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988 points by gatsby 12y ago

mathattack 12y ago
When I saw this, I was hoping for a "Sam Altman AMA". :-)
- thedaveoflife 12y ago
  you have your wish: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman_lead_investor_in_reddits_new/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman...
  - mathattack 12y ago
    ok. Next I'll wish for a raise and a George Lucas AMA. :-)
wasd 12y ago
Sorry if this is obvious but how does this work if Conde Nast/Advanced Publications is the primary shareholder?
- orky56 12y ago
  They were acquired by Conde Nast but have since parted ways to go private: http://betabeat.com/2011/09/a-startup-is-reborn-reddit-no-longer-part-of-conde-nast-seeks-ceo/ http://betabeat.com/2011/09/a-startup-is-reborn-reddit-no-lo...
  - amha 12y ago
    That article says that they're still owned by Advance Publications, though (the Conde Nast parent). I'm confused as well. Is Advance Publications retaining a stake? Are they spinning it off? ???
dkokelley 12y ago
Does anyone know of any precedent for granting equity to a community site's users? I'm curious to see what sort of dynamic this creates in the site.
- mbillie1 12y ago
  > I'm curious to see what sort of dynamic this creates in the site. As a daily reddit user for 4+ years, I'd wager that it'll just be an exaggerated amount of the same. With any internet community it seems, given enough time, you get saturated by users 'gaming' it for points/karma/post count/etc. So now the same small number of nothing-else-to-do reddit users trawling the archives for repostable karma material have one more incentive to keep up the high-karma-low-content submissions: money. Sorry for the cynicism.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  Co-operatives have existed for a long time.
- clamprecht 12y ago
  RedditCoin? (Think bitcoin)
- deleted 12y ago
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- deleted 12y ago
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- davidw 12y ago
  When companies like Redhat and VA Linux IPO'ed, they handed out some options to open source people.
gatsby 12y ago
"It’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. We have some creative thoughts about the mechanics of this, but it’ll take us awhile to sort through all the issues. If it works as we hope, it’s going to be really cool and hopefully a new way to think about community ownership." This is awesome. Curious to see how this plays out. What's the approximate timing for announcing if reddit is able to do this or not?
- not_that_noob 12y ago
  I hope this works out - nice move Sam. This and ceding voting control. Setting the benchmark by which others will be measured.
- deleted 12y ago
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- johnyzee 12y ago
  Very cool. It's like turning reddit into a bit of a communal property.
- buckbova 12y ago
  Probably all shares go to r/gonewild.
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  Looks like it is going to be a cryptocurrency: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390136
- elwell 12y ago
  With a monetary incentive, how will this affect behavior?
- ufmace 12y ago
  I don't understand this. How does "the reddit community" own shares in a company? What does that even mean? Are board votes going to be held on reddit posts or something?
kyrra 12y ago
The one downside (as I see it) of Reddit that Facebook, G+, and HN all don't have is the ability to downvote. Downvoting makes it so larger subreddits will only have material on their front page that the majority of that group agrees with. This leads to certain subreddits (like /r/politics/) being heavily dominated by one side of the subject area. But I still use reddit daily myself. Getting off some of the default subreddits and subscribing to ones focused on a specific topic (a video game, programming language, city, etc...) has replaced specialized/focused forums for me. It's definitely a great communication platform.
- windsurfer 12y ago
  HN has downvoting. I was able to downvote you, and your comment went lower on the page and turned grey. HN also has excellent moderation.
  - nilkn 12y ago
    I believe he's referring to stories, not comments, as he explicitly refers to material on the front page. I don't know if there's a karma threshold after which one can downvote stories. If there is, I haven't hit it, at 2129 karma as of this writing.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      You can Flag stories at a certain point, which has a downvote-like effect if enough flags are accumulated.
- deleted 12y ago
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- giarc 12y ago
  With HN, once a user reaches a certain level of "upvotes" they unlock the ability to downvote.
  - kyrra 12y ago
minimaxir 12y ago
I like Reddit. I recently obtained a data dump of every single submission and comment so I could perform interesting data analysis and may just determine what make a post on Reddit viral. The problem I have with Reddit is that I'm still unsure if it's a positive externality. There's a lot of good aspects of Reddit (discovery, community), but there's so much bad about Reddit that it's impossible to overlook it (abusive subreddits, abusive users, no administrator transparency, etc.) There's free speech, and then there's the ethics of promoting and profiting off of abusive/illegal content. My dream startup would be a Reddit-esque link aggregator, which favors the actual quality of submissions, instead of submissions which are lowest-common-denominator which are optimized for the hive mind.
- kylekampy 12y ago
  I couldn't agree with you more. The bad parts of reddit are what push me away. Of course there are some smaller subreddits that actually value quality content, but if they somehow grow to 'default' subreddit status then things seem to go downhill quickly. Hopefully you publish some of your findings down the road. I'm interested to hear more.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I agree with you, but... > no administrator transparency, admin transparency can lead to vociferous site-wide meta nonsense and it can also get toxic very quickly.
  - minimaxir 12y ago
    However, the lack of transparency can lead to baseless speculation, which can be just as toxic, if not worse. Case in point, during The Fappening, a large number were filled with conspiracy theories on why the administrators hadn't banned it yet before Wong's blog post, which was only made a week after the first incident.
    - jn1234 12y ago
      The problem with reddit right now is that community managers are rather ineffective at actually handling the community which leads to the other employees of reddit (engineers) to finally step in. The only time when reddit does usually act is when there are some serious legal implications. This is what often leads to the reddit administrator's actions to be labeled as arbitrary. Although, as of recently the reddit administrators started banning some of the more racist subreddits even though they didn't have any official change in policy.
SuperKlaus 12y ago
"...are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community..." How's that supposed to work? Reddit (the company) will own the shares? Some foundation? A bit more detail would be nice.
- Balgair 12y ago
  Lets hope for a subreddit controlling it. No really, have the users control it. Really. Yes, yes, trolls, hacked accounts, wall street manipulators, sock puppets, 4chan, 14 year olds, etc. But, I mean, wow, just imagine the flame wars! It would be a beautiful fire of crazy. Have the insane fedora neckbeards actually try to get things together in a really real setting? The raw data files alone would be worth it. You'd glean so much, and in a Public setting. Yeah, Google does it already, but to let all of us join in on the analysis of the decision making process? I dare say it: You'd be able to determine how an internet-type true democracy would work. Hash out representatives, the whole deal. Give it to the users, reveal just how dumb we all are in a herd.
- mksm 12y ago
  They will most probably use blockchain technology for the community ownership distribution: https://jobs.lever.co/reddit/6ce6a242-00d1-49c4-9bed-c34f26445ee7 https://jobs.lever.co/reddit/6ce6a242-00d1-49c4-9bed-c34f264...
  - bencxr 12y ago
    this is really the interesting point of the article for me. it could be the first cryptocoin actively used based for rewards/sponsorships etc. See http://ltbcoin.com/ http://ltbcoin.com/ as an example.
- chiph 12y ago
  I'm wondering about the load of shareholder service work that has to be done when corporate stuff gets put up to a vote. They have to notify people, and that might be hard if someone uses a throwaway account and somehow ends up acquiring a share because of it. While I have a real name account there, TBH 95% of the time I'm using an alias.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I agree that reddit drips in awesomeness. I talked with the co-founder Alexis Ohanian when he talked at Google last year: really interesting guy, not only with solid advice on entrepreneurship, but also he talked a lot about public service.
kyro 12y ago
Exciting news. One thing I sincerely hope reddit will do with the new injection is to increase the level of quality of content and discussion across the board. Often the advice given is "you've got to find the smaller subreddits" and while that's true, I think having the first few layers filled with terrible content and hive-minded, often racist/sexist discussion is incredibly detrimental to both the site's image and new user experiences. I know there's great content there, and great people having great discussions, but it's not terribly easy to find. I'm thoroughly convinced that reddit could be an incredibly valuable source of reliable news, discussion, and entertainment, but the way it's structured highlights its more juvenile aspects. And if it can find a way to establish legitimacy, it'll be worth far more than it is today.
- drmarianus 12y ago
  The recent update of the default subreddits was nice, until it just decreased the level of discourse in those previously excellent subreddits.
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    Not to mention the entirely expected but entirely horrible response to /r/twoxchromosomes initially though they seem to have got that under control (again with excellent moderation).
- jn1234 12y ago
  Heavily moderated subreddits are another way to get great quality content. The only problem with this is that it relies on volunteer moderators who devote large amounts of their free time to making the site a better place.
  - LeoPanthera 12y ago
