8 ms·

Reddit's weird setup where essentially random people who were first "own" entire categories (= subreddits) of discussion is totally absurd.

by tazjin 4y ago

root_axis 4y ago
It's not absurd, it's reddit's killer feature and the primary reason that reddit is as big as it is.
- EGreg 4y ago
  Sorry, I am not familiar with reddit’s model. What is “ownership” in this case? Total private tyranny, with delegation of authority? Does it transition to collectively and more democratically managing the channel, as stackexchsnge does?
  - cyborgx7 4y ago
    There is no collective or democratic management, unless the tyrannical overlords choose to allow it. "Total private tyranny, with delegation of authority" is correct. What it leaves out is that anybody else can make a competing subreddit, dedicated to the same issue, where they have control. The only thing getting there first does is prime realestate in the namespace and network effects of having an existing community.
    - EGreg 4y ago
      Ah, so like Valve Software then. On a related note, the only reason the United States' citizens directly vote for the President is at the pleasure of the State Legislatures. The Constitution allows them to choose the manner in which electors are elected, and they in theory could elect them directly (by specifying this before election day), usurping the power from the public. https://www.justsecurity.org/73274/no-state-legislatures-cannot-overrule-the-popular-vote/ https://www.justsecurity.org/73274/no-state-legislatures-can...
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        Almost no countries have a directly-elected chief executive. Certainly that's not the case in the bulk of countries with parliamentary systems. For instance, outside of his own district ("riding", I think they call it there), no Canadian even saw Justin Trudeau on the ballot, and the few who did only saw him as a candidate for Member of Parliament, not Prime Minister. What typically happens in those countries is that the party hacks of whichever party (or coalition of parties) has a majority get together and decide who's going to be the Big Cheese. The average voter has little or nothing to say about it. Voters who are registered members of the majority party or parties may have a (small) degree of influence, but the ones who belong to other parties don't get a say. Worse, most Canadian parties actually charge you dues to belong to them (to its credit, Trudeau's party is not one of these). No pay, no say.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Yes, it's total private tyranny if the person who started the subreddit chooses to keep it that way. But if Reddit (the company) doesn't like the way you're running your sub, they can and will replace the people in charge.
    - seanw444 4y ago
      That's kind of bizarre to me. They act like they're firing employees, and replacing someone for that role, when they're just random volunteers to a community set up by a person unaffiliated with Reddit.
      - watwut 4y ago
        The issue here is stuff like brigading and stuff against the terms of service like straigh out nazism etc. And even those subs stay long often. Brigading is when members of sub coordinate and go to harass people on different sub or mass downvote their posts etc. The subs that have been closed or taken over were notorious for that.
        EGreg 4y ago
        Sounds like the perfect activity for botswarms controlled by a couple guys
  - root_axis 4y ago
    It's a web forum for shitposting, not a government for a country. Using hyperbolic language like "private tyranny" to talk about unpaid moderators curating a stream of news articles and posts typifies the terminally online madness of the current zeitgeist.
    - EGreg 4y ago
      It's true, there is no violence involved. Private tyranny is a technical description.
      - root_axis 4y ago
        I don't agree that it's a technical description, I'd say it's a political description meant to inflate the perceived harmfulness of what is a completely typical and mundane event on the internet.
- Xcelerate 4y ago
  I would argue that “killer feature” killed its potential to be much bigger and more profitable than it is.
  - cyborgx7 4y ago
    How much bigger could it possibly be?
    - ianbutler 4y ago
      Reddit is one of the smaller social media sites at 430m yearly users. Yes absurd number but TikTok, FB, Instagram etc all have more.
      - cyborgx7 4y ago
        The first result on google (not verified) says it's the fifth most visited website in the US. There is much more room upwards if you are honest.
      - karaterobot 4y ago
        Counterpoint: 430 million users is actually a lot. I just checked, and most sites don't have that many.
  - root_axis 4y ago
    Killed it's potential? It's in the top 20 biggest sites in the world with no competitors anywhere near it.
    - Xcelerate 4y ago
      It’s not nearly as big or profitable as the other social media companies, by a long shot. I think it has the potential to be though.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  I've had my fair share of terrible moderators on Reddit. Even on major / big name subreddits. There's not much to do aside from start a rival subreddit (with a less popular name), or just give up on Reddit entirely and go elsewhere.
  - root_axis 4y ago
    > I've had my fair share of terrible moderators on Reddit Welcome to the internet, the same thing could be said about every web forum since the 90s. > There's not much to do aside from start a rival subreddit Yes, that's the system working as intended. You don't have any right to the subreddit any more than the people who got there first. There have been many successful offshoot subreddits that go on to eclipse their predecessors in size if the new subreddit is actually better.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      > Welcome to the internet, the same thing could be said about every web forum since the 90s. Not USENET, not IRC. There's other systems, older than Reddit, that have other rules.
      - root_axis 4y ago
        Ah yes, usenet and irc, two platforms where moderators never ban people for capricious reasons.
