15 ms·

Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started

141 points by jl 3y ago

samstave 3y ago
[flagged]
- vore 3y ago
  YC is probably silent because most of the people at YC don't wear tinfoil hats. Except the Ellen Pao part, but that was because she was checks notes promoted to CEO.
  - samstave 3y ago
    UHM, SHOULD i agree with you or not?
- doodlebugging 3y ago
  As a long time redditor I wonder too about some of this. I wrote it off a long time ago as probably part of their attempts to drive eyeballs to the site, any eyeballs so that they could demonstrate growth in a market dominated at the time by Digg and Fark. They always made a point of claiming that speech was free, no subjects were off limits, anything goes. That allowed posters like violentacrez to post his shit and get his 15 minutes of fame before they had to admit that some stuff was better left unsaid. Some of the most notorious stories date back to the days before there were subject and subreddit bans. Once they achieved their engagement goals they were more amenable to ban things that were widely considered unsavory. I don't understand why Aaron's part is sidelined now as it appears to be crumbsnatching by Steve and Alexis when they grab all the credit. He appeared at the time to be on equal footing with them in the process of managing the site. MaxwellHill managed to position themselves as a knowledgeable source of information. This was something that reddit needed and set her up to be a prominent mod. YC is silent about things because they had skin in the game and feared a rash.
  - samstave 3y ago
    >>MaxwellHill managed to position themselves as a knowledgeable source of information. This was something that reddit needed and set her up to be a prominent mod" - This (no offense to you, personally) is such a disgusting thought if true. -- Aaron was not going after papers, he was going to expose some people.
    - doodlebugging 3y ago
      >This (no offense to you, personally) LOL. In your other reply I am a cunt, or an absolute cunt. I do have a preference as I noted in my reply. I agree that MaxwellHill acting as a mod for so long is really disgusting. The other guy that ended up getting his 15 minutes of fame before it all led to the banning of his favorite subs of which I think he was a mod is violentacrez. The guy was straight up pushing porn, racism, etc [0] as a mod. Reddit in those days was a genuine cesspool where users had to carefully read comments to know whether the post they were about to click linked to something enlightening or to some disgusting shit posted by an asshole as payback to someone else who shitposted another disgusting link with a catchy title. [0]https://www.gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web https://www.gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacre... >Aaron was not going after papers, he was going to expose some people. This would not be surprising to me. He was principled and others he encountered were not. Do you have any good stories to back up this part of your post?
  - samstave 3y ago
    You are a cunt. Please never meet me in [erson\\\ if you dont beleive these One of the things that digital did... it reveled absolute cunts.... \ \they are everywhere
    - doodlebugging 3y ago
      Am I a "cunt" or an "absolute cunt"? Can you explain the difference and how you made your determination based on the content of my post? If an absolute cunt is somehow the best kind of cunt or something akin to the type of cunt against which all others can be compared for validating their individual levels of cuntness then I definitely want to be THE absolute cunt. Not just any absolute cunt. Indeed I suspect that you're correct when you "revel" that cunts are everywhere and I take some measure of comfort in knowing that there are those among us all, people like myself who find some small pleasure in their presence. Your reply seems a bit over the edge.
locustmostest 3y ago
I've enjoyed all of the episodes so far, but this one was definitely the stand-out.
compumike 3y ago
Listened to this episode on a road trip yesterday and really enjoyed it. If you do a "part 2", I'm curious to hear more details about how they pulled off the growth of Reddit, broadening from an initial niche community into a wider collection of communities. Thanks jl and clevy!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- giantrobot 3y ago
  They got multiple migration waves from digg, added subreddits, then network effects started. Early Reddit was pretty boring unless you were interested in programming or technology. The first big bump in users from digg was during the HD-DVD key fracas. The ham-handed response by digg to even talking about the key leak pissed off a lot of users. They were already simmering due to astroturfing/Payola by "power users" (we'd call them influencers today). Then a huge influx came after the digg v4 rollout that basically turned the site into a giant advertising channel, more so than it had been. I'm no Reddit insider but I got turned onto it in 2005 or so and watched the digg user influxes over the years.
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    Digg changed the way comments were threaded meaning there could be no cogent discussion in threads. I am confident that was the mortal wound to Digg.
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      I don't think you're wrong. Digg did not understand the core features that users valued. They assumed users would stick around through every monetization abuse they threw at them. Users put up with the "power user" bullshit (paid influencers and astroturfing) because the comments tied to those submissions could be worthwhile. I think digg's fundamental problem was they viewed their user base like a passive audience. It turned out their users were in fact their main attraction. When they ruined the experience for users they left and digg was left with zero value.
bigcloud1299 3y ago
Most of social platforms are nothing but feature AOL back in the day. They got a different look and feel. Some are cross over of ICQ and AOL (WhatsApp) AOL messenger Chat rooms (discord, telegram) Twitter is nothing but public chat room.
- grogenaut 3y ago
  Slack is just irc, Dropbox just nfs, Google just grep, Craigslist just newspaper classifieds, amazon just Walmart, Netflix just charter, hacker news just coffee shops and bars, and on and on, what's your point
  - inkywatcher 3y ago
    When you put it like that, I really prefer some of the precursors.
    - OnlyMortal 3y ago
      Reddit is just Usenet.
      - morkalork 3y ago
        I like reddit because it's a bunch of millennials and has been from the start. My old manager, he talks all glowingly about the haydays of usenet. He's a gen-Xer. Given the equivalency of social networks features, the most important thing is just going to be the identity of the users consuming them.
        grogenaut 3y ago
        I love to joke to my kids that twitch is just AM radio for their age group... they get mad on that one cause it's pretty on point.
        OnlyMortal 3y ago
        As a Gen-X, almost Boomer, and the only social media I use is Reddit… I think, perhaps, you might be looking at the wrong “groups”. CasualUK is where I spend my time.
werid 3y ago
this is good timing, as we're witnessing in real time how reddit is ending right now :)
- doodlebugging 3y ago
