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So they're doing a Digg. End of an era. What's the "reddit" that everyone will migrate to when they change the UX?
by afro88 9y ago
So they're doing a Digg. End of an era.
What's the "reddit" that everyone will migrate to when they change the UX?
- mpfundstein 9y agosteem would be cool
- uncoder0 9y agoVoat (https://voat.co/ https://voat.co/) is also an option I've heard of before but never used. However I just looked at their front page and the number 2 post is titled 'How to solve the Voat's antisemitism problem' and the image contains an antisemitic slur so that's not very promising.
- nameless912 9y agoVoat is a complete shithole these days unfortunately. It was very quickly overrun by disgruntled members of Reddit's alt-right fringe community.
- debacle 9y agoThe free speech part of Voat is great. I don't think it's so much overrun as that the only people there are the ones with radical opinions. I wouldn't use Voat for other reasons, but that's just me.
- herrkanin 9y agoI will never understand this romanticising of free speech on private platforms. Why would a service that cares about its members _ever_ implement free speech policies? That's just asking for assholes. If anything, popular services should have _more_ filtering and removal of asshole users.
- conception 9y agoExactly. The best subreddits on Reddit are the ones heavily moderated like /r/science.
- xster 9y agoI think it's just an outcome of of the comparatively good state of the scientific community today which in turn doesn't necessitate contrarianism or radicalism. Galileo would probably think that r/science is among the worst of subreddits.
- awkwarddaturtle 9y ago/r/science is a terrible sub. It's pretty much people from /r/politics pretending to be scientists. It's a politic sub.
- awkwarddaturtle 9y agoIf you think /r/science is great, check out what is the top post of /r/science right now. "Google searches for “how to commit suicide” increased 26% following the release of "13 Reasons Why", a Netflix series about a girl who commits suicide." https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6qwdgo/google_searches_for_how_to_commit_suicide/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6qwdgo/google_sear... Something that is societal/political rather than science.
- greenshackle2 9y agoThe problem is that in the space of {things that are unmentionable in polite company}, there may be a few nuggets of important new ideas, but those nuggets are lost in a torrent of shit. I think it's important to be able to discuss taboo topics to find those important nuggets. From my perspective it's not totally crazy to have complete free speech platforms to pursue that goal, but it's probably better done in private among trusted friends, where it has been established that you are not generally assholes, than on a semi-public platform, where you will drown in a torrent of shit brought on by the mass of contrarian assholes who will inevitably flock to the platform. It's analogous to Peter Thiel and Paul Graham's argument that most successful startups will look like bad ideas at the outset. (http://www.businessinsider.com/this-venn-diagram-shows-why-startup-investing-is-hard-you-have-to-be-on-bad-ideas-2012-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/this-venn-diagram-shows-why-s...) An Important New Truth probably looks stupid at first, otherwise someone else would have figured it out already.
- CM30 9y ago> I don't think it's so much overrun as that the only people there are the ones with radical opinions. This is the issue with a lot of pro free speech websites, or a a lot of 'alternatives' to popular platforms in general. Unless the more popular site completely jumps the shark, only the more extreme users (read, those angry with the old service) move over. So the site gets more extreme due to them being the only ones represented, and hence attracts more extreme users as a result. Repeat ad infinitum, until the new site is filled with people who are so far to one extreme of the political spectrum that it actively puts off a lot of more moderate potential users. The only way Voat can get out of this is if it can draw in people who aren't interested in Trump, GamerGate or fringe politics.
- xster 9y ago+100000. "Overrun" sounds too deliberate. It's just the result of a population biasing as you say.
- untog 9y agoVoat is just the latest in a never-ending cycle. "We want free speech! Everyone move to our alternative venue where we promote free speech! [...] Wow, there's some truly hateful content on here, how did that happen?"
