9 ms·

Video is Coming to Reddit

96 points by Deimorz 9y ago

eneve 9y ago
why did i land on the fullscreen background pattern?
pgrote 9y ago
What is the end game for Reddit? Control of the videos so they can sell ads, right? Does the benefit redditors? No. Based on the testing so far the mobile player is not ready for prime time nor is the backend video infrastructure. Videos lag horribly and spin sometimes forever .. as if the connection was broken.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - csours 9y ago
    Tell me which video site has a rich and persistent community? Some youtube channels are less terrible than others, but none of them feel like community to me.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      YouTube channels definitely have communities, but that doesn't mean that the community interacts purely through the YouTube comment section -- mainly because Google has managed to make said comment system worse and worse over time. Often the community itself communicates over Reddit or some similar platform that is much better for communication, but the community itself was created around a particular video site (and channels on said video site). If YouTube had a better way of having discussions, it would likely be much a much better service.
- slumberlust 9y ago
  None of the videos loaded for me on Chrome with Ublock and privacybadger.
  - marrone12 9y ago
    Worked with just Chrome and uBlock.
- barumrho 9y ago
  Video playback experience sucks right now for their mobile apps. I think they can aim for a much better viewing and uploading experience.
  - dave5104 9y ago
    Video playback has actually worked quite well for me on the official reddit app, along with Alien Blue. What have you seen?
- slackoverflower 9y ago
  Sure as hell benefits Reddit. Ads are their business and main priority, users come second.
- niftich 9y ago
  Definitely control of videos so they can sell ads, but also an effort to cultivate a captive ecosystem and reduce reliance on outside sites. These largely circle back to 'sell ads', but it's too drastic to suggest that it doesn't benefit the community. It, however, does continue the process of changing its character. Captive content ecosystems, despite their widely-recognized drawbacks, aren't devoid of engagement. Vine was a captive content ecosystem whose attributes resulted in many creative works; Snapchat and its Facebook-run clones -- most notably the Stories inside Instagram -- are another, where the content is made and consumed by the official app and never escapes out onto the public web. As an extreme example, Hulu is a captive content ecosystem where all the content happens to be professionally produced. Captive content ecosystems are excellent places to sell ads, because you track the user's content consumption habits, and control the client such that they can't easily avoid the ads using technical means.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    How long until, like Twitter, reddit puts the bulk of its content behind a login? It's transforming itself into another walled garden like everything else, because that's the way to get paid.
- mulmen 9y ago
  Video playback is hard. Does Reddit have the technical resources to make this work? Only a handful of companies have pulled it off. Other than YouTube are there any web video players that are ready for prime time? Facebook's player is as much of a nightmare of usability as would be expected from the rest of their site, it's unusable for me on both an iPhone 6s in their native app and on the web. Netflix does a good job in their apps but I haven't used their web player in years, is it any good? News sites seem to love auto-playing videos that don't actually play but still follow the visitor through the page. If the videos do play I can look forward to my laptop fans ('14 RMBP) immediately kicking into high gear. Is this the experience I can look forward to on Reddit?
  - symlinkk 9y ago
    I don't understand why it's so hard, you can just use the HTML5 <video> tag and then bam, you've got a polished and bug-free video player.
    - mulmen 9y ago
      You're kidding right? What about the CDN? Does anyone actually use a plain html5 <video> tag for playback? Is that what Facebook and news sites like NYT and CNN are using? Is that what Reddit will use? Outside Youtube I can't think of a single video player I would even call usable, forget polished.
    - wolfgang42 9y ago
      It's nowhere near that simple. I wrote a video player which only had to support three clients (Win7+IE, Win7+Chrome, and iPad Safari) and it still took me weeks to get it working right. Here's a whole post I wrote about the transcoding settings alone: http://www.linestarve.com/blog/post/rendering-html5-video-with-handbrake/ http://www.linestarve.com/blog/post/rendering-html5-video-wi...
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    The Netflix web player is good. I use it regularly. Some other good web video players: - Vimeo - Hulu HBO Now's web player is pretty good, tho not great. They definitely seem to have a hard time with their backend some times (e.g. around season premieres of Game of Thrones). In general tho, video playback is just the latest spiritual incarnation of popup ads.
thrillgore 9y ago
Is the exit plan now to tack reddit with so much bullshit they can sell it to anyone who wants a social bookmarking site?
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
