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Reddit’s Plan to Recover from Its Meltdown

161 points by sbuccini 11y ago

Karunamon 11y ago
But a decade after Reddit launched, it has blossomed into a platform for racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and other hateful conversations. My eyes just about rolled out of my head. "Blossomed?" By volume, those "conversations" make up a minority of a minority of a minority of what happens on Reddit.
- linkydinkandyou 11y ago
  The forgot "fat hate." Weren't the anti-Obesity folks the straw that broke the camel's back?
  - joefarish 11y ago
    It wasn't the fat hate as such, it was more that the users from that particular sub-reddit took it upon themselves to harass and mock other reddit users outside of that sub-reddit.
    - LesZedCB 11y ago
      That's correct. And as the reddit execs et. al. have stated, it's not that such communities, whether based around fundamentally hateful memes or not, can exist on reddit. In fact, many morally/ethically reprehensible communities have been explicitly allowed to continue existing. However, when they start moving outside of their communities and harass other communities through vote brigading or doxxing or PMing hateful messages, then it breaches a line (or smudged line) that allows reddit admins to take action.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        I'd believe that if the behavior of the administrators were consistent with that explanation. Example, the ban you're talking about, communities which had the same idea, with different staff, that had existed before that one had, were also caught up in the ban. In other words, they were banned despite not breaking any stated rules. Another example: A racist subreddit, not getting banned because of harassment, not for breaking rules, but because they were a frequent target of admin attention. Another another example: Colluding with the governments of other non-US countries to censor content at those governments' request. It's their website, they can run it as they please, but I wish Ohanian and Huffman would stop playing lip service to "free speech" and "open discussion" (something that up until recently, they did loudly and often) if that's not the goal they intend to live by. Actions speak a lot louder than words.
        linkydinkandyou 11y ago
        Exactly. People are saying that /r/fatpeoplehate "violated copyright" but every meme does that. (See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/08/how-copyright-is-killing-your-favorite-memes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09...). And reddit never said they were getting legal takedown notices for material published there. Most of the posts I saw were responses to fat-acceptance bloggers and their postings on their blogs. Obviously these blogs were created to foster discussion and that was happening. When the discussion wasn't positive, they got upset. Obviously, it's a private website and they can do what they want with it. But it never was a place for "free speech." If you didn't go along with Reddit groupthink (which is an odd mix of socialism "college should be free" "Koch Brothers are Evil" and libertarianism "Go Uber!" "Open Access to the Internet") you would be quickly down voted away.
      - linkydinkandyou 11y ago
        I'm not so sure that /r/fatpeoplehate did anything worse than any other "funny pictures" subreddit. (For example, ones about "rednecks" or "ravers") I think just a lot of obese people got offended, and for some reason Ellen Pao felt for them.
        amyjess 11y ago
        I've seen their page before the sub was banned. Half the posts fell into one of two categories: - Creepshots of people taken and published without the subject's permission in order to harass them. - Pictures taken from people's friends-only Facebook albums stolen and published on Reddit for harassment purposes in violation of the privacy settings chosen by the original uploader. Both are harassment, and the latter is a gratuitous copyright violation. The former probably also falls afoul of laws against using people's likenesses without permission. Oh, and once imgur began removing their images for TOS violations, they began acting like a pack of wild monkeys flinging their feces: they began targeting individual imgur staff members for harassment, and multiple people began inciting DDoS attacks against imgur. Reddit admins have been cracking down on witch hunts for quite some time, and DDoS attacks are highly illegal. They dug their own graves and deserved to be banned.
        monad2001 11y ago
        Just out of curiosity, are you personally for or against obesity? Does it make a difference how you feel about this topic?
        makomk 11y ago
        They also reposted images from other subreddits, causing hordes of FPH regulars to find the original post and spam the poster with PMs telling them how much FPH hated them and how awful they were. Some of the posts even pointed people at the right subreddit, with the knowledge and complicity of the FPH moderators. We know this because at least one person who was on the receiving end of this complained to the mods, and they responded by posting another post drawing more attention to the original one and posting her photo in the subreddit sidebar. She later posted on r/suicidewatch saying she was thinking of killing herself, and FPH regulars piled into that with some nasty comments too. It got to the point that some subreddits started discouraging people - especially women - from posting selfies solely because they kept getting posted on FPH.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  I mean, if you read the comments on many of the default subs, there is a clear undertone of those cultures. I don't believe that's an editorial statement, but really a pretty accurate depiction of how many people (both inside and out) perceive the reddit community. It's sad.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    but really a pretty accurate depiction of how many people (both inside and out) perceive the reddit community. Shout something long enough and hard enough, and people will widely begin to believe it. Wired doing what they just did here is at least part of the reason that perception exists. Certain rabble-rousers within the community itself are another. It's an accusation. A smear. For it to be otherwise, there'd need to be proof, something sorely lacking from this meme.
    - kaitai 11y ago
      But it's pretty easy for the average user to find offensive content on Reddit -- things that would upset them if they or one of their children was involved. An existence proof for ugly stuff on Reddit is trivial, while it's much harder to give an average user a feel for what ratio of content they find offensive vs not.
      - sonnyz 11y ago
        I think a lot of the offensive comments that are easy to find on Reddit can also be found on other popular sites, such as Youtube, Facebook, or comment sections on news sites.
      - tomjen3 11y ago
        So? That is an excellent argument for not including those subreddits in the default home page (for users who are not logged in) or /r/all. But you can find offensive things, or things you don't want your children to see, on just about any site (also, yes, your teens know about redtube).
      - johnward 11y ago
- mahouse 11y ago
  Breaking news! People of the world are prejudiced against some grups due to their past experiences in real life.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  One current dominant media narrative is that any sort of intolerant thought is intolerable, and that the emotional state of a listener is the responsibility of the speaker. There are clear problems with this point of view vis a vi reality, which is why it is a narrative, not actual reporting. This divorcing from reality allows journalists to comfortably include the narrative everywhere that it can possibly fit with no regard for the actual applicability to anything. I suspect that overall it's about as likely to be successful as religious attempts to sell the narrative that teen sex is wrong. Shame and guilt don't really ever teach the lesson that is intended, but those are the only tools the media truly has.
  - eli 11y ago
    I don't buy the "Media vs Reddit" narrative. I don't think this has anything to do with journalism or even intolerance. I just don't like hanging out with racists and sexists (in real life or online). If Reddit wants to keep me as a contributor to their site, they need to do something about that or I will not return. I doubt I'm alone in feeling that way.
    - johnward 11y ago
      Most of the sub reddits I hangout in don't have those tones or maybe I'm used to ignoring those types of comments online. I think any community starts to have those problems as they grow. HN isn't immune but it's still a small enough niche that we tend to still get higher quality comments than your average site. If you're in r/funny you're going to get comments from the lowest of the low just like youtube. I don't see it as a reddit issue it's more of a human nature problem. When you get enough of people in one area you're going to find the assholes.
      - mreiland 11y ago
        I don't see those issues either, OTOH I have a tendency to stick with specific subreddits of interest to me. I've never viewed reddit as a community, but as a community of communities, and I've always chosen to be a part of specific communities, ignore others, and stay the hell away from yet others. I don't go anywhere near /r/politics or /r/programming, for example. I just can't deal with the people in either. But I love me some /r/cpp and /r/startrek.
- Spivak 11y ago
  If they're going to attack Reddit, they should at least point out that the same is true for any platform with user generated content. For example, the comments section of every news site, Facebook, Twitter, IRC, etc.. I think the world, and especially the corporate world is struggling with the idea that people hold disgusting, ignorant, or hateful opinions and that we're not nearly as nice as we believe ourselves to be. But of course I don't hold any opinions like that -- obviously I'm better than those people. There isn't a minority group of hateful people who have are expressing their hateful opinions on social media -- it's that each person's hateful opinions are a minority of their total opinions which are expressed in proportional frequency.