    Heavily moderated subreddits are Reddit's biggest problem. Time and again, the volunteer moderators prove that they cannot be impartial, and bias creeps in, inevitably culminating in a bizarre power struggle with the normal users. I've seen it so many times. This isn't helped by the fact that the majority of popular subreddits are moderated by the same people, resulting in a kind of weird cabal situation. I'm not sure what the solution is. Personally I think no moderation, simply relying on up/down votes would be better, but without going to that extreme, perhaps only allowing one person to moderate one subreddit (or a small number) would help.
lazyant 12y ago
I suggest giving some shares to the people that have been with Reddit 8+ years and with over 8k combined link+comment karma :)
cryoshon 12y ago
Mod/admin censorship, government manipulation (out of Eglin AFB most likely), and corporate advertising/shilling are pretty blatantly huge in reddit right now, with many users openly looking for alternative websites. The admin team has shown again and again that they're willing to tolerate anything until there's bad PR. One of the founders (Alexis) has a PR firm, Antique Jetpack, which is on record [1] as cooperating with Stratfor of wikileaks fame. I can't quite see how the two are unconnected. A couple of years ago, one of the admins there tacitly admitted that he was under a National Security letter complete with gag order to give up user information. A few months ago, reddit changed its voting system in order to completely obfuscate user detection of large scale vote manipulation. The community was unanimously against this change, and has been overruled. I don't see a great future for reddit, honestly. I'll continue to use it until whoaverse or another alternative is populated enough. [1]: https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=277352 https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=277352
- throwawayornot 12y ago
  HN Gold to you, good sir!
- icpmacdo 12y ago
  The thing is there need to be something like Reddit that is not controlled at all by a company or corporation but completely by the users.
  - T-hawk 12y ago
    Usenet is the closest thing we've got to that. Although it lacks any voting or ranking system to filter content. Whether that's a bug or feature is debatable.
    - ape4 12y ago
      Time for a hierarchy on reddit. I suggest: comp.* – computer-related discussions (comp.software, comp.sys.amiga) humanities.* – fine arts, literature, and philosophy (humanities.classics, humanities.design.misc) misc.* – miscellaneous topics (misc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids) news.* – discussions and announcements about news (meaning Usenet, not current events) (news.groups, news.admin) rec.* – recreation and entertainment (rec.music, rec.arts.movies) sci.* – science related discussions (sci.psychology, sci.research) soc.* – social discussions (soc.college.org, soc.culture.african) talk.* – talk about various controversial topics (talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.origins)
dogecoinbase 12y ago
Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I’m excited to watch it play out. Wow, seriously? He's talking about the guy who spewed this nonsense[0]: We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathize. Having said that, we are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies in response to this specific event. The reason is because we consider ourselves not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community. If Sam wants to hitch his wagon to this wash-your-hands-of-responsibility-while-reaping-the-profits attitude, that's his business, but's it's fucking reprehensible. 0: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-for-his-own.html http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-f...
- odonnellryan 12y ago
  I'm confused, sorry. Are you for or against the banning?
  - dogecoinbase 12y ago
    I am against a site policy that says "we are aware that something horrible happened, but we aren't willing to make any changes to prevent it from potentially happening again". I'd love to get some feedback from the downvoters, because it's hard for me to reconcile Yishan Wong's statement with Sam's assertion that he's "excited to watch it play out".
    - vasilipupkin 12y ago
      I think he is being very clear. For now, at least, he doesn't want to be the moral police - he expects each user to exercise their own moral judgement. I personally prefer reddit to leave moral choices to their users
      - dogecoinbase 12y ago
        he expects each user to exercise their own moral judgement It's clear that this is not happening in any meaningful way, so his lack of action is simply an admission that he can't or won't do anything to prevent abhorrent behavior on the site he's responsible for. If it's a government, it's a powerless one, enforcing no laws but collecting taxes regardless. There's nothing to admire there.
rthomas6 12y ago
So we finally get to redeem our karma.
yuhong 12y ago
I wish that Reddit would actually copy HN's about box and remove the 10:1 rule for submissions. This include killing Anonymity Rules from /r/talesfrom*.
- teach 12y ago
  I would like to see a Reddit about box, at least.
Major_Grooves 12y ago
I keep asking this, but it never gets much attention - but why can't reddit put more effort in to a hierarchical structure. As others have said some of the best contents is in the smaller sub-reddits, but they often struggle to get much content because people feel that to get any "attention" they have to post in a sub-reddit. I feel people would be encouraged to submit to smaller sub-reddits if there was a hierarchical structure whereby if a story did well in a sub-reddit, it would get to the front page of the next sub-reddit above it - so I might submit to /r/Dundee which leads to /r/Scotland which leans to /r/UnitedKingdom etc I'm sure there would be some clever way to structure and control this. It would breathe life in to the smaller sub-reddits.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  Some of the best subreddits have rules that you're not to link to any post in the sub anywhere else on Reddit. They don't want more attention, they feel it will decrease their quality, and they're probably right.
- raldi 12y ago
  I worked there from 2008-2011 and always wanted to implement exactly this, but at that time we only had 5 +/- 1 employees so nobody ever had the time. Now that they have dozens of employees I wish they'd put this high up on their roadmap. As a nearby comment points out, it would be the next step on reddit's journey toward reincarnating the golden age of Usenet.
wudf 12y ago
Next I'd like to see Steam as a member-owned platform. Awesome announcement, sama!
taylorbuley 12y ago
Not a YC investment, but I'm interested in how this relates to YC's mitigation of signaling risk. > So the new rule is that partners can only invest some amount of time after Demo Day (we’ll experiment a little to figure out exactly how long) or as part of a Series A. Reddit seems to qualify under the "some amount of time after Demo Day" caveat. Does anyone know at what time period YC ended up setting? http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-investment-policy-and-email-list http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-investment-policy-and-email-l...
- sama 12y ago
  still haven't set it, but 9 years after demo day is certainly going to be over the bar.
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foobarqux 12y ago
Reddit, like all community new sites, is awful and devolves to the mean of society as the user base grows.
- d0m 12y ago
  Good thing nobody is forcing you to browse it.
Alex3917 12y ago
> First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. How do you prevent extrinsic motivation from undermining intrinsic motivation here?
hammock 12y ago
It's a good time to invest in reddit. Not because it will become cooler over the coming years, but because it will become more valuable as it monetizes itself and sells off it's goodwill/equity. Reddit as a platform peaked in 2013- quantitatively[1] and qualitatively. It's mainstream now, and will soon be passe (something like SomethingAwful). If reddit has any value as an investment, it's for advertising and personal (pseudonymous or not) data. Facebook peaked a few years ago in the way I've described, and since their IPO has grown in market value[2] but declined in cultural value[3] (even as its MAU continue to grow!). They are slowly selling off piece by piece, literally to the highest bidder, the equity, trust and attention that it has built up over the years. It's not a sustainable model, it's in a mature phase by now, and it generates a whole lot of cash while it lasts. Wouldn't be surprised to watch reddit do the same. [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/09/28/the-most-upvoted-post-on-reddit-every-day/ http://www.randalolson.com/2014/09/28/the-most-upvoted-post-... [2] http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FB&t=2y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c= http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FB&t=2y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c= [3] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook
- BrandonM 12y ago
  Your '[1]' link doesn't make the point that you claim it does. That post says that 2014 data isn't available yet.
Pxtl 12y ago
I get that there's a lot to like about Reddit - it's absolutely an impressive platform and it definitely deserves investment. And I get the libertarian ideals of the admins, I do. But yeah, seeing the phrase "First, it’s always bothered me that users ..." not end in a discussion of the toxic parts of Reddit's culture and the various high-profile cases of Reddit's admins ignoring ongoing problems of their most horrifying sub-reddits... that was a bit jarring.
jokoon 12y ago
I'm still interested in how moderation really works on reddit... the "reddit drama" always makes me curious but I don't really know the rules very well.
- SquareWheel 12y ago
  Users can create their own communities called subreddits. If they do, they are the first and only moderator of that sub. A sub can be about anything, and if other users enjoy that type of content they can subscribe. Ultimately mods can remove or approve any post they desire. Some mods are hands-off, and others curate content. It depends on their goals for the subreddit. If users are not happy with the content of the sub or the moderation style, they can subscribe to a competitor subreddit or start their own. It's very much an open system.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