  I'm winding down my participation. It's been a fun ride for the most part but it is really easy to get depressed reading a lot of stuff that gets posted. Discussions tend to deteriorate quickly and quality comments with sources get buried. That isn't how it all started. I'll shut down my last account soon after overwriting and deleting all the posts. It's fitting that Imgur is also gonna scratch all the content they have from people who never made Imgur accounts. I have a lot of tutorials, marked-up photos, etc that I used to help people thru issues on some of those niche forums involving home and auto repairs. It's good to know all that will be gone. I'll be down to one site for online engagement and news.
- turzmo 3y ago
  How is that?
  - exsf0859 3y ago
    Reddit recently announced changes to their APIs pricing and features that will probably lead to the abandonment of most third-party Reddit clients. Users of those clients are upset. https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_few_calls_with_reddit_today_about_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_fe...
    - turzmo 3y ago
      Gotcha, thanks
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      but lets say they're upset enough to leave - where will they go en masse that replaces reddit?
earthscienceman 3y ago
They spammed posts and comments with fake accounts to fake growth until it caught on and then talked about it on HackerNews ...
- doodlebugging 3y ago
  Yes. This is what I remember from the earliest days. Back and forth between their own posts using multiple accounts to give the impression of active engagement and a growing community. Reposting things from Digg, Fark, etc and grabbing memes like Rickrolls, goatse, to draw eyeballs and clicks to their single page scrolling interface. Dodging bullshit posts was a game of waiting for comments to post so you could see which actually had real content and not some nasty meme from somewhere else. Deciding that they needed a coat of arms and figuring out what should go on it, the alien, narwhals, etc.
- jedberg 3y ago
  Lol HN didn't exist until reddit was popular. HN was in fact created because reddit go so popular it no longer appealed to PG, so he started HN so he could moderate the conversation himself and steer the community they way he wanted it to go. The other thing you said partly true -- in the beginning the founders had about 100 accounts that they posted with, but there were no comments back then. There was never fake commenting, and the posts weren't "fake" either. Alexis would scour the internet all day looking for interesting things and then posting them with random accounts, as would Steve. So if anything Alexis and Steve were just really prolific users. But the site was self sustaining by the time comments launched. ie. There would be fresh content even if Steve and Alexis didn't post anything that day.
  - effingwewt 3y ago
    Thats some mighty handwavy mental gymnastics to not call them liars. Pretending to be different people to post qualifies as 'fake posts'. Fake it till you make it, or fraud? Either way it's still bullshit.
    - inkywatcher 3y ago
earthscienceman 3y ago
This is a nice time to remind everyone that Aaron Swartz died while fighting for a freer internet and a freer world. He is, by Paul Graham, considered a founder of reddit but is rarely mentioned in these stories. Instead of trying to go for broke and grind till he could cash out, Aaron put his skin in the game for what the internet should become. Which gets more relevant everyday that the internet megacorps consolidate power, control information, and shape the public discourse. Reddit is one such site. They should be embarrassed by how they dismissed the ethical dilemmas of operating reddit in favor of making a profit.
- kodah 3y ago
  It'd be nice if they'd stop trying erase Aaron's work on Reddit but that's been underway for some time, and I'm not even really sure why. I can't fathom an end-goal where marginalizing Aaron's contributions is a benefit to them.
  - benatkin 3y ago
    Yeah it was long before the government went after Aaron. You could hear it straight from spez but the comment linked here is deleted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    To my recollection Aaron Swartz was anti-establishment; the reddit he was part of was grass-roots, laissez-faire, no holds barred, ... whilst reddit today is part of the media establishment, much more top-down, heavily modded and censored. Reddit in the post digg-exodus days seemed like a veneer of 'news' covering one of _the_ seedy underbellies of the web. Not only, but to a large extent a hive of scum and villainy; not a chan-site but similarly lacking in societal respectability. ?
    - benatkin 3y ago
      He was only there for a few months, so I don't think the reddit community changed much and drove him off that way. It was like it was when it started for several years. kn0thing and spez seem like they have a lot in common with Elon politically. Aaronsw not so much. Sorry I can't seem to explain how I perceive their political differences at the moment and instead am just giving an example.
EasyTiger_ 3y ago
Congratulations on the most toxic, astroturfed site on the internet I guess
- culopatin 3y ago
  It’s not 4chan
  - dontupvoteme 3y ago
    4chan is mostly anti-astroturfed - it's actual people but they'll just kneejerk-hate anything which is popular on reddit or with 'normies'.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    4chan is actually among the less toxic discussion sites, and definitely better than Reddit. This is mostly owed to the quality of its moderation team. 4chan's infamy is largely undeserved.
samwillis 3y ago
The story of Reddit would make a good TV show, kind of "The Social Network" crossed with "The Crown". So many ups and downs, and many cross overs to other things happing in tech and the wider world. You could easily fill three or four seasons. "The front page of the Internet"
- corbulo 3y ago
  But who would have the guts to be honest about the bad parts?
- bink 3y ago
  You might be interested in reading the book about Reddit that came out a few years ago, "We Are the Nerds". It doesn't shed a great light on Aaron Schwartz.
celtoid 3y ago
[flagged]
- optimalsolver 3y ago
  Aaron didn't really have anything to do with Reddit. He was foisted on the founders by Paul Graham.
  - celtoid 3y ago
    Aaron helped rewrite Reddit's codebase. He had a lot to do with Reddit until he didn't. "One of the points of the merger was that we would all call ourselves co-founders, so that's what I've been doing. I'd be happy to stop if that's what Steve and Alexis wanted, though." - Aaron Swartz
- voytec 3y ago
  I made this choice later, when Tencent started ruling Reddit. People immediately started throwing Tiananmen Square posts which quickly were getting to front and then being shadowbanned. As I was born in communist Poland, I have no love (to say politely) for communist governments. I made a good choice, as Reddit quickly made a turn from being a site hosting thematic forums into a social media website full of garbage. Before that, some smaller subreddits were valuable and not infested by marketers nor moderated by corporations. But it quickly changed and now, for me, Reddit is as unbearable as Facebook.
- up_your_ass 3y ago
  They've done a full 180° and are against free speech now. If you express certain forbidden opinions or bring up certain controversial topics, then your account gets permabanned. And that's side-wide. Individual subreddits, especially the more popular ones, are even more restrictive.
doodlebugging 3y ago