  - 7952 11y ago
    For a lot of people the whole point of Reddit is the comment threads. The voting turn it into a game, and oppositional views are an intrinsic part of that. People learn which arguments are most insidious or effective. I don't think Facebook is like this as unsound arguments are more likely to be tolerated. Reddit may have hotrrible offensive comments but they will often be razor sharp and highly effective at winning arguments. That makes it endlessly interesting. Of course HN has this to a lesser degree. I live in fear of being accused of "anecodotal". Looking at this comment that is ironic.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Care to back up that critique with some stats? And, if you've got stats, would you mind sharing what percentage of Reddit activity/traffic is porn?
- kaonashi 11y ago
  Those minorities can and do spill out into other subreddits, degrading their quality.
- psaintla 11y ago
  You're absolutely right but that doesn't mean those small subreddits didn't have an impact, /r/fatpeoplehate and /r/imgoingtohellforthis were increasingly showing up on the frontpage.
  - jtuente 11y ago
    Neither of those were small when they started to show up on the frontpage. /r/fatpeoplehate was definitely growing very quickly in the six months leading up to it's demise.
- vernie 11y ago
  I must just be really good at finding them then.
- gcb0 11y ago
  i just went to the front page. clear cookies and un-logged. 4/25 posts were "/r/blackpeopletweeter" how inclusive.
- opsforgotmypass 11y ago
  > By volume, those "conversations" make up a minority of a minority of a minority of what happens on Reddit. Right, because the rest of them are just non-sequitur memers fishing for upvotes. Such meltdown. Very epic. --- Unfortunately it doesn't matter if it's a minority of all the content on Reddit if it's what's on the frontpage 24/7 since that's what everyone is going to be looking at. Yay feedback loop!
- wil421 11y ago
  Has the wired blogger ever been to 4Chan or read youtube comments? The same could be said about both of those sites. Main subs have their share of filth but it's not only those things. There are some very racist and morally challenged subs but I wouldn't conclude all of reddit is like that.
  - eli 11y ago
    I think Reddit has a problem and pointing out that there are other sites that have an even bigger problem doesn't help.
- RexRollman 11y ago
  Everyone wants freedom of speech until it become uncomfortable.
  - rodgerd 11y ago
    Everyone wants freedom of speech until someone calls them a racist, then they're triggered.
- draw_down 11y ago
  Another way to phrase it: "Reddit is part of the internet."
- intopieces 11y ago
  >By volume, those "conversations" make up a minority of a minority of a minority of what happens on Reddit. This hardly matters when that content makes the front page of the site and is given positive votes continually. Every time someone complains about the offensive content in a "default" subreddit, the refrain goes like this: "That's just because it's a default man. You gotta unsub from the defaults and pick your own." Let's consider that for a minute. The standard view of your website, the view that is presented to any new member, is so clogged with terrible content that the active members recommend you change it immediately. When we buy phones and computers like this, we call it bloatware; we nuke the entire filesystem and start over. But when it's actual people generating content that most agree is worthless and often offensive: "well that's just a minority of a minority." Nonsense.
  - personjerry 11y ago
    You seem to have asserted that this type of content regularly makes it to the front page, but in my experience that's not true at all.
    - d2xdy2 11y ago
      In my 5+ years, I tend to agree with you; there are occasionally little spats that I see, but by and large-- I'd never have known about all of this "bad" stuff if it weren't for other people telling me about it.
      - intopieces 11y ago
        >I'd never have known about all the "bad" stuff if it weren't for other people telling me about it. This is precisely the issue with "bad" stuff. It draws better attention to itself than the good stuff does. All the more reason for Reddit to get control of it if they want to inspire user growth and maintain ad revenue.
        d2xdy2 11y ago
        Well, like I said, I'd have never known about it if other people hadn't told me. I can't speak to what Reddit "should" do; in _my_ niche area, Reddit works just fine the way it is. If they were to start "doing something about it", it'd likely not affect me in the least.
- tsotha 11y ago
  This. If you stay out of subreddits specifically devoted to that kind of stuff (plus a handful of others), you're not going to see it. I'm amazed at the extent to which people are willing to attack posts they have to go out of their way to see. Reddit is going to lose far more people trying to police out non-PC stuff than they will ever gain from it. And when people move on they do so quickly and in large numbers.
- makeitsuckless 11y ago
  You have to put this in the context of it being almost two decades since Wired was relevant.
- code_sterling 11y ago
  Funny, I see it in every other comment thread.
- jordigh 11y ago
  Well, it's a very visible minority on the front page.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  The core problem with reddit is there's no firewall between communities. So the fact that there are communities specifically set up with the goal of hating blacks or fat people or women or what-have-you means that those people spend a lot of time on reddit and end up spilling over into other popular communities. The moderation tools and admin support on reddit are comparatively underpowered so for a lot of popular sub-reddits it's very easy for the overall quality to plummet when a tiny group of vocal assholes decides they want to squat there. And for most sub-reddits this just starts a spiral of death as good people decide not to waste their time wading through toxic garbage and just find somewhere else to be, while the toxic minority gets stronger and more brazen. Imagine you have several subscriptions to a bunch of different print magazines. Every couple days a new magazine shows up. Stuff like Scientific American, The Economist, Better Homes and Gardens, National Geographic, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, Cat Fancy, etc. All fine and good. Except sometimes, maybe once every quarter per magazine, maybe less often even, there's some really weird stuff in your magazines. There's a 10 page article praising the KKK in your copy of Rolling Stone. Or there's a thing about how the jews did 9/11. Or the ads in Cat Fancy are all relentlessly making fun of fat people. Or there's an insert in the October edition of Scientific American that's actually a personal letter to you that is filled with hate and vitriol and ends with a plea for you to commit suicide. Who would put up with that? They wouldn't. But that's what people have been asked to deal with on sites like reddit, and it's beyond a reasonable level. How much shit is acceptable in your drinking water? Just a tiny bit? How about just 1 hour a year where the tap pours out 50/50 shit & water? Is that acceptable? No, it's not. There's far too much shit in the drinking water at reddit, the fact that the drinking water is not, in fact, mostly shit is not a defense.
  - qu4z-2 11y ago
    Reddit is not a magazine, though. (Although Upvoted is!) EDIT: That said, I think better moderation tools and stronger firewalls between subs would be a huge improvement. The existence of /r/fph absolutely shouldn't spill over into /r/worldnews or wherever.
    - InclinedPlane 11y ago
      It's not, but it's a comparison that helps clarify. I've been participating in online communities since 1994, I've seen the full range. I've watched, and participated in, epic flame wars on Usenet that went on for weeks. I've had people make death threats against me. I've seen legitimately mentally ill people spew all kinds of nonsense. And in comparison to all of that I'd say reddit is worse. I like many things about reddit, it's got plenty of good parts. But there are fundamental weaknesses in the design and administration of the site which mean that it's difficult to avoid incredibly terrible interactions with assholes on a regular basis.
- JeremyBanks 11y ago
  Have you been to Reddit in recent years? A majority of the site may not exhibit this individually, but most highly-visible threads that touch race will be dominated by racists, and most highly-visible threads that touch gender will be dominated by sexists. It's very gross.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Agreed. There were and are some terrible subreddits, but they aren't the default subs, you had to go looking for them. In that sense it's really no better or worse than the rest of the internet. I also think the article is pretty misguided in saying that somehow wealthy white men are treated better on the site. First of all, unless you tell people who you are, nobody knows. Secondly, the idea that revealing your wealthy white dude status would lead to better treatment on Reddit it laughable to anybody who's used the site for more than a few minutes.
- loco5niner 11y ago
  And the same could be said about google... "It will send you directly to the most racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and other hateful websites!"
sirtastic 11y ago
I've seen worse hyperbole.
VLM 11y ago
How do we police everyone's thoughts, without offending anyone? Whaddya mean there's more than one cultural definition of correct thought, and sometimes the definitions disagree?
- lghh 11y ago
