-disparaging way, and a way that I'm sure is
| accurate to their beliefs about it.
|
| But my point is that _even if_ Aaron was super, super
| important to the company 16 years ago (which I can't
| speak to), Reddit was a tiny little fledgling of what it
| is now. From what little I know about Reddit's history, I
| know that Aaron stopped working on Reddit very soon after
| he started and has had no contribution to the company
| since then.
|
| I also do think it's interesting that the people that
| have worked at Reddit for years/decades all seem to have
| a similar opinion of the situation, and the people who
| haven't worked at Reddit at all are the ones that feel so
| strongly that Aaron is being wronged somehow.
|
| Maybe Aaron himself was more proud of all the other
| things he accomplished! Saying he was an important but
| small part of Reddit's story is still something!
| benatkin wrote:
| If people have to listen to a podcast to hear them
| present a balanced view, clearly they've failed to do so
| publicly.
|
| I'll pass on listening to the podcast, there are
| thousands of others I'd rather listen to. Thanks anyways.
| birken wrote:
| Well I guess we'll both agree to disagree about the
| nuances of the early years of Reddit, something neither
| of us know anything about. Oh well.
| benatkin wrote:
| I think I understand it pretty well.
|
| Edit: I had to retract what I said here because a lot of
| things the reddit founders said from 2006-2009 seem to be
| missing and I couldn't find anything to back it up
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20339
| benatkin wrote:
| Yeah it was long before the government went after Aaron. You
| could hear it straight from spez but the comment linked here
| is deleted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| It's owned by a Chinese company from what I understand. I don't
| think they have a particular bone with Aaron, but generally
| just believe in deleting inconvenient controversies.
| eco wrote:
| Tencent owns 5% of reddit.
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| 5% based on fictional evaluation, but $150 of the last $300
| mil raised. Certainly enough to influence marketing and
| positioning.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I've felt for a decade now, even though the two weren't
| directly linked, that the death of Aaron Schwartz was the
| symbolic death of Reddit's soul. Nowadays the website is a dark
| pattern hellscape that forces app downloads for "age
| verification" and just because you scrolled through too many
| comments.
|
| Schwartz is dead and Ohanian is a multi-millionaire married to
| an olympian, so I guess that tells you about what society
| values. At least we can already see the beginning of the end of
| the exploitative paywalled journals and people like Alexandra
| Elbakyan picking up where Schwartz left off.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Swartz.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
| iguana_lawyer wrote:
| I've been banned from multiple subreddits for commenting "I
| wish Aaron Swartz were still alive". Just that. Nothing else.
| Instant ban with no recourse. That's how toxic reddit
| moderators are.
| compumike wrote:
| Listened to this episode on a road trip yesterday and really
| enjoyed it. If you do a "part 2", I'm curious to hear more
| details about how they pulled off the growth of Reddit,
| broadening from an initial niche community into a wider
| collection of communities. Thanks jl and clevy!
| [deleted]
| giantrobot wrote:
| They got multiple migration waves from digg, added subreddits,
| then network effects started.
|
| Early Reddit was pretty boring unless you were interested in
| programming or technology. The first big bump in users from
| digg was during the HD-DVD key fracas. The ham-handed response
| by digg to even talking about the key leak pissed off a lot of
| users. They were already simmering due to astroturfing/Payola
| by "power users" (we'd call them influencers today).
|
| Then a huge influx came after the digg v4 rollout that
| basically turned the site into a giant advertising channel,
| more so than it had been.
|
| I'm no Reddit insider but I got turned onto it in 2005 or so
| and watched the digg user influxes over the years.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Digg changed the way comments were threaded meaning there
| could be no cogent discussion in threads. I am confident that
| was the mortal wound to Digg.
| giantrobot wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong. Digg did not understand the
| core features that _users_ valued. They assumed users would
| stick around through every monetization abuse they threw at
| them. Users put up with the "power user" bullshit (paid
| influencers and astroturfing) because the comments tied to
| those submissions could be worthwhile.
