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I dunno. Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. But I agree with you overall. I'm

• skunkworker 5y ago
  Conde Nast also owns Ars Technica, which personally is my favorite tech-news site and has high and consistent quality.
  • ddingus 5y ago
    I don't think the Reddit transition has gone very well. But there is still a lot to be seen on that front. Ars is an example of a successful acquisition. I totally agree.
    • milkytron 5y ago
      > I don't think the Reddit transition has gone very well. I would agree, although I do not think it has been particularly bad either. If they had broken apps the enhance reddit and removed old.reddit.com, then I would think otherwise. For the most part, I am still able to use the site as I have since 2011.
      • ddingus 5y ago
        To me, and I'm in the same scenario as you, that's mostly bad. old.reddit.com isn't going to last, is it?
        • bhaak 5y ago
          For what it's worth, even i.reddit.com aka reddit.com/.compact is still working.
  • thefz 5y ago
    Yes and no. Article comment can be toxic downvote brigades to anyone who does not adhere to the hive's opinion and Ars is a mala fide Apple boot licker to the bone. Ars forums have gone to hell in this regard.
    • ddingus 5y ago
      Not sure the fourms are caused by acquisition. I do see the UX experience being more thick, less favorable signal to noise happening due to acquisition. There may be editorial conflicts of interest too. I do not notice at present.
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      If you don't like downvotes then make your own subreddit and attract like opinions. I personally don't think posts should be voted more negative than -1.
      • thefz 5y ago
        That's really mature, bravo.
  • phist_mcgee 5y ago
    If you ever want to see thee Ars community dogpile on a certain topic, read any article on cryptocurrencies. You will get the following comments at the top of the heap: Crypto means I can't buy a graphics card Crypto is a ponzi scheme and should be banned It is immoral to own Bitcoin, and governments should punish people who do Would you like to buy my new XCoin ha ha ha. Elon Musk is amazing, but this crypto thing makes me a little unhappy with him. Ad nauseum. I have been visiting that site less and less, because I think the audience has become an echo chamber.
    • phist_mcgee 5y ago
      I think the downvotes on my comment show I have hit a nerve. I did not disagree with any of the points I listed, I am simply pointing out a fact. Downvoting this comment does disprove not my point. The downvotes without engaging with my post are what is wrong with commodified community participation (comment/post points); exactly what harms Stack Overflow in the long run.
      • panopticon 5y ago
        You posted a tangential rant disparaging the comment section of another website. The voting system is the most appropriate response to flamebait.
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• skeeter2020 5y ago
  >> The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. I've been a part of a couple of these. This statement is somewhere on the spectrum of absolutely naive to willfully disingenuous. "Someone just paid 2 billion dollars to buy us, but they're not going to change anything, exert any influence or expect payback beyond what we've already been doing."
  • spurgu 5y ago
    Naive indeed. I flew to meet a company we had just acquired and I personally promised them that nothing would change. Even though I believed it at the time of course it didn't pan out that way and to this day I regret saying that.
    • sulam 5y ago
      Wow, yeah, never say that. Even if you believe it's true, saying nothing will change is sort of like waving a red flag in front of the bull. Of course things will change over time, they always do!
      • GenerocUsername 5y ago
        Its like fixing the wifi router for your parents and then having them call you to complain that their emails now have a signature at the bottom... "I didnt do that", "Well, you were the last one to touch the internet"
        • monsieurbanana 5y ago
          Except that in this situation, you really did put the signature on those emails.
        • rightbyte 5y ago
          Well to be fair that is how my coworkers (and I) think too. The one with the latest commit get a ping when the top break.
  • 5y ago
• dredmorbius 5y ago
  Reddit's managed that on their own.
• pavel_lishin 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Their current plan seems to be a race to the bottom; a new re-design for the default landing page that rewards infinite scroll over in-depth content. Meanwhile, the moderation tools are still garbage.
  • chairmanwow1 5y ago
    Their app is 2x slower than their mobile site and their new mobile site is 4x slower than their old site. Why do these brands feel the need to make everything a fucking SPA.
    • jakub_g 5y ago
      Plus the constant nag to install the app on mobile, and sometimes even downright blocking access and "see in the app". (For now there's still "old." subdomain which works if you enable desktop emulation on mobile, but it can shut down any day).
      • swiley 5y ago
        The fact that "old." still works is a pretty strong indication that the new redesign is to ensure new users will tolerate manipulation while retaining a large portion of the old users. Looking at the ratio of old/new site users is probably a very powerful analytics tool for predicting ad revenue for a given subreddit.
