5 ms·

I'd prefer reddit die and something replace it. I go to the website every day, mostly for sports and gaming subreddits, but as a platform, it's hopelessly mism

I'd prefer reddit die and something replace it. I go to the website every day, mostly for sports and gaming subreddits, but as a platform, it's hopelessly mismanaged. They're technically lost. Look at the trouble they've had making a proper phone app (they still don't have a good one). The user interface is lacking at best (as evidenced by RES being needed to use the site for a long time now). People have been asking for better moderation tools for nearly a decade. The recent CSS dustup shows they don't even understand how people use their site. Then there's the lack what would be super helpful features (the ability to do a subreddit poll, vote for moderators, and access more than your last 100 posts easily). The leadership is completely tone-deaf to the userbase. Just look at the drama when they fired that AMA mod. Many times various CEOs from Ellen Pao to Steve Huffman have acted more like spoiled 6-year-olds than chief executives. That's before you start talking about them pushing their politics on the site. And spoiled 6-year-old isn't too far off from the truth. Keep in mind Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian were essentially gifted their success. They applied to y-combinator with no idea of what to make. They were given the idea for reddit. They couldn't make it work so they had Aaron Swartz forced on them (in what was by all accounts a strained relationship). Aaron fixed the site and made it what it is today then they all got paid. And those two have just been coasting on that ever since. It's nearly a "born on third and thought they hit a triple" situation. If I were a VC I'd be throwing money at a reddit replacement. It's not hard to envision a better platform, it just has a high barrier to entry because you're likely not going to be profitable for years while you grow your userbase. The payoff is huge though. Reddit is one of the largest websites in the world and makes next to no profit because of its management.