|
| I think digg's fundamental problem was they viewed their
| user base like a passive audience. It turned out their
| _users_ were in fact their main attraction. When they
| ruined the experience for users they left and digg was left
| with zero value.
| 6510 wrote:
| Same way youtube discontinued their discussion platform.
| One day I had 200 interesting active discussions, the next
| there was non. Channels that relied on feedback turned into
| drifting ships.
| samstave wrote:
| [flagged]
| vore wrote:
| YC is probably silent because most of the people at YC don't
| wear tinfoil hats. Except the Ellen Pao part, but that was
| because she was _checks notes_ promoted to CEO.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| As a long time redditor I wonder too about some of this. I
| wrote it off a long time ago as probably part of their attempts
| to drive eyeballs to the site, any eyeballs so that they could
| demonstrate growth in a market dominated at the time by Digg
| and Fark.
|
| They always made a point of claiming that speech was free, no
| subjects were off limits, anything goes. That allowed posters
| like violentacrez to post his shit and get his 15 minutes of
| fame before they had to admit that some stuff was better left
| unsaid. Some of the most notorious stories date back to the
| days before there were subject and subreddit bans. Once they
| achieved their engagement goals they were more amenable to ban
| things that were widely considered unsavory.
|
| I don't understand why Aaron's part is sidelined now as it
| appears to be crumbsnatching by Steve and Alexis when they grab
| all the credit. He appeared at the time to be on equal footing
| with them in the process of managing the site.
|
| MaxwellHill managed to position themselves as a knowledgeable
| source of information. This was something that reddit needed
| and set her up to be a prominent mod.
|
| YC is silent about things because they had skin in the game and
| feared a rash.
| locustmostest wrote:
| I've enjoyed all of the episodes so far, but this one was
| definitely the stand-out.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| When looking up Digg on wikipedia I found this gem:
| Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open
| letter to Rose: this new version of digg reeks of VC
| meddling. It's cobbling together features from more
| popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which
| was to "give the power back to the people."
|
| Apparently nobody can resist the allure of VC meddling.
| tough wrote:
| Funny both Alexis is a VC now, and he actually invested in
| kevin's NFT 10k PFP (Moonbrids)
|
| The Reddit Mafia
| notatoad wrote:
| reddit basically became everything the founders mocked when
| they first started it. https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2.html
| tough wrote:
| That's why you never sell yourself as the hero,
|
| Or you'll just wait long enough to become the villain
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I tried Reddit for a while but overall the site is not that
| different from any incarnation of Twitter. The main difference is
| individuals vs. subreddits, and if you're careful selecting
| interesting individuals on Twitter / interesting subreddits on
| Reddit, you can often find a fair amount of useful content, but
| the effort is barely worth the bother, it feels like looking for
| needles in a haystack.
|
| If you're just passively absorbing content on either platform
| both are equally poor quality, not all that different from
| watching MSNBC, CNN or FOX - i.e. heavily gamed by advertisers
| and propagandists.
|
| What Twitter and Reddit also have in common is a low-quality in-
| house search engine and a restricted API for search, which I
| assume is an attempt to control exposure of content by
| administrators, subreddit moderators, etc.
|
| Twitter: "Please note that Twitter's search service and, by
| extension, the Search API is not meant to be an exhaustive source
| of Tweets. Not all Tweets will be indexed or made available via
| the search interface."
|
| Reddit: "You can search subreddits and posts, but comments aren't
| available to search via the public API."
|
| They appear to want to _feed_ users content algorithmically based
| on some profile /agenda, and not just let users go wandering
| around _finding_ content based on their own criteria.
| stametseater wrote:
| One of the reasons I keep coming back to HN is because the
| comment search actually works, so it's easy to figure out what
| sort of things, if anything, has been said here about some
| topic. It's easy to search a project's name and find that one
| post from a guy 10 years ago who mentioned it, and also
| mentioned a better alternative.