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-accounts--2 https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-t... This is an old article with a similarly themed discussion. I'll have to listen to the pod cast to see whether anything changed in the retelling.
vlovich123 3y ago
Step 1: convince your main competitor to piss of its entire user base. Step 2: ? <- could be interesting to see if they did something special here Step 3: get Obama and other major celebrities to establish you as a media company brand.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  Step 2 probably has a bunch of stuff, but includes: They posted content using fake accounts to stimulate adoption. To my recollection they allowed a lot of skeevy (illegal and/or immoral) content to proliferate. I think they probably ran at a loss for a long time; leaning heavily on volunteer personnel. ?
  - nanidin 3y ago
    Step 2 for a Reddit clone/competitor would be much easier and more convincing given the current state of LLM’s.
- flomo 3y ago
  One take I heard is Digg was actively combating vote manipulation, while on Reddit it was easy to get RonPaul/etc content onto the homepage. So the migration was memed to some extent.
qwertox 3y ago
I ask myself on a weekly basis when old.reddit.com will disappear. And there is nothing more cruel than the new Reddit, UI-wise. Even Twitter's "threading" of conversations appears to make more sense, even though I have still not figured out how it works.
- twostorytower 3y ago
  I know some people at Reddit and sadly it's definitely going to happen.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    I have mentally prepared myself to say goodbye to Reddit once it happens. Complete with deleting my account for closure. This is what I recommend. It's pretty much facebook, pure dark UX at that point.
  - bmarquez 3y ago
    I hope the Fediverse replacement for Reddit, Lemmy, will pick up in popularity before old.reddit dies. It makes a lot of sense since each "subreddit" could be its own server.
    - uthinter 3y ago
      Are servers hosted on fediverse open to being indexed by search engines otherwise I doubt it can replace reddit. Reddit did discussion threads , subs, and searchable results from search engines really well. It was a really great version of "forums" . I am not sure fediverse or Discord can do such things.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      I don't think Fediverse solves the problems that we see in Reddit (or Twitter, or any of the others). Instead of admin meddling from a single group of closely-affiliated admins (they all work for the same company), you just get meddling from many small groups of admins, none of those groups affiliated with each other except via ActivityPub. They can't shut down conversations they dislike entirely, but they can sever you from the Fediverse thoroughly enough that they might as well. And they can do it early enough that no one ever knew you were there in the first place. Even the Reddit admins didn't do that... I don't know if it was apathy and indifference, or just that they couldn't pay enough attention back in the early 2010s, but they didn't. And that likely allowed Reddit to grow so large, it could be the forum for everybody, about everything. Fediverse and Lemmy just ends up being those old phpbb forums, that won't talk to or link to each other unless everything is excessively sanitized and drips with insincere civility. Lemmy doesn't even have an Elon Musk to piss everyone off of Reddit and drive them to search for an alternative.
bryceneal 3y ago
Reddit is such a cesspool of low-quality commentary and rage-baiting. The front page/popular category is particularly egregious.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  You have to choose subs carefully. Most are bad but some are okay
- bmarquez 3y ago
  Front page is horrible, and I always skip it by bookmarking a subreddit that I'm already subscribed to. Front page feels like clickbait and "get angry for engagement metrics"
  - voytec 3y ago
    No idea if it still works, but it was possible to select content from only certain subreddits https://reddit.com/r/subreddit1+subreddit2+subreddit3
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I assume at least some portion of the front page (or /r/popular) has been for sale for a long time. For example, sports leagues like NBA or marketers trying to make viral videos for brands or new movie/TV show releases.
- mrexroad 3y ago
  I’ve never visited the front page, but I’ve found a number of helpful folks on various construction trade or woodworking subs. I only have notifications enabled for /r/costco_alcohol quite useful to gauge the overall distribution patterns for specific whiskeys I like, so I know when it’s worth making a trip or not. Pretty much every sub I’ve recently spent time offering help in, or have found interesting enough to scroll around, has a pretty rigid policy of no politics and no religion. With all that said, I made the mistake of visiting /r/BayArea and found your assessment spot on.
photochemsyn 3y ago
I tried Reddit for a while but overall the site is not that different from any incarnation of Twitter. The main difference is individuals vs. subreddits, and if you're careful selecting interesting individuals on Twitter / interesting subreddits on Reddit, you can often find a fair amount of useful content, but the effort is barely worth the bother, it feels like looking for needles in a haystack. If you're just passively absorbing content on either platform both are equally poor quality, not all that different from watching MSNBC, CNN or FOX - i.e. heavily gamed by advertisers and propagandists. What Twitter and Reddit also have in common is a low-quality in-house search engine and a restricted API for search, which I assume is an attempt to control exposure of content by administrators, subreddit moderators, etc. Twitter: "Please note that Twitter's search service and, by extension, the Search API is not meant to be an exhaustive source of Tweets. Not all Tweets will be indexed or made available via the search interface." Reddit: "You can search subreddits and posts, but comments aren’t available to search via the public API." They appear to want to feed users content algorithmically based on some profile/agenda, and not just let users go wandering around finding content based on their own criteria.
- jasondigitized 3y ago
  Well run subreddits are vastly superior to Twitter. By way of example, if you are into homegyms or woodworking or Austin, there are three subreddits dedicated to those topics. I may be missing something about Twitter that allows me to focus on an esoteric topic that isn’t dependent on a inconsistent hashtag denotion. Twitter topics are simply too restricted and opinionated for my liking.
- up_your_ass 3y ago
  You can try the third-party archive Pushshift for search. Here's an interface to their API: https://camas.unddit.com https://camas.unddit.com Replacing "reddit.com" in URLs with "unddit.com" or "reveddit.com" is also handy, it lets you see deleted or removed comments.
- stametseater 3y ago