I wonder if those community shares will benefit the people whose digital content is infringed upon for profit will be? Giving back to the community is interesting. Attempting to give back to the content creators upon whose backs Reddit is built would be even more interesting.
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giulianob 12y ago
As a long time Reddit user, I've been really disappointed lately with Reddits "battle" against content creators and the little recourse you have if you are marked as a spammer or shadow banned. See the recent /r/indiegaming debacle for example, where a subreddit where mainly indie devs would post about their games now allows very little self promotion ( http://redd.it/2fdwyv http://redd.it/2fdwyv ). Some of these rules are Reddit wide so theres nothing they can do but it essentially discourages content creators from being close to their audience on Reddit. On top of that, if you are banned from a subreddit (even a default one) the moderators can basically choose to ignore you and you are SOL. There's the whole 90/10 rule where if you are posting something from the same source too often, you can be seen as a spammer and banned. It's very easy to break this rule. For example, if you make a few self posts, make tons of comments, post links to 5 different websites, then post 1 link to your website, you are breaking the rule and if a mod sees it you can be banned (comments/self posts don't count towards the 90/10 rule so your 5 posts to 1 self promotion post is breaking the rules). I wish they would just let the upvote/downvote system do its job and weed out content people don't want instead of forcing people to post a bunch of crap they wouldn't normally post just to make their profile look good so they can post about their own projects once in a while.
- deleted 12y ago
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- Semaphor 12y ago
  You are confusing mods and admins. > For example, if you make a few self posts, make tons of comments, post links to 5 different websites, then post 1 link to your website, you are breaking the rule and if a mod sees it you can be banned (comments/self posts don't count towards the 90/10 rule so your 5 posts to 1 self promotion post is breaking the rules). Some admin recently said that something like that has never happened. Only flagrant violators of that rule get shadowbanned by the admins.
  - giulianob 12y ago
    A mod can ban you from their subreddit and that happens a lot based on a fairly subjective basis. There are even times where you just get caught by moderating bots then if the moderators don't bother to reply to you, there is little recourse. I have heard of cases from friends who have been banned for fairly bizarre reasons. I'm not saying you will be banned the first time you break the rule but people who post about content they create have to be extremely careful or they can be banned either from a subreddit or globally. When you are a moderator of a subreddit that has millions of viewers, I think it shouldn't be so subjective.
rdl 12y ago
The "giving equity to the community" is interesting -- I remember when VA Linux, Red Hat, etc. did something similar at IPO (to a much smaller number of developers, but still). Seems like a great idea in principle, and hard to make it work, but hopefully they'll come up with a structure that does.
pond_lilly 12y ago
reddit has been downhill for some time now. Just check /r/worldnews. It also shadowbans users and it is a big reason folks are leaving en masse.
27182818284 12y ago
Is that 1 billion guess a guess of 1 billion MAU? In other words, as much MAU as Facebook?
ionwake 12y ago
My money is on SageBump. Ofcourse I built it, so I am biased. http://www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat&intro http://www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat&intro
Kequc 12y ago
Reddit has got to be one of the ugliest popular websites on the internet. And idealistic, gosh. How can you look at a toilet magazine largely being contributed to by people on their toilets and think "I bet all those people want to own a part of it." This article suggests that in a "couple of years" reddit "could have close to a billion users". Are all these numbers just being pulled out of thin air? This person is talking about investing in reddit, a site with so many pageviews for such a long time which last I heard still somehow was not turning a profit. This person is investing in reddit and giving 10% of their investment to purportedly a billion people. Which is a valuation of 1e-8 percent of his investment per person. I don't want that? Can I not have it somehow.
markburns 12y ago
They are looking at using a crypto-currency backed by the shares. https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2hwpmm/fundraising_for_reddit/ckwph30?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2hwpmm/fundraising_fo...
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Ok, Sam Altman, YC and reedit all just entered my personal mini-hero status for "we want to give 10% of shares to "the community" It does more than bother me that community created value is captured by a few servers in SV - and it's going to take a lot of experimentation to get this right. I rather like the idea of licensing my location data to Google Traffic, and rather doubt giving equity to some but not all redditors will ever work out fairly, but hats off for actually acknowledging the problem publicly and trying something. I expect whatever the normal for community value will be in twenty years, none of the ideas on this thread even come close - in beginning to enjoy the ride though :-)
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anoncow 12y ago
A little non topic related reddit love story. When I first came across reddit, I was working on getting more traffic to my website. So I tried to use reddit to achieve that. I don't think it needs to be said, but I was banned in an hour. I remember presenting my case in forceful comments to the mods and thinking how unjust everything was. The mods replied to my questions and gave me a detailed reason on why reddit is not for self promotion and why I should stop spamming. I wouldn't have gone back but I did, feeling bad for what I had done. The comment replies by the mods had played a big role in that. That and the fact that I found a lot of far more interesting posts in that SR (/r/programming, if I recollect correctly). Reddit has influenced me personally in a big way (/r/atheism). And the trolls, the bots, the larger than life andrewsmiths and some extremely talented OPs and commenters make reddit what it is, because reddit allows them to be their true selves. Reddit is not for business. Reddit is used, I am sure, by marketing teams, but that is not what reddit is. Reddit is where you can be yourself. Your kind, nasty, loving self. That is why I think reddit is popular. The marketing teams are on reddit because of the eyeballs. If you change reddit to make it better for the advertisers or if you change reddit to make it better for one particular set of communities, some of the original magic will be lost. Subreddits with their own rules and mods is a good idea. Site wide extra rules is not. Thank you for reading
justaman 12y ago
One simple way to improve the quality of posts is to remove default subreddits. Instead, have people pick from a list of common interests: programming, games, rap, etc. I think that by limiting interaction with trolls will, over time, reduce the total number of trolls. It is my assumption that the majority of trolls tend to stay on the default subreddits. This would also allow for smaller subreddits to grow by in a sense linking interests into categories rather than the current method of community discovery.
- thearn4 12y ago
  As a mod of two defaults, I agree that this might be a good way forward. Right now, adding a popular but non-default sub to the default set is a very quick way to decrease the quality of the posted content, and can nearly kill the community unless the mods are extremely proactive. I can't help but think that there must be a better way.
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joshdance 12y ago
Better community moderation tools would be awesome.
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EGreg 12y ago
This is excellent! Reddit is closer to the kind of online community I like to see and I'm happy to see what they have planned. Weren't they also giving away 10% of profits to charity?
balor123 12y ago
Quora looks like a nice iteration on Reddit. Reddit should just do a big rewrite to make it look and feel more like Quora. The data model should be able to remain mostly the same, with just some major interface changes, minor feature changes, and major backend updates. It could probably even be deployed in parallel to the existing implementation. Some items that'd be nice are email updates, weekly digests, topic suggestions, anonymous posts, related topics, etc.
- carlesfe 12y ago
  I honestly don't think so. There is a lot of value on Reddit, but I bet that 90% of the visits and content are basically memes and imgur pictures. The part that could "become Quora" may die without the other.
- arfliw 12y ago
  I'm a heavy user of both and never made a connection between them. Them are very different I think. However one thing Quora does way, way, way, way better is your feed (home page on reddit). It's really smart and accurate and unearths lots of great content. Not all of it fresh. Some of it even really old. reddit should copy that. Yishan Wong is the biggest power user Quora has ever had, so he surely knows and understands this.
atko 12y ago
We are in the process of raising first round of funds for http://whoaverse.com http://whoaverse.com and things are starting to get interesting. We have major plans for both enterprise and private use of the platform and when it comes to giving back to the community - we plan to use the same model big players like YouTube and Twitch have for rewarding content creation (actual money). This will be a fun ride which currently feels like David vs Goliath, but boy is it fun :)
- wingerlang 12y ago
  This is literally a reddit clone, what's your edge?
  - atko 12y ago