|
| With reddit it's not worth trying, even with Google and
| "site:reddit.com" searches. Reddit's SNR is awful, so you have
| to wade through dozens if not hundreds of posts of people
| mentioning the thing but saying nothing worthwhile. Pages of
| people asking questions relevant to your query, but not
| receiving any useful response. HN has some people asking
| questions, but most posts are about people volunteering
| information. On reddit, it seems like most posts are people
| asking questions into the void and rarely receiving an answer,
| and those kind of search results just aren't useful.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| Well run subreddits are vastly superior to Twitter. By way of
| example, if you are into homegyms or woodworking or Austin,
| there are three subreddits dedicated to those topics. I may be
| missing something about Twitter that allows me to focus on an
| esoteric topic that isn't dependent on a inconsistent hashtag
| denotion. Twitter topics are simply too restricted and
| opinionated for my liking.
| up_your_ass wrote:
| You can try the third-party archive Pushshift for search.
|
| Here's an interface to their API: https://camas.unddit.com
|
| Replacing "reddit.com" in URLs with "unddit.com" or
| "reveddit.com" is also handy, it lets you see deleted or
| removed comments.
| celtoid wrote:
| [flagged]
| up_your_ass wrote:
| They've done a full 180deg and are against free speech now. If
| you express certain forbidden opinions or bring up certain
| controversial topics, then your account gets permabanned. And
| that's side-wide. Individual subreddits, especially the more
| popular ones, are even more restrictive.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Aaron didn't really have anything to do with Reddit. He was
| foisted on the founders by Paul Graham.
| celtoid wrote:
| Aaron helped rewrite Reddit's codebase. He had a lot to do
| with Reddit until he didn't.
|
| "One of the points of the merger was that we would all call
| ourselves co-founders, so that's what I've been doing. I'd be
| happy to stop if that's what Steve and Alexis wanted,
| though." - Aaron Swartz
| voytec wrote:
| I made this choice later, when Tencent started ruling Reddit.
| People immediately started throwing Tiananmen Square posts
| which quickly were getting to front and then being
| shadowbanned. As I was born in communist Poland, I have no love
| (to say politely) for communist governments.
|
| I made a good choice, as Reddit quickly made a turn from being
| a site hosting thematic forums into a social media website full
| of garbage.
|
| Before that, some smaller subreddits were valuable and not
| infested by marketers nor moderated by corporations. But it
| quickly changed and now, for me, Reddit is as unbearable as
| Facebook.
| EasyTiger_ wrote:
| Congratulations on the most toxic, astroturfed site on the
| internet I guess
| culopatin wrote:
| It's not 4chan
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| 4chan is mostly anti-astroturfed - it's actual people but
| they'll just kneejerk-hate anything which is popular on
| reddit or with 'normies'.
| snvzz wrote:
| 4chan is actually among the less toxic discussion sites, and
| definitely better than Reddit.
|
| This is mostly owed to the quality of its moderation team.
|
| 4chan's infamy is largely undeserved.
| samwillis wrote:
| The story of Reddit would make a good TV show, kind of "The
| Social Network" crossed with "The Crown". So many ups and downs,
| and many cross overs to other things happing in tech and the
| wider world. You could easily fill three or four seasons.
|
| "The front page of the Internet"
| corbulo wrote:
| But who would have the guts to be honest about the bad parts?
| gropo3 wrote:
| [dead]
| joshu wrote:
| I don't really want to listen to the podcast, but I do seem to
| recall that Reddit drew heavy inspiration from the delicious
| popular page. digg was talked about a bunch but much smaller...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389494
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Step 1: convince your main competitor to piss of its entire user
| base.
|
| Step 2: ? <- could be interesting to see if they did something
| special here
|
| Step 3: get Obama and other major celebrities to establish you as
| a media company brand.
| flomo wrote:
| One take I heard is Digg was actively combating vote
| manipulation, while on Reddit it was easy to get RonPaul/etc
| content onto the homepage. So the migration was memed to some
| extent.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Step 2 probably has a bunch of stuff, but includes:
|
| They posted content using fake accounts to stimulate adoption.
|
| To my recollection they allowed a lot of skeevy (illegal and/or
| immoral) content to proliferate.
|
| I think they probably ran at a loss for a long time; leaning
| heavily on volunteer personnel.
|
| ?
