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Reddit is the worst. I created a sub that ended up becoming a default (/r/lifeprotips) and ended up getting banned when I tried to promote a site that I built (

Reddit is the worst. I created a sub that ended up becoming a default (/r/lifeprotips) and ended up getting banned when I tried to promote a site that I built (which was my original intention with the idea). They banned me because I had adsense on the site (funny because Imgur was/has been the golden child for reddit and they've had advertising for quite a while). I sent them a DMCA to remove the logo that I had commissioned from someone from Dribbble (for my site, but ended up using it as the header there). No response. Reddit is run by a bunch of leeches who rely on moderators to create content and never reward them.

hire_charts 11y ago
Is lifeprotips.com the site you were trying to promote? I see that the banners are really similar.
- fourstar 11y ago
  Correct.
pknopf 11y ago
I'm working on a site: https://skimur.com https://skimur.com I plan on making like Twitter, but "followers" "vote" for "tweets" so that the collective community sees the best content. Reddit isn't really meant for personal usage. Subs are typically topic related there.
- Smudge 11y ago
  Interesting idea, but right now this is just a self-hosted instance of Reddit, is it not? How do you plan to develop the idea further and (most importantly) attract actual visitors/users?
- deelowe 11y ago
  voat.co is already a good alternative.
  - Forbo 11y ago
    If you don't mind digging through blatant racism.
    - corobo 11y ago
      The problem with starting a community made of the banned members of another
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    C# based and struggling to keep up with load, last I saw
- na85 11y ago
  The "next big thing" won't have voting. It's too easily gamed and leads to groupthink in the worst way. Inb4 "HN has voting but no groupthink". It has both in large quantities.
  - donatj 11y ago
    I've always had the idea for a comment system where you can only down vote with a comment on why, and that comments down vote power depends on its votes.
woah 11y ago
You tried to use their site to promote your site and they banned you? And then you threatened legal action to get them to take down an image that you yourself posted?
- fourstar 11y ago
  I took a survey of what was lacking on the subreddit at the time and there were plenty of things that were suggested that I thought I could build/provide.
- kbenson 11y ago
  > And then you threatened legal action to get them to take down an image that you yourself posted? Why not? If he owned the rights to the image, it's use was contingent on his approval, absent any other agreement. The only reason it required a a legal notice is because they locked him out of the account he used that had rights to change it. This is no different than offering to let the office use your ping pong table, then getting fired and having your building access revoked. If the business refused to return the ping pong table, which was in use contingent upon your and the businesses approval, they have essentially stolen your property. Feel free to substitute any other item item (such as fridge, chair, computer hardware or servers...) for the ping pong table in that example.
  - JimDabell 11y ago
    > absent any other agreement The user agreement includes perpetual, irrevocable license to reproduce content you submit to Reddit.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      Depending on how that's worded, and how "submit" is defined, that may or may not apply. We're talking about theming a subreddit, not submitting content as part of a regular reddit submission.
    - hellbanner 11y ago
      Does that mean if you link to a website, they own that code?
forgetsusername 11y ago
>Reddit is the worst. Reddit is the best. In fact, now when I'm searching for random terms or information, I'll often include "reddit" in the query, because I'm confident that on pretty much any subject there are bona fide experts or people who have already done the research willingly sharing their knowledge on Reddit, for free. Wonderful.
- seangrant 11y ago
  Can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but you should be weary of the information you read on Reddit. A lot of people simply rehash untrue statements they've heard on Reddit before. I'd say this is true anywhere but Reddit seems to be exceeding prevalent.
  - bcook 11y ago
    Anyone who believes something at face-value is asking to be deceived. I think reddit is truly great at playing to the common denominator. Whether that is good or bad, I do not know.
    - platz 11y ago
      I think you're oversimplifying an extremely large and complex thing. How does a post like this "play to the common denominator"? https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/3y3fjh/need_some_help_understanding_a_concept_related_to/cybu7vx https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/3y3fj...
      - bcook 11y ago