    Bing is a clone of Google and Yahoo is a clone of... DuckDuckGo? Call it what you want, here are just a few distinctions: - built-in night mode (reddit does not have this) - responsive design which works great on mobile out of the box (reddit does not have this) - limited voting (new users need to gain a certain amount of points before they are able to vote without restrictions, reddit does not have this) - limited number of owned subs (reddit does not have this, one person can and does moderate hundreds of subs) - youtube-like score bar which graphically shows percentage of upvotes/downvotes (reddit does not have this) - user profiles which show statistics about user activity, for example, submission distribution and highest-lowest rated submissions (reddit does not have this) - better privacy, users can delete all data stored about them if they decide to leave and close their account (reddit does not have this, all data is kept and public even after user deletes his account) - youtube-like revenue sharing model (in development) where community is rewarded with real money (reddit does not have this) - based in Switzerland, no censorship policy as long as content is legal (reddit is like North Korea when it comes to this, censoring thefappening but leaving sexwithdogs) - no blatant ad submissions posing as regular posts policy (examples: a photo of a starbucks cup with a cute kitten inside which frequently reaches reddit frontpage or a video titled "look what I filmed with my GoPro") - ...constant dialog with community and very open to new ideas and improvement I hope this answers your question.
dimitrideag 12y ago
I´ts interesting, however the idea of Reddit to allocate 10% of their shares back to the Reddit community for me it´s more than something "cool" as Sam Altman said, and beyond the "a new way to think about community ownership". From another perspective, It´s just a good strategy to do your own IPO (go public) without the legal/bureaucratic way. It´s creating your own NY Stock Exchange with the idea to increase your value based on what your users are doing now (because it will be possible to buy, sell and trade between users). So, beyond the message that it´s for “giving back to the community”, Is it more a clever strategy to increase the company value, and even more the stockholders value? or I´m incorrect?
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
Just a interesting note: Currently (5PM EST) this news is #16 on the reddit front page with only 545 comments. I figured it would have been higher given the gravity.
sujosh 12y ago
I enjoy Sam's writing but I am wondering why is he doing this ? Of course, its his money and he has 100 % right to do with it whatever he wants but still -- 1. Reddit is site which promotes hatred. Radical men hatred is quite common to find out. 2. Almost all mods are SJWs. It is almost impossible to find or carry out rational discussion on reddit. This hatred is so strong that many FEMINAZIs recommend getting rid of men from planet. 3. Mods control everything. Free speech is illusion on reddit. #GamerGate proved that reddit collaborated with un-ethical journalists to promote hidden propoganda 4. Reddit ads are most useless things. 5. Reddit users are mostly illiterate or low wage earners or college students or BurgerLand workers or IT workers who are stuck at their job. Reddit will never achieve revenue it is expecting to achieve. 6. Reddit is owned by mainstream media powerhouse. 7. Reddit regularly participates in social experiments to modify user views and conducts social experiments. If all such things are happening why a partner at YC, who in other posting talks about morals, ethics, equality would want to invest in something this filthy. After all , Money changes everything, doesn't it ? PS - You can downovote me as you wish, or moderate this post but it won't change fact that Reddit is shithole and you can't deny it. All interested parties in Reddit wants to create rage, modify or alter people's opinion/view in US and outside countries and profit.
- kvl7 12y ago
  I completely agree with your points, and just created this account to post something similar until I saw your post. Reddit is indeed a shithole, filled with an extremely radical left-wing hive mind that is completely devoid of critical thinking skills.
  - meowface 12y ago
    I don't completely agree. I support Gamergate and do not like SJWs or their movement, but Reddit is not run by or even heavily influenced by SJWs for the most part. The ruthless shadowbanning of people discussing Gamergate was mostly due to very poor research and reasoning by the admins, and the misinformed belief that some subreddits were being raided by 4chan. SJWs are still mostly a fringe group. In fact, reddit actually fired one of its admins a few months ago for going full-SJW and being clearly very biased towards /r/SRS. Now, some mods in some of the big subreddits lean a little more left or right politically. The userbase in general is not "extreme left" though, much more center left. Search reddit for IA's and thunderf00t's latest videos and you'll see serious support and upvotes in almost all subreddits. No offense, but this conspiracy theory mongering just makes this whole thing even harder to debate.
Angostura 12y ago
I'm intrigued by the final paragraph: > Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I’m excited to watch it play out. Has anyone seen him set out his big vision? I'm not sure that I have.
- arfliw 12y ago
  He hasn't, beyond his 'reddit is city-state' thing.
n0body 12y ago
Reddit - full of kids
septerr 12y ago
The giving back to community approach would, in my opinion, be more deserved by a community like StackOverflow. I always feel grateful to and am amazed by the SO community.
moron4hire 12y ago
Reddit is barely above 4chan in my mind.
arfliw 12y ago
Does anybody know of a sub where stuff like this link would make the front page? And techmeme type stuff (fundraising etc)? I can't find anything like that. It certainly isn't /r/technology or /r/startups
mmcclellan 12y ago
Just wanted to say that this is a fascinating thread. It's eye opening to see just how differently I use reddit than others. I have numerous 6+ year accounts and I don't know what the hell most of this stuff means: subscribing, moderator tools, banning, All I know is nearly anything I want to learn about, there is some passionate group of people on reddit discussing it. I just type in my address bar: site:reddit.com litecoin rig or site:reddit.com flask api, and open a half dozen tabs. Because of the compact layout, I can race through hundreds of comments really quickly and waste like milliseconds on trolls. They've probably lost track of how many "How can this thing grow up, without becoming wack" discussions they've had. I think my answer remains, "it probably can't."
paulhauggis 12y ago
I wonder what's going to happen when they find out that the majority of the top users on Reddit are under 18.
simonblack 12y ago
I think it's time we re-invented Usenet by making the subreddits tree-structured. Or at the least, by making a tree-structured list of subreddits. At the moment there are thousands of subreddits but the only way to find them is by playing with the 'random' button and hoping for a bit of serendipity.
- jgh 12y ago
  I kind of like this idea.
sytelus 12y ago
How do these people get time for reading reddit, twitter, FB and blogs? Just reading HN once in a while sips away pretty much all of my "free" time.
circuiter 12y ago
Excellent. The comments here simply further the notion that HN is slowly turning into reddit.
liotier 12y ago
> First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. If it bothered you that much, you would let users publish their contributions as cc-by-sa !
opinionedated 12y ago
They allow shit like /r/greatapes and a entire super racist network of subreddits like /r/ferguson and shit, but hoo boy if you're Jennifer Lawrence they'll bend over backwords to shut down /r/TheFappening to get rid of your nudes... While simultaneously ignoring /r/Photoplunder, which does the same thing but to people who aren't famous. And lets not even start on banning /r/creepshots but not /r/CandidFashionPolice, which is THE SAME FUCKING THING. I mean shit, if you're going to have standards, at least be consistent. And don't get me started on /r/netsec and it's shitty anti-disclosure philosophy.
- jcfrei 12y ago
  I like to believe that due to the anonymity on reddit it provides a much better reflection of our society - and hence also exposes some of the deeply ingrained hypocrisy.
jgalt212 12y ago
Not to be a prig, but I think Sam leading a VC round outside of Y Combinator while he's president of Y Combinator at the very least represents a conflict of interest* and at the worst is an abuse of power. *conflict of interest is pretty much the standard way of doing biz in the Valley as I understand it.
smrtinsert 12y ago
And to think, this could have been Digg, had it not been for a n unwanted design revamp and the Great Exodus.
ser_ocelot 12y ago
The problem with Reddit for awhile now has been the default subreddits. How about no default subreddits?
MarkMc 12y ago
Can anyone recommend a good subreddit? Something where people are thoughtful and respectful. Perhaps something like HN without the tech...?
- dazmax 12y ago
  http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit "A subreddit for really great, insightful articles, reddiquette, reading before voting and the hope to generate intelligent discussion on the topics of these articles."
orionblastar 12y ago
Actually the problem with Reddit are low-functioning people who join subreddits for the attention and trolling. Most of them a griefers and almost all of them are looking for porn and other stuff like that. I have a few small subreddits I get on that seem to be free of that: http://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordianHumanism/ http://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordianHumanism/ http://www.reddit.com/r/OS2/ http://www.reddit.com/r/OS2/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/ http://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/ http://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/ http://www.reddit.com/r/ebookdeals/ http://www.reddit.com/r/ebookdeals/ http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/ http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/ http://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ http://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ You will find better content on those Subreddits even if they don't have a lot of members on them like the others that are so popular that they get the low functioning trolls and attention seekers who cause only trouble. The DiscordianHumanism subreddit was created because of the trolls on Atheism and SecurlarHumanism and sort of combines Discordianism with Humanism for a different take on the world, etc. A lot of the subreddits where you ask for advice, you often get bad advice and a groupmind who votes up bad advice and votes down good advice. This is because the low functioning people outnumber the mid-functioning and high-functioning people. You will find a lot of the low-functioning people are under 18, and posting from their parent's basement with no supervision.