I've only encountered it a few times but it seems everyone dislikes it. The player is pretty bad. Then again, Reddit jumped the shark some time ago.
- jdubs 9y ago
  Like most new ventures, iterating is key to improving the product.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    There's a difference between iterating based on community feedback, and "iterating" based on artificial requirements not defined by the community.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  When it works at all it's been fine for me, but sometimes I just get a black box
- weego 9y ago
  I ignore any link to v.reddit. the player and experience is garbage. And it's not a problem you can just solve because you want to, there are plenty of dedicated web video companies that do it with varying competence from average to badly (vimeo, dailymotion).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
falcolas 9y ago
Just trying to look at images with their built-in image hosting is not the greatest experience - two clicks to view the original image, compared to one with other image hosts (yeah, I know, RES; but I browse on mobile too). Combine this with the highly frequent "we're overloaded" messages, and I'm not really looking forward to their attempt at hosting videos as well.
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  Plus the fact that on desktop, you can't pull to scale the i.reddit.com hosted images like you can with the imgur hosted ones, or if you can, you can do it on the front page, but not the comments for whatever silly reason.
minimaxir 9y ago
A couple months ago I found that Reddit submissions using Reddit's native image hosting, a year after its implementation, surpassed those of its main competitor, Imgur (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595212) I'm not entirely sure the same will happen with video. Not only are the videos typically posted on Reddit's largest video subreddits are from the YouTube community (and intended for the YouTube community), the video player beta is apparently a worse user experience than YouTube. (in contrast with images, where the competitor was the one with the worse user experience) And that's not even getting into the logistical concerns. Hosting images is much, much easier than video, as video has much higher bandwidth/storage requirements AND Reddit will have to frequently remove pirated/NSFW videos for Safe Harbor protection/advertiser friendliness, which is a challenge even Google has not been able to solve at scale.
- mandie 9y ago
  Image hosting is easy, if you don't care about losing money. As long as you provide direct links to images, you're better than everybody else. Video hosting? You need a good player (nothing will ever top YouTube's) and a good CDN. That's a tough nut to crack. Especially for a company with no money.
  - cheald 9y ago
    The proliferation of HTML5 video support in browsers has made the player massively less of a concern than it used to be. I recently led a move of my employer's video hosting (many TBs worth of video) from a third-party platform to an in-house solution and it was quite a lot simpler than one might expect. Video is super expensive in terms of bandwidth, but the technical pipeline for ingesting, transcoding, delivering, and presenting it is extremely simple now.
    - mulmen 9y ago
      On the web the only usable player I interact with is YouTube. No other site has video that I would describe as watchable.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gallerdude 9y ago
I think it's obvious why they're doing this - accessibility. In moving r/all to r/popular, image hosting, removing default subs, and now this, they're trying to cater to more people. Four years ago I joined reddit, tried it out for about 2 hours, and quit. I couldn't get past the (admittedly small) learning curve (especially acronyms: ITT, OP, TIL, etc). Two years ago I joined it for real after putting in an hour to learn what everything was. Reddit is an amazing site, it's just kind of hard to get into it. By hosting their own video, they make it easier for new users.
- chatmasta 9y ago
  How does an embedded YouTube video (the status quo) make the Reddit experience less accessible for new users? Chances are, reddit's implementation will be significantly worse than embedded YouTube videos. If anything will create confusion for new users, it's having both YouTube embeds and Reddit videos on the same page. Nobody who is new to Reddit is unfamiliar with the YouTube player, but is definitely unfamiliar with any custom Reddit player. EDIT: Point taken, I can see how this makes it easier for users to upload content to Reddit (especially original content, e.g. from a phone camera roll) without jumping through YouTube hoops.
  - asdfnn88 9y ago
    I think you're over thinking how it will confuse people even more. Surfers/readers won't really notice unless it is just that awful. Serious online personalities will still use YouTube and link in. Casual uploaders or Reddit-only sorts won't have to click away and deal with some other system and its rules as well as Reddit's.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    You know I didn't even consider upload. A few years ago I remember going trough tons of hoops getting integrations setup so I could post to YouTube from my WiiU and PS4. It was a huge pain. If Reddit can make video uploading easier for people without a YouTube account or who forgot their password or don't want to visit 3 sites to get it done.
- 9y ago
bluthru 9y ago