        dragontamer 4y ago
        I'm less interested in bad moderators per se, as much as I am more concerned about "permanently owning a major, important name on Reddit". On IRC, if the channel goes dead, the channel name is back up for grabs. This means that the admins can kick everyone out of a room and "Reset the ownership" of a name, if necessary. (Ex: #Ubuntu suffers from a glitch and gets taken over by griefers. Admins come in, kick everyone off, and gives official #Ubuntu devs control of the channel again). Reddit can ban redditors who are poor behaving (even moderators). But the name of the channel remains in their control. The subreddit name can be lost forever. I don't think its a good system of name management. --------- USENET was way more ad-hoc. The alt.* distribution lists were fully unmoderated and fully ad-hoc from what I remember. I don't think it was even possible to ban anyone, and as such, a lot of those alt.* channels became filled with spam, porn, and other unfavorable material. The comp.* moderated lists were done better. I don't fully recall the administrative structure. But I know it wasn't done like how Reddit did things. Reddit's decisions can be discussed in light of its competitors. Be it Discord (today), or USENET / IRC (from the past).
andsoitis 4y ago
What do you think would be a better model? I have a hard time imagining one. It doesn't seem all that different to me than whoever is first to claim a company name, a domain name, or when we go back further in time, land.
- birdyrooster 4y ago
  this model effectively e-parastroika
- dragontamer 4y ago
  IRC Network administrators tend to enforce "official" names (owned by a particular group) vs "unofficial" names. For example, "#Ubuntu" is owned by the Ubuntu devs. While the unofficial ##Ubuntu is just fan owned. This already is a huge step forward compared to Reddit, where you aren't even sure which subreddits are owned by the corporation / official groups, or if they're "fan run". Are you sure /r/Ubuntu is a fan-run subreddit, or does it have official Ubuntu communications?
  - shlubbert 4y ago
    Which companies do actually own and moderate their own subreddits? I have always treated all of them as unofficial, even if there are employees of the company that post periodically.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure /r/Wargroove was company run (and well run) mind you. Its not necessarily a bad thing to have company run subreddits. But it should be clear when its an "official" vs "unofficial / fan-run" subreddit.
    - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
      /r/Hololive is like that
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Many streamers are root mods on their own subreddits. I doubt they do most of the moderation themselves, but they appoint and manage other mods. Most aren't companies, but some of the big ones have LLCs to handle their streaming businesses.
sva_ 4y ago
Nah, it's pretty amazing getting those people to work for free.
s3000 4y ago
The weirder thing is that redditors make it possible to own categories. The name of the subreddit shouldn't matter much at all. For each category there are several subreddits but people don't actively move to the subreddits with the best moderators. For aggregators as a whole, it's the same. Places like https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ don't have many visitors even though Reddit's flaws should incentivize significant amounts of users to try other aggregators.
ilaksh 4y ago
I was a moderator for r/robots for awhile. I even spent a few hundred dollars hiring an artist to create a theme. I begged them to help me pin down what the subreddit was about since the submissions were all over the place, and some people seemed to think it was for a certain type of robot content and others a different type. Most ignored the question. I tried to share articles and videos of actual leading edge robots that I though t were awesome. Generally these were ignored, along with most such things. Occasionally a video of a real robot would randomly become popular for some reason. The worst most repeated robot sketches would often receive many votes. Anything even remotely erotic went straight to the top. They seemed to like art quite a bit, but often the voting was the opposite of what it should have been. Like artwork that was clearly derivative or low quality was top billing for the day, and amazing work was ignored. Then there was someone who really wanted to use it for some channel that was obviously kind of a stealth marketing system. I repeatedly warned everyone about it and tried to discourage it, but the only feedback from anyone was that they liked the content and I was overreacting. Due to the incredibly poor judgement of the people voting in the sub, I got fed up and left.
- Sebb767 4y ago
  > Like artwork that was clearly derivative or low quality was top billing for the day, and amazing work was ignored. With all Reddit-like forums, there are big secondary factors to what bubbles to the top. Just as an example, the timing can be critical [0], the current top posts [1], the current trends and even just whether the people who like that particular style are browsing new at just the right time to give the post some starting traction. It's a bit like the difference between weather and climate, you really need to sample a lot to get an accurate picture. [0] If a lot of users are online when the post is new it will earn a lot more votes. Someone on a data subreddit actually modeled which times are the best to post content for maximum visibility. EDIT: There's even a website for this now: https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/ https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/ [1] "Blocking" the top spots can easily happen. Just look at what stays at the top of HN on a Sunday vs. when Elon stirs something up at Twitter yet again.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Good for them. You obviously wanted something else than the actual users.
im3w1l 4y ago
If someone founds a company they get to own it. Why shouldn't someone get to own a community they found?