  > How do we police everyone's thoughts, without offending anyone? No one is trying to police thoughts. > Whaddya mean there's more than one cultural definition of correct thought, and sometimes the definitions disagree? Just because there is more than one cultural definition of correct thought does mean there is more than one actual definition.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    > No one is trying to police thoughts. Except all the people on Reddit who don't want people to use the word "rape" because it's "triggering". > Just because there is more than one cultural definition of correct thought does mean there is more than one actual definition. Yeah, but there's nothing that proves that there is only one actual definition, either. You've literally said nothing here.
    - lghh 11y ago
      People don't argue about using the word rape on reddit, that place is a bastion for anti-trigger warning rhetoric much like tumblr is a haven for pro-trigger warning rhetoric. Also you are severely misunderstanding what 'trigger warnings' are. Nobody says you can't talk about rape, just give people a heads up before you do. If you live next door to a veteran that you know suffers from PTSD, you ask him/her about using fireworks before you do it, right? Trigger warnings are the same thing except on the internet and instead of not talking about it the person just knows to stop reading. Also, this isn't policing thoughts. Think whatever you want. Say what you want. Understand the consequences. I will think what I want and respond how I want and understand the consequences.
      - copsarebastards 11y ago
twblalock 11y ago
I think reddit's issues stem from a simple case of failing to manage expectations -- the users got the idea that Reddit was a bastion of free speech where they could post anything, no matter how offensive. Apparently the corporation never really believed that, despite some of its representatives making statements that seemed to confirm it. Reddit ought to have been more straightforward with its content policy from the beginning. Some would argue that such a policy would have restricted the growth of reddit, but I think that as long as the content policy was not enforced in a heavy-handed manner, it would not have caused issues.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  This is a very good point. For what Reddit has traditionally aspired to be, versus how it works, e.g. as an ebb and flow of community standards, it's a rock and a hard place in my opinion. Somewhere I've seen the perspective put forth that Reddit is essentially the gateway for things from 4Chan (etc) to make it into the mainstream, and I kind of buy into that.
- TarpitCarnivore 11y ago
  One thing I've always found interesting with Reddit related news is users will say things like "You (Reddit) never told us..." or other similar statement. It just always came across as an odd sense of entitlement as if Reddit should run every idea, change or whatever by their users for approval.
  - twblalock 11y ago
    Some users seem to feel like they are the true owners of the site, and that the corporation exists to serve them and fulfill their needs. This is another example of the corporation's failure to manage expectations. They seem to have lost control over the site they created.
    - dgritsko 11y ago
      Isn't there an element of truth to that sentiment though? The situation with Reddit is reminiscent in some ways to Digg's downfall with the release of v4 (which ironically contributed significantly to Reddit's growth). What is Reddit without its users?
unethical_ban 11y ago
>Reddit has a bad reputation for being a repository for hate speech. Because for all of the world’s-largest-secret-Santa programs and for every lonely teen able to find friends on Reddit, there is a small and vocal minority of bad actors trying to ruin it for everyone. And let’s face it, you’re much more likely to come into conflict with them if you are not a wealthy white man. What a garbage article. Reddit's full of horrible content, but it's mostly on /r/atheism and /r/politics. the hate speech is there, but it's more hidden than it's ever been. And wow, it's the internet, where people can say anything they want. Where's the hitpiece on Berners-Lee?
- ambler0 11y ago
  Last I checked, Reddit was hosted on private servers. Hence, what you can say on their site is dictated by their TOS. The Internet is not a place where you can "say anything you want". It's a collection of servers. If you want the ability to say anything you want, start your own server. Reddit is not the government; it is not their obligation to protect free speech.
  - Animats 11y ago
    We need at least one big federated social network, so it's not "theirs".
  - mawburn 11y ago
    >Last I checked, Reddit was hosted on private servers. I'm pretty sure Reddit is hosted on AWS. http://www.redditblog.com/2009/11/moving-to-cloud.html http://www.redditblog.com/2009/11/moving-to-cloud.html http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/09/20/amazon-web-services-goes-down-taking-netflix-reddit-pocket-and-more-with-it/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/09/20/amazon-web-services...
    - Moeancurly 11y ago
      Why is that distinction important?
totaldomination 11y ago
Reddit still way way better than Fückêr News in terms of free speech and open communication.
chejazi 11y ago
I wonder how often fallen-out relationships between cofounders get reconciled. It seems like the force driving change needs to be pretty compelling... something much larger than the two individuals.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  I think they both love reddit. I know as a user I love reddit, and despite the myriad problems with it, if I was in a position to give it some TLC and make it a place I would want to be, I would put aside interpersonal differences to make that happen.
- fieryeagle 11y ago
  Professional fall-out tended to be due to professional reasons. If the root causes could be fixed or overridden with a greater cause, why could they not work together again?
thieving_magpie 11y ago
I can't really fault Reddit for trying to figure out how to monetize the site and I'm certainly not in favor of pervasive hate speech, but I can't help but feel annoyed at all the gimmicks they're introducing like upvoted.com or the not-so-subtly promoted casual celebrity drop-ins to askreddit threads. I haven't visited in a few days and that trend is likely to continue. And honestly, there's no tangible reason for my loss of interest. I certainly don't have any better ideas as to how to solve these very real problems. All I know is I just want to forget about it.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  When I realized I was spending more time reading r/guitar and r/wearethemusicmakers than playing guitar or making music, I deleted my account and only drop in about once a month to see if I've missed much of anything. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Just my take on it.
  - sotojuan 11y ago
    Same with me and programming. I'm fine just browsing HN every other day and checking out slow small community boards like Lainchan.
daveloyall 11y ago
I'm not really part of this conversation, but my GF has previously complained that Reddit isn't worth using because "you're just scrolling down looking at cool shit, and then BAM, you get murder-rolled. [What?] It's like rickrolling, but it's a picture or video of somebody getting murdered." Various client-side solutions to this occurred to me, like identifying domains that will host such media (gotta be just a few, right?) and null routing them on her computer, but then it turned out that she doesn't have root on her "computer", so she just quit using reddit.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  Or unsubscribe from r/WTF I haven't seen anything like that on Reddit though. Everything is marked NSFW, unless perhaps stuff in 50/50, but even they tell you there's 50% chance that any post is something vile.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    > Or unsubscribe from r/WTF Perhaps, but that's still not great from a marketing perspective. "Reddit: You Can Opt Out Of The Gory Murder Porn!"
    - letstryagain 11y ago
      It's not a default sub, you have to actually subscribe to get it.
      - astrange 11y ago
        It was a default sub last year, possibly with a different mission statement. Or they were just into murder at the time. I mean, lots of popular websites are.
        eeZi 11y ago
        Mission statement was always the same. It's just no longer a default. Note that user who signed up before the default change took place still have the old defaults!
Animats 11y ago
"Tired" starts out by telling us there was a day when "Reddit wasn't there", as if they had a major outage. That's never mentioned again. The article is mostly about their struggle to be more politically correct to satisfy advertisers.
rustynails 11y ago
This is quite a poor article. I'm surprised it made it here. "Just like that, most of Reddit went quiet." I'm not a big reddit user, but I never noticed that. Most discussions I am interested in are still going. Also, the word "misogynist" is one of my litmus tests - it usually indicates prejudice by the author. Most people here have translated that term to sexist but it is usually used to imply "the comments are negative and directed at women". I usually find such articles stereotype men in a negative way (ie. The people who use this term are often hypocritical).
- redwards510 11y ago
  Agreed. It reads like a loving puff piece designed to make investors happy. I don't understand the claim that reddit is a "bastion of free speech" while saying misogynists and racists are nothing but violent, vile trolls. What exactly do they think free speech IS? It means supporting speech you don't agree with!
  - thescribe 11y ago
    To quote SlateStarCodex "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup"
- uncletaco 11y ago
  > "Just like that, most of Reddit went quiet." That's in reference to subreddits, including many of the default ones, becoming private for a day in protest after a well liked Reddit employee was fired. A good portion of the article is about dramatizing Ohanian and HUffman's response to the event. If you're not a heavy Reddit user its easy to see how you missed it, but a lot of the article revolves around its aftermath: Ellen Pao deciding to resign, Ohanian and Huffman putting aside their differences, Reddit the company deciding it needs a concrete direction. This article was mostly about putting a heroic spin on the story of Reddit's founders, and the challenges they face trying to open reddit to a wider audience. Its very much a puff piece that really isn't a general critique of the seedier aspects of reddit.