988 points by gatsby 12y ago

mathattack 12y ago

When I saw this, I was hoping for a "Sam Altman AMA". :-)

thedaveoflife 12y ago
you have your wish: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman_lead_investor_in_reddits_new/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2hwr02/i_am_sam_altman...
- mathattack 12y ago
  ok. Next I'll wish for a raise and a George Lucas AMA. :-)

wasd 12y ago

Sorry if this is obvious but how does this work if Conde Nast/Advanced Publications is the primary shareholder?

orky56 12y ago
They were acquired by Conde Nast but have since parted ways to go private: http://betabeat.com/2011/09/a-startup-is-reborn-reddit-no-longer-part-of-conde-nast-seeks-ceo/ http://betabeat.com/2011/09/a-startup-is-reborn-reddit-no-lo...
- amha 12y ago
  That article says that they're still owned by Advance Publications, though (the Conde Nast parent). I'm confused as well. Is Advance Publications retaining a stake? Are they spinning it off? ???

dkokelley 12y ago

Does anyone know of any precedent for granting equity to a community site's users? I'm curious to see what sort of dynamic this creates in the site.

mbillie1 12y ago
> I'm curious to see what sort of dynamic this creates in the site. As a daily reddit user for 4+ years, I'd wager that it'll just be an exaggerated amount of the same. With any internet community it seems, given enough time, you get saturated by users 'gaming' it for points/karma/post count/etc. So now the same small number of nothing-else-to-do reddit users trawling the archives for repostable karma material have one more incentive to keep up the high-karma-low-content submissions: money. Sorry for the cynicism.
foobarqux 12y ago
Co-operatives have existed for a long time.
clamprecht 12y ago
RedditCoin? (Think bitcoin)
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davidw 12y ago
When companies like Redhat and VA Linux IPO'ed, they handed out some options to open source people.

gatsby 12y ago

"It’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. We have some creative thoughts about the mechanics of this, but it’ll take us awhile to sort through all the issues. If it works as we hope, it’s going to be really cool and hopefully a new way to think about community ownership." This is awesome. Curious to see how this plays out. What's the approximate timing for announcing if reddit is able to do this or not?

not_that_noob 12y ago
I hope this works out - nice move Sam. This and ceding voting control. Setting the benchmark by which others will be measured.
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johnyzee 12y ago
Very cool. It's like turning reddit into a bit of a communal property.
buckbova 12y ago
Probably all shares go to r/gonewild.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
Looks like it is going to be a cryptocurrency: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390136
elwell 12y ago
With a monetary incentive, how will this affect behavior?
ufmace 12y ago
I don't understand this. How does "the reddit community" own shares in a company? What does that even mean? Are board votes going to be held on reddit posts or something?