        • zerocrates 5y ago
          In my occasional interactions on Reddit it seems a very large proportion of users are on the "new" Reddit, the mobile site, or an app. I'm sure it varies by community though (especially ones that heavily use custom CSS and things that don't work on the new site). Just as one example I can recall, you can do things that are kind of like "quote retweets" with the cross-post feature that don't really make sense on the old site (on "new Reddit" when you crosspost the original post/title are displayed in a little window so you'll see people make titles that are actually commenting on the original post and not on whatever the link actually is). On old Reddit these just show up as links to whatever the original post linked to, but with the "meta-commentary" title. More than once I've encountered one of these with confusion until a comment explained, or I thought to check the tab that shows where else the same link has been posted.
• Chris2048 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Reddit is simply dying a slow death. I wouldn't touch the place now.
• will4274 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. I would have said the exact opposite. The Reddit community was destroyed. People no longer recommend Reddit for interesting discussions or speak excitedly about its communities. Conde Nast monetized and changed Reddit, recouping their investment, and now it's hard to find people who have good things to say about it. Consider e.g. /r/darknetplan or similar topic focused subreddit a that were thriving in the early 2000s - all graveyards today. Those people are on Discord now.
  • ssaturn 5y ago
    Where can I find links to these discord invites?
    • hirako2000 5y ago
      https://disboard.org/servers/tag/darknet https://disboard.org/servers/tag/darknet
  • jedberg 5y ago
    That subreddit was started after the acquisition. In fact, every subreddit was, because user created subreddits were paid for by Conde Nast. As was self posts and pretty much every major innovation. It was after they brought in outside investors that they were pressured to monetize.
  • renewiltord 5y ago
    Reddit itself didn't exist in the early 2000s wtf is this /r/darknetplan itself is from late 2010 You're just bullshitting wtf These are verifiable facts (go to /r/darknetplan and cmd-f for "community for" and then select that text).
• htrp 5y ago
  > Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Ehhhh not so sure on that one.
• Dah00n 5y ago
  >Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. That.... is a very positive view of Reddit. I'd say everything on Reddit is way worse now and going downhill fast.
  • lupire 5y ago
    That was after Conde Nast sold.
    • Dah00n 5y ago
      Also before. It isn't something new. I'm amazed it can still become worse but it does.
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    No it isn't.
    • Dah00n 5y ago
      Are we really at YES NO YES NO discussion levels?
• soheil 5y ago
  > Stack Overflow is so good, and its fate is now entirely in the hands of the purchaser. I wonder how much of it is Google making it look good by providing laser-precise results for the vaguest search queries.
• LegitShady 5y ago
  >most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices ...at least until this purchase news died down a bit, and then we can get some managers in there to make new priorities and get some of the old ones out...
• aiisjustanif 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Now Bon Appetit on the other hand...
• edgyquant 5y ago
  >Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition For whom? For people who uses it since the beginning it isn’t even the same place anymore. It’s UX (and I’m not talking about the aesthetics of the new design, I don’t mind those) is legitimately the worst I’ve ever experienced and the quality of discussion has went down the drain. Even if you find a tightly controlled community dedicated to a topic you’re interested in it’s either one extreme to another or doesn’t last long. That doesn’t even get into the constant rolling out for Facebook-tier features that no Reddit user ever wanted. I stopped using Reddit last month after ~12 years and I’ve since realized I was getting nothing but regurgitated memes and anger from a dozen people replying to my every comment who aren’t even addressing what I was saying just arguing for arguments sake. It’s basically what Facebook groups were in 2016 at this point. I’m sure it’s a great acquisition for those who bought it, but for the old power users it’s anything but.
  • teamspirit 5y ago
    old.reddit.com it's the only way to browse Reddit. Not sure for how long, but it's there. That way you don't have to deal with any of the new nonsense that has become Reddit.
    • twelvechairs 5y ago
      3rd party apps are a better experience than old.reddit.com to be honest. Rif, sync, boost, relay, etc.
      • Semaphor 5y ago
        All of those are mobile-only though.
    • aerique 5y ago
      And for mobile stick ".compact" at the end.
  • wokwokwok 5y ago
    > For whom? Well, most people right? Power users are by almost by definition an insignificant (but over represented in discussions and noise making) cohort right? If the platform keeps quality content, gets more users over time and maintains both a good DAU and RPU, then, well, what objective metric of success do you want to measure? Number of happy power users? I really think most people don't care about that metric. With SO it remains to be seen...; the power users there are the mods, and they contribute tangible value to the platform... but... you know, the writing is already on the wall. Whether this does it, or it was coming anyway, it's hard to say.
• 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  > The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. Says everyone who is involved in huge company acquisitions ever, and most of the time it does not hold true. The rest is common marketing talk. I'm certainly not saying it is impossible for that to be true, but such a statement itself does not hold any value.
• m463 5y ago
  > Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. In relation to money, or to users? Reddit is awful now, forcing everyone to an app and privacy out the window