- lotso 11y ago
  >I usually find such articles stereotype men in a negative way (ie. The people who use this term are often hypocritical). Or maybe it is accurate, but is hard for men to accept that. The world operates generally in a misogynistic way. Is it really hard to believe Reddit, who's userbase is predominantly men, act this way as well? Source: Man who used to frequent Reddit for years.
mundo 11y ago
The most interesting thing in this article is that Reddit's CTO is the little brother of SMBC creator Zach Weinberg(!)
- JTon 11y ago
  I was curious about this, so I went to the SMBC site. It says by Zach Weinersmith; not Weinberg. Also the CTO of Reddit is Marty Weiner. That's three different last names. I think you're a little confused!
  - cambion 11y ago
    Zach Weiner changed his name to Weinersmith when he got married. I think the parent was mistaken when he said Weinberg, but Marty Weiner being Zach Weiner's brother does make logical sense (I don't know if it's true though).
    - stephaniepier 11y ago
      It is true! https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3hs3v4/im_marty_weiner_the_new_reddit_cto/cua27tb https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3hs3v4/im_ma...
trhway 11y ago
>But a decade after Reddit launched, it has blossomed into a platform for racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and other hateful conversations. blaming the mirror ...
SilasX 11y ago
They still have tons of users and an extremely active community that doesn't show signs of dying, with lots of untapped revenue opportunities. If that's a meltdown, I don't want to be solid.
- ProAm 11y ago
  But we can agree this is the beginning of the end? Reddit is to big for a quick death, but it's peaked.
steven2012 11y ago
Great article except for the whole "rich white men" part, which I found asinine and distracting.
NovaS1X 11y ago
>“ When we see harassing behavior, we can speak up to challenge it,” the authors wrote. And that’s true. We can. But if we aren’t white men, it’s likely we won’t be heard. Here. This doesn't make sense. Why are people, or do people feel the need to link their identity to their thoughts online. If you're pushing for equality then why are you assigning a gender, race, or political affiliation to your comments? If we are all equal then why separate yourself with labels? This is why having your online identity linked with your real identity is a bad thing in lots of cases. This is why anonymity is important. Every conversation I've had on 4chan I have no clue what gender the other person is, what race they are, where they live, how much money they make, what organizations they support, or what their name is real or not. The only thing that matters is what they're saying or what pictures they're posting. Even identifying yourself as a female results in "tits or GTFO" responses. You can see this as hate speech against women or the community saying in it's own fucked up way "we don't care and you shouldn't announce these labels to us". But in the end it pushes away the labels that people have such a problem with. And nobody's comments are getting downvoted so there goes the echo chamber mechanic built into Reddit. In an ironic twist the "internet hate machine" can be far more inclusive than Reddit.
- codeulike 11y ago
  You can see this as hate speech against women or the community saying in it's own fucked up way "we don't care and you shouldn't announce these labels to us" Generous interpretation
  - yesco 11y ago
    This was more of the case when they first started doing it. More recently its devolved into actually being hate speech in accordance to poe's law. You really only see it on /b/ though.
  - NovaS1X 11y ago
    It's an honest interpretation on a lot of boards. Of course this is a trend, not the rule. I can't speak for everyone. This wouldn't be true on places like /pol/ or /b/
- 11y ago
yk 11y ago
As a avid reddit user, these two sentences scare me more than any of the stuff that happened this year: > Huffman believes Reddit can be mainstream, embraced by the larger world. But for that to happen, he’ll need to clean up the product so that it is more straightforward for new users to try it out—without alienating the existing community members. Thing is, reddit is incredible fractured and all of the value I get from the site is because it is incredible fractured. I am not subscribed to any of the default subs (sub forums new users get subscribed to automatically) and in general I avoid /r/all which is just a cesspool of shallow memes. However behind this a some fantastic niche communities like r/worldbuilding and the history community (I avoid r/history though). And I believe, these communities thrive to a large part because reddit is fractured and I fear that a more mainstream reddit would look a lot more like a boring version of the current /r/all.
- return0 11y ago
  It would be a win-win if Reddit goes on with its beautification project. On the one hand reddit will finally become presentable to advertisers, on the other hand the fringe communities will probably move to a non-commercial, impossible-to-censor community.
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  > I am not subscribed to any of the default subs (sub forums new users get subscribed to automatically) and in general I avoid /r/all Say that to any non-techie (say, to the average Facebook user) and I'd bet real money their eyes glaze over and they make it a point to forget Reddit even exists. That is Reddit's problem.
lackbeard 11y ago
The Reddit PR blitz is on!
dpc_pw 11y ago
"Huffman believes Reddit can be mainstream, embraced by the larger world." It might sound hipster-like, but whatever: mainstream is boring, stupid and brings all the worst type of people. Best online communities are niche, small and focused. Reddit for a long while was just a big pool of niche communities. They were good subreddits, there were ugly subreddits, and things were OK. But with time it grew popular and now it needs to "take a stance on political correctness, social justice etc", "people get offended", it's bad for business, while the company needs to monetize after so many years ... so rules needs to be imposed, etc. etc. Racist people will move elsewhere, hate will move elsewhere, they won't disappear - that's for sure. But most creative people will also move as they were on reddit for what it used to be. There's a reason why these "awful" places like 4Chan and Reddit were the source of most of online trends and interesting action: "Pretty Flowers Grow In Shit". Reddit is doomed, just like digg was. It won't happen over night (digg.com is still around), no, but it will. Hopefully something p2p and decentralized (zeronet maybe?) will replace it this time, so it won't be owned by any entity to impose some stupid rules.
EGreg 11y ago
Reddit is like Craigslist 2.0 -- stark, text based with arcane cultural conventions, there is a lot of gold out there but also a lot of crap. Whereas craigslist is for locals to meet up, this is for online denizens to comment.
- bendev_test 11y ago
  Sturgeon's law applies.
pc2g4d 11y ago
Whatever happened to the idea that the best way to combat speech is with speech? Yet the "bastion of free speech" Reddit feels it must shut down various communities, probably just sending them elsewhere. Society could benefit from the conversation between those who say unapproved things and those who disapprove of them.
hint-water 11y ago
I started a subreddit called Life Pro Tips. Initially I seeded it with some of the best content I found through browsing reddit and kind of forgot about it. I submitted it to their self-serve advert program and it just kind of developed into what became a default subreddit. At the same time I started it, I registered the domain with the intent to some day build a standalone site out of it. That day finally came and I finished the site (I work on side projects like this in my spare time outside of work and always have). Since it was a subreddit that I created, I thought I could write my own rules for it. We ended up having a community discussion and only allowing self links due to people spamming unworthy "TOP ___ life hack" lists. When I launched the site, I had an Automoderator rule approve anything that was submitted from the site I built. One member discovered this, reported it, and before I knew it, I was shadowbanned and told to remove everything. Reddit didn't even tell me about the shadowbanning (I found out due to another mod making the discovery of it). They claimed that it was violating their TOS because the site had ads on it (I have lots of reasons why I disagree with this, and how they treat certain sites preferentially, but I'm not interested in explaining it, honestly). Considering I have a career and this was a side project, I gave up on reddit and it was the best thing for me. I've spent countless hours of my life moderating and contributing to making that subreddit a nice part of reddit (ultimately helping them create content, for free), and there was never any kind of gratitude (aside from a reddit gold I randomly received, which is worthless to me) expressed to me. At this time there is nothing compelling enough on reddit for me to return, and I have a feeling the company and its employees know they are in trouble.
- tinalumfoil 11y ago
  > I had an Automoderator rule approve anything that was submitted from the site I built. One member discovered this, reported it, and before I knew it, I was shadowbanned and told to remove everything. I don't know why this came as a huge surprise to you. Reddit has always been strict about posting stuff from your own site. The following statement has been on the FAQ page since 2010. > It's not strictly forbidden to submit a link to a site that you own or otherwise benefit from in some way, but you should sort of consider yourself on thin ice.
- yAnonymous 11y ago

