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I always marvel that Reddit has seemed not have learned even one lesson from Digg. They are literally making the same exact mistakes, and its leading to the sa
by cubano 7y ago
I always marvel that Reddit has seemed not have learned even one lesson from Digg.
They are literally making the same exact mistakes, and its leading to the same exact results...karma whoring, piling on, ingroup/outgroup ete etc.
It seems beyond comprehension to me that they wouldn't have thoroughly looked at the rise and fall of Digg and not made every effort not to follow the same path.
- dymk 7y agoIf I had to guess, this is what happens when you make your company data driven at all costs. All the dog-piling leads to higher engagement, more comments made faster as people get the last word in, and more gold/platinum/silver buying as people foam at the mouth to super-bump comments they agree with. Reddit has a strong incentive to make their website a platform where you shout into an abyss that echos back what you currently feel, where you can feel vindicated for downvoting and insulting the "other", and get that sweet dopamine kick for stealing (not sharing) content with no concept of attribution. All of that means higher engagement of the userbase. If they wanted to encourage thoughtful discussion? That would mean requiring long-form posts, or throttling how fast users could comment. Wanting high quality discussion would mean encouraging posting sources and taking time to read them, which drives users off the site. It would mean dis-incentivizing the emotion-based vector for buying gold as a means to super-bump arguments you agree with, or to spite the opposition.
- kebman 7y agoHave you read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman? If not, give it a read. ^^
- Angostura 7y ago> They are literally making the same exact mistakes, I haven't seen them make a formal system whereby publishers can pay to have their content autosubmitted and promoted to the front page. That was what killed Digg.
- cubano 7y agoOk..yes I'll admit I never even knew that Digg did that. I thought Digg's vote system was simply being gamed by bad actors. The idea that someone at Digg thought it would be even a reasonably good thing to have the system you describe is totally bonkers.
- Angostura 7y agoNice little summary here https://searchengineland.com/digg-v4-how-to-successfully-kill-a-community-50450 https://searchengineland.com/digg-v4-how-to-successfully-kil... It was really was an astonishingly cack-handed set of decisions.
- archey1 7y agoReddit doesn't need this system there are plenty of vote farms that you can pay a miniscule amount of money to and they will do it for you.