  One of the reasons I keep coming back to HN is because the comment search actually works, so it's easy to figure out what sort of things, if anything, has been said here about some topic. It's easy to search a project's name and find that one post from a guy 10 years ago who mentioned it, and also mentioned a better alternative. With reddit it's not worth trying, even with Google and "site:reddit.com" searches. Reddit's SNR is awful, so you have to wade through dozens if not hundreds of posts of people mentioning the thing but saying nothing worthwhile. Pages of people asking questions relevant to your query, but not receiving any useful response. HN has some people asking questions, but most posts are about people volunteering information. On reddit, it seems like most posts are people asking questions into the void and rarely receiving an answer, and those kind of search results just aren't useful.
stametseater 3y ago
I don't see a transcript and I'm not going to listen to a podcast so I'll just ask here: does he discuss how they seeded their site with fraudulent accounts/posts?
- Etrnl_President 3y ago
  [flagged]
hayst4ck 3y ago
When looking up Digg on wikipedia I found this gem: Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open letter to Rose: this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to "give the power back to the people." Apparently nobody can resist the allure of VC meddling.
- tough 3y ago
  Funny both Alexis is a VC now, and he actually invested in kevin's NFT 10k PFP (Moonbrids) The Reddit Mafia
  - notatoad 3y ago
    reddit basically became everything the founders mocked when they first started it. https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2.html https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2.html
    - tough 3y ago
      That's why you never sell yourself as the hero, Or you'll just wait long enough to become the villain
    - jefftk 3y ago
      But modern reddit isn't really very similar to what they're mocking? Here's the joke mockup: https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2mockup.jpg https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2mockup.jpg Open reddit now and there's no silly unusable tag clouds, no top-of-page ads, no 3rd-party ad serving, no gradients, no overdone logo, no tagline, no allcaps headings, no giant voting arrows...
      - bigcloud1299 3y ago
        Let’s admit modern Reddit is probably half porn and only fans site. I don’t have quantifiable data but the way I see people on Twitter complain about porn on Twitter. I can only assume.
gropo3 3y ago
[dead]
joshu 3y ago
I don’t really want to listen to the podcast, but I do seem to recall that Reddit drew heavy inspiration from the delicious popular page. digg was talked about a bunch but much smaller… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389494
- dang 3y ago
  Related old comment with links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245652
- hoofhearted 3y ago
  Interesting note to see that Paul Graham initially hated the name Reddit lol
  - sgt 3y ago
    What's your take now, pg? (summon(pg))
    - hoofhearted 3y ago
      I have this theory that every great company gets to change their name once lol.. I could go down a pretty big list of companies that changes names after launching: Ring / Doorbot Amazon / Cadabra Google / Backrub Facebook / The Facebook Coinbase / BitBank Stripe / /dev/payments Doordash / Palo Alto Delivery Uber / Uber Taxi
- jl 3y ago
  Joshua, Delicious/popular was mentioned a bunch of times in the podcast as a main inspiration. I'll send you a transcript someday if I can arrange it :)
- animal531 3y ago
  Right, and before Digg people used to hang out on MetaFilter, then Usenet etc. Each was in its own way only a small upgrade over the previous one.
gumby 3y ago
Can anyone post the TL;DL?
mandmandam 3y ago
Steve Huffman, aka 'spez'? Wasn't he the guy who got caught anonymously rewriting user comments? Secretly editing user comments, without a trace. As CEO. ... Seems weird that this hasn't been brought up yet - maybe it was covered in the podcast?
- bloopernova 3y ago
  Yep, that was him. He had an admin login to their prod database. Honestly wish that signing comments was supported in more forums/aggregators. I know I can do it manually but I want verification built into the site.
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    Huffman also seems to be the guy who edited a list of co-founders to remove Aaron Swarz. [0] He also said - after Swarz's death - that Swarz wasn't a co-founder. 'Unpersoned', I think is the correct term for such as this. So... I'm left wondering why anyone is listening to this guy. Especially on a subject where he has been caught lying and rewriting history multiple times. 0 - https://web.archive.org/web/20201005184849/https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddit_rewrites_history_by_excluding_aaron_swartz/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201005184849/https://www.reddi... - Archive link necessary as the original has a deleted user, a deleted post, and many deleted comments. In fact, the entire sub (watchRedditDie) was ended, partly because Huffman reneged on a promise to reinstate Swarz on the founders list [1]. 1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/vd2wj8/were_closing_our_sub_farewell/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/vd2wj8/were...
    - jjulius 3y ago
      >So... I'm left wondering why anyone is listening to this guy. Especially on a subject where he has been caught lying and rewriting history multiple times. Hot take: Because their push for more users was successful, resulting in a massively large user base, the majority of which I would argue is the "lowest common denominator" crowd (read: mindless consumption) and would more quickly go, "Reddit cool, spez cool" than actually pay attention to what's happening there internally.
langfan 3y ago
I once emailed Steve with some questions about software technology choices and architecture for a new project I was on, in the early days of Reddit, and he replied with some advice.
- capableweb 3y ago
  This is not a obituary (I think?)
  - todd3834 3y ago
    This made me laugh, however, it’s awesome hearing how he was in the same time period that the original post is about. Definitely relevant.
  - langfan 3y ago
    No, unfortunately :) [1] Just an actual anecdote. [1] ”The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain
    - capableweb 3y ago
      :) Reading my comment after a good nights sleep, it might seem slight snappish and/or brusque, that wasn't my intention and I'm sorry if that's the case. I'm glad you shared it, thank you!
      - langfan 3y ago
        Oh no, it didn't feel that way to me :) Anyway, glad you liked it, and thank you too, for clarifying your intent.
nextmove 3y ago
I didn't listen to the entire podcast, but I'm sure he didn't mention a single thing about Aaron Swartz one of the co-founders. Edit: at the 34:00 minute mark he mentions him.
- divbzero 3y ago
  Yes, he mentions and talks about Aaron through the 39:00 minute mark.
fairity 3y ago
I’ve often wondered how the Reddit cofounders feel about selling so early. At the time they cashed out, they made single digit millions. If they had held out, they would have made 100-1000x. Edit: After googling, the short answer is they regret it. Both founders do mental gymnastics to try to manage their regret, but it's apparent they regret it. Sources below. My personal takeaway is to try to hold on to some percentage even when selling out e.g. rolling over 30% of your shares into the new entity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6qlUG3EbtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6qlUG3EbtU https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/alexis-ohanian-reflects-on-selling-reddit-for-10-million.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/alexis-ohanian-reflects-on-s...