- Spivak 9y agoSome reasons this happens: * Most people don't actually need free speech because in large their ideas are popular, tame, uncontroversial, and respect the established order. * We are quick to define ideas that disagree with popular opinion as hateful which drives those that hold them to the fringe. Only the loudest and angriest will have so little to lose socially that they'll dare speak in public (i.e. the top and bottom of the social ladder). * By in large we like to be surrounded by people that think like we do and believe the same things we do. This leads to partitioning the internet into disjoint communities and social bubbles so strong that, despite being almost 148 million people in the US, a common sentiment is 'I don't understand the issue, I've never met someone in person who opposes gay marriage'.
- guelo 9y agoNo. The people that are saying black people are bad, gays are bad, muslims are bad, women are bad, etc etc, are hateful, they're the definition of hateful. It's not "PC" to call them out as hateful. In fact, there's a new Political Correctness saying we can't call bigots bigots. If you want to make a safe space for hatefulness then nobody else is going to want to be there. These hateful people are terrorists in that they feel the need to be around as many people as possible so they can inflict the most the maximum amount of pain. They are not interested in having a nice discussion site. Nobody wants to be around them and any non-hateful community will leave if they are allowed to inflict their damage.
- hycaria 9y agoWhat a simplistic point of view. People not often say "black people are bad, gays are bad, muslims are bad, women are bad". I am moderator on a national sub on reddit, and it's a very difficult question. A few examples : - What are you supposed to do with people who think it's unfair that men can be tricked in impregnating a woman and sued for child support ? Is this sexism ? - What are you supposed to do with people who feel unsafe in a specific neighborhood because of the great concentration of immigrants there ? Is this "muslims are bad" ? - Is someone against surrogacy a "gays are bad" people ? Or is this legitimate concern ? - What about people who use IQ per country studies ? Is this racial hate speech ? And for these examples, we have people who deeply consider all these as "bad", and harangue us mods as people who leave hate speech, yada yada. Where do facts stop and propaganda start, where does a fast generalization ends and real, systematic hate for a whole group of individuals begin (over a common denominator considered "bad" by PC, because no one will ever harass you or call you hateful if you think people who wear fur are douchebags) ? And by doing so, you don't allow any discussion, private or not to be made around these questions, as they are directly flagged as "good vs bad" and arguments are an expression of the hate, and not legitimate questions. Which I don't think is good, but that's my own opinion.
- monksy 9y agoI would say the "alt-right" rejects and anti-social people.
- dredmorbius 9y agoImzy attacked the problem from the other side of the spectrum and failed even harder. The problem is that neither the "unrestricted free speech" nor the "absolute safe space" models scale. Nor, ultimately, promote their putative goals.
- nameless912 9y agoSo, the only answer is a bunch of hermit kingdoms with their own rules and incentive structures? You mean like the rest of the internet? Who'd have guessed.
- dredmorbius 9y agoI'm not sure that's the only option, but at the very least, a mix of contexts, spaces, and communities seems likely.
- komali2 9y agoI fear people are downvoting you for merely pointing out that alternatives already exist, even though you indicate your distaste at the site in your post.
- potatolicious 9y agoUnfortunately Voat got overrun with Reddit's least desirable people and content, as you've already seen. More than that though, Voat doesn't seem to have any significant funding or even team behind it, so even if people do end up flocking to a site primarily known for its ardent bigotry, it's unlikely Voat can withstand a large spike in its traffic and scale to even a fraction of Reddit-level.
- biggerbistro 9y agoIsn't it obvious that Voat would be filled with the more extreme forms of speech given that they are the ones not allowed on Reddit? Faulting Voat for that reason is kind of a clueless thing to do. If walking your dog becomes politically unfashionable tomorrow I'm sure they would be the next to migrate to Voat.
- kbenson 9y agoI think if there's a mass exodus from Reddit and the choice is Voat or something not Voat, the majority will choose not-Voat. If Voat hadn't absorbed much of the subreddits rejected for extreme and hate speech, then it would have a chance at growing with a more natural makeup. As it is now, any community that moved there would have to accept that there's a much higher percentage of extremist views there than present in reality. Initial adoption of a larger more general set of communities will be a hard sell for those communities.