I'm just happy to see youtube and facebook get some video competition.
agumonkey 9y ago
I still prefer clicking on an embedded imgur link rather than their own reddit image hosting version.
- matty22 9y ago
  Especially on mobile. Every imgur image displays properly on my phone. Every time I click on an i.reddit image, it's 1000px wide so to see the entire thing I have to scroll vertically and horizontally. I've just stopped clicking on any image links from i.reddit.
DeepRote 9y ago
They can barely get text search right, how in the hell are they going to manage an entire video platform? Gotta hustle those investors somehow, I guess.
koolba 9y ago
> If you’ve spent any time on r/HighQualityGifs, r/mealtimevideos, or just about any other Reddit community, you know that videos and gifs represent a major proportion of the content shared on our site. But prior to this launch, content creators had to go through a time-consuming, circuitous process to post videos, using third-party hosting platforms, copying URLs, and sharing them as link posts. This inhibited many users, especially those who capture videos on their phones and want to share them quickly with their favorite subreddits. I've never heard anyone complain that copying a URL is too onerous. I don't get what they're plan is. How does a company that is currently losing money plan to make more and be a sustainable enterprise by adding features that only increase their costs? Video uses a lot of bandwidth. Especially compared everything they've done so far (i.e. all text). They had a good thing going with the mooching off free hosting on YouTube and Imgur. Why kill that? All I see them gaining are a bit more details on how many times someone played a video. And you could probably do that with some custom JS wrapping the YouTube player (guessing here ... not sure how that works in practice).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- j-walker 9y ago
  > I don't get what they're plan is. "This launch is a giant step forward in our efforts to bring rich content to Reddit, following last year’s release of native image hosting and our introduction of native video ads earlier this year." Which means having to watch a 30 second ad before a 15second video clip.
  - stephengillie 9y ago
    Also another giant step away from Imgur, who has a very simple YouTube-to-hosted-GIF meme maker.
  - parthdesai 9y ago
    Looks like i'll have to remove reddit from whitelisted sites on my ad-blocker. Sigh.
thinbeige 9y ago
Slightly OT: I started to blocked HN at daytime recently. Great impact on my productivity and a side effect was... - I visit Reddit more often (which is unblocked) - Reddit is surprisngly not that addictive; you skim it for few minutes and leave again - AND this is the most important thing: Reddit is sometimes so funny, the posts and especially the top voted comments that I am cracking up every time, almost at the point of crying. After Reddit I am always in a very good mood.
zubspace 9y ago
Content uploaded to youtube/imgur and embedded in reddit has the avantage, that you actually serve two communities at once with the (tiny) possibility of going viral in both. As a content creator I'd prefer that. Moreover users can discover older content easier in youtube with the stream of recommendations of similar content. If your goal is to reach the largest audience it doesn't make sense to me to only hide it in reddit.
jimjimjim 9y ago
pivot to video without knowing why. because what you really want is a 4k view of the dumpster fire rather than just reading about it.
vit05 9y ago
I think Reddit should focus on short videos first. A middle term between a gif and a youtube video that would be perfect on any smartphone. Video is very expensive and there are very few examples of companies that profit by hosting without having a pay subscription system. In fact, every big video platform is trying to make easier for content creators profit from their creations. Reddit doesn't have any idea how to make money now, and will not be able to help others. Make great content with regularity is expensive. They should only give the option to people who wish to host sporadic content in a simpler way, especially using smatphone. But without focusing on being the first choice for content creators until they have a great strategy to help them make money.
mmanfrin 9y ago
Youtube does not yet make money. This is such a windmillfight, I just don't understand why Reddit thinks adding a cost-sink will help. With images, it made sense -- Imgur was trying to become Reddit and hosting was a means of shoring up defense against that. No one wants reddit video. Reddit is an aggregator whose core strength is discovery; Youtube cannot so easily become Reddit like Imgur could.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  > Reddit is an aggregator whose core strength is discovery Yeah, at some point they should reconsider their slogan "the front page of the internet" given their seeming desire to become an isolated walled garden.
propogandist 9y ago
this will only lead people to steal content from other websites so they can get "karma" also, reddit tracks every outbound click with a unique identifier -- be sure to block all reddit tracking
- corobo 9y ago
  You can turn that off in prefs -> privacy options
  - propogandist 9y ago
    which means you're logged in and they're tracking your browsing activity anyway
Grue3 9y ago
Ctrl-F "porn"... nothing. Seems like the most obvious application and they completely ignore it.