141 points by jl 3y ago

samstave 3y ago

[flagged]

vore 3y ago
YC is probably silent because most of the people at YC don't wear tinfoil hats. Except the Ellen Pao part, but that was because she was checks notes promoted to CEO.
- samstave 3y ago
  UHM, SHOULD i agree with you or not?
doodlebugging 3y ago
As a long time redditor I wonder too about some of this. I wrote it off a long time ago as probably part of their attempts to drive eyeballs to the site, any eyeballs so that they could demonstrate growth in a market dominated at the time by Digg and Fark. They always made a point of claiming that speech was free, no subjects were off limits, anything goes. That allowed posters like violentacrez to post his shit and get his 15 minutes of fame before they had to admit that some stuff was better left unsaid. Some of the most notorious stories date back to the days before there were subject and subreddit bans. Once they achieved their engagement goals they were more amenable to ban things that were widely considered unsavory. I don't understand why Aaron's part is sidelined now as it appears to be crumbsnatching by Steve and Alexis when they grab all the credit. He appeared at the time to be on equal footing with them in the process of managing the site. MaxwellHill managed to position themselves as a knowledgeable source of information. This was something that reddit needed and set her up to be a prominent mod. YC is silent about things because they had skin in the game and feared a rash.
- samstave 3y ago
  >>MaxwellHill managed to position themselves as a knowledgeable source of information. This was something that reddit needed and set her up to be a prominent mod" - This (no offense to you, personally) is such a disgusting thought if true. -- Aaron was not going after papers, he was going to expose some people.
  - doodlebugging 3y ago
    >This (no offense to you, personally) LOL. In your other reply I am a cunt, or an absolute cunt. I do have a preference as I noted in my reply. I agree that MaxwellHill acting as a mod for so long is really disgusting. The other guy that ended up getting his 15 minutes of fame before it all led to the banning of his favorite subs of which I think he was a mod is violentacrez. The guy was straight up pushing porn, racism, etc [0] as a mod. Reddit in those days was a genuine cesspool where users had to carefully read comments to know whether the post they were about to click linked to something enlightening or to some disgusting shit posted by an asshole as payback to someone else who shitposted another disgusting link with a catchy title. [0]https://www.gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web https://www.gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacre... >Aaron was not going after papers, he was going to expose some people. This would not be surprising to me. He was principled and others he encountered were not. Do you have any good stories to back up this part of your post?
- samstave 3y ago
  You are a cunt. Please never meet me in [erson\\\ if you dont beleive these One of the things that digital did... it reveled absolute cunts.... \ \they are everywhere
  - doodlebugging 3y ago
    Am I a "cunt" or an "absolute cunt"? Can you explain the difference and how you made your determination based on the content of my post? If an absolute cunt is somehow the best kind of cunt or something akin to the type of cunt against which all others can be compared for validating their individual levels of cuntness then I definitely want to be THE absolute cunt. Not just any absolute cunt. Indeed I suspect that you're correct when you "revel" that cunts are everywhere and I take some measure of comfort in knowing that there are those among us all, people like myself who find some small pleasure in their presence. Your reply seems a bit over the edge.

locustmostest 3y ago

I've enjoyed all of the episodes so far, but this one was definitely the stand-out.

compumike 3y ago

Listened to this episode on a road trip yesterday and really enjoyed it. If you do a "part 2", I'm curious to hear more details about how they pulled off the growth of Reddit, broadening from an initial niche community into a wider collection of communities. Thanks jl and clevy!

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
giantrobot 3y ago
They got multiple migration waves from digg, added subreddits, then network effects started. Early Reddit was pretty boring unless you were interested in programming or technology. The first big bump in users from digg was during the HD-DVD key fracas. The ham-handed response by digg to even talking about the key leak pissed off a lot of users. They were already simmering due to astroturfing/Payola by "power users" (we'd call them influencers today). Then a huge influx came after the digg v4 rollout that basically turned the site into a giant advertising channel, more so than it had been. I'm no Reddit insider but I got turned onto it in 2005 or so and watched the digg user influxes over the years.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  Digg changed the way comments were threaded meaning there could be no cogent discussion in threads. I am confident that was the mortal wound to Digg.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    I don't think you're wrong. Digg did not understand the core features that users valued. They assumed users would stick around through every monetization abuse they threw at them. Users put up with the "power user" bullshit (paid influencers and astroturfing) because the comments tied to those submissions could be worthwhile. I think digg's fundamental problem was they viewed their user base like a passive audience. It turned out their users were in fact their main attraction. When they ruined the experience for users they left and digg was left with zero value.

bigcloud1299 3y ago

Most of social platforms are nothing but feature AOL back in the day. They got a different look and feel. Some are cross over of ICQ and AOL (WhatsApp) AOL messenger Chat rooms (discord, telegram) Twitter is nothing but public chat room.

grogenaut 3y ago
Slack is just irc, Dropbox just nfs, Google just grep, Craigslist just newspaper classifieds, amazon just Walmart, Netflix just charter, hacker news just coffee shops and bars, and on and on, what's your point
- inkywatcher 3y ago
  When you put it like that, I really prefer some of the precursors.
  - OnlyMortal 3y ago
    Reddit is just Usenet.
    - morkalork 3y ago
      I like reddit because it's a bunch of millennials and has been from the start. My old manager, he talks all glowingly about the haydays of usenet. He's a gen-Xer. Given the equivalency of social networks features, the most important thing is just going to be the identity of the users consuming them.
      - grogenaut 3y ago
        I love to joke to my kids that twitch is just AM radio for their age group... they get mad on that one cause it's pretty on point.
      - OnlyMortal 3y ago
        As a Gen-X, almost Boomer, and the only social media I use is Reddit… I think, perhaps, you might be looking at the wrong “groups”. CasualUK is where I spend my time.