161 points by sbuccini 11y ago

But a decade after Reddit launched, it has blossomed into a platform for racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and other hateful conversations. My eyes just about rolled out of my head. "Blossomed?" By volume, those "conversations" make up a minority of a minority of a minority of what happens on Reddit.

linkydinkandyou 11y ago
The forgot "fat hate." Weren't the anti-Obesity folks the straw that broke the camel's back?
- joefarish 11y ago
  It wasn't the fat hate as such, it was more that the users from that particular sub-reddit took it upon themselves to harass and mock other reddit users outside of that sub-reddit.
  - LesZedCB 11y ago
    That's correct. And as the reddit execs et. al. have stated, it's not that such communities, whether based around fundamentally hateful memes or not, can exist on reddit. In fact, many morally/ethically reprehensible communities have been explicitly allowed to continue existing. However, when they start moving outside of their communities and harass other communities through vote brigading or doxxing or PMing hateful messages, then it breaches a line (or smudged line) that allows reddit admins to take action.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      I'd believe that if the behavior of the administrators were consistent with that explanation. Example, the ban you're talking about, communities which had the same idea, with different staff, that had existed before that one had, were also caught up in the ban. In other words, they were banned despite not breaking any stated rules. Another example: A racist subreddit, not getting banned because of harassment, not for breaking rules, but because they were a frequent target of admin attention. Another another example: Colluding with the governments of other non-US countries to censor content at those governments' request. It's their website, they can run it as they please, but I wish Ohanian and Huffman would stop playing lip service to "free speech" and "open discussion" (something that up until recently, they did loudly and often) if that's not the goal they intend to live by. Actions speak a lot louder than words.
      - linkydinkandyou 11y ago
        Exactly. People are saying that /r/fatpeoplehate "violated copyright" but every meme does that. (See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/08/how-copyright-is-killing-your-favorite-memes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09...). And reddit never said they were getting legal takedown notices for material published there. Most of the posts I saw were responses to fat-acceptance bloggers and their postings on their blogs. Obviously these blogs were created to foster discussion and that was happening. When the discussion wasn't positive, they got upset. Obviously, it's a private website and they can do what they want with it. But it never was a place for "free speech." If you didn't go along with Reddit groupthink (which is an odd mix of socialism "college should be free" "Koch Brothers are Evil" and libertarianism "Go Uber!" "Open Access to the Internet") you would be quickly down voted away.
    - linkydinkandyou 11y ago
      I'm not so sure that /r/fatpeoplehate did anything worse than any other "funny pictures" subreddit. (For example, ones about "rednecks" or "ravers") I think just a lot of obese people got offended, and for some reason Ellen Pao felt for them.
      - amyjess 11y ago
        I've seen their page before the sub was banned. Half the posts fell into one of two categories: - Creepshots of people taken and published without the subject's permission in order to harass them. - Pictures taken from people's friends-only Facebook albums stolen and published on Reddit for harassment purposes in violation of the privacy settings chosen by the original uploader. Both are harassment, and the latter is a gratuitous copyright violation. The former probably also falls afoul of laws against using people's likenesses without permission. Oh, and once imgur began removing their images for TOS violations, they began acting like a pack of wild monkeys flinging their feces: they began targeting individual imgur staff members for harassment, and multiple people began inciting DDoS attacks against imgur. Reddit admins have been cracking down on witch hunts for quite some time, and DDoS attacks are highly illegal. They dug their own graves and deserved to be banned.
        monad2001 11y ago
        Just out of curiosity, are you personally for or against obesity? Does it make a difference how you feel about this topic?
        makomk 11y ago
        They also reposted images from other subreddits, causing hordes of FPH regulars to find the original post and spam the poster with PMs telling them how much FPH hated them and how awful they were. Some of the posts even pointed people at the right subreddit, with the knowledge and complicity of the FPH moderators. We know this because at least one person who was on the receiving end of this complained to the mods, and they responded by posting another post drawing more attention to the original one and posting her photo in the subreddit sidebar. She later posted on r/suicidewatch saying she was thinking of killing herself, and FPH regulars piled into that with some nasty comments too. It got to the point that some subreddits started discouraging people - especially women - from posting selfies solely because they kept getting posted on FPH.
LesZedCB 11y ago
I mean, if you read the comments on many of the default subs, there is a clear undertone of those cultures. I don't believe that's an editorial statement, but really a pretty accurate depiction of how many people (both inside and out) perceive the reddit community. It's sad.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  but really a pretty accurate depiction of how many people (both inside and out) perceive the reddit community. Shout something long enough and hard enough, and people will widely begin to believe it. Wired doing what they just did here is at least part of the reason that perception exists. Certain rabble-rousers within the community itself are another. It's an accusation. A smear. For it to be otherwise, there'd need to be proof, something sorely lacking from this meme.
  - kaitai 11y ago
    But it's pretty easy for the average user to find offensive content on Reddit -- things that would upset them if they or one of their children was involved. An existence proof for ugly stuff on Reddit is trivial, while it's much harder to give an average user a feel for what ratio of content they find offensive vs not.
    - sonnyz 11y ago
      I think a lot of the offensive comments that are easy to find on Reddit can also be found on other popular sites, such as Youtube, Facebook, or comment sections on news sites.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      So? That is an excellent argument for not including those subreddits in the default home page (for users who are not logged in) or /r/all. But you can find offensive things, or things you don't want your children to see, on just about any site (also, yes, your teens know about redtube).
    - johnward 11y ago
mahouse 11y ago
Breaking news! People of the world are prejudiced against some grups due to their past experiences in real life.
oldmanjay 11y ago
One current dominant media narrative is that any sort of intolerant thought is intolerable, and that the emotional state of a listener is the responsibility of the speaker. There are clear problems with this point of view vis a vi reality, which is why it is a narrative, not actual reporting. This divorcing from reality allows journalists to comfortably include the narrative everywhere that it can possibly fit with no regard for the actual applicability to anything. I suspect that overall it's about as likely to be successful as religious attempts to sell the narrative that teen sex is wrong. Shame and guilt don't really ever teach the lesson that is intended, but those are the only tools the media truly has.
- eli 11y ago
  I don't buy the "Media vs Reddit" narrative. I don't think this has anything to do with journalism or even intolerance. I just don't like hanging out with racists and sexists (in real life or online). If Reddit wants to keep me as a contributor to their site, they need to do something about that or I will not return. I doubt I'm alone in feeling that way.
  - johnward 11y ago
    Most of the sub reddits I hangout in don't have those tones or maybe I'm used to ignoring those types of comments online. I think any community starts to have those problems as they grow. HN isn't immune but it's still a small enough niche that we tend to still get higher quality comments than your average site. If you're in r/funny you're going to get comments from the lowest of the low just like youtube. I don't see it as a reddit issue it's more of a human nature problem. When you get enough of people in one area you're going to find the assholes.
    - mreiland 11y ago
      I don't see those issues either, OTOH I have a tendency to stick with specific subreddits of interest to me. I've never viewed reddit as a community, but as a community of communities, and I've always chosen to be a part of specific communities, ignore others, and stay the hell away from yet others. I don't go anywhere near /r/politics or /r/programming, for example. I just can't deal with the people in either. But I love me some /r/cpp and /r/startrek.
Spivak 11y ago