Reddit's weird setup where essentially random people who were first "own" entire categories (= subreddits) of discussion is totally absurd.

by tazjin 4y ago

Reddit's weird setup where essentially random people who were first "own" entire categories (= subreddits) of discussion is totally absurd.

root_axis 4y ago

It's not absurd, it's reddit's killer feature and the primary reason that reddit is as big as it is.

EGreg 4y ago
Sorry, I am not familiar with reddit’s model. What is “ownership” in this case? Total private tyranny, with delegation of authority? Does it transition to collectively and more democratically managing the channel, as stackexchsnge does?
- cyborgx7 4y ago
  There is no collective or democratic management, unless the tyrannical overlords choose to allow it. "Total private tyranny, with delegation of authority" is correct. What it leaves out is that anybody else can make a competing subreddit, dedicated to the same issue, where they have control. The only thing getting there first does is prime realestate in the namespace and network effects of having an existing community.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Ah, so like Valve Software then. On a related note, the only reason the United States' citizens directly vote for the President is at the pleasure of the State Legislatures. The Constitution allows them to choose the manner in which electors are elected, and they in theory could elect them directly (by specifying this before election day), usurping the power from the public. https://www.justsecurity.org/73274/no-state-legislatures-cannot-overrule-the-popular-vote/ https://www.justsecurity.org/73274/no-state-legislatures-can...
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Almost no countries have a directly-elected chief executive. Certainly that's not the case in the bulk of countries with parliamentary systems. For instance, outside of his own district ("riding", I think they call it there), no Canadian even saw Justin Trudeau on the ballot, and the few who did only saw him as a candidate for Member of Parliament, not Prime Minister. What typically happens in those countries is that the party hacks of whichever party (or coalition of parties) has a majority get together and decide who's going to be the Big Cheese. The average voter has little or nothing to say about it. Voters who are registered members of the majority party or parties may have a (small) degree of influence, but the ones who belong to other parties don't get a say. Worse, most Canadian parties actually charge you dues to belong to them (to its credit, Trudeau's party is not one of these). No pay, no say.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Yes, it's total private tyranny if the person who started the subreddit chooses to keep it that way. But if Reddit (the company) doesn't like the way you're running your sub, they can and will replace the people in charge.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    That's kind of bizarre to me. They act like they're firing employees, and replacing someone for that role, when they're just random volunteers to a community set up by a person unaffiliated with Reddit.
    - watwut 4y ago
      The issue here is stuff like brigading and stuff against the terms of service like straigh out nazism etc. And even those subs stay long often. Brigading is when members of sub coordinate and go to harass people on different sub or mass downvote their posts etc. The subs that have been closed or taken over were notorious for that.
      - EGreg 4y ago
        Sounds like the perfect activity for botswarms controlled by a couple guys
- root_axis 4y ago