| qwertox wrote:
| I ask myself on a weekly basis when old.reddit.com will
| disappear. And there is nothing more cruel than the new Reddit,
| UI-wise. Even Twitter's "threading" of conversations appears to
| make more sense, even though I have still not figured out how it
| works.
| twostorytower wrote:
| I know some people at Reddit and sadly it's definitely going to
| happen.
| snvzz wrote:
| I have mentally prepared myself to say goodbye to Reddit once
| it happens.
|
| Complete with deleting my account for closure. This is what I
| recommend. It's pretty much facebook, pure dark UX at that
| point.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| That is the day I will quit reddit and never look back. 6
| months ago I rarely used old.reddit.com, but now I run into
| more and more dark patterns all the time. They tried to
| TikTok my feed and it was an awful experience. I frequently
| default to it now instead of using it only when I get sick of
| the dark patterns.
|
| Reddit got popular because Digg screwed up their comment
| threading. It's sad to see reddit is starting to make anti-
| user mistakes like digg. Maybe they think they can force it
| because there isn't a competent competitor.
|
| The problem with all of these sites is they start to service
| the lowest common denominator in the name of next quarters
| profits. As their websites become more hostile to the
| educated, the quality of content drops and profit goes up,
| but the golden goose is slowly being strangled.
|
| Reddit was fantastic around the time of digg because the
| average user appeared to be college educated or greater.
| Celebrities like Randall Monroe were submitting high quality
| content. It was common for a literal expert to write a well
| thought out post. Now it's an "Americas funniest home videos"
| feed of fart jokes with your liberal aunt and conservative
| uncle having an argument in the background.
|
| It seems so clear to me that billionaires mean we can't have
| nice things. Twitter and Reddit both promoted a "truth to
| power" free speech ideology, and now billionaires are
| coercing these companies into becoming cess pits that reflect
| the worst parts of humanity. Power doesn't like to be
| threatened so they will destroy the weapon.
|
| I still can't decide if these companies are being destroyed
| because they promote a "no more billionaires" ideology, or if
| it is simply capitalistic greed and the search for next
| quarters profits.
| stametseater wrote:
| > _The problem with all of these sites is they start to
| service the lowest common denominator in the name of next
| quarters profits. [...] It seems so clear to me that
| billionaires mean we can 't have nice things"_
|
| The pressure to increase quarterly profits to the detriment
| of the long-term emerges from the very nature of short-term
| investment, particularly as facilitated by stock exchanges.
| Eliminating billionaires would not eliminate this dynamic.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, Reddit is not even part of a publicly listed company
| that has investor pressure to meet quarterly numbers, it
| is privately owned by the Newhouse family. People just
| like having more money than less money.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications
| Aloha wrote:
| I think reddit is majority owned by Reddit employees.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| The lack of ownership transparency is an absolute
| failure. Reddit should not have been for profit anyway
| ROTMetro wrote:
| The entire Internet at the 'fantastic' time of Reddit was
| very much tilted towards the elite class that could 1.
| Afford an expensive computer or phone (or have access from
| University) 2. Afford Internet (and for an added bump of
| exclusivity add mobile Internet) (or have access from
| University) 3. Have the time/inclination to put lots of
| energy into CREATING Internet content (via either a hobby
| site, or composing well thought out posts). What you are
| complaining about is the quality of a restaurant that has
| gone from an exclusive new spot you discovered to a Chili's
| franchise. (Phil's Fish Market?).
|
| What everyone on Hacker News seems to long for is an
| Internet limited to 'that class' of people. They complain
| about billionaires and advertising, but maybe they should
| take a broader look at what they are really longing for.
| bmarquez wrote:
| I hope the Fediverse replacement for Reddit, Lemmy, will pick
| up in popularity before old.reddit dies.
|
| It makes a lot of sense since each "subreddit" could be its
| own server.
| uthinter wrote:
| Are servers hosted on fediverse open to being indexed by
| search engines otherwise I doubt it can replace reddit.