dageshi 9y ago
Personally I've been using reddit for about a decade. It seems more or less the same site it always has been just a lot bigger and with some incremental improvements. 99% of the user base has no clue about who most of the people in your post are, they aren't up in arms about anything, they only care that the site continues to work, which it does. Additionally, I cannot see how a competitor can possibly compete with reddit, reddit offers everything most people want without charging anything, without excessive advertising and without demanding a lot of personal information. How do you build a competitor that matches those criteria and then makes a ton of money?
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  >Additionally, I cannot see how a competitor can possibly compete with reddit, reddit offers everything most people want without charging anything, without excessive advertising and without demanding a lot of personal information. How do you build a competitor that matches those criteria and then makes a ton of money? The answer is simply "build what Reddit was like 5 years ago". It's plain to see that Reddit is on a downward spiral - their product has been getting worse and will continue to get worse. Same goes for the community. Reddit is showing all of the signs of a dying platform, if you study the historical lifecycles of web properties it matches quite well. Unfortunately, whatever comes up to replace it is probably going to suffer the same fate.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    What Reddit was like 5 years ago didn't make much money.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
      Which is why the replacement is doomed to suffer the same fate. Reddit is not a suistainable business model.
    - wand3r 9y ago
      To my knowledge, it still doesn't.
- CrystalLangUser 9y ago
  A competitor can compete by building a platform that handles user load & doesn't shill out for advertisers. And one that focuses on actually improving the site's functionality (search, anyone?) instead of user profiles which don't even make sense really given reddit's original purpose.
jeremymims 9y ago
I know it's hard to imagine, but there are many sides to these stories. Things really aren't so black and white. You really have no idea just how hard these guys worked or the struggles they had to go through. I'd recommend you read Alexis's post from back in 2010: http://alexisohanian.com/keep-calm-carry-on-what-you-didnt-know-about http://alexisohanian.com/keep-calm-carry-on-what-you-didnt-k.... Reddit was born out of the first Y Combinator batch in 2005. This batch turned out to be an exceptional group of people who helped make Y Combinator into Y Combinator. But it was far from a forgone conclusion that they would be successful or that Reddit would one day become a top five website on the internet. My experience with Alexis and Steve is that they're extremely generous, helpful, and have set the tone for the "pay it forward" spirit of Y Combinator's alumni network. I'd encourage you to wish them the best of luck instead of hoping someone takes them down.
tiles 9y ago
I don't disagree with the idea that Reddit is mismanaged, but isn't "born on third and thought they hit a triple" a hyperbolic way to describe the success of one of the top 10 websites in the U.S.? From introducing the concept of subreddits, to actually profiting off of Reddit Gold, to a distributed moderation team (that when it works, works well) there are plenty of places they succeeded. That doesn't just simply happen.
- phaus 9y ago
  The commenter you are replying to is making the claim that Aaron Schwartz did all of the work that made Reddit one of the largest websites in the world. That's why he describes Steve and Alexis as "Being born on third."
WalterBright 9y ago
Reddit is enormously successful. I'd tread very carefully in attempting to "fix" it.
- wand3r 9y ago
  Depends on the metric. As a business it has yet to monetize 250m users
- axaxs 9y ago
  I'd argue its current success is because there's no site quite like it in design. We used to have digg and reddit, until digg redesigned and users jumped ship to 'an alternative'. Now, there really isn't a good alternative. The only one I even know of is voat, which seems to be a somehow worse clone, filled with the hate of those banned from more traditional places. And that's failing, too. I agree with parent comment, a reddit like idea with a tech refresh, and less toxic leadership, would be successful. But as acknowledged, it would take time to grow its user base.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    > tech refresh I like its low tech interface, as I like the HN simple, modest, low-key interface.
    - axaxs 9y ago
      i agree completely. but both sites are...not good..on mobile. Usable with some effort. And well, it's down far too often for a site of its size.
CrystalLangUser 9y ago
The problem is building a viable alternative community wise. That's what Voat.co tried to do and look where they are now. Reddit's leadership is beyond terrible- anyone remember their CEO shadow-editing users' posts? Where even Pao commented on it? Except no one cared because it was in /r/the_donald. Ever since Reddit made upvotes / downvotes hidden, and started fuzzing upvotes, it started going downhill rapidly. Why? Because it's basically become an advertising platform using the default / larger subs. Just follow /r/hailcorporate to see.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  > The problem is building a viable alternative community wise. That's what Voat.co tried to do and look where they are now. Voat had a very specific adverse selection problem. Whenever a community is formed in reaction to viewpoint discrimination[1] move towards a stance of active moderation against certain viewpoints, your community is going to (initially) consist of a few principled, marketplace-of-ideas true believes and then a whole ton of the worst elements of the viewpoints being discriminated against. Or as I heard it put recently: "If you establish a witch-hunt-free zone, you'll attract tons of actual witches". The suggestion upthread here has no such downside. If anything, the better comparison would be Reddit vs Digg, back in the day. Digg had a far better network (and corresponding network effects) back in the day, but Reddit kept plugging away being quietly competent while Digg kept making changes that frustrated the userbase and over time pushed the people who cared the most about quality of conversation to another network. This is the exact _opposite_ problem that Voat had: the sample that was on the smaller site was higher-quality which allowed Reddit to hum along and continually gain users until Digg collapsed and Reddit got a flood of users. [1] I mean this in the descriptive sense, not the sense with a negative connotation
  - CrystalLangUser 9y ago
    Yeah, it's unfortunate what happened with Voat. Eventually what happened to Digg will happen to Reddit. Even now people are questioning things like the new profiles and the direction Reddit is taking. I agree, and I've even thought about writing an alternative platform, but I'm worried about the exact same thing with Voat happening.

dageshi 9y ago

Personally I've been using reddit for about a decade. It seems more or less the same site it always has been just a lot bigger and with some incremental improvements. 99% of the user base has no clue about who most of the people in your post are, they aren't up in arms about anything, they only care that the site continues to work, which it does. Additionally, I cannot see how a competitor can possibly compete with reddit, reddit offers everything most people want without charging anything, without excessive advertising and without demanding a lot of personal information. How do you build a competitor that matches those criteria and then makes a ton of money?

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
>Additionally, I cannot see how a competitor can possibly compete with reddit, reddit offers everything most people want without charging anything, without excessive advertising and without demanding a lot of personal information. How do you build a competitor that matches those criteria and then makes a ton of money? The answer is simply "build what Reddit was like 5 years ago". It's plain to see that Reddit is on a downward spiral - their product has been getting worse and will continue to get worse. Same goes for the community. Reddit is showing all of the signs of a dying platform, if you study the historical lifecycles of web properties it matches quite well. Unfortunately, whatever comes up to replace it is probably going to suffer the same fate.
- vidarh 9y ago
  What Reddit was like 5 years ago didn't make much money.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    Which is why the replacement is doomed to suffer the same fate. Reddit is not a suistainable business model.
  - wand3r 9y ago
    To my knowledge, it still doesn't.
CrystalLangUser 9y ago
A competitor can compete by building a platform that handles user load & doesn't shill out for advertisers. And one that focuses on actually improving the site's functionality (search, anyone?) instead of user profiles which don't even make sense really given reddit's original purpose.