kyrra 12y ago

The one downside (as I see it) of Reddit that Facebook, G+, and HN all don't have is the ability to downvote. Downvoting makes it so larger subreddits will only have material on their front page that the majority of that group agrees with. This leads to certain subreddits (like /r/politics/) being heavily dominated by one side of the subject area. But I still use reddit daily myself. Getting off some of the default subreddits and subscribing to ones focused on a specific topic (a video game, programming language, city, etc...) has replaced specialized/focused forums for me. It's definitely a great communication platform.

windsurfer 12y ago
HN has downvoting. I was able to downvote you, and your comment went lower on the page and turned grey. HN also has excellent moderation.
- nilkn 12y ago
  I believe he's referring to stories, not comments, as he explicitly refers to material on the front page. I don't know if there's a karma threshold after which one can downvote stories. If there is, I haven't hit it, at 2129 karma as of this writing.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    You can Flag stories at a certain point, which has a downvote-like effect if enough flags are accumulated.
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giarc 12y ago
With HN, once a user reaches a certain level of "upvotes" they unlock the ability to downvote.
- kyrra 12y ago

minimaxir 12y ago

I like Reddit. I recently obtained a data dump of every single submission and comment so I could perform interesting data analysis and may just determine what make a post on Reddit viral. The problem I have with Reddit is that I'm still unsure if it's a positive externality. There's a lot of good aspects of Reddit (discovery, community), but there's so much bad about Reddit that it's impossible to overlook it (abusive subreddits, abusive users, no administrator transparency, etc.) There's free speech, and then there's the ethics of promoting and profiting off of abusive/illegal content. My dream startup would be a Reddit-esque link aggregator, which favors the actual quality of submissions, instead of submissions which are lowest-common-denominator which are optimized for the hive mind.

kylekampy 12y ago
I couldn't agree with you more. The bad parts of reddit are what push me away. Of course there are some smaller subreddits that actually value quality content, but if they somehow grow to 'default' subreddit status then things seem to go downhill quickly. Hopefully you publish some of your findings down the road. I'm interested to hear more.
DanBC 12y ago
I agree with you, but... > no administrator transparency, admin transparency can lead to vociferous site-wide meta nonsense and it can also get toxic very quickly.
- minimaxir 12y ago
  However, the lack of transparency can lead to baseless speculation, which can be just as toxic, if not worse. Case in point, during The Fappening, a large number were filled with conspiracy theories on why the administrators hadn't banned it yet before Wong's blog post, which was only made a week after the first incident.
  - jn1234 12y ago
    The problem with reddit right now is that community managers are rather ineffective at actually handling the community which leads to the other employees of reddit (engineers) to finally step in. The only time when reddit does usually act is when there are some serious legal implications. This is what often leads to the reddit administrator's actions to be labeled as arbitrary. Although, as of recently the reddit administrators started banning some of the more racist subreddits even though they didn't have any official change in policy.

SuperKlaus 12y ago

"...are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community..." How's that supposed to work? Reddit (the company) will own the shares? Some foundation? A bit more detail would be nice.

Balgair 12y ago
Lets hope for a subreddit controlling it. No really, have the users control it. Really. Yes, yes, trolls, hacked accounts, wall street manipulators, sock puppets, 4chan, 14 year olds, etc. But, I mean, wow, just imagine the flame wars! It would be a beautiful fire of crazy. Have the insane fedora neckbeards actually try to get things together in a really real setting? The raw data files alone would be worth it. You'd glean so much, and in a Public setting. Yeah, Google does it already, but to let all of us join in on the analysis of the decision making process? I dare say it: You'd be able to determine how an internet-type true democracy would work. Hash out representatives, the whole deal. Give it to the users, reveal just how dumb we all are in a herd.
mksm 12y ago
They will most probably use blockchain technology for the community ownership distribution: https://jobs.lever.co/reddit/6ce6a242-00d1-49c4-9bed-c34f26445ee7 https://jobs.lever.co/reddit/6ce6a242-00d1-49c4-9bed-c34f264...
- bencxr 12y ago
  this is really the interesting point of the article for me. it could be the first cryptocoin actively used based for rewards/sponsorships etc. See http://ltbcoin.com/ http://ltbcoin.com/ as an example.
chiph 12y ago
I'm wondering about the load of shareholder service work that has to be done when corporate stuff gets put up to a vote. They have to notify people, and that might be hard if someone uses a throwaway account and somehow ends up acquiring a share because of it. While I have a real name account there, TBH 95% of the time I'm using an alias.

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I agree that reddit drips in awesomeness. I talked with the co-founder Alexis Ohanian when he talked at Google last year: really interesting guy, not only with solid advice on entrepreneurship, but also he talked a lot about public service.

kyro 12y ago

Exciting news. One thing I sincerely hope reddit will do with the new injection is to increase the level of quality of content and discussion across the board. Often the advice given is "you've got to find the smaller subreddits" and while that's true, I think having the first few layers filled with terrible content and hive-minded, often racist/sexist discussion is incredibly detrimental to both the site's image and new user experiences. I know there's great content there, and great people having great discussions, but it's not terribly easy to find. I'm thoroughly convinced that reddit could be an incredibly valuable source of reliable news, discussion, and entertainment, but the way it's structured highlights its more juvenile aspects. And if it can find a way to establish legitimacy, it'll be worth far more than it is today.

drmarianus 12y ago
The recent update of the default subreddits was nice, until it just decreased the level of discourse in those previously excellent subreddits.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  Not to mention the entirely expected but entirely horrible response to /r/twoxchromosomes initially though they seem to have got that under control (again with excellent moderation).
jn1234 12y ago
Heavily moderated subreddits are another way to get great quality content. The only problem with this is that it relies on volunteer moderators who devote large amounts of their free time to making the site a better place.
- LeoPanthera 12y ago
  Heavily moderated subreddits are Reddit's biggest problem. Time and again, the volunteer moderators prove that they cannot be impartial, and bias creeps in, inevitably culminating in a bizarre power struggle with the normal users. I've seen it so many times. This isn't helped by the fact that the majority of popular subreddits are moderated by the same people, resulting in a kind of weird cabal situation. I'm not sure what the solution is. Personally I think no moderation, simply relying on up/down votes would be better, but without going to that extreme, perhaps only allowing one person to moderate one subreddit (or a small number) would help.