| Reddit did discussion threads , subs, and searchable
| results from search engines really well. It was a really
| great version of "forums" . I am not sure fediverse or
| Discord can do such things.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I don't think Fediverse solves the problems that we see in
| Reddit (or Twitter, or any of the others). Instead of admin
| meddling from a single group of closely-affiliated admins
| (they all work for the same company), you just get meddling
| from many small groups of admins, none of those groups
| affiliated with each other except via ActivityPub. They
| can't shut down conversations they dislike _entirely_ , but
| they can sever you from the Fediverse thoroughly enough
| that they might as well.
|
| And they can do it early enough that no one ever knew you
| were there in the first place. Even the Reddit admins
| didn't do that... I don't know if it was apathy and
| indifference, or just that they couldn't pay enough
| attention back in the early 2010s, but they didn't. And
| that likely allowed Reddit to grow so large, it could be
| the forum for everybody, about everything. Fediverse and
| Lemmy just ends up being those old phpbb forums, that won't
| talk to or link to each other unless everything is
| excessively sanitized and drips with insincere civility.
|
| Lemmy doesn't even have an Elon Musk to piss everyone off
| of Reddit and drive them to search for an alternative.
| flangola7 wrote:
| How do they plan to handle moderation? The strong majority of
| subreddit mods still use old Reddit because modding on new is
| suffering. Many will give up modding and some will abandon
| using Reddit entirely. Do they have a plan to replace the
| thousands of free employees that currently keep Reddit
| habitable?
| paulpauper wrote:
| maybe plugins can restore the old look and functionality?
| up_your_ass wrote:
| Have they given any hints as to when?
| noir_lord wrote:
| Used Reddit for 14 years as a registered member and longer
| since before I signed up.
|
| The day old.reddit.com stops working is the day I stop using
| reddit completely, I detest their new UI so much that it's
| essentially unusable for me.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| yeah, it's pretty wild how bad it is
|
| I ended up having to pay $2 for a Safari iOS extension to
| auto-redirect reddit links to old.reddit just so I could
| actually read the site when I got there via web searches.
| There's no usability whatsoever
|
| I just painstakingly pinch and pan around old.reddit rather
| than try to wrestle with their dog-awful app or redesign
|
| semi-related: I've been trying to get the WallStreetBets
| mods to just make their own version of Reddit instead of
| putting up with the admins' constant bullshit.. they're
| basically singlehandedly funding that whole shitshow and
| get nothing out of it but scam ads, users randomly banned
| for saying a no-no word, etc
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I agree completely. I've used Reddit since at least 2008. I
| quit Facebook over what they did to WhatsApp and will never
| use another Meta product. Reddit is getting dangerously
| close.
|
| It's very clear there is not an adult at reddit who can
| tell the people in power _NO_.
| sufficer wrote:
| It has seen 0 improvement since it was released lmao. Like
| wait 8 years ago?
| m348e912 wrote:
| old.reddit.com and it's imminent disappearance underscores that
| there is a still need for a user-centric web browser designed
| to combat user-hostile web ui. Here are some features I think
| the browser should have by default (without plugins)
|
| Short feature list:
|
| - Overwrite website code and display a user-hostile UI of
| popular sites like reddit/Facebook (this warrants a whole list
| in itself)
|
| - offer a reader view of any website including pay walled
| websites
|
| - easy access to archive a page using archive.today and to view
| already archived versions
|
| - Right-click anything to download, images/videos/audio, even
| when sites like instagram and twitter make it difficult to do.
|
| - Bypass field restrictions. Ever seen a password field where
| you can't paste text for whatever reason. That would not be a
| thing.
|
| - Tab freeze for tabs not in focus - save CPU and battery
| energy
|
| - Click the back button and end up at the same place on the
| page you clicked from instead of having to scroll endlessly to
| find where you were before
|
| - Use a common user-agent so the browser doesn't get
| blacklisted by websites
|
| - Accept only essential cookies by default
|
| - Easy right-click and delete of paywall style overlays or
| other elements
|
| - Ad block may not need to be built-in by default, but the
| ability to right-click and nuke a banner ad (especially the
| ones that don't disappear and block text even when you click
| the "x")
|
| -Respect new lines when posting comments instead of users
| having to constantly go back, edit their comments, and add new
| lines to break up a wall of text
| snvzz wrote:
| There's some appeal on doing this client side, but I do not
| hate the Nitter approach.
