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Reddit Set to Land $150M Investment from a Chinese Censorship Powerhouse
- hereiskkb 8y agoWill it go down the Google path? Can it prevent itself from the greed of user growth? Will it fuck over the user base? Watch the next episode of DragonBall to find out!
- xyk8jic0 8y agoThey already fucked over the user base multiple times... At this point it sadly looks like going the Digg route won't be avoidable.
- dqpb 8y agoThe only users that matter are the shareholders.
- lawlington 8y agoReddit as an idea died with Aaron Swartz. All that is left now is a corporation.
- tiuPapa 8y agoKAAA MEEE HAAAA MEEEE MONEEEEEEEEEY is all that matters.
- dang 8y agoCould you please not do this here?
- MeltySmelty 8y agoSerious Business!
- tiuPapa 8y agoIt is hard to resist that call of Goku but I will honor the sanctity of HN and not do that here anymore.
- motohagiography 8y agoReddit always seemed to me like an english training corpus for ML political sorting into "neuro linguistic" tribal affiliations. I imagine a near future HR department feeding sent-mail writing samples into a service that categorizes people based on their relative fit and a risk assessment that uses subreddit cultures as a base set. Reddit has some amazing communities for tech and hobbies, it also had some dark places.
- samstave 8y ago>>seemed to me like an english training corpus for ML political sorting into "neuro linguistic" tribal affiliations. https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4fupos/paid_digital_astroturfing_effort_by_correct_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4fupos... https://np.reddit.com/r/shills/comments/4kdq7n/astroturfing_information_megathread_revision_8/?st=j1y5la6q&sh=75667764 https://np.reddit.com/r/shills/comments/4kdq7n/astroturfing_... https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1dz470/most_reddit_addicted_city_over_100k_visits_total/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1dz470/most_red...
- arbitrage 8y agoi'm sure Reddit will be completely transparent with how this will potentially influence their running of the site, and will not interfere with their users. i mean, they're such supporters of free speech, afterall. /s
- _red 8y agoThis will coincide with a spontaneous / grassroots effort on regular reddit users who will push for "ending the stupid tariffs against china". Also don't post Winnie-the-pooh images, its not cute...
- nopriorarrests 8y agotbh, I don't understand two things. 1. What stops china from flooding reddit with "ending the stupid tariffs against china" users now, without 150M investment? 2. How effective this will be anyway? I mean, it's not like White House looks into /r/politics for a foreign policy tips? This is rather weird way to influence policy, when you have such tools as, say, lobbying.
- viivaux 8y ago1. Nothing. Which is what makes this seem soooo shady, and both parties refusing to give even a surface exuse. 2. They're not trying to influence policy, but young impressionable Redditors. Even a 1% change in opinion can be huge at key moments, narrative framing is still effective, even things like the semblance of disagreement can be massively persuading. I've witnessed my own national subreddit turn from a great little corner of the internet to a shill-ridden shithole. It probably only took the coordination of two or three real full-time people, some coordination on mod replacement, and clever software. But it has been remarkably effective. The same tactics that worked for my little country would probably work as well or better in other subreddits, and there's no real creativity required to pull it off.
- nopriorarrests 8y ago>1. Nothing. Which is what makes this seem soooo shady, and both parties refusing to give even a surface exuse. i think the fact that Reddit is losing money and needs cash infusion counts as surface exuse.
- save_ferris 8y ago> The apparently impending Reddit-Tencent marriage is complicated by the fact that Reddit, one of the most popular websites on the internet, is regularly—and is currently—blocked in China That should be disqualifying right there. How do you take money from an entity created in a culture that bans the very speech you built your platform on and keep a straight face about it?
- dhh2106 8y agoCompletely agree, unless it's under the pretext of launching in China? I don't see how that happens though unless reddit abandons some of its principles
- adrianN 8y agoIt wouldn't be the first time companies abandon or reinterpret their principles.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arbitrage 8y agothey'll hire a new CEO to take the flak, then quit in disgrace with a huge parachute payout. remarkably effective.
- reader5000 8y agoI'm not sure that China is significantly more prone to censorship than Reddit, if at all.
- naravara 8y agoI’m not sure if you’re operating under a shocking lack of perspective of what “censorship” means or a shocking amount of ignorance of what the PRC gets up to.
- YeahSureWhyNot 8y agoentity created in a 'culture'? its not the culture that bans free speech, its the government's policy. does that mean every american company agreed with USA's war on drugs or democracy in oily deserts policies?
- influx 8y agoWhy do they even need money? How long have they been in business, and why aren’t they turning a profit?
- jacknews 8y agoIs this the Chinese government directly targeting a source of "inharmonious speech" instead of just trying to block it?
- fxfan 8y agoWouldnt/shouldnt there be concerns about political influence and meddling? Russia and china are both always finding ways to do so. Reddit influences the urban population hugely.
- Proven 8y agoMost befitting! Reddit is already awful enough, I just need to witness on more blatant censorship incident to add a domain blocking rule for my home network and never look back.
- nabla9 8y agoWestern countries have rules against government censorship. It's unsustainable to upheld this rule only for the one government and allow foreigin governments and companies that must obey them to have different rules. Reddit has been blocked in china 90-days, I don't think Chinese company should be allowed to invest in a media company that is not allowed into China.
- merricksb 8y agoDiscussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087558 (754 points/841 comments)
- paulcarroty 8y agoI think this image should be here: https://cdn.instructables.com/FDN/FDJD/HAQ35G8Y/FDNFDJDHAQ35G8Y.LARGE.jpg https://cdn.instructables.com/FDN/FDJD/HAQ35G8Y/FDNFDJDHAQ35...
- akfanta 8y agoCalling Tencent a Chinese censorship powerhouse is a bit of a stretch. Might as well call every Chinese IT company a censorship powerhouse because they are all censored by the Chinese government.