If they're going to attack Reddit, they should at least point out that the same is true for any platform with user generated content. For example, the comments section of every news site, Facebook, Twitter, IRC, etc.. I think the world, and especially the corporate world is struggling with the idea that people hold disgusting, ignorant, or hateful opinions and that we're not nearly as nice as we believe ourselves to be. But of course I don't hold any opinions like that -- obviously I'm better than those people. There isn't a minority group of hateful people who have are expressing their hateful opinions on social media -- it's that each person's hateful opinions are a minority of their total opinions which are expressed in proportional frequency.
- 7952 11y ago
  For a lot of people the whole point of Reddit is the comment threads. The voting turn it into a game, and oppositional views are an intrinsic part of that. People learn which arguments are most insidious or effective. I don't think Facebook is like this as unsound arguments are more likely to be tolerated. Reddit may have hotrrible offensive comments but they will often be razor sharp and highly effective at winning arguments. That makes it endlessly interesting. Of course HN has this to a lesser degree. I live in fear of being accused of "anecodotal". Looking at this comment that is ironic.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
6stringmerc 11y ago
Care to back up that critique with some stats? And, if you've got stats, would you mind sharing what percentage of Reddit activity/traffic is porn?
kaonashi 11y ago
Those minorities can and do spill out into other subreddits, degrading their quality.
psaintla 11y ago
You're absolutely right but that doesn't mean those small subreddits didn't have an impact, /r/fatpeoplehate and /r/imgoingtohellforthis were increasingly showing up on the frontpage.
- jtuente 11y ago
  Neither of those were small when they started to show up on the frontpage. /r/fatpeoplehate was definitely growing very quickly in the six months leading up to it's demise.
vernie 11y ago
I must just be really good at finding them then.
gcb0 11y ago
i just went to the front page. clear cookies and un-logged. 4/25 posts were "/r/blackpeopletweeter" how inclusive.
opsforgotmypass 11y ago
> By volume, those "conversations" make up a minority of a minority of a minority of what happens on Reddit. Right, because the rest of them are just non-sequitur memers fishing for upvotes. Such meltdown. Very epic. --- Unfortunately it doesn't matter if it's a minority of all the content on Reddit if it's what's on the frontpage 24/7 since that's what everyone is going to be looking at. Yay feedback loop!
wil421 11y ago
Has the wired blogger ever been to 4Chan or read youtube comments? The same could be said about both of those sites. Main subs have their share of filth but it's not only those things. There are some very racist and morally challenged subs but I wouldn't conclude all of reddit is like that.
- eli 11y ago
  I think Reddit has a problem and pointing out that there are other sites that have an even bigger problem doesn't help.
RexRollman 11y ago
Everyone wants freedom of speech until it become uncomfortable.
- rodgerd 11y ago
  Everyone wants freedom of speech until someone calls them a racist, then they're triggered.
draw_down 11y ago
Another way to phrase it: "Reddit is part of the internet."
intopieces 11y ago
>By volume, those "conversations" make up a minority of a minority of a minority of what happens on Reddit. This hardly matters when that content makes the front page of the site and is given positive votes continually. Every time someone complains about the offensive content in a "default" subreddit, the refrain goes like this: "That's just because it's a default man. You gotta unsub from the defaults and pick your own." Let's consider that for a minute. The standard view of your website, the view that is presented to any new member, is so clogged with terrible content that the active members recommend you change it immediately. When we buy phones and computers like this, we call it bloatware; we nuke the entire filesystem and start over. But when it's actual people generating content that most agree is worthless and often offensive: "well that's just a minority of a minority." Nonsense.
- personjerry 11y ago
  You seem to have asserted that this type of content regularly makes it to the front page, but in my experience that's not true at all.
  - d2xdy2 11y ago
    In my 5+ years, I tend to agree with you; there are occasionally little spats that I see, but by and large-- I'd never have known about all of this "bad" stuff if it weren't for other people telling me about it.
    - intopieces 11y ago
      >I'd never have known about all the "bad" stuff if it weren't for other people telling me about it. This is precisely the issue with "bad" stuff. It draws better attention to itself than the good stuff does. All the more reason for Reddit to get control of it if they want to inspire user growth and maintain ad revenue.
      - d2xdy2 11y ago
        Well, like I said, I'd have never known about it if other people hadn't told me. I can't speak to what Reddit "should" do; in _my_ niche area, Reddit works just fine the way it is. If they were to start "doing something about it", it'd likely not affect me in the least.
tsotha 11y ago
This. If you stay out of subreddits specifically devoted to that kind of stuff (plus a handful of others), you're not going to see it. I'm amazed at the extent to which people are willing to attack posts they have to go out of their way to see. Reddit is going to lose far more people trying to police out non-PC stuff than they will ever gain from it. And when people move on they do so quickly and in large numbers.
makeitsuckless 11y ago
You have to put this in the context of it being almost two decades since Wired was relevant.
code_sterling 11y ago
Funny, I see it in every other comment thread.
jordigh 11y ago
Well, it's a very visible minority on the front page.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
The core problem with reddit is there's no firewall between communities. So the fact that there are communities specifically set up with the goal of hating blacks or fat people or women or what-have-you means that those people spend a lot of time on reddit and end up spilling over into other popular communities. The moderation tools and admin support on reddit are comparatively underpowered so for a lot of popular sub-reddits it's very easy for the overall quality to plummet when a tiny group of vocal assholes decides they want to squat there. And for most sub-reddits this just starts a spiral of death as good people decide not to waste their time wading through toxic garbage and just find somewhere else to be, while the toxic minority gets stronger and more brazen. Imagine you have several subscriptions to a bunch of different print magazines. Every couple days a new magazine shows up. Stuff like Scientific American, The Economist, Better Homes and Gardens, National Geographic, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, Cat Fancy, etc. All fine and good. Except sometimes, maybe once every quarter per magazine, maybe less often even, there's some really weird stuff in your magazines. There's a 10 page article praising the KKK in your copy of Rolling Stone. Or there's a thing about how the jews did 9/11. Or the ads in Cat Fancy are all relentlessly making fun of fat people. Or there's an insert in the October edition of Scientific American that's actually a personal letter to you that is filled with hate and vitriol and ends with a plea for you to commit suicide. Who would put up with that? They wouldn't. But that's what people have been asked to deal with on sites like reddit, and it's beyond a reasonable level. How much shit is acceptable in your drinking water? Just a tiny bit? How about just 1 hour a year where the tap pours out 50/50 shit & water? Is that acceptable? No, it's not. There's far too much shit in the drinking water at reddit, the fact that the drinking water is not, in fact, mostly shit is not a defense.
- qu4z-2 11y ago
  Reddit is not a magazine, though. (Although Upvoted is!) EDIT: That said, I think better moderation tools and stronger firewalls between subs would be a huge improvement. The existence of /r/fph absolutely shouldn't spill over into /r/worldnews or wherever.
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    It's not, but it's a comparison that helps clarify. I've been participating in online communities since 1994, I've seen the full range. I've watched, and participated in, epic flame wars on Usenet that went on for weeks. I've had people make death threats against me. I've seen legitimately mentally ill people spew all kinds of nonsense. And in comparison to all of that I'd say reddit is worse. I like many things about reddit, it's got plenty of good parts. But there are fundamental weaknesses in the design and administration of the site which mean that it's difficult to avoid incredibly terrible interactions with assholes on a regular basis.
JeremyBanks 11y ago
Have you been to Reddit in recent years? A majority of the site may not exhibit this individually, but most highly-visible threads that touch race will be dominated by racists, and most highly-visible threads that touch gender will be dominated by sexists. It's very gross.
TrevorJ 11y ago
Agreed. There were and are some terrible subreddits, but they aren't the default subs, you had to go looking for them. In that sense it's really no better or worse than the rest of the internet. I also think the article is pretty misguided in saying that somehow wealthy white men are treated better on the site. First of all, unless you tell people who you are, nobody knows. Secondly, the idea that revealing your wealthy white dude status would lead to better treatment on Reddit it laughable to anybody who's used the site for more than a few minutes.
loco5niner 11y ago
And the same could be said about google... "It will send you directly to the most racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and other hateful websites!"