- potatolicious 9y agoAgreed. If there's any migration it will likely be towards more actively moderated forums - if you just want to talk about slow cooker recipes you're probably not hoping that it comes with a side of genocide advocacy. Reddit has been an interesting exercise in shaping online communities, and the zeitgeist has changed in response. Where extremist views were originally approached on the basis of maximum tolerance, the resulting loss of more mainstream users (and the extremist domination of even unrelated subreddits), has shifted away from it. My suspicion is that mainstream users will gravitate towards forums that have a heavier moderating hand. An interesting question is if this will cause a general return to more independent, freestanding online communities (as opposed to Reddit's model of centralizing a vast number of topics under one roof).
- refulgentis 9y agoYou buried the lede a bit. The image contains a slur in its proposal to kill all Jews
- am1988 9y agoIsn't Voat where The_Donald threatened to go when they finally got slapped around for their antics?
- arca_vorago 9y agoYet not a peep about spez surreptitiously editing user comments.
- komali2 9y agoNot a peep from who? The community universally uses "spez:" instead of "edit:" to this day.
- arca_vorago 9y agoFair enough. There was a lot of Drama from TD, and I'm pretty sure a signifigant slice of TD was TRDT's data mining/scientist campaign using bots to amplify semi-organic user input. That said, there was a lot of fuckery from the admins and mods in that and other reddit sagas, and the spez drama never materialized anything more than a half-assed apology for essentially violating some core principles that should be behind a privately run limited public forum.
- nl 9y agoTRDT?
- komali2 9y agoI don't know but one of the top links on google for it is [1]this video, which is amazing. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSUkpVPJ1sQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSUkpVPJ1sQ
- arca_vorago 9y agoThe real Donald Trump.
- ErikVandeWater 9y agoVoat can be the replacement to reddit if they implement the "popular" section as reddit has - people with accounts will see what they currently see, but new users can see a more regular site. The over the next 3 inevitable reddit scandals, they can take progressively more and more reddit users. If reddit screws up the site design, and Voat doesn' screw up, Voat can take it all.
- heartbreak 9y agoVoat has a reputation as an extremist haven.
- imjk 9y agoHacker News
- celticninja 9y agoI think it is starting to happen already. A few too many jokey comments appearing, puns and the like.
- giarc 9y agoI agree but I find that they are pretty quickly downvoted and therefore greyed out, or sit as a parent only comment without any discussion.
- Semaphor 9y agoHN is protected a bit better with its karma requirements. But I feel like recently I've been getting way more upvotes than I feel I "deserve" for some comments, which scares me a bit.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoIt's easy to get massive upvotes on anything that jibes with the HN groupthink. It can also be instructive to "troll" with anything that the groupthink will be appalled by no matter how true or rational it may be. That's the surest way to compensate for undeserved karma.
- sidlls 9y agoHN takes itself too seriously. This site isn't brimming with intellectuals having significant, deep discussions. It's a bunch of hackers, nerds, and interested people who aren't either of those things kibbitzing about things (sometimes only marginally) related to technology. I find the resistance to even a little humor to be hilarious (and embarrassing, for them).
- autokad 9y ago
- maxerickson 9y agoFacebook.
- Huhty 9y agoSnapzu.
- throwaway81122 9y agoLike Craigslist and its downfall, the migration isnt going to be to one large community, but many smaller ones.
- m777z 9y agoCraigslist had a downfall? I thought it hadn't changed substantively in a decade at least.
- jajern 9y agoI had no idea either. I use it almost every day.
- ojbyrne 9y agoI'm guessing he's referring to this article: https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-another-product-disrupted-and-replaced-Craigslist/answer/Josh-Hannah https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-another-product-disrupted-an... Which had quite a lot of visibility a few years ago.
