20 ms·
The Reddit sleuths who brought down a meme empire
- zachlatta 13y agoNo idea if anyone's interested, but I'm currently working on an open source Quickmeme alternative. I plan to deploy the MVP later this week. The Github repository is over at https://github.com/zachlatta/easymeme https://github.com/zachlatta/easymeme
- billybob255 13y agoIt's a cool project, but HN doesn't seem like the sort of site that would be interested. Not that I'm criticizing you or your post.
- zachlatta 13y agoYeah, absolutely. Honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of memes myself. The opportunity arose, so I asked myself why not.
- idupree 13y agoDon't forget to add a license file if you mean it to be open source (e.g. MIT/BSD, GPL).
- zachlatta 13y agoThanks! I forgot to do that! I looked into it and ended up going with the MIT license.
- thereallurch 13y agoestimated $1.6 mil a month for > 12 months? For a meme generator? I'd say they had a good run.
- Puer 13y agoAre there any possible legal repercussions? I mean, yeah, if they made upwards of 12 million dollars from their site then banning it from reddit isn't exactly going to hurt them...
- numbsafari 13y agoI guess Reddit could complain to the DA and press charges under CFAA, but the irony would probably cause the internet to implode.
- enraged_camel 13y agoReddit users were a humongous part of their visitor-base, though. I don't know of many people outside of Reddit who have heard about them.
- Uperte 13y agoThose numbers are from Worth of Web which is not reliable source. Were they making bank? Sure, but nowhere near $1m per month. CPM on websites like these is low.
- bostonpete 13y agoWhat happened to the higher ranking mod who tried to intimidate ManWithoutModem to not look into the issue any further...?
- makomk 13y agoHe's still a moderator there and still hasn't reinstated ManWithoutModem as one. Apparently a large chunk of the Advice Animals moderation team also quit over it.
- Hovertruck 13y agoIt really bothers me that the word "meme" has become a synonym for these Advice Animal style images.
- heartbreak 13y agoYou mean "image macros"
- kmfrk 13y agoYou mean "demotivational posters". Words change. "LOL" means something different than it used to. Such is the fluidity of language and the web.
- mehrzad 13y agoBut they're not demotivationals.
- MostAwesomeDude 13y agoImage macros come from Japanese message boards; they are not really related to the faux motivational posters that are commonly known as "demotivationals".
- astrange 13y agoImage macros came from SomethingAwful, although even then it was only a brief period where they were actual "macros". Japanese sites don't even let you embed images. Everyone uses ASCII art (actually SJIS of course).
- pyre 13y agoThey were originally "image macros," but some image macros became memes unto themselves. Eventually people started referring to image macros as memes. Advice Animals started somewhere in the middle of all of this. Originally image macros didn't share a common picture, but a common phrase with a funny picture that was related or a specific image/phrase combination (e.g. "do not want", "no u", "get in the soup"[1]). [1] http://endlesspicdump.com/original/shut%20the%20hell%20up%20and%20get%20in%20the%20soup.gif http://endlesspicdump.com/original/shut%20the%20hell%20up%20...
- SeanDav 13y agoI would be quite fascinated to learn if the AdviceAnimals moderator that quashed the first investigation into gtw08 was receiving kickbacks from Quickmeme. The article does not go into that at all and it seems like an obvious point to address.
- minimaxir 13y agoUnfortunately, there's no evidence. (most of the article's information were from MwM and jokes_on_you themselves) As mentioned with the article, Redditors shy away from conspiracy theories, because most of them sound too stupid to be true. Which, of course, makes actual conspiracies very effective.
- acgourley 13y agoThe point that I make to people of your generation is that you can't lie to reddit. It's remarkable how many people try, but they don't understand that reddit's ability to detect bullshit is insanely high. Gabe Newell Reflections of a Video Game Maker [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU
- MWil 13y agoI would love to see livememe bring a lawsuit, not because I'm trigger happy but because it sounds like they lost a ton of money which only had one direct cause.
- danielweber 13y agoI don't think you have a right to not have your stuff downvoted on a website.
- MWil 13y agoI think you do have a right not to have your competitors engage in anticompetitive behavior
- hayksaakian 13y agoIts really quite ironic that this article was submitted by an account that is 33 days old and submits daily dot articles exclusively without ever commenting. I pointed this out once before, the last time they wrote an article and submitted it, and that was about the same thing too.
- jmduke 13y agoThe submitter is the Asst. Managing Editor of the Daily Dot. That being said, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with accounts that exist specifically to submit a given site's content (even programmatically), since that content must be still democratically approved by the user base. I think vote-brigading is a much more serious issue, and one that HN seems to deal with well.
- brokentone 13y agoAgreed, it sounded like the Atlantic guy banned eons ago was actually a good community member. At some point the Reddit restriction of "submit any content but your own" feels very artificial.