sirtastic 11y ago

I've seen worse hyperbole.

VLM 11y ago

How do we police everyone's thoughts, without offending anyone? Whaddya mean there's more than one cultural definition of correct thought, and sometimes the definitions disagree?

lghh 11y ago
> How do we police everyone's thoughts, without offending anyone? No one is trying to police thoughts. > Whaddya mean there's more than one cultural definition of correct thought, and sometimes the definitions disagree? Just because there is more than one cultural definition of correct thought does mean there is more than one actual definition.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  > No one is trying to police thoughts. Except all the people on Reddit who don't want people to use the word "rape" because it's "triggering". > Just because there is more than one cultural definition of correct thought does mean there is more than one actual definition. Yeah, but there's nothing that proves that there is only one actual definition, either. You've literally said nothing here.
  - lghh 11y ago
    People don't argue about using the word rape on reddit, that place is a bastion for anti-trigger warning rhetoric much like tumblr is a haven for pro-trigger warning rhetoric. Also you are severely misunderstanding what 'trigger warnings' are. Nobody says you can't talk about rape, just give people a heads up before you do. If you live next door to a veteran that you know suffers from PTSD, you ask him/her about using fireworks before you do it, right? Trigger warnings are the same thing except on the internet and instead of not talking about it the person just knows to stop reading. Also, this isn't policing thoughts. Think whatever you want. Say what you want. Understand the consequences. I will think what I want and respond how I want and understand the consequences.
    - copsarebastards 11y ago

twblalock 11y ago

I think reddit's issues stem from a simple case of failing to manage expectations -- the users got the idea that Reddit was a bastion of free speech where they could post anything, no matter how offensive. Apparently the corporation never really believed that, despite some of its representatives making statements that seemed to confirm it. Reddit ought to have been more straightforward with its content policy from the beginning. Some would argue that such a policy would have restricted the growth of reddit, but I think that as long as the content policy was not enforced in a heavy-handed manner, it would not have caused issues.

6stringmerc 11y ago
This is a very good point. For what Reddit has traditionally aspired to be, versus how it works, e.g. as an ebb and flow of community standards, it's a rock and a hard place in my opinion. Somewhere I've seen the perspective put forth that Reddit is essentially the gateway for things from 4Chan (etc) to make it into the mainstream, and I kind of buy into that.
TarpitCarnivore 11y ago
One thing I've always found interesting with Reddit related news is users will say things like "You (Reddit) never told us..." or other similar statement. It just always came across as an odd sense of entitlement as if Reddit should run every idea, change or whatever by their users for approval.
- twblalock 11y ago
  Some users seem to feel like they are the true owners of the site, and that the corporation exists to serve them and fulfill their needs. This is another example of the corporation's failure to manage expectations. They seem to have lost control over the site they created.
  - dgritsko 11y ago
    Isn't there an element of truth to that sentiment though? The situation with Reddit is reminiscent in some ways to Digg's downfall with the release of v4 (which ironically contributed significantly to Reddit's growth). What is Reddit without its users?

unethical_ban 11y ago

>Reddit has a bad reputation for being a repository for hate speech. Because for all of the world’s-largest-secret-Santa programs and for every lonely teen able to find friends on Reddit, there is a small and vocal minority of bad actors trying to ruin it for everyone. And let’s face it, you’re much more likely to come into conflict with them if you are not a wealthy white man. What a garbage article. Reddit's full of horrible content, but it's mostly on /r/atheism and /r/politics. the hate speech is there, but it's more hidden than it's ever been. And wow, it's the internet, where people can say anything they want. Where's the hitpiece on Berners-Lee?

ambler0 11y ago
Last I checked, Reddit was hosted on private servers. Hence, what you can say on their site is dictated by their TOS. The Internet is not a place where you can "say anything you want". It's a collection of servers. If you want the ability to say anything you want, start your own server. Reddit is not the government; it is not their obligation to protect free speech.
- Animats 11y ago
  We need at least one big federated social network, so it's not "theirs".
- mawburn 11y ago
  >Last I checked, Reddit was hosted on private servers. I'm pretty sure Reddit is hosted on AWS. http://www.redditblog.com/2009/11/moving-to-cloud.html http://www.redditblog.com/2009/11/moving-to-cloud.html http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/09/20/amazon-web-services-goes-down-taking-netflix-reddit-pocket-and-more-with-it/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/09/20/amazon-web-services...
  - Moeancurly 11y ago
    Why is that distinction important?

totaldomination 11y ago

Reddit still way way better than Fückêr News in terms of free speech and open communication.

chejazi 11y ago

I wonder how often fallen-out relationships between cofounders get reconciled. It seems like the force driving change needs to be pretty compelling... something much larger than the two individuals.

LesZedCB 11y ago
I think they both love reddit. I know as a user I love reddit, and despite the myriad problems with it, if I was in a position to give it some TLC and make it a place I would want to be, I would put aside interpersonal differences to make that happen.
fieryeagle 11y ago
Professional fall-out tended to be due to professional reasons. If the root causes could be fixed or overridden with a greater cause, why could they not work together again?

thieving_magpie 11y ago

I can't really fault Reddit for trying to figure out how to monetize the site and I'm certainly not in favor of pervasive hate speech, but I can't help but feel annoyed at all the gimmicks they're introducing like upvoted.com or the not-so-subtly promoted casual celebrity drop-ins to askreddit threads. I haven't visited in a few days and that trend is likely to continue. And honestly, there's no tangible reason for my loss of interest. I certainly don't have any better ideas as to how to solve these very real problems. All I know is I just want to forget about it.

6stringmerc 11y ago
When I realized I was spending more time reading r/guitar and r/wearethemusicmakers than playing guitar or making music, I deleted my account and only drop in about once a month to see if I've missed much of anything. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Just my take on it.
- sotojuan 11y ago
  Same with me and programming. I'm fine just browsing HN every other day and checking out slow small community boards like Lainchan.

daveloyall 11y ago

I'm not really part of this conversation, but my GF has previously complained that Reddit isn't worth using because "you're just scrolling down looking at cool shit, and then BAM, you get murder-rolled. [What?] It's like rickrolling, but it's a picture or video of somebody getting murdered." Various client-side solutions to this occurred to me, like identifying domains that will host such media (gotta be just a few, right?) and null routing them on her computer, but then it turned out that she doesn't have root on her "computer", so she just quit using reddit.

wodenokoto 11y ago
Or unsubscribe from r/WTF I haven't seen anything like that on Reddit though. Everything is marked NSFW, unless perhaps stuff in 50/50, but even they tell you there's 50% chance that any post is something vile.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  > Or unsubscribe from r/WTF Perhaps, but that's still not great from a marketing perspective. "Reddit: You Can Opt Out Of The Gory Murder Porn!"
  - letstryagain 11y ago
    It's not a default sub, you have to actually subscribe to get it.
    - astrange 11y ago
      It was a default sub last year, possibly with a different mission statement. Or they were just into murder at the time. I mean, lots of popular websites are.
      - eeZi 11y ago
        Mission statement was always the same. It's just no longer a default. Note that user who signed up before the default change took place still have the old defaults!

Animats 11y ago

"Tired" starts out by telling us there was a day when "Reddit wasn't there", as if they had a major outage. That's never mentioned again. The article is mostly about their struggle to be more politically correct to satisfy advertisers.

rustynails 11y ago

This is quite a poor article. I'm surprised it made it here. "Just like that, most of Reddit went quiet." I'm not a big reddit user, but I never noticed that. Most discussions I am interested in are still going. Also, the word "misogynist" is one of my litmus tests - it usually indicates prejudice by the author. Most people here have translated that term to sexist but it is usually used to imply "the comments are negative and directed at women". I usually find such articles stereotype men in a negative way (ie. The people who use this term are often hypocritical).

redwards510 11y ago
Agreed. It reads like a loving puff piece designed to make investors happy. I don't understand the claim that reddit is a "bastion of free speech" while saying misogynists and racists are nothing but violent, vile trolls. What exactly do they think free speech IS? It means supporting speech you don't agree with!
- thescribe 11y ago
  To quote SlateStarCodex "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup"
uncletaco 11y ago
> "Just like that, most of Reddit went quiet." That's in reference to subreddits, including many of the default ones, becoming private for a day in protest after a well liked Reddit employee was fired. A good portion of the article is about dramatizing Ohanian and HUffman's response to the event. If you're not a heavy Reddit user its easy to see how you missed it, but a lot of the article revolves around its aftermath: Ellen Pao deciding to resign, Ohanian and Huffman putting aside their differences, Reddit the company deciding it needs a concrete direction. This article was mostly about putting a heroic spin on the story of Reddit's founders, and the challenges they face trying to open reddit to a wider audience. Its very much a puff piece that really isn't a general critique of the seedier aspects of reddit.
lotso 11y ago
>I usually find such articles stereotype men in a negative way (ie. The people who use this term are often hypocritical). Or maybe it is accurate, but is hard for men to accept that. The world operates generally in a misogynistic way. Is it really hard to believe Reddit, who's userbase is predominantly men, act this way as well? Source: Man who used to frequent Reddit for years.

mundo 11y ago

The most interesting thing in this article is that Reddit's CTO is the little brother of SMBC creator Zach Weinberg(!)