- parsnipsumthing 9y agoThe author argued in 2011 that craigslist would be an afterthought within 10 years. Its revenue has grown from 122m when he wrote that to in excess of 380m now. I think he's pretty clearly wrong.
- dopamean 9y agoWhat happened at craigslist?
- 20years 9y agoAs of 2015 Craigslist was valued at an estimated $5 billion and had annual revenues in excess of $381 million. Not sure what it is today 2 years later but my guess is more now. Plus CL has been around for 20 years now. It is a cash cow and serves over 20 million page views a month. I don't really consider that a downfall.
- rthomas6 9y agoCheck out Hubski (https://hubski.com https://hubski.com). It's got a great community, and a unique way displaying and moderating posts. Instead of subreddits, you follow users and tags. When you upvote posts, you share them with whoever follows you. It's sort of like a community web of trust. It works really well.
- sebtoast 9y agoSome alternative's I have bookmarked: https://hubski.com/ https://hubski.com/ https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ https://snapzu.com https://snapzu.com https://soylentnews.org/ https://soylentnews.org/ and Voat. I don't really use them so I can't do a good review. I had some more bookmarked but can't find them at the moment.
- therobotking 9y agoWould you be able to send me an invitation to signup to lobste.rs please? mail at-symbol therobotking dotcom
- am1988 9y agoAny site which requires this type of thing to signup sounds like one I don't want to be a part of. Seems like a recipe for a hive mind.
- msla 9y agoYou get a hive mind or you get regression to the mean, by which I mean you either aggressively filter for people with specific qualities, which is apparently a hive mind scenario, or you end up with the same kind of commentators you find on every other let-everyone-in platform.
- krapp 9y agoSo Hacker News is a regression to the mean, then?
- baldfat 9y agoIf it ain't broke don't fix it. I miss the early days of Digg before people starting getting concerned about their points and front page drama started.
- onion2k 9y agoIf it ain't broke don't fix it. What 'broke' looks like for a business like Reddit is a question about generating revenue rather than design (though the two things are intrinsically linked). If the company can't make money with the current design then it has to change.
- mustacheemperor 9y agoReddit does make money though - Gold sales alone started paying for the servers after the admins added a meter to the side of the homepage that showed a daily "goal" to pay for server time. At the time, it was posited as an opportunity for the community to fund their own party. Of course, the monetization train just kept rolling from there - starting with AMAs, now (according to some) with sponsored content embedded organically. Presumably this redesign will only accommodate the trend further.
- simlevesque 9y agoServer time doesn't pay employees.
- mustacheemperor 9y agoGood point! I'll admit my bias, I pretty much lost faith in the site's administration after they bungled the monetization of AMAs so poorly. It was exactly as predicted: AMA was the most obviously monetizable community, and was completely ruined in the process. The administrator who ran them quit over it and the quality has never recovered. I don't even bother reading most celebrity AMAs anymore because they're either a transparent advertisement or/and clearly written by someone with no understanding of reddit. The management just seems to "miss the point" so often. The best AMAs in the early years were by a vacuum cleaner repair technician, not a movie star.
- monochromatic 9y agoHacker News.
- ericfrederich 9y agoI stopped using digg as soon as digg.com/videos stopped working.
- raldi 9y agoPeople have been saying this since the very first day comments were enabled on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/17913/reddit_now_supports_comments/c228/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/17913/reddit_no...
- mtgx 9y agoSteemit.com probably. It literally pays to post or comment there. Still rough around the edges right now, in part because the algorithms aren't as good as Reddit's, and in part because it has a small user base, but it has huge potential.
- fourstar 9y agoSo they issue Steem (their own cryptocurrency) and you earn it when you post and it gets voted up? Can you actually cash out with it?
- pgl 9y agohttps://steemit.com/steemit/@lurker1/step-by-step-how-to-cash-out-your-steemit-earnings-to-usd https://steemit.com/steemit/@lurker1/step-by-step-how-to-cas...
- Angostura 9y agoImzy was quite literally ahead of it's time, perhaps.