lazyant 12y ago

I suggest giving some shares to the people that have been with Reddit 8+ years and with over 8k combined link+comment karma :)

cryoshon 12y ago

Mod/admin censorship, government manipulation (out of Eglin AFB most likely), and corporate advertising/shilling are pretty blatantly huge in reddit right now, with many users openly looking for alternative websites. The admin team has shown again and again that they're willing to tolerate anything until there's bad PR. One of the founders (Alexis) has a PR firm, Antique Jetpack, which is on record [1] as cooperating with Stratfor of wikileaks fame. I can't quite see how the two are unconnected. A couple of years ago, one of the admins there tacitly admitted that he was under a National Security letter complete with gag order to give up user information. A few months ago, reddit changed its voting system in order to completely obfuscate user detection of large scale vote manipulation. The community was unanimously against this change, and has been overruled. I don't see a great future for reddit, honestly. I'll continue to use it until whoaverse or another alternative is populated enough. [1]: https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=277352 https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=277352

throwawayornot 12y ago
HN Gold to you, good sir!
icpmacdo 12y ago
The thing is there need to be something like Reddit that is not controlled at all by a company or corporation but completely by the users.
- T-hawk 12y ago
  Usenet is the closest thing we've got to that. Although it lacks any voting or ranking system to filter content. Whether that's a bug or feature is debatable.
  - ape4 12y ago
    Time for a hierarchy on reddit. I suggest: comp.* – computer-related discussions (comp.software, comp.sys.amiga) humanities.* – fine arts, literature, and philosophy (humanities.classics, humanities.design.misc) misc.* – miscellaneous topics (misc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids) news.* – discussions and announcements about news (meaning Usenet, not current events) (news.groups, news.admin) rec.* – recreation and entertainment (rec.music, rec.arts.movies) sci.* – science related discussions (sci.psychology, sci.research) soc.* – social discussions (soc.college.org, soc.culture.african) talk.* – talk about various controversial topics (talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.origins)

dogecoinbase 12y ago

Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I’m excited to watch it play out. Wow, seriously? He's talking about the guy who spewed this nonsense[0]: We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathize. Having said that, we are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies in response to this specific event. The reason is because we consider ourselves not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community. If Sam wants to hitch his wagon to this wash-your-hands-of-responsibility-while-reaping-the-profits attitude, that's his business, but's it's fucking reprehensible. 0: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-for-his-own.html http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/every-man-is-responsible-f...

odonnellryan 12y ago
I'm confused, sorry. Are you for or against the banning?
- dogecoinbase 12y ago
  I am against a site policy that says "we are aware that something horrible happened, but we aren't willing to make any changes to prevent it from potentially happening again". I'd love to get some feedback from the downvoters, because it's hard for me to reconcile Yishan Wong's statement with Sam's assertion that he's "excited to watch it play out".
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    I think he is being very clear. For now, at least, he doesn't want to be the moral police - he expects each user to exercise their own moral judgement. I personally prefer reddit to leave moral choices to their users
    - dogecoinbase 12y ago
      he expects each user to exercise their own moral judgement It's clear that this is not happening in any meaningful way, so his lack of action is simply an admission that he can't or won't do anything to prevent abhorrent behavior on the site he's responsible for. If it's a government, it's a powerless one, enforcing no laws but collecting taxes regardless. There's nothing to admire there.

rthomas6 12y ago

So we finally get to redeem our karma.

yuhong 12y ago

I wish that Reddit would actually copy HN's about box and remove the 10:1 rule for submissions. This include killing Anonymity Rules from /r/talesfrom*.

teach 12y ago
I would like to see a Reddit about box, at least.

Major_Grooves 12y ago

I keep asking this, but it never gets much attention - but why can't reddit put more effort in to a hierarchical structure. As others have said some of the best contents is in the smaller sub-reddits, but they often struggle to get much content because people feel that to get any "attention" they have to post in a sub-reddit. I feel people would be encouraged to submit to smaller sub-reddits if there was a hierarchical structure whereby if a story did well in a sub-reddit, it would get to the front page of the next sub-reddit above it - so I might submit to /r/Dundee which leads to /r/Scotland which leans to /r/UnitedKingdom etc I'm sure there would be some clever way to structure and control this. It would breathe life in to the smaller sub-reddits.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
Some of the best subreddits have rules that you're not to link to any post in the sub anywhere else on Reddit. They don't want more attention, they feel it will decrease their quality, and they're probably right.
raldi 12y ago
I worked there from 2008-2011 and always wanted to implement exactly this, but at that time we only had 5 +/- 1 employees so nobody ever had the time. Now that they have dozens of employees I wish they'd put this high up on their roadmap. As a nearby comment points out, it would be the next step on reddit's journey toward reincarnating the golden age of Usenet.

wudf 12y ago

Next I'd like to see Steam as a member-owned platform. Awesome announcement, sama!

taylorbuley 12y ago

Not a YC investment, but I'm interested in how this relates to YC's mitigation of signaling risk. > So the new rule is that partners can only invest some amount of time after Demo Day (we’ll experiment a little to figure out exactly how long) or as part of a Series A. Reddit seems to qualify under the "some amount of time after Demo Day" caveat. Does anyone know at what time period YC ended up setting? http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-investment-policy-and-email-list http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-investment-policy-and-email-l...

sama 12y ago
still haven't set it, but 9 years after demo day is certainly going to be over the bar.

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foobarqux 12y ago

Reddit, like all community new sites, is awful and devolves to the mean of society as the user base grows.

d0m 12y ago
Good thing nobody is forcing you to browse it.

Alex3917 12y ago

> First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. How do you prevent extrinsic motivation from undermining intrinsic motivation here?

hammock 12y ago

It's a good time to invest in reddit. Not because it will become cooler over the coming years, but because it will become more valuable as it monetizes itself and sells off it's goodwill/equity. Reddit as a platform peaked in 2013- quantitatively[1] and qualitatively. It's mainstream now, and will soon be passe (something like SomethingAwful). If reddit has any value as an investment, it's for advertising and personal (pseudonymous or not) data. Facebook peaked a few years ago in the way I've described, and since their IPO has grown in market value[2] but declined in cultural value[3] (even as its MAU continue to grow!). They are slowly selling off piece by piece, literally to the highest bidder, the equity, trust and attention that it has built up over the years. It's not a sustainable model, it's in a mature phase by now, and it generates a whole lot of cash while it lasts. Wouldn't be surprised to watch reddit do the same. [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/09/28/the-most-upvoted-post-on-reddit-every-day/ http://www.randalolson.com/2014/09/28/the-most-upvoted-post-... [2] http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FB&t=2y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c= http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FB&t=2y&l=on&z=l&q=l&c= [3] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook

BrandonM 12y ago
Your '[1]' link doesn't make the point that you claim it does. That post says that 2014 data isn't available yet.

Pxtl 12y ago

I get that there's a lot to like about Reddit - it's absolutely an impressive platform and it definitely deserves investment. And I get the libertarian ideals of the admins, I do. But yeah, seeing the phrase "First, it’s always bothered me that users ..." not end in a discussion of the toxic parts of Reddit's culture and the various high-profile cases of Reddit's admins ignoring ongoing problems of their most horrifying sub-reddits... that was a bit jarring.

jokoon 12y ago

I'm still interested in how moderation really works on reddit... the "reddit drama" always makes me curious but I don't really know the rules very well.

SquareWheel 12y ago
Users can create their own communities called subreddits. If they do, they are the first and only moderator of that sub. A sub can be about anything, and if other users enjoy that type of content they can subscribe. Ultimately mods can remove or approve any post they desire. Some mods are hands-off, and others curate content. It depends on their goals for the subreddit. If users are not happy with the content of the sub or the moderation style, they can subscribe to a competitor subreddit or start their own. It's very much an open system.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

I wonder if those community shares will benefit the people whose digital content is infringed upon for profit will be? Giving back to the community is interesting. Attempting to give back to the content creators upon whose backs Reddit is built would be even more interesting.