96 points by Deimorz 9y ago

why did i land on the fullscreen background pattern?

What is the end game for Reddit? Control of the videos so they can sell ads, right? Does the benefit redditors? No. Based on the testing so far the mobile player is not ready for prime time nor is the backend video infrastructure. Videos lag horribly and spin sometimes forever .. as if the connection was broken.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
- csours 9y ago
  Tell me which video site has a rich and persistent community? Some youtube channels are less terrible than others, but none of them feel like community to me.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    YouTube channels definitely have communities, but that doesn't mean that the community interacts purely through the YouTube comment section -- mainly because Google has managed to make said comment system worse and worse over time. Often the community itself communicates over Reddit or some similar platform that is much better for communication, but the community itself was created around a particular video site (and channels on said video site). If YouTube had a better way of having discussions, it would likely be much a much better service.
slumberlust 9y ago
None of the videos loaded for me on Chrome with Ublock and privacybadger.
- marrone12 9y ago
  Worked with just Chrome and uBlock.
barumrho 9y ago
Video playback experience sucks right now for their mobile apps. I think they can aim for a much better viewing and uploading experience.
- dave5104 9y ago
  Video playback has actually worked quite well for me on the official reddit app, along with Alien Blue. What have you seen?
slackoverflower 9y ago
Sure as hell benefits Reddit. Ads are their business and main priority, users come second.
niftich 9y ago
Definitely control of videos so they can sell ads, but also an effort to cultivate a captive ecosystem and reduce reliance on outside sites. These largely circle back to 'sell ads', but it's too drastic to suggest that it doesn't benefit the community. It, however, does continue the process of changing its character. Captive content ecosystems, despite their widely-recognized drawbacks, aren't devoid of engagement. Vine was a captive content ecosystem whose attributes resulted in many creative works; Snapchat and its Facebook-run clones -- most notably the Stories inside Instagram -- are another, where the content is made and consumed by the official app and never escapes out onto the public web. As an extreme example, Hulu is a captive content ecosystem where all the content happens to be professionally produced. Captive content ecosystems are excellent places to sell ads, because you track the user's content consumption habits, and control the client such that they can't easily avoid the ads using technical means.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  How long until, like Twitter, reddit puts the bulk of its content behind a login? It's transforming itself into another walled garden like everything else, because that's the way to get paid.
mulmen 9y ago
Video playback is hard. Does Reddit have the technical resources to make this work? Only a handful of companies have pulled it off. Other than YouTube are there any web video players that are ready for prime time? Facebook's player is as much of a nightmare of usability as would be expected from the rest of their site, it's unusable for me on both an iPhone 6s in their native app and on the web. Netflix does a good job in their apps but I haven't used their web player in years, is it any good? News sites seem to love auto-playing videos that don't actually play but still follow the visitor through the page. If the videos do play I can look forward to my laptop fans ('14 RMBP) immediately kicking into high gear. Is this the experience I can look forward to on Reddit?
- symlinkk 9y ago
  I don't understand why it's so hard, you can just use the HTML5 <video> tag and then bam, you've got a polished and bug-free video player.
  - mulmen 9y ago
    You're kidding right? What about the CDN? Does anyone actually use a plain html5 <video> tag for playback? Is that what Facebook and news sites like NYT and CNN are using? Is that what Reddit will use? Outside Youtube I can't think of a single video player I would even call usable, forget polished.
  - wolfgang42 9y ago
    It's nowhere near that simple. I wrote a video player which only had to support three clients (Win7+IE, Win7+Chrome, and iPad Safari) and it still took me weeks to get it working right. Here's a whole post I wrote about the transcoding settings alone: http://www.linestarve.com/blog/post/rendering-html5-video-with-handbrake/ http://www.linestarve.com/blog/post/rendering-html5-video-wi...
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  The Netflix web player is good. I use it regularly. Some other good web video players: - Vimeo - Hulu HBO Now's web player is pretty good, tho not great. They definitely seem to have a hard time with their backend some times (e.g. around season premieres of Game of Thrones). In general tho, video playback is just the latest spiritual incarnation of popup ads.

thrillgore 9y ago

Is the exit plan now to tack reddit with so much bullshit they can sell it to anyone who wants a social bookmarking site?