werid 3y ago

this is good timing, as we're witnessing in real time how reddit is ending right now :)

doodlebugging 3y ago
I'm winding down my participation. It's been a fun ride for the most part but it is really easy to get depressed reading a lot of stuff that gets posted. Discussions tend to deteriorate quickly and quality comments with sources get buried. That isn't how it all started. I'll shut down my last account soon after overwriting and deleting all the posts. It's fitting that Imgur is also gonna scratch all the content they have from people who never made Imgur accounts. I have a lot of tutorials, marked-up photos, etc that I used to help people thru issues on some of those niche forums involving home and auto repairs. It's good to know all that will be gone. I'll be down to one site for online engagement and news.
turzmo 3y ago
How is that?
- exsf0859 3y ago
  Reddit recently announced changes to their APIs pricing and features that will probably lead to the abandonment of most third-party Reddit clients. Users of those clients are upset. https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_few_calls_with_reddit_today_about_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_fe...
  - turzmo 3y ago
    Gotcha, thanks
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    but lets say they're upset enough to leave - where will they go en masse that replaces reddit?

earthscienceman 3y ago

They spammed posts and comments with fake accounts to fake growth until it caught on and then talked about it on HackerNews ...

doodlebugging 3y ago
Yes. This is what I remember from the earliest days. Back and forth between their own posts using multiple accounts to give the impression of active engagement and a growing community. Reposting things from Digg, Fark, etc and grabbing memes like Rickrolls, goatse, to draw eyeballs and clicks to their single page scrolling interface. Dodging bullshit posts was a game of waiting for comments to post so you could see which actually had real content and not some nasty meme from somewhere else. Deciding that they needed a coat of arms and figuring out what should go on it, the alien, narwhals, etc.
jedberg 3y ago
Lol HN didn't exist until reddit was popular. HN was in fact created because reddit go so popular it no longer appealed to PG, so he started HN so he could moderate the conversation himself and steer the community they way he wanted it to go. The other thing you said partly true -- in the beginning the founders had about 100 accounts that they posted with, but there were no comments back then. There was never fake commenting, and the posts weren't "fake" either. Alexis would scour the internet all day looking for interesting things and then posting them with random accounts, as would Steve. So if anything Alexis and Steve were just really prolific users. But the site was self sustaining by the time comments launched. ie. There would be fresh content even if Steve and Alexis didn't post anything that day.
- effingwewt 3y ago
  Thats some mighty handwavy mental gymnastics to not call them liars. Pretending to be different people to post qualifies as 'fake posts'. Fake it till you make it, or fraud? Either way it's still bullshit.
  - inkywatcher 3y ago

earthscienceman 3y ago

This is a nice time to remind everyone that Aaron Swartz died while fighting for a freer internet and a freer world. He is, by Paul Graham, considered a founder of reddit but is rarely mentioned in these stories. Instead of trying to go for broke and grind till he could cash out, Aaron put his skin in the game for what the internet should become. Which gets more relevant everyday that the internet megacorps consolidate power, control information, and shape the public discourse. Reddit is one such site. They should be embarrassed by how they dismissed the ethical dilemmas of operating reddit in favor of making a profit.

kodah 3y ago
It'd be nice if they'd stop trying erase Aaron's work on Reddit but that's been underway for some time, and I'm not even really sure why. I can't fathom an end-goal where marginalizing Aaron's contributions is a benefit to them.
- benatkin 3y ago
  Yeah it was long before the government went after Aaron. You could hear it straight from spez but the comment linked here is deleted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  To my recollection Aaron Swartz was anti-establishment; the reddit he was part of was grass-roots, laissez-faire, no holds barred, ... whilst reddit today is part of the media establishment, much more top-down, heavily modded and censored. Reddit in the post digg-exodus days seemed like a veneer of 'news' covering one of _the_ seedy underbellies of the web. Not only, but to a large extent a hive of scum and villainy; not a chan-site but similarly lacking in societal respectability. ?
  - benatkin 3y ago
    He was only there for a few months, so I don't think the reddit community changed much and drove him off that way. It was like it was when it started for several years. kn0thing and spez seem like they have a lot in common with Elon politically. Aaronsw not so much. Sorry I can't seem to explain how I perceive their political differences at the moment and instead am just giving an example.

EasyTiger_ 3y ago

Congratulations on the most toxic, astroturfed site on the internet I guess

culopatin 3y ago
It’s not 4chan
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  4chan is mostly anti-astroturfed - it's actual people but they'll just kneejerk-hate anything which is popular on reddit or with 'normies'.
- snvzz 3y ago
  4chan is actually among the less toxic discussion sites, and definitely better than Reddit. This is mostly owed to the quality of its moderation team. 4chan's infamy is largely undeserved.

samwillis 3y ago

The story of Reddit would make a good TV show, kind of "The Social Network" crossed with "The Crown". So many ups and downs, and many cross overs to other things happing in tech and the wider world. You could easily fill three or four seasons. "The front page of the Internet"

corbulo 3y ago
But who would have the guts to be honest about the bad parts?
bink 3y ago
You might be interested in reading the book about Reddit that came out a few years ago, "We Are the Nerds". It doesn't shed a great light on Aaron Schwartz.

celtoid 3y ago

[flagged]

optimalsolver 3y ago
Aaron didn't really have anything to do with Reddit. He was foisted on the founders by Paul Graham.
- celtoid 3y ago
  Aaron helped rewrite Reddit's codebase. He had a lot to do with Reddit until he didn't. "One of the points of the merger was that we would all call ourselves co-founders, so that's what I've been doing. I'd be happy to stop if that's what Steve and Alexis wanted, though." - Aaron Swartz
voytec 3y ago
I made this choice later, when Tencent started ruling Reddit. People immediately started throwing Tiananmen Square posts which quickly were getting to front and then being shadowbanned. As I was born in communist Poland, I have no love (to say politely) for communist governments. I made a good choice, as Reddit quickly made a turn from being a site hosting thematic forums into a social media website full of garbage. Before that, some smaller subreddits were valuable and not infested by marketers nor moderated by corporations. But it quickly changed and now, for me, Reddit is as unbearable as Facebook.
up_your_ass 3y ago
They've done a full 180° and are against free speech now. If you express certain forbidden opinions or bring up certain controversial topics, then your account gets permabanned. And that's side-wide. Individual subreddits, especially the more popular ones, are even more restrictive.

doodlebugging 3y ago

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-accounts--2 https://www.vice.com/en/article/z4444w/how-reddit-got-huge-t... This is an old article with a similarly themed discussion. I'll have to listen to the pod cast to see whether anything changed in the retelling.