        I said "I think" which I hope was interpreted to mean it was my subjective opinion. There are some great things to be found in reddit, but immaturity is rampant along with one of the strongest examples of groupthink. this is just my opinion though. No statements of fact here.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I do the same. For pretty much any topic there's a decent subreddit with a community of people involved in it, who did lots of research and collected relevant information in various FAQ / Wiki posts. Whenever I want to seriously learn something outside of programming, I usually search for a subreddit on it.
7952 11y ago
> Reddit is run by a bunch of leeches who rely on moderators to create content and never reward them. I think sites like Reddit emerged at a point where infrastructure for sharing was very valuable for users in its own right. It seems amazing now that the submit/upvote/downvote flow was so novel and we all lapped up the spirit of freedom. But actually the powerful feature of sites like Reddit and HN is the moderation rather than the technology. I would pay for some of the better subs, and certainly HN. Good moderation is invaluable and it's a shame that it is hard to make money out of. I have a hunch that Google Contributor is aimed at this market as a sort of Netflix for content.
- brownbat 11y ago
  > submit/upvote/downvote flow was so novel What was the timeline again... Slashdot emerged in 1997, it developed voting on several different criteria, you could filter for "funny" or "insightful" posts, and it had a pretty sophisticated meta-moderation system. Digg simplified that with up- and down-votes. Reddit borrowed digg's model. I'm not 100% sure what the innovation of reddit was at the time, but I feel like these three just had slightly different tones to their communities. Slashdot was the geek site, Digg had more jokes and politics, reddit was sort of... deliberative? The culture was a lot different back then, a bit more like this site.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    They didn't change the UX and tank their site. That was their innovation, if we are being honest.
    - brownbat 11y ago
      That was a weird moment, Reddit's September as everyone flooded in. I'm maybe the one person who enjoys digg more today than before. I like the curation they do on videos, there's far less variation in quality than when it was all user submitted. Really no social interaction there anymore though. I think they killed something broken that a lot of people loved, and replaced it with something kind of neat for a completely different use case. Like if McDonald's started making electric cars or something. Widely hated, I'm still not sure it wasn't the right call though.
Huhty 11y ago
Reddit is run by a bunch of leeches who rely on moderators to create content and never reward them. Snapzu (http://snapzu.com http://snapzu.com) is a reddit alternative that has a referral program that splits revenues with moderators, as a reward and incentive to grow it. Their system is similar where instead of subreddits, there are 'tribes', but it's essentially the same way of organizing communities. Here is a link to their referral program page: http://snapzu.com/referralprogram/ http://snapzu.com/referralprogram/
- fourstar 11y ago
  This is very interesting and I think there might be something here with this idea. It looks like you might run/work there. Is your "Frank" on the affiliate program just an example or a real person? Another question I have is about the legality of it. Are these technically employees or contractors?
  - corobo 11y ago
    I'd imagine it's similar to how YouTube works. You're self employed/independent contractors and need to sort your own taxes and everything as you would in any other similar position
Houshalter 11y ago
I know it sucks, and I'm not saying their policy is best. But they do get a huge number of spammers and people self promoting their own websites. The problem isn't that your site has ads, it's that you aren't supposed to submit links to your own website at all. Or at least not more than 10% of all your posts should be self promotion is the rule now. I don't agree with this rule at all, but I understand why it exists.
ivanca 11y ago
Reddit has so many users that it always has to behave as the most common lowest denominator dictates, to survive this that CLD has to stay away from your subreddit, consciously ("I understand I'm not smart enough to talk here " or subconsciously "I don't care about this"). Otherwise it just goes to shit. Banning sites for having AdSense is extremely hypocritical, Reddit lives thanks to ads or cohercing users to remove them ("gold")
wslh 11y ago
I have mixed feelings about reddit but mainly positives. One, it is the main driver of traffic to my blogs because there are specific subreddits with very focused audiences about these topics. The negative was only related to the netsec subreddit which I think is really great but banned me several times in the last few months because some moderators said my post were offtopic while the same kind of posts were really successful there before. For example, benchmarking different ways of betwork traffic capture in Windows including drivers developed by ourselves.