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

I've only encountered it a few times but it seems everyone dislikes it. The player is pretty bad. Then again, Reddit jumped the shark some time ago.

jdubs 9y ago
Like most new ventures, iterating is key to improving the product.
- cyphar 9y ago
  There's a difference between iterating based on community feedback, and "iterating" based on artificial requirements not defined by the community.
wlesieutre 9y ago
When it works at all it's been fine for me, but sometimes I just get a black box
weego 9y ago
I ignore any link to v.reddit. the player and experience is garbage. And it's not a problem you can just solve because you want to, there are plenty of dedicated web video companies that do it with varying competence from average to badly (vimeo, dailymotion).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

falcolas 9y ago

Just trying to look at images with their built-in image hosting is not the greatest experience - two clicks to view the original image, compared to one with other image hosts (yeah, I know, RES; but I browse on mobile too). Combine this with the highly frequent "we're overloaded" messages, and I'm not really looking forward to their attempt at hosting videos as well.

FridgeSeal 9y ago
Plus the fact that on desktop, you can't pull to scale the i.reddit.com hosted images like you can with the imgur hosted ones, or if you can, you can do it on the front page, but not the comments for whatever silly reason.

minimaxir 9y ago

A couple months ago I found that Reddit submissions using Reddit's native image hosting, a year after its implementation, surpassed those of its main competitor, Imgur (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595212) I'm not entirely sure the same will happen with video. Not only are the videos typically posted on Reddit's largest video subreddits are from the YouTube community (and intended for the YouTube community), the video player beta is apparently a worse user experience than YouTube. (in contrast with images, where the competitor was the one with the worse user experience) And that's not even getting into the logistical concerns. Hosting images is much, much easier than video, as video has much higher bandwidth/storage requirements AND Reddit will have to frequently remove pirated/NSFW videos for Safe Harbor protection/advertiser friendliness, which is a challenge even Google has not been able to solve at scale.

mandie 9y ago
Image hosting is easy, if you don't care about losing money. As long as you provide direct links to images, you're better than everybody else. Video hosting? You need a good player (nothing will ever top YouTube's) and a good CDN. That's a tough nut to crack. Especially for a company with no money.
- cheald 9y ago
  The proliferation of HTML5 video support in browsers has made the player massively less of a concern than it used to be. I recently led a move of my employer's video hosting (many TBs worth of video) from a third-party platform to an in-house solution and it was quite a lot simpler than one might expect. Video is super expensive in terms of bandwidth, but the technical pipeline for ingesting, transcoding, delivering, and presenting it is extremely simple now.
  - mulmen 9y ago
    On the web the only usable player I interact with is YouTube. No other site has video that I would describe as watchable.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gallerdude 9y ago

I think it's obvious why they're doing this - accessibility. In moving r/all to r/popular, image hosting, removing default subs, and now this, they're trying to cater to more people. Four years ago I joined reddit, tried it out for about 2 hours, and quit. I couldn't get past the (admittedly small) learning curve (especially acronyms: ITT, OP, TIL, etc). Two years ago I joined it for real after putting in an hour to learn what everything was. Reddit is an amazing site, it's just kind of hard to get into it. By hosting their own video, they make it easier for new users.

chatmasta 9y ago
How does an embedded YouTube video (the status quo) make the Reddit experience less accessible for new users? Chances are, reddit's implementation will be significantly worse than embedded YouTube videos. If anything will create confusion for new users, it's having both YouTube embeds and Reddit videos on the same page. Nobody who is new to Reddit is unfamiliar with the YouTube player, but is definitely unfamiliar with any custom Reddit player. EDIT: Point taken, I can see how this makes it easier for users to upload content to Reddit (especially original content, e.g. from a phone camera roll) without jumping through YouTube hoops.
- asdfnn88 9y ago
  I think you're over thinking how it will confuse people even more. Surfers/readers won't really notice unless it is just that awful. Serious online personalities will still use YouTube and link in. Casual uploaders or Reddit-only sorts won't have to click away and deal with some other system and its rules as well as Reddit's.
- MBCook 9y ago
  You know I didn't even consider upload. A few years ago I remember going trough tons of hoops getting integrations setup so I could post to YouTube from my WiiU and PS4. It was a huge pain. If Reddit can make video uploading easier for people without a YouTube account or who forgot their password or don't want to visit 3 sites to get it done.
9y ago

bluthru 9y ago

I'm just happy to see youtube and facebook get some video competition.

agumonkey 9y ago

I still prefer clicking on an embedded imgur link rather than their own reddit image hosting version.

matty22 9y ago
Especially on mobile. Every imgur image displays properly on my phone. Every time I click on an i.reddit image, it's 1000px wide so to see the entire thing I have to scroll vertically and horizontally. I've just stopped clicking on any image links from i.reddit.