vlovich123 3y ago

Step 1: convince your main competitor to piss of its entire user base. Step 2: ? <- could be interesting to see if they did something special here Step 3: get Obama and other major celebrities to establish you as a media company brand.

pbhjpbhj 3y ago
Step 2 probably has a bunch of stuff, but includes: They posted content using fake accounts to stimulate adoption. To my recollection they allowed a lot of skeevy (illegal and/or immoral) content to proliferate. I think they probably ran at a loss for a long time; leaning heavily on volunteer personnel. ?
- nanidin 3y ago
  Step 2 for a Reddit clone/competitor would be much easier and more convincing given the current state of LLM’s.
flomo 3y ago
One take I heard is Digg was actively combating vote manipulation, while on Reddit it was easy to get RonPaul/etc content onto the homepage. So the migration was memed to some extent.

qwertox 3y ago

I ask myself on a weekly basis when old.reddit.com will disappear. And there is nothing more cruel than the new Reddit, UI-wise. Even Twitter's "threading" of conversations appears to make more sense, even though I have still not figured out how it works.

twostorytower 3y ago
I know some people at Reddit and sadly it's definitely going to happen.
- snvzz 3y ago
  I have mentally prepared myself to say goodbye to Reddit once it happens. Complete with deleting my account for closure. This is what I recommend. It's pretty much facebook, pure dark UX at that point.
- bmarquez 3y ago
  I hope the Fediverse replacement for Reddit, Lemmy, will pick up in popularity before old.reddit dies. It makes a lot of sense since each "subreddit" could be its own server.
  - uthinter 3y ago
    Are servers hosted on fediverse open to being indexed by search engines otherwise I doubt it can replace reddit. Reddit did discussion threads , subs, and searchable results from search engines really well. It was a really great version of "forums" . I am not sure fediverse or Discord can do such things.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    I don't think Fediverse solves the problems that we see in Reddit (or Twitter, or any of the others). Instead of admin meddling from a single group of closely-affiliated admins (they all work for the same company), you just get meddling from many small groups of admins, none of those groups affiliated with each other except via ActivityPub. They can't shut down conversations they dislike entirely, but they can sever you from the Fediverse thoroughly enough that they might as well. And they can do it early enough that no one ever knew you were there in the first place. Even the Reddit admins didn't do that... I don't know if it was apathy and indifference, or just that they couldn't pay enough attention back in the early 2010s, but they didn't. And that likely allowed Reddit to grow so large, it could be the forum for everybody, about everything. Fediverse and Lemmy just ends up being those old phpbb forums, that won't talk to or link to each other unless everything is excessively sanitized and drips with insincere civility. Lemmy doesn't even have an Elon Musk to piss everyone off of Reddit and drive them to search for an alternative.

bryceneal 3y ago

Reddit is such a cesspool of low-quality commentary and rage-baiting. The front page/popular category is particularly egregious.

paulpauper 3y ago
You have to choose subs carefully. Most are bad but some are okay
bmarquez 3y ago
Front page is horrible, and I always skip it by bookmarking a subreddit that I'm already subscribed to. Front page feels like clickbait and "get angry for engagement metrics"
- voytec 3y ago
  No idea if it still works, but it was possible to select content from only certain subreddits https://reddit.com/r/subreddit1+subreddit2+subreddit3
lotsofpulp 3y ago
I assume at least some portion of the front page (or /r/popular) has been for sale for a long time. For example, sports leagues like NBA or marketers trying to make viral videos for brands or new movie/TV show releases.
mrexroad 3y ago
I’ve never visited the front page, but I’ve found a number of helpful folks on various construction trade or woodworking subs. I only have notifications enabled for /r/costco_alcohol quite useful to gauge the overall distribution patterns for specific whiskeys I like, so I know when it’s worth making a trip or not. Pretty much every sub I’ve recently spent time offering help in, or have found interesting enough to scroll around, has a pretty rigid policy of no politics and no religion. With all that said, I made the mistake of visiting /r/BayArea and found your assessment spot on.

photochemsyn 3y ago

I tried Reddit for a while but overall the site is not that different from any incarnation of Twitter. The main difference is individuals vs. subreddits, and if you're careful selecting interesting individuals on Twitter / interesting subreddits on Reddit, you can often find a fair amount of useful content, but the effort is barely worth the bother, it feels like looking for needles in a haystack. If you're just passively absorbing content on either platform both are equally poor quality, not all that different from watching MSNBC, CNN or FOX - i.e. heavily gamed by advertisers and propagandists. What Twitter and Reddit also have in common is a low-quality in-house search engine and a restricted API for search, which I assume is an attempt to control exposure of content by administrators, subreddit moderators, etc. Twitter: "Please note that Twitter's search service and, by extension, the Search API is not meant to be an exhaustive source of Tweets. Not all Tweets will be indexed or made available via the search interface." Reddit: "You can search subreddits and posts, but comments aren’t available to search via the public API." They appear to want to feed users content algorithmically based on some profile/agenda, and not just let users go wandering around finding content based on their own criteria.

jasondigitized 3y ago
Well run subreddits are vastly superior to Twitter. By way of example, if you are into homegyms or woodworking or Austin, there are three subreddits dedicated to those topics. I may be missing something about Twitter that allows me to focus on an esoteric topic that isn’t dependent on a inconsistent hashtag denotion. Twitter topics are simply too restricted and opinionated for my liking.
up_your_ass 3y ago
You can try the third-party archive Pushshift for search. Here's an interface to their API: https://camas.unddit.com https://camas.unddit.com Replacing "reddit.com" in URLs with "unddit.com" or "reveddit.com" is also handy, it lets you see deleted or removed comments.
stametseater 3y ago
One of the reasons I keep coming back to HN is because the comment search actually works, so it's easy to figure out what sort of things, if anything, has been said here about some topic. It's easy to search a project's name and find that one post from a guy 10 years ago who mentioned it, and also mentioned a better alternative. With reddit it's not worth trying, even with Google and "site:reddit.com" searches. Reddit's SNR is awful, so you have to wade through dozens if not hundreds of posts of people mentioning the thing but saying nothing worthwhile. Pages of people asking questions relevant to your query, but not receiving any useful response. HN has some people asking questions, but most posts are about people volunteering information. On reddit, it seems like most posts are people asking questions into the void and rarely receiving an answer, and those kind of search results just aren't useful.

stametseater 3y ago

I don't see a transcript and I'm not going to listen to a podcast so I'll just ask here: does he discuss how they seeded their site with fraudulent accounts/posts?