- nonotthatone 13y ago> submit any content but your own Plenty of people submit their own content. In fact, it's encouraged. You have reddit confused with digg, somehow.
- Uperte 13y ago"Feel free to post links to your own content (within reason). But if that's all you ever post, and it always seems to get voted down, take a good hard look in the mirror — you just might be a spammer. A widely used rule of thumb is the 9:1 ratio, i.e. only 1 out of every 10 of your submissions should be your own content." From reddiquette.
- minimaxir 13y agoIt's definitely not encouraged on Reddit, one of the old notes of Redditquite is "if more than 10% of what you submit is your personal content, then you're probably a spammer." Once, someone submitted one of my blog posts about a rather interesting bug in a AAA game to /r/programming. Over 1,000 net score. Out of curiosity, I submitted the same post myself to /r/games. -7 score.
- zalew 13y ago> The Miltz brothers learned the hard way that cheating Reddit doesn’t pay. 1.6 million dollars per month doesn't pay?
- xanderstrike 13y agoWell that 80% drop in traffic is going to ensure that it doesn't pay any more. They've probably spent millions on infrastructure that will no longer be generating revenue, I imagine they'll see losses while they adjust.
- baggachipz 13y agoStill ~$320,000 per month... nothing to sneeze at there either. I somehow doubt their infrastructure costs anywhere near that.
- MichaelGG 13y agoThis kinda thing seems perfect for elastic computing. They could scaleup the front-end on demand, and use S3 or whatever for actual storage, then aggressively delete older or less popular content. If their traffic drops, just scale down. "Cloud" in this manner seems like a great hedge for sites that rely on somewhat fickle popularity.
- corresation 13y agoDid they grow on the back of cheating Reddit, however? If this was a more recent desperation tactic, then it did explode in their face rather spectacularly, seeing a much more dramatic decline than they would have likely seen with simple competition.
- chiph 13y agoBetween all the image macro sites, who holds copyright on the base images? I imagine the owners of Grumpy Cat (the cat) are motivated to continue to allow photos of their pet to be used as Grumpy Cat (the meme), because they get exposure. But what about Overly Attached Girlfriend (apologies, don't remember her name IRL) -- the photos are of her, not a pet. I would think she has a stronger case in demanding ownership.
- icebraining 13y agoCopyright is hold by the person who took the photo, so they both have a case. That said, what can she do? As long as Reddit responds to DMCA takedown requests, they should be under safe harbor, so unless she planned on suing each submitter - and for nothing, since damages would be very hard to show -, there's really not much she can do.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoI've had varied experiences with sites and banning. A couple of years ago, I made a funny picture site where I would collect some of these visual jokes. (plug: http://caption-of-the-day.com http://caption-of-the-day.com) I never submitted here, of course, but I also got zero traction on reddit. It always seemed weird to me that reddit was such a wasteland for that material, especially when there was so much of it on there. Then this year, before the NSA story broke, I figured privacy and anonymity would be a big issue, one I was passionate about. So I created http://freedom-or-safety.com http://freedom-or-safety.com It's a mix of rewriting long stories into 3-5 paragraph summaries (with appropriate links back), and original commentary. Since the majority of stuff on that site was technology/privacy related, and since many of my friends are here and like that kind of stuff, I submitted a lot of it on HN. Then I got banned on HN. Beats me how. Still waiting to figure that one out. I asked to be reinstated and I was, but without knowing what I've done it makes it really difficult to avoid doing it again. I've stopped creating content over there while I figure out if it's worth getting another ban here because of who-knows-what. Sucks to have your work silenced due to forces outside your control and understanding. I really feel for all those other meme sites struggling away on reddit all that while. How many hundreds or thousands of hours of productivity were destroyed trying to honestly work with a system that was rigged all along? We like to think of these aggregation sites as pristine, driven by the user voice, and automatically selecting and promoting good content. But after many years on several such sites, and after submitting my own stuff on several of them, I don't have such a charitable opinion. I like HN, and I really like the folks here, but in their effort to keep the site cleaned up, they've created an opaque and non-intuitive system. In many ways, this has the same effect on trust as having a crooked moderator. Things just don't make sense and don't feel right, but hell if you can put your finger on exactly what's going on.
- snowwrestler 13y ago> It's a mix of rewriting long stories into 3-5 paragraph summaries (with appropriate links back), and original commentary. I never read your site so please take this with a grain of salt. But I assume the long stories were not your writing, right? You were taking other people's writing and condensing it down. That's not really that valuable or useful, and might have violated this part of the HN guidelines: > Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.