DeepRote 9y ago

They can barely get text search right, how in the hell are they going to manage an entire video platform? Gotta hustle those investors somehow, I guess.

koolba 9y ago

> If you’ve spent any time on r/HighQualityGifs, r/mealtimevideos, or just about any other Reddit community, you know that videos and gifs represent a major proportion of the content shared on our site. But prior to this launch, content creators had to go through a time-consuming, circuitous process to post videos, using third-party hosting platforms, copying URLs, and sharing them as link posts. This inhibited many users, especially those who capture videos on their phones and want to share them quickly with their favorite subreddits. I've never heard anyone complain that copying a URL is too onerous. I don't get what they're plan is. How does a company that is currently losing money plan to make more and be a sustainable enterprise by adding features that only increase their costs? Video uses a lot of bandwidth. Especially compared everything they've done so far (i.e. all text). They had a good thing going with the mooching off free hosting on YouTube and Imgur. Why kill that? All I see them gaining are a bit more details on how many times someone played a video. And you could probably do that with some custom JS wrapping the YouTube player (guessing here ... not sure how that works in practice).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
j-walker 9y ago
> I don't get what they're plan is. "This launch is a giant step forward in our efforts to bring rich content to Reddit, following last year’s release of native image hosting and our introduction of native video ads earlier this year." Which means having to watch a 30 second ad before a 15second video clip.
- stephengillie 9y ago
  Also another giant step away from Imgur, who has a very simple YouTube-to-hosted-GIF meme maker.
- parthdesai 9y ago
  Looks like i'll have to remove reddit from whitelisted sites on my ad-blocker. Sigh.

thinbeige 9y ago

Slightly OT: I started to blocked HN at daytime recently. Great impact on my productivity and a side effect was... - I visit Reddit more often (which is unblocked) - Reddit is surprisngly not that addictive; you skim it for few minutes and leave again - AND this is the most important thing: Reddit is sometimes so funny, the posts and especially the top voted comments that I am cracking up every time, almost at the point of crying. After Reddit I am always in a very good mood.

zubspace 9y ago

Content uploaded to youtube/imgur and embedded in reddit has the avantage, that you actually serve two communities at once with the (tiny) possibility of going viral in both. As a content creator I'd prefer that. Moreover users can discover older content easier in youtube with the stream of recommendations of similar content. If your goal is to reach the largest audience it doesn't make sense to me to only hide it in reddit.

jimjimjim 9y ago

pivot to video without knowing why. because what you really want is a 4k view of the dumpster fire rather than just reading about it.

vit05 9y ago

I think Reddit should focus on short videos first. A middle term between a gif and a youtube video that would be perfect on any smartphone. Video is very expensive and there are very few examples of companies that profit by hosting without having a pay subscription system. In fact, every big video platform is trying to make easier for content creators profit from their creations. Reddit doesn't have any idea how to make money now, and will not be able to help others. Make great content with regularity is expensive. They should only give the option to people who wish to host sporadic content in a simpler way, especially using smatphone. But without focusing on being the first choice for content creators until they have a great strategy to help them make money.

mmanfrin 9y ago

Youtube does not yet make money. This is such a windmillfight, I just don't understand why Reddit thinks adding a cost-sink will help. With images, it made sense -- Imgur was trying to become Reddit and hosting was a means of shoring up defense against that. No one wants reddit video. Reddit is an aggregator whose core strength is discovery; Youtube cannot so easily become Reddit like Imgur could.

aeorgnoieang 9y ago
> Reddit is an aggregator whose core strength is discovery Yeah, at some point they should reconsider their slogan "the front page of the internet" given their seeming desire to become an isolated walled garden.

propogandist 9y ago

this will only lead people to steal content from other websites so they can get "karma" also, reddit tracks every outbound click with a unique identifier -- be sure to block all reddit tracking

corobo 9y ago
You can turn that off in prefs -> privacy options
- propogandist 9y ago
  which means you're logged in and they're tracking your browsing activity anyway

Grue3 9y ago

Ctrl-F "porn"... nothing. Seems like the most obvious application and they completely ignore it.