hire_charts 11y ago

Is lifeprotips.com the site you were trying to promote? I see that the banners are really similar.

fourstar 11y ago
Correct.

pknopf 11y ago

I'm working on a site: https://skimur.com https://skimur.com I plan on making like Twitter, but "followers" "vote" for "tweets" so that the collective community sees the best content. Reddit isn't really meant for personal usage. Subs are typically topic related there.

Smudge 11y ago
Interesting idea, but right now this is just a self-hosted instance of Reddit, is it not? How do you plan to develop the idea further and (most importantly) attract actual visitors/users?
deelowe 11y ago
voat.co is already a good alternative.
- Forbo 11y ago
  If you don't mind digging through blatant racism.
  - corobo 11y ago
    The problem with starting a community made of the banned members of another
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  C# based and struggling to keep up with load, last I saw
na85 11y ago
The "next big thing" won't have voting. It's too easily gamed and leads to groupthink in the worst way. Inb4 "HN has voting but no groupthink". It has both in large quantities.
- donatj 11y ago
  I've always had the idea for a comment system where you can only down vote with a comment on why, and that comments down vote power depends on its votes.

woah 11y ago

You tried to use their site to promote your site and they banned you? And then you threatened legal action to get them to take down an image that you yourself posted?

fourstar 11y ago
I took a survey of what was lacking on the subreddit at the time and there were plenty of things that were suggested that I thought I could build/provide.
kbenson 11y ago
> And then you threatened legal action to get them to take down an image that you yourself posted? Why not? If he owned the rights to the image, it's use was contingent on his approval, absent any other agreement. The only reason it required a a legal notice is because they locked him out of the account he used that had rights to change it. This is no different than offering to let the office use your ping pong table, then getting fired and having your building access revoked. If the business refused to return the ping pong table, which was in use contingent upon your and the businesses approval, they have essentially stolen your property. Feel free to substitute any other item item (such as fridge, chair, computer hardware or servers...) for the ping pong table in that example.
- JimDabell 11y ago
  > absent any other agreement The user agreement includes perpetual, irrevocable license to reproduce content you submit to Reddit.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    Depending on how that's worded, and how "submit" is defined, that may or may not apply. We're talking about theming a subreddit, not submitting content as part of a regular reddit submission.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    Does that mean if you link to a website, they own that code?

forgetsusername 11y ago

>Reddit is the worst. Reddit is the best. In fact, now when I'm searching for random terms or information, I'll often include "reddit" in the query, because I'm confident that on pretty much any subject there are bona fide experts or people who have already done the research willingly sharing their knowledge on Reddit, for free. Wonderful.

seangrant 11y ago
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but you should be weary of the information you read on Reddit. A lot of people simply rehash untrue statements they've heard on Reddit before. I'd say this is true anywhere but Reddit seems to be exceeding prevalent.
- bcook 11y ago
  Anyone who believes something at face-value is asking to be deceived. I think reddit is truly great at playing to the common denominator. Whether that is good or bad, I do not know.
  - platz 11y ago
    I think you're oversimplifying an extremely large and complex thing. How does a post like this "play to the common denominator"? https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/3y3fjh/need_some_help_understanding_a_concept_related_to/cybu7vx https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceDiscussion/comments/3y3fj...
    - bcook 11y ago
      I said "I think" which I hope was interpreted to mean it was my subjective opinion. There are some great things to be found in reddit, but immaturity is rampant along with one of the strongest examples of groupthink. this is just my opinion though. No statements of fact here.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I do the same. For pretty much any topic there's a decent subreddit with a community of people involved in it, who did lots of research and collected relevant information in various FAQ / Wiki posts. Whenever I want to seriously learn something outside of programming, I usually search for a subreddit on it.