- rufugee 13y agoQuickmeme was now netting the brothers around $1.6 million a month So...say I have an idea which would allow me to drive a lot of traffic to my site from Reddit. How does one begin to monetize this traffic? Where do you start? Where do you go to find advertisers? I've always had a vague understanding how it worked, but if I really had an idea with lots of traffic generation today, I lack the real world understanding re: how to turn that traffic into dollars now. Also, /r/AdviceAnimals all seem to link directly to images...so where would the page views for quickmeme come from? Were they generating $1.6M simply by showing ads to the meme creators?
- minimaxir 13y agoQuickmeme used the infamous transparent JPG trick to prevent direct linking of images, forcing links on /r/AdviceAnimals to link to the page with ads.
- rufugee 13y agoCan you explain how this works or provide a link to an explanation? Thanks.
- minimaxir 13y agoA little discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5928510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5928510
- jessaustin 13y agoSo this means that there are a significant number of people "skilled" enough to right-click, but not skilled enough to view source. The mind boggles...
- FireBeyond 13y agoThe latest variations of this put the transparent JPG in the source code, then load in the image via JS with a lower Z layer. Now you move from "View Source", to "Developer Extension, watch assets, copy initial URL, paste, save".
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jlgreco 13y agoUnsubscribe from the subreddits that are for the sort of content that you are not interested in.
- ebbv 13y agoLink aggregating sites and social media are rampant with abuse and shilling. It's the name of the game. From celebrities trying to pass off obviously paid tweets as legitimate to every traffic driven/ad driven site engaging in shilling and upvote scamming. It's pretty obivous to spot if you're a normal user of these types of sites. But administrators usually have no incentive whatsoever to stop it unless the users actually get out the torches and pitchforks, and the administrators themselves are in danger of being called out as supporting this behavior. But in reality it's trivially easy for them to watch for it and stop it if they're interested in it. I was in charge of a small, niche hobby forum that garnered about 20k visitors per day. Peanuts compared to anything larger, but even we had shills. I would spot it and stop it because I cared about the quality of the discussion far more than the number of posts or visitors. Digg lost the number one spot because in its revision previously rather than stomping out shilling and vote scamming, Digg attempted to legitimize it and mainstream the sites that previously had engaged in nefarious acts to try to garner traffic. Users are not innocent in this whole situation either; if they paid attention and reacted appropriately to shills and obvious voting abuse, the administrators would be forced to act responsibly. But users are apathetic most of the time, and often complicit in it.
- thedaveoflife 13y agoIn the same vein, aren't most newspaper articles simply PR in some form or another? The key is to be a savvy enough user to spot it.
- hobs 13y agoYep. Al Franken had a great piece he wrote about this when he was defending the claims of the liberal media and the like being biased against Bush. He went on to explain that most of the media is just an echo chamber, and repackaging a press release is much easier than actually doing work. A !ton! of "news" is just reposting reposts.
- nwzpaperman 13y agoPeople have the opportunity to write news, but the will to write news isn't there, yet. With ~9 months of open-beta under our belts and no interference or incentivizing content of any stripe, people just don't cover what's in front of them. Fundamentally, I believe this is because people have a herding instinct and seek to be a member of a larger group. It's also possible that community-level(local) issues are "too close to home" for non-professionals to risk community reputation on. Many people validate their positions--and themselves--by the quantity of people that agree with them which leads to holding popular positions. At certain points in time altruism and necessity meet to overcome these social forces, but it's usually only when crisis forces everyone to the table.
- anigbrowl 13y agoThis post is full of teh drama, and pretty sophomoric, with the self-righteous conclusion... The Miltz brothers learned the hard way that cheating Reddit doesn’t pay. More like 'eventually stops paying.' If they were making $1.2m/month at the peak it seems reasonable to guess that they pulled in somewhere between $5 and $10 million over the two years of unhindered operation and resultant growth. Maybe more, but even if they only made $1 million that's a pretty nice payout for two people. It's odd how the article totally ignores this in favor of the opportunity cost. To me it seems like gtwo8 and his brother made a small fortune without any incurring any legal problems, and learned enough to repeat the formula in some other context later.
- vermontdevil 13y agoBut I wonder what are the costs to host all these images and traffic.
- umsm 13y agoDefinitely no where near the reported millions of income. Data hosting is probably the lowest expense a website has.
- benologist 13y agoIronically the submitter is a dailydot spammer, the second submission they've successfully spammed about this site spamming reddit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5927904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5927904
- pawrvx 13y agoReddit needs to get rid of all moderators from the default sub-reddits if it want's to survive over the long term.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago"The Miltz brothers learned the hard way that cheating Reddit doesn’t pay." Looks like it paid handsomely for a year or more.
- redblacktree 13y agoExactly my thought when I read that. I figured if I was them, I'd be saying, "Well, at least I've already got the yachts and vacation homes."
- NanoWar 13y ago"The Miltz brothers learned the hard way that cheating Reddit doesn’t pay." Well, actually...
- _pmf_ 13y ago> The Reddit sleuths who brought down a meme empire ... asylum ... inmates.