jeremymims 9y ago

I know it's hard to imagine, but there are many sides to these stories. Things really aren't so black and white. You really have no idea just how hard these guys worked or the struggles they had to go through. I'd recommend you read Alexis's post from back in 2010: http://alexisohanian.com/keep-calm-carry-on-what-you-didnt-know-about http://alexisohanian.com/keep-calm-carry-on-what-you-didnt-k.... Reddit was born out of the first Y Combinator batch in 2005. This batch turned out to be an exceptional group of people who helped make Y Combinator into Y Combinator. But it was far from a forgone conclusion that they would be successful or that Reddit would one day become a top five website on the internet. My experience with Alexis and Steve is that they're extremely generous, helpful, and have set the tone for the "pay it forward" spirit of Y Combinator's alumni network. I'd encourage you to wish them the best of luck instead of hoping someone takes them down.

tiles 9y ago

I don't disagree with the idea that Reddit is mismanaged, but isn't "born on third and thought they hit a triple" a hyperbolic way to describe the success of one of the top 10 websites in the U.S.? From introducing the concept of subreddits, to actually profiting off of Reddit Gold, to a distributed moderation team (that when it works, works well) there are plenty of places they succeeded. That doesn't just simply happen.

phaus 9y ago
The commenter you are replying to is making the claim that Aaron Schwartz did all of the work that made Reddit one of the largest websites in the world. That's why he describes Steve and Alexis as "Being born on third."

WalterBright 9y ago

Reddit is enormously successful. I'd tread very carefully in attempting to "fix" it.

wand3r 9y ago
Depends on the metric. As a business it has yet to monetize 250m users
axaxs 9y ago
I'd argue its current success is because there's no site quite like it in design. We used to have digg and reddit, until digg redesigned and users jumped ship to 'an alternative'. Now, there really isn't a good alternative. The only one I even know of is voat, which seems to be a somehow worse clone, filled with the hate of those banned from more traditional places. And that's failing, too. I agree with parent comment, a reddit like idea with a tech refresh, and less toxic leadership, would be successful. But as acknowledged, it would take time to grow its user base.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  > tech refresh I like its low tech interface, as I like the HN simple, modest, low-key interface.
  - axaxs 9y ago
    i agree completely. but both sites are...not good..on mobile. Usable with some effort. And well, it's down far too often for a site of its size.

CrystalLangUser 9y ago

The problem is building a viable alternative community wise. That's what Voat.co tried to do and look where they are now. Reddit's leadership is beyond terrible- anyone remember their CEO shadow-editing users' posts? Where even Pao commented on it? Except no one cared because it was in /r/the_donald. Ever since Reddit made upvotes / downvotes hidden, and started fuzzing upvotes, it started going downhill rapidly. Why? Because it's basically become an advertising platform using the default / larger subs. Just follow /r/hailcorporate to see.

wutbrodo 9y ago
> The problem is building a viable alternative community wise. That's what Voat.co tried to do and look where they are now. Voat had a very specific adverse selection problem. Whenever a community is formed in reaction to viewpoint discrimination[1] move towards a stance of active moderation against certain viewpoints, your community is going to (initially) consist of a few principled, marketplace-of-ideas true believes and then a whole ton of the worst elements of the viewpoints being discriminated against. Or as I heard it put recently: "If you establish a witch-hunt-free zone, you'll attract tons of actual witches". The suggestion upthread here has no such downside. If anything, the better comparison would be Reddit vs Digg, back in the day. Digg had a far better network (and corresponding network effects) back in the day, but Reddit kept plugging away being quietly competent while Digg kept making changes that frustrated the userbase and over time pushed the people who cared the most about quality of conversation to another network. This is the exact _opposite_ problem that Voat had: the sample that was on the smaller site was higher-quality which allowed Reddit to hum along and continually gain users until Digg collapsed and Reddit got a flood of users. [1] I mean this in the descriptive sense, not the sense with a negative connotation
- CrystalLangUser 9y ago
  Yeah, it's unfortunate what happened with Voat. Eventually what happened to Digg will happen to Reddit. Even now people are questioning things like the new profiles and the direction Reddit is taking. I agree, and I've even thought about writing an alternative platform, but I'm worried about the exact same thing with Voat happening.