7952 11y ago

> Reddit is run by a bunch of leeches who rely on moderators to create content and never reward them. I think sites like Reddit emerged at a point where infrastructure for sharing was very valuable for users in its own right. It seems amazing now that the submit/upvote/downvote flow was so novel and we all lapped up the spirit of freedom. But actually the powerful feature of sites like Reddit and HN is the moderation rather than the technology. I would pay for some of the better subs, and certainly HN. Good moderation is invaluable and it's a shame that it is hard to make money out of. I have a hunch that Google Contributor is aimed at this market as a sort of Netflix for content.

brownbat 11y ago
> submit/upvote/downvote flow was so novel What was the timeline again... Slashdot emerged in 1997, it developed voting on several different criteria, you could filter for "funny" or "insightful" posts, and it had a pretty sophisticated meta-moderation system. Digg simplified that with up- and down-votes. Reddit borrowed digg's model. I'm not 100% sure what the innovation of reddit was at the time, but I feel like these three just had slightly different tones to their communities. Slashdot was the geek site, Digg had more jokes and politics, reddit was sort of... deliberative? The culture was a lot different back then, a bit more like this site.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  They didn't change the UX and tank their site. That was their innovation, if we are being honest.
  - brownbat 11y ago
    That was a weird moment, Reddit's September as everyone flooded in. I'm maybe the one person who enjoys digg more today than before. I like the curation they do on videos, there's far less variation in quality than when it was all user submitted. Really no social interaction there anymore though. I think they killed something broken that a lot of people loved, and replaced it with something kind of neat for a completely different use case. Like if McDonald's started making electric cars or something. Widely hated, I'm still not sure it wasn't the right call though.

Huhty 11y ago

Reddit is run by a bunch of leeches who rely on moderators to create content and never reward them. Snapzu (http://snapzu.com http://snapzu.com) is a reddit alternative that has a referral program that splits revenues with moderators, as a reward and incentive to grow it. Their system is similar where instead of subreddits, there are 'tribes', but it's essentially the same way of organizing communities. Here is a link to their referral program page: http://snapzu.com/referralprogram/ http://snapzu.com/referralprogram/

fourstar 11y ago
This is very interesting and I think there might be something here with this idea. It looks like you might run/work there. Is your "Frank" on the affiliate program just an example or a real person? Another question I have is about the legality of it. Are these technically employees or contractors?
- corobo 11y ago
  I'd imagine it's similar to how YouTube works. You're self employed/independent contractors and need to sort your own taxes and everything as you would in any other similar position

Houshalter 11y ago

I know it sucks, and I'm not saying their policy is best. But they do get a huge number of spammers and people self promoting their own websites. The problem isn't that your site has ads, it's that you aren't supposed to submit links to your own website at all. Or at least not more than 10% of all your posts should be self promotion is the rule now. I don't agree with this rule at all, but I understand why it exists.

ivanca 11y ago

Reddit has so many users that it always has to behave as the most common lowest denominator dictates, to survive this that CLD has to stay away from your subreddit, consciously ("I understand I'm not smart enough to talk here " or subconsciously "I don't care about this"). Otherwise it just goes to shit. Banning sites for having AdSense is extremely hypocritical, Reddit lives thanks to ads or cohercing users to remove them ("gold")

wslh 11y ago

I have mixed feelings about reddit but mainly positives. One, it is the main driver of traffic to my blogs because there are specific subreddits with very focused audiences about these topics. The negative was only related to the netsec subreddit which I think is really great but banned me several times in the last few months because some moderators said my post were offtopic while the same kind of posts were really successful there before. For example, benchmarking different ways of betwork traffic capture in Windows including drivers developed by ourselves.