| djcannabiz wrote:
| I would love this. Almost all of these can be achieved using
| Firefox and tons of extensions, but its to much for some of
| my relatives who feel the same way about the web but don't
| have the technical knowledge to set everything up.
|
| for example, bypass paywalls clean was removed from most
| (all?) web extension stores and now has to be sideloaded. I
| don't think most non techies would be comfortable doing this,
| so maybe something like a firefox distribution (a la
| librewolf) would be ideal, so you could build off the other
| extensions there, and the anti tracking tech built into
| firefox.
| dangus wrote:
| > offer a reader view of any website including pay walled
| websites
|
| Not really possible if a paywalled website is a true paywall.
| Many paywalled websites don't even expose their content to
| crawlers.
|
| I also think that, philosophically, the majority of the user
| base being able to bypass paywall isn't healthy for the
| Internet. It will only make content quality decrease and
| advertisement aggression increase. You can see this effect
| come into play with pages that use anti-adblocking tools,
| where you can't see anything until you disable ad blocking.
|
| > Tab freeze for tabs not in focus - save CPU and battery
| energy
|
| Chrome energy saver mode? Safari seems to effectively do
| this, tabs seem to be pretty dead until you are using them. I
| would also ask what kind of need there is to save battery
| life above and beyond present technology. Modern laptops sold
| on the market now can be in a web browser for an entire
| workday (e.g., ASUS Zenbook 13 OLED, any MacBook M1/M2).
|
| Almost everything on this list is already available with
| browser extensions or existing browsers.
| swalling wrote:
| If a link is paywalled and/or the content is not able to be
| crawled/archived for a reader mode, a browser that warned
| me before I wasted time opening a tab whose content is
| totally inaccessible would be appreciated. Contextual lock
| icons on links or a hover state with a preview.
|
| If paywall status was exposed via a standardized API to the
| browser, it could further make it more seamless to buy a
| subscription iOS-style that I know I can cancel easily
| later. Looking at you, NYT and other new sites.
| djcannabiz wrote:
| Anecdotally i have never had a problem with anti adblockers
| with UBOs anti-anti-adblocker list turned on, but maybe
| anti-adblock will get better if more people start using
| adblockers.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Ever seen a password field where you can't paste text for
| whatever reason. That would not be a thing.
|
| Can anyone explain this one to me? My passwords are
| impossible to type/memorize, and the password manager's
| Firefox extension sucks too much to rely on it. It's clearing
| the clipboard 10 seconds later anyway, so they website's not
| protecting me.
| victor9000 wrote:
| Well, i.reddit.com just recently disappeared, so it might be
| sooner than later.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The 'new' Reddit has so much wasted space and bloat. The old
| one is slick and optimized for content display. It's also an
| eyesore. Garish colors, weird icons...just horrible in every
| way. It has been many years and I still cannot bring myself to
| use it.
| bigcloud1299 wrote:
| Most of social platforms are nothing but feature AOL back in the
| day. They got a different look and feel. Some are cross over of
| ICQ and AOL (WhatsApp) AOL messenger Chat rooms (discord,
| telegram) Twitter is nothing but public chat room.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Slack is just irc, Dropbox just nfs, Google just grep,
| Craigslist just newspaper classifieds, amazon just Walmart,
| Netflix just charter, hacker news just coffee shops and bars,
| and on and on, what's your point
| inkywatcher wrote:
| When you put it like that, I really prefer some of the
| precursors.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| Reddit is just Usenet.
| canadianfella wrote:
| [dead]
| werid wrote:
| this is good timing, as we're witnessing in real time how reddit
| is ending right now :)
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I'm winding down my participation. It's been a fun ride for the
| most part but it is really easy to get depressed reading a lot
| of stuff that gets posted.
|
| Discussions tend to deteriorate quickly and quality comments
| with sources get buried. That isn't how it all started. I'll
| shut down my last account soon after overwriting and deleting
| all the posts.