  It's a web forum for shitposting, not a government for a country. Using hyperbolic language like "private tyranny" to talk about unpaid moderators curating a stream of news articles and posts typifies the terminally online madness of the current zeitgeist.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    It's true, there is no violence involved. Private tyranny is a technical description.
    - root_axis 4y ago
      I don't agree that it's a technical description, I'd say it's a political description meant to inflate the perceived harmfulness of what is a completely typical and mundane event on the internet.
Xcelerate 4y ago
I would argue that “killer feature” killed its potential to be much bigger and more profitable than it is.
- cyborgx7 4y ago
  How much bigger could it possibly be?
  - ianbutler 4y ago
    Reddit is one of the smaller social media sites at 430m yearly users. Yes absurd number but TikTok, FB, Instagram etc all have more.
    - cyborgx7 4y ago
      The first result on google (not verified) says it's the fifth most visited website in the US. There is much more room upwards if you are honest.
    - karaterobot 4y ago
      Counterpoint: 430 million users is actually a lot. I just checked, and most sites don't have that many.
- root_axis 4y ago
  Killed it's potential? It's in the top 20 biggest sites in the world with no competitors anywhere near it.
  - Xcelerate 4y ago
    It’s not nearly as big or profitable as the other social media companies, by a long shot. I think it has the potential to be though.
dragontamer 4y ago
I've had my fair share of terrible moderators on Reddit. Even on major / big name subreddits. There's not much to do aside from start a rival subreddit (with a less popular name), or just give up on Reddit entirely and go elsewhere.
- root_axis 4y ago
  > I've had my fair share of terrible moderators on Reddit Welcome to the internet, the same thing could be said about every web forum since the 90s. > There's not much to do aside from start a rival subreddit Yes, that's the system working as intended. You don't have any right to the subreddit any more than the people who got there first. There have been many successful offshoot subreddits that go on to eclipse their predecessors in size if the new subreddit is actually better.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    > Welcome to the internet, the same thing could be said about every web forum since the 90s. Not USENET, not IRC. There's other systems, older than Reddit, that have other rules.
    - root_axis 4y ago
      Ah yes, usenet and irc, two platforms where moderators never ban people for capricious reasons.
      - dragontamer 4y ago
        I'm less interested in bad moderators per se, as much as I am more concerned about "permanently owning a major, important name on Reddit". On IRC, if the channel goes dead, the channel name is back up for grabs. This means that the admins can kick everyone out of a room and "Reset the ownership" of a name, if necessary. (Ex: #Ubuntu suffers from a glitch and gets taken over by griefers. Admins come in, kick everyone off, and gives official #Ubuntu devs control of the channel again). Reddit can ban redditors who are poor behaving (even moderators). But the name of the channel remains in their control. The subreddit name can be lost forever. I don't think its a good system of name management. --------- USENET was way more ad-hoc. The alt.* distribution lists were fully unmoderated and fully ad-hoc from what I remember. I don't think it was even possible to ban anyone, and as such, a lot of those alt.* channels became filled with spam, porn, and other unfavorable material. The comp.* moderated lists were done better. I don't fully recall the administrative structure. But I know it wasn't done like how Reddit did things. Reddit's decisions can be discussed in light of its competitors. Be it Discord (today), or USENET / IRC (from the past).