Etrnl_President 3y ago
[flagged]

hayst4ck 3y ago

When looking up Digg on wikipedia I found this gem: Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open letter to Rose: this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to "give the power back to the people." Apparently nobody can resist the allure of VC meddling.

tough 3y ago
Funny both Alexis is a VC now, and he actually invested in kevin's NFT 10k PFP (Moonbrids) The Reddit Mafia
- notatoad 3y ago
  reddit basically became everything the founders mocked when they first started it. https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2.html https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2.html
  - tough 3y ago
    That's why you never sell yourself as the hero, Or you'll just wait long enough to become the villain
  - jefftk 3y ago
    But modern reddit isn't really very similar to what they're mocking? Here's the joke mockup: https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2mockup.jpg https://sp.reddit.com/reddit2mockup.jpg Open reddit now and there's no silly unusable tag clouds, no top-of-page ads, no 3rd-party ad serving, no gradients, no overdone logo, no tagline, no allcaps headings, no giant voting arrows...
    - bigcloud1299 3y ago
      Let’s admit modern Reddit is probably half porn and only fans site. I don’t have quantifiable data but the way I see people on Twitter complain about porn on Twitter. I can only assume.

gropo3 3y ago

[dead]

joshu 3y ago

I don’t really want to listen to the podcast, but I do seem to recall that Reddit drew heavy inspiration from the delicious popular page. digg was talked about a bunch but much smaller… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389494

dang 3y ago
Related old comment with links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245652
hoofhearted 3y ago
Interesting note to see that Paul Graham initially hated the name Reddit lol
- sgt 3y ago
  What's your take now, pg? (summon(pg))
  - hoofhearted 3y ago
    I have this theory that every great company gets to change their name once lol.. I could go down a pretty big list of companies that changes names after launching: Ring / Doorbot Amazon / Cadabra Google / Backrub Facebook / The Facebook Coinbase / BitBank Stripe / /dev/payments Doordash / Palo Alto Delivery Uber / Uber Taxi
jl 3y ago
Joshua, Delicious/popular was mentioned a bunch of times in the podcast as a main inspiration. I'll send you a transcript someday if I can arrange it :)
animal531 3y ago
Right, and before Digg people used to hang out on MetaFilter, then Usenet etc. Each was in its own way only a small upgrade over the previous one.

gumby 3y ago

Can anyone post the TL;DL?

mandmandam 3y ago

Steve Huffman, aka 'spez'? Wasn't he the guy who got caught anonymously rewriting user comments? Secretly editing user comments, without a trace. As CEO. ... Seems weird that this hasn't been brought up yet - maybe it was covered in the podcast?

bloopernova 3y ago
Yep, that was him. He had an admin login to their prod database. Honestly wish that signing comments was supported in more forums/aggregators. I know I can do it manually but I want verification built into the site.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  Huffman also seems to be the guy who edited a list of co-founders to remove Aaron Swarz. [0] He also said - after Swarz's death - that Swarz wasn't a co-founder. 'Unpersoned', I think is the correct term for such as this. So... I'm left wondering why anyone is listening to this guy. Especially on a subject where he has been caught lying and rewriting history multiple times. 0 - https://web.archive.org/web/20201005184849/https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddit_rewrites_history_by_excluding_aaron_swartz/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201005184849/https://www.reddi... - Archive link necessary as the original has a deleted user, a deleted post, and many deleted comments. In fact, the entire sub (watchRedditDie) was ended, partly because Huffman reneged on a promise to reinstate Swarz on the founders list [1]. 1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/vd2wj8/were_closing_our_sub_farewell/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/vd2wj8/were...
  - jjulius 3y ago
    >So... I'm left wondering why anyone is listening to this guy. Especially on a subject where he has been caught lying and rewriting history multiple times. Hot take: Because their push for more users was successful, resulting in a massively large user base, the majority of which I would argue is the "lowest common denominator" crowd (read: mindless consumption) and would more quickly go, "Reddit cool, spez cool" than actually pay attention to what's happening there internally.

langfan 3y ago

I once emailed Steve with some questions about software technology choices and architecture for a new project I was on, in the early days of Reddit, and he replied with some advice.

capableweb 3y ago
This is not a obituary (I think?)
- todd3834 3y ago
  This made me laugh, however, it’s awesome hearing how he was in the same time period that the original post is about. Definitely relevant.
- langfan 3y ago
  No, unfortunately :) [1] Just an actual anecdote. [1] ”The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain
  - capableweb 3y ago
    :) Reading my comment after a good nights sleep, it might seem slight snappish and/or brusque, that wasn't my intention and I'm sorry if that's the case. I'm glad you shared it, thank you!
    - langfan 3y ago
      Oh no, it didn't feel that way to me :) Anyway, glad you liked it, and thank you too, for clarifying your intent.

nextmove 3y ago

I didn't listen to the entire podcast, but I'm sure he didn't mention a single thing about Aaron Swartz one of the co-founders. Edit: at the 34:00 minute mark he mentions him.

divbzero 3y ago
Yes, he mentions and talks about Aaron through the 39:00 minute mark.

fairity 3y ago

I’ve often wondered how the Reddit cofounders feel about selling so early. At the time they cashed out, they made single digit millions. If they had held out, they would have made 100-1000x. Edit: After googling, the short answer is they regret it. Both founders do mental gymnastics to try to manage their regret, but it's apparent they regret it. Sources below. My personal takeaway is to try to hold on to some percentage even when selling out e.g. rolling over 30% of your shares into the new entity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6qlUG3EbtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6qlUG3EbtU https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/alexis-ohanian-reflects-on-selling-reddit-for-10-million.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/alexis-ohanian-reflects-on-s...