|
| It's fitting that Imgur is also gonna scratch all the content
| they have from people who never made Imgur accounts. I have a
| lot of tutorials, marked-up photos, etc that I used to help
| people thru issues on some of those niche forums involving home
| and auto repairs. It's good to know all that will be gone.
|
| I'll be down to one site for online engagement and news.
| LegitShady wrote:
| How is reddit ending? In general it seems they waited for
| enough critical mass before instituting all the content
| policies that would kill smaller sites.
|
| And while digg's implosion had reddit as an alternative, in
| 2023 who is the alternative to reddit?
| criddell wrote:
| > in 2023 who is the alternative to reddit?
|
| I think the rapid decline of Twitter and the sputter of
| Mastodon indicates that a lot of us have realized that simply
| removing social media from our lives and not replacing it
| with anything feels pretty good.
|
| A few years ago I used to visit Reddit a couple times every
| week. These days I only end up there if a google search sends
| me there.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I don't think twitter has anything to do with reddit -they
| don't exist in the same niche in social media. The sputter
| of mastadon was because the decline of twitter was largely
| short term outrage. I hear every day on hackernews that
| twitter is failing and I'm not sure that's true.
|
| Twitter and reddit exist because there is a market for
| those types of social media experience. If even 50k
| computer science specialized people stop visiting reddit
| and twitter I don't think that matters to those sites
| overall traffic levels.
|
| If you already aren't visiting twitter or reddit than you
| aren't really interested in the alternative for them, are
| you? Since you're already rejecting those experiences. You
| aren't the target audience, you're just imagining everyone
| is like you, when all evidence seems to go the other way.
|
| So again, lets say people want an alternative platform to
| twitter, they could go to substack maybe. but whats the
| alternative to reddit? Discord? I don't think so.
| werid wrote:
| the critical mass might have to do without power-users (sucks
| for all the subreddits people go to for technical help!) and
| moderators, as the api changes affect tools and apps mods use
| a lot.
|
| as for implosion, it might be more of a twitter thing, slowly
| people will get enough and leave. sometimes you don't need a
| new destination, but you just stop by the site anymore.
| turzmo wrote:
| How is that?
| exsf0859 wrote:
| Reddit recently announced changes to their APIs pricing and
| features that will probably lead to the abandonment of most
| third-party Reddit clients. Users of those clients are upset.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_fe.
| ..
| LegitShady wrote:
| but lets say they're upset enough to leave - where will
| they go en masse that replaces reddit?
| exsf0859 wrote:
| I doubt they'll go anywhere en masse. They'll probably
| just grudgingly use the official clients. Possibly with
| browser plugins to customize the UI.
| ant6n wrote:
| Outside
| LegitShady wrote:
| a reddit level answer that only serves to let you
| congratulate your own cleverness instead of facilitating
| intelligent discussion.
| turzmo wrote:
| Gotcha, thanks
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I see no evidence Reddit is dying really.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-t...
|
| This is an old article with a similarly themed discussion. I'll
| have to listen to the pod cast to see whether anything changed in
| the retelling.
| bryceneal wrote:
| Reddit is such a cesspool of low-quality commentary and rage-
| baiting. The front page/popular category is particularly
| egregious.
| mrexroad wrote:
| I've never visited the front page, but I've found a number of
| helpful folks on various construction trade or woodworking
| subs. I only have notifications enabled for /r/costco_alcohol
| quite useful to gauge the overall distribution patterns for
| specific whiskeys I like, so I know when it's worth making a
| trip or not. Pretty much every sub I've recently spent time
| offering help in, or have found interesting enough to scroll
| around, has a pretty rigid policy of no politics and no
| religion. With all that said, I made the mistake of visiting
| /r/BayArea and found your assessment spot on.
| bmarquez wrote:
| Front page is horrible, and I always skip it by bookmarking a
| subreddit that I'm already subscribed to.
|
| Front page feels like clickbait and "get angry for engagement
| metrics"
| voytec wrote:
| No idea if it still works, but it was possible to select
| content from only certain subreddits
| https://reddit.com/r/subreddit1+subreddit2+subreddit3
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume at least some portion of the front page (or
| /r/popular) has been for sale for a long time. For example,
| sports leagues like NBA or marketers trying to make viral
| videos for brands or new movie/TV show releases.
| paulpauper wrote:
| You have to choose subs carefully. Most are bad but some are
| okay
| stametseater wrote:
| I don't see a transcript and I'm not going to listen to a podcast
| so I'll just ask here: does he discuss how they seeded their site
| with fraudulent accounts/posts?