andsoitis 4y ago

What do you think would be a better model? I have a hard time imagining one. It doesn't seem all that different to me than whoever is first to claim a company name, a domain name, or when we go back further in time, land.

birdyrooster 4y ago
this model effectively e-parastroika
dragontamer 4y ago
IRC Network administrators tend to enforce "official" names (owned by a particular group) vs "unofficial" names. For example, "#Ubuntu" is owned by the Ubuntu devs. While the unofficial ##Ubuntu is just fan owned. This already is a huge step forward compared to Reddit, where you aren't even sure which subreddits are owned by the corporation / official groups, or if they're "fan run". Are you sure /r/Ubuntu is a fan-run subreddit, or does it have official Ubuntu communications?
- shlubbert 4y ago
  Which companies do actually own and moderate their own subreddits? I have always treated all of them as unofficial, even if there are employees of the company that post periodically.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure /r/Wargroove was company run (and well run) mind you. Its not necessarily a bad thing to have company run subreddits. But it should be clear when its an "official" vs "unofficial / fan-run" subreddit.
  - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
    /r/Hololive is like that
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Many streamers are root mods on their own subreddits. I doubt they do most of the moderation themselves, but they appoint and manage other mods. Most aren't companies, but some of the big ones have LLCs to handle their streaming businesses.

sva_ 4y ago

Nah, it's pretty amazing getting those people to work for free.

s3000 4y ago

The weirder thing is that redditors make it possible to own categories. The name of the subreddit shouldn't matter much at all. For each category there are several subreddits but people don't actively move to the subreddits with the best moderators. For aggregators as a whole, it's the same. Places like https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ don't have many visitors even though Reddit's flaws should incentivize significant amounts of users to try other aggregators.

ilaksh 4y ago

I was a moderator for r/robots for awhile. I even spent a few hundred dollars hiring an artist to create a theme. I begged them to help me pin down what the subreddit was about since the submissions were all over the place, and some people seemed to think it was for a certain type of robot content and others a different type. Most ignored the question. I tried to share articles and videos of actual leading edge robots that I though t were awesome. Generally these were ignored, along with most such things. Occasionally a video of a real robot would randomly become popular for some reason. The worst most repeated robot sketches would often receive many votes. Anything even remotely erotic went straight to the top. They seemed to like art quite a bit, but often the voting was the opposite of what it should have been. Like artwork that was clearly derivative or low quality was top billing for the day, and amazing work was ignored. Then there was someone who really wanted to use it for some channel that was obviously kind of a stealth marketing system. I repeatedly warned everyone about it and tried to discourage it, but the only feedback from anyone was that they liked the content and I was overreacting. Due to the incredibly poor judgement of the people voting in the sub, I got fed up and left.

Sebb767 4y ago
> Like artwork that was clearly derivative or low quality was top billing for the day, and amazing work was ignored. With all Reddit-like forums, there are big secondary factors to what bubbles to the top. Just as an example, the timing can be critical [0], the current top posts [1], the current trends and even just whether the people who like that particular style are browsing new at just the right time to give the post some starting traction. It's a bit like the difference between weather and climate, you really need to sample a lot to get an accurate picture. [0] If a lot of users are online when the post is new it will earn a lot more votes. Someone on a data subreddit actually modeled which times are the best to post content for maximum visibility. EDIT: There's even a website for this now: https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/ https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/ [1] "Blocking" the top spots can easily happen. Just look at what stays at the top of HN on a Sunday vs. when Elon stirs something up at Twitter yet again.
ilyt 4y ago
Good for them. You obviously wanted something else than the actual users.

im3w1l 4y ago

If someone founds a company they get to own it. Why shouldn't someone get to own a community they found?