JTon 11y ago
I was curious about this, so I went to the SMBC site. It says by Zach Weinersmith; not Weinberg. Also the CTO of Reddit is Marty Weiner. That's three different last names. I think you're a little confused!
- cambion 11y ago
  Zach Weiner changed his name to Weinersmith when he got married. I think the parent was mistaken when he said Weinberg, but Marty Weiner being Zach Weiner's brother does make logical sense (I don't know if it's true though).
  - stephaniepier 11y ago
    It is true! https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3hs3v4/im_marty_weiner_the_new_reddit_cto/cua27tb https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3hs3v4/im_ma...

trhway 11y ago

>But a decade after Reddit launched, it has blossomed into a platform for racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and other hateful conversations. blaming the mirror ...

SilasX 11y ago

They still have tons of users and an extremely active community that doesn't show signs of dying, with lots of untapped revenue opportunities. If that's a meltdown, I don't want to be solid.

ProAm 11y ago
But we can agree this is the beginning of the end? Reddit is to big for a quick death, but it's peaked.

steven2012 11y ago

Great article except for the whole "rich white men" part, which I found asinine and distracting.

NovaS1X 11y ago

>“ When we see harassing behavior, we can speak up to challenge it,” the authors wrote. And that’s true. We can. But if we aren’t white men, it’s likely we won’t be heard. Here. This doesn't make sense. Why are people, or do people feel the need to link their identity to their thoughts online. If you're pushing for equality then why are you assigning a gender, race, or political affiliation to your comments? If we are all equal then why separate yourself with labels? This is why having your online identity linked with your real identity is a bad thing in lots of cases. This is why anonymity is important. Every conversation I've had on 4chan I have no clue what gender the other person is, what race they are, where they live, how much money they make, what organizations they support, or what their name is real or not. The only thing that matters is what they're saying or what pictures they're posting. Even identifying yourself as a female results in "tits or GTFO" responses. You can see this as hate speech against women or the community saying in it's own fucked up way "we don't care and you shouldn't announce these labels to us". But in the end it pushes away the labels that people have such a problem with. And nobody's comments are getting downvoted so there goes the echo chamber mechanic built into Reddit. In an ironic twist the "internet hate machine" can be far more inclusive than Reddit.

codeulike 11y ago
You can see this as hate speech against women or the community saying in it's own fucked up way "we don't care and you shouldn't announce these labels to us" Generous interpretation
- yesco 11y ago
  This was more of the case when they first started doing it. More recently its devolved into actually being hate speech in accordance to poe's law. You really only see it on /b/ though.
- NovaS1X 11y ago
  It's an honest interpretation on a lot of boards. Of course this is a trend, not the rule. I can't speak for everyone. This wouldn't be true on places like /pol/ or /b/
11y ago

yk 11y ago

As a avid reddit user, these two sentences scare me more than any of the stuff that happened this year: > Huffman believes Reddit can be mainstream, embraced by the larger world. But for that to happen, he’ll need to clean up the product so that it is more straightforward for new users to try it out—without alienating the existing community members. Thing is, reddit is incredible fractured and all of the value I get from the site is because it is incredible fractured. I am not subscribed to any of the default subs (sub forums new users get subscribed to automatically) and in general I avoid /r/all which is just a cesspool of shallow memes. However behind this a some fantastic niche communities like r/worldbuilding and the history community (I avoid r/history though). And I believe, these communities thrive to a large part because reddit is fractured and I fear that a more mainstream reddit would look a lot more like a boring version of the current /r/all.

return0 11y ago
It would be a win-win if Reddit goes on with its beautification project. On the one hand reddit will finally become presentable to advertisers, on the other hand the fringe communities will probably move to a non-commercial, impossible-to-censor community.
Domenic_S 11y ago
> I am not subscribed to any of the default subs (sub forums new users get subscribed to automatically) and in general I avoid /r/all Say that to any non-techie (say, to the average Facebook user) and I'd bet real money their eyes glaze over and they make it a point to forget Reddit even exists. That is Reddit's problem.

lackbeard 11y ago

The Reddit PR blitz is on!

dpc_pw 11y ago

"Huffman believes Reddit can be mainstream, embraced by the larger world." It might sound hipster-like, but whatever: mainstream is boring, stupid and brings all the worst type of people. Best online communities are niche, small and focused. Reddit for a long while was just a big pool of niche communities. They were good subreddits, there were ugly subreddits, and things were OK. But with time it grew popular and now it needs to "take a stance on political correctness, social justice etc", "people get offended", it's bad for business, while the company needs to monetize after so many years ... so rules needs to be imposed, etc. etc. Racist people will move elsewhere, hate will move elsewhere, they won't disappear - that's for sure. But most creative people will also move as they were on reddit for what it used to be. There's a reason why these "awful" places like 4Chan and Reddit were the source of most of online trends and interesting action: "Pretty Flowers Grow In Shit". Reddit is doomed, just like digg was. It won't happen over night (digg.com is still around), no, but it will. Hopefully something p2p and decentralized (zeronet maybe?) will replace it this time, so it won't be owned by any entity to impose some stupid rules.

EGreg 11y ago

Reddit is like Craigslist 2.0 -- stark, text based with arcane cultural conventions, there is a lot of gold out there but also a lot of crap. Whereas craigslist is for locals to meet up, this is for online denizens to comment.

bendev_test 11y ago
Sturgeon's law applies.

pc2g4d 11y ago

Whatever happened to the idea that the best way to combat speech is with speech? Yet the "bastion of free speech" Reddit feels it must shut down various communities, probably just sending them elsewhere. Society could benefit from the conversation between those who say unapproved things and those who disapprove of them.

hint-water 11y ago

I started a subreddit called Life Pro Tips. Initially I seeded it with some of the best content I found through browsing reddit and kind of forgot about it. I submitted it to their self-serve advert program and it just kind of developed into what became a default subreddit. At the same time I started it, I registered the domain with the intent to some day build a standalone site out of it. That day finally came and I finished the site (I work on side projects like this in my spare time outside of work and always have). Since it was a subreddit that I created, I thought I could write my own rules for it. We ended up having a community discussion and only allowing self links due to people spamming unworthy "TOP ___ life hack" lists. When I launched the site, I had an Automoderator rule approve anything that was submitted from the site I built. One member discovered this, reported it, and before I knew it, I was shadowbanned and told to remove everything. Reddit didn't even tell me about the shadowbanning (I found out due to another mod making the discovery of it). They claimed that it was violating their TOS because the site had ads on it (I have lots of reasons why I disagree with this, and how they treat certain sites preferentially, but I'm not interested in explaining it, honestly). Considering I have a career and this was a side project, I gave up on reddit and it was the best thing for me. I've spent countless hours of my life moderating and contributing to making that subreddit a nice part of reddit (ultimately helping them create content, for free), and there was never any kind of gratitude (aside from a reddit gold I randomly received, which is worthless to me) expressed to me. At this time there is nothing compelling enough on reddit for me to return, and I have a feeling the company and its employees know they are in trouble.

tinalumfoil 11y ago
> I had an Automoderator rule approve anything that was submitted from the site I built. One member discovered this, reported it, and before I knew it, I was shadowbanned and told to remove everything. I don't know why this came as a huge surprise to you. Reddit has always been strict about posting stuff from your own site. The following statement has been on the FAQ page since 2010. > It's not strictly forbidden to submit a link to a site that you own or otherwise benefit from in some way, but you should sort of consider yourself on thin ice.
yAnonymous 11y ago