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [flagged]
| earthscienceman wrote:
| They spammed posts and comments with fake accounts to fake growth
| until it caught on and then talked about it on HackerNews ...
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop taking this thread into flamewar?
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35677196.
| jedberg wrote:
| Lol HN didn't exist until reddit was popular. HN was in fact
| created because reddit go so popular it no longer appealed to
| PG, so he started HN so he could moderate the conversation
| himself and steer the community they way he wanted it to go.
|
| The other thing you said partly true -- in the beginning the
| founders had about 100 accounts that they posted with, but
| there were no comments back then. There was never fake
| commenting, and the posts weren't "fake" either. Alexis would
| scour the internet all day looking for interesting things and
| then posting them with random accounts, as would Steve.
|
| So if anything Alexis and Steve were just really prolific
| users.
|
| But the site was self sustaining by the time comments launched.
| ie. There would be fresh content even if Steve and Alexis
| didn't post anything that day.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Digg had it first, Reddit was Digg's second cousin. Reddit
| never took off until Digg shot itself in the kneecap. Digg
| was where the "fresh content" came from.
|
| If Digg hadn't made the v2.0 mistake; Reddit wouldn't be
| where it was now.
|
| The accounts may of not been fake, but reddit for sure had
| many plants; it was even boasted by the administration team
| prior Conde Nest. And now it's more blatant than before.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > Digg was where the "fresh content" came from.
|
| This is not quite true. StumbleUpon is where fresh content
| came from. It was popularized on digg.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Fancy that. Thanks for the update in history.
|
| I guess before that it was Newgrounds.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Came here to say this. Reddit was this quaint tiny site
| that was a breath of fresh air after digg's self-
| destruction. In those days there were no sub-reddits, just
| the front page.
|
| I left after sub-reddits started and it went to shit as a
| result. It has been downhill since then (at least for what
| I want). HN is much more like what the original Reddit was
| like. I can imagine that if HN gets "sub" things it will
| also self-deatruct like Reddit has.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Thats some mighty handwavy mental gymnastics to not call them
| liars.
|
| Pretending to be different people to post qualifies as 'fake
| posts'.
|
| Fake it till you make it, or fraud?
|
| Either way it's still bullshit.
| inkywatcher wrote:
| While I am very ready to be critical of Reddit, including
| its creators, community, interface, and aesthetic, I am not
| personally offended that a couple jabronis posted a bunch
| of stuff to build up some initial momentum.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Jedberg. I've called you and them out on this before. There
| are HackerNews comments from '08 and '09 where the
| astroturfing and fake accounts are openly mentioned.
|
| Don't make me go through the effort to dig them up.
|
| As for the order of events, I wasn't clear. I meant they
| _talked about it_ on HackerNews but not contemporaneously.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Exactly what I thought when I saw the title.
|
| You really needed an entire podcast to describe _that_?!
|
| RIP Aaron, was a great guy.
|
| Alexis and Steve are bullshit artists that got rich.
|
| Steve was especially bad when he dipped back in.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Yes.
|
| This is what I remember from the earliest days. Back and forth
| between their own posts using multiple accounts to give the
| impression of active engagement and a growing community.
| Reposting things from Digg, Fark, etc and grabbing memes like
| Rickrolls, goatse, to draw eyeballs and clicks to their single
| page scrolling interface.
|
| Dodging bullshit posts was a game of waiting for comments to
| post so you could see which actually had real content and not
| some nasty meme from somewhere else.
|
| Deciding that they needed a coat of arms and figuring out what
| should go on it, the alien, narwhals, etc.
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