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Reddit is the new Usenet: It's good, it's bad, it's ugly. It all depends on where you look, and there is no single community, there's a fractal-like set of them
by qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Reddit is the new Usenet: It's good, it's bad, it's ugly. It all depends on where you look, and there is no single community, there's a fractal-like set of them.
- digi_owl 10y agoBig diff is that usenet was to a large extent decentralized and non-profit. Reddit on the other hand is very much centralized and for profit.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago...Which is the problem: It's really hard to actually turn a profit on that model, much less to take responsibility for millions of users. The usenet approach was pretty much, "as long as it isn't illegal, do what you will: the local mods are the ones who make the rules." (yes, that wasn't the whole story, but close enough). Reddit's actually trying to clean up their community, and censor outright hatespeech. You may or may not think it's a good idea to do, but it's actually quite difficult.
- codezero 10y agoThe moderation of usenet was very much centralized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbone_cabal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbone_cabal
- exolymph 10y ago> Reddit on the other hand is very much centralized and for profit. Although in a mind-bogglingly incompetent way. Their self-serve ad product is so far behind even Twitter's offering (which is inferior to Facebook and Google) that it's not even funny.
- deadbunny 10y agoYeah, these stories always make me remember that reddit really is a whole heaving mess not just the pretty niche subreddits I frequent (I unsubbed from the defaults years ago).
- clifanatic 10y agoWhy can't usenet be the new usenet?
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoBecause usenet is just barely alive, with an active userbase that is tiny, and it's regularly flooded with spam to the point that it's hard to find any content, because there are hardly any admins any more.