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giulianob 12y ago

As a long time Reddit user, I've been really disappointed lately with Reddits "battle" against content creators and the little recourse you have if you are marked as a spammer or shadow banned. See the recent /r/indiegaming debacle for example, where a subreddit where mainly indie devs would post about their games now allows very little self promotion ( http://redd.it/2fdwyv http://redd.it/2fdwyv ). Some of these rules are Reddit wide so theres nothing they can do but it essentially discourages content creators from being close to their audience on Reddit. On top of that, if you are banned from a subreddit (even a default one) the moderators can basically choose to ignore you and you are SOL. There's the whole 90/10 rule where if you are posting something from the same source too often, you can be seen as a spammer and banned. It's very easy to break this rule. For example, if you make a few self posts, make tons of comments, post links to 5 different websites, then post 1 link to your website, you are breaking the rule and if a mod sees it you can be banned (comments/self posts don't count towards the 90/10 rule so your 5 posts to 1 self promotion post is breaking the rules). I wish they would just let the upvote/downvote system do its job and weed out content people don't want instead of forcing people to post a bunch of crap they wouldn't normally post just to make their profile look good so they can post about their own projects once in a while.

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Semaphor 12y ago
You are confusing mods and admins. > For example, if you make a few self posts, make tons of comments, post links to 5 different websites, then post 1 link to your website, you are breaking the rule and if a mod sees it you can be banned (comments/self posts don't count towards the 90/10 rule so your 5 posts to 1 self promotion post is breaking the rules). Some admin recently said that something like that has never happened. Only flagrant violators of that rule get shadowbanned by the admins.
- giulianob 12y ago
  A mod can ban you from their subreddit and that happens a lot based on a fairly subjective basis. There are even times where you just get caught by moderating bots then if the moderators don't bother to reply to you, there is little recourse. I have heard of cases from friends who have been banned for fairly bizarre reasons. I'm not saying you will be banned the first time you break the rule but people who post about content they create have to be extremely careful or they can be banned either from a subreddit or globally. When you are a moderator of a subreddit that has millions of viewers, I think it shouldn't be so subjective.

rdl 12y ago

The "giving equity to the community" is interesting -- I remember when VA Linux, Red Hat, etc. did something similar at IPO (to a much smaller number of developers, but still). Seems like a great idea in principle, and hard to make it work, but hopefully they'll come up with a structure that does.

pond_lilly 12y ago

reddit has been downhill for some time now. Just check /r/worldnews. It also shadowbans users and it is a big reason folks are leaving en masse.

27182818284 12y ago

Is that 1 billion guess a guess of 1 billion MAU? In other words, as much MAU as Facebook?

ionwake 12y ago

My money is on SageBump. Ofcourse I built it, so I am biased. http://www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat&intro http://www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat&intro

Kequc 12y ago

Reddit has got to be one of the ugliest popular websites on the internet. And idealistic, gosh. How can you look at a toilet magazine largely being contributed to by people on their toilets and think "I bet all those people want to own a part of it." This article suggests that in a "couple of years" reddit "could have close to a billion users". Are all these numbers just being pulled out of thin air? This person is talking about investing in reddit, a site with so many pageviews for such a long time which last I heard still somehow was not turning a profit. This person is investing in reddit and giving 10% of their investment to purportedly a billion people. Which is a valuation of 1e-8 percent of his investment per person. I don't want that? Can I not have it somehow.

markburns 12y ago

They are looking at using a crypto-currency backed by the shares. https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2hwpmm/fundraising_for_reddit/ckwph30?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/2hwpmm/fundraising_fo...

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

Ok, Sam Altman, YC and reedit all just entered my personal mini-hero status for "we want to give 10% of shares to "the community" It does more than bother me that community created value is captured by a few servers in SV - and it's going to take a lot of experimentation to get this right. I rather like the idea of licensing my location data to Google Traffic, and rather doubt giving equity to some but not all redditors will ever work out fairly, but hats off for actually acknowledging the problem publicly and trying something. I expect whatever the normal for community value will be in twenty years, none of the ideas on this thread even come close - in beginning to enjoy the ride though :-)

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anoncow 12y ago

A little non topic related reddit love story. When I first came across reddit, I was working on getting more traffic to my website. So I tried to use reddit to achieve that. I don't think it needs to be said, but I was banned in an hour. I remember presenting my case in forceful comments to the mods and thinking how unjust everything was. The mods replied to my questions and gave me a detailed reason on why reddit is not for self promotion and why I should stop spamming. I wouldn't have gone back but I did, feeling bad for what I had done. The comment replies by the mods had played a big role in that. That and the fact that I found a lot of far more interesting posts in that SR (/r/programming, if I recollect correctly). Reddit has influenced me personally in a big way (/r/atheism). And the trolls, the bots, the larger than life andrewsmiths and some extremely talented OPs and commenters make reddit what it is, because reddit allows them to be their true selves. Reddit is not for business. Reddit is used, I am sure, by marketing teams, but that is not what reddit is. Reddit is where you can be yourself. Your kind, nasty, loving self. That is why I think reddit is popular. The marketing teams are on reddit because of the eyeballs. If you change reddit to make it better for the advertisers or if you change reddit to make it better for one particular set of communities, some of the original magic will be lost. Subreddits with their own rules and mods is a good idea. Site wide extra rules is not. Thank you for reading

justaman 12y ago

One simple way to improve the quality of posts is to remove default subreddits. Instead, have people pick from a list of common interests: programming, games, rap, etc. I think that by limiting interaction with trolls will, over time, reduce the total number of trolls. It is my assumption that the majority of trolls tend to stay on the default subreddits. This would also allow for smaller subreddits to grow by in a sense linking interests into categories rather than the current method of community discovery.

thearn4 12y ago
As a mod of two defaults, I agree that this might be a good way forward. Right now, adding a popular but non-default sub to the default set is a very quick way to decrease the quality of the posted content, and can nearly kill the community unless the mods are extremely proactive. I can't help but think that there must be a better way.

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joshdance 12y ago

Better community moderation tools would be awesome.

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EGreg 12y ago

This is excellent! Reddit is closer to the kind of online community I like to see and I'm happy to see what they have planned. Weren't they also giving away 10% of profits to charity?

balor123 12y ago

Quora looks like a nice iteration on Reddit. Reddit should just do a big rewrite to make it look and feel more like Quora. The data model should be able to remain mostly the same, with just some major interface changes, minor feature changes, and major backend updates. It could probably even be deployed in parallel to the existing implementation. Some items that'd be nice are email updates, weekly digests, topic suggestions, anonymous posts, related topics, etc.

carlesfe 12y ago
I honestly don't think so. There is a lot of value on Reddit, but I bet that 90% of the visits and content are basically memes and imgur pictures. The part that could "become Quora" may die without the other.
arfliw 12y ago
I'm a heavy user of both and never made a connection between them. Them are very different I think. However one thing Quora does way, way, way, way better is your feed (home page on reddit). It's really smart and accurate and unearths lots of great content. Not all of it fresh. Some of it even really old. reddit should copy that. Yishan Wong is the biggest power user Quora has ever had, so he surely knows and understands this.

atko 12y ago

We are in the process of raising first round of funds for http://whoaverse.com http://whoaverse.com and things are starting to get interesting. We have major plans for both enterprise and private use of the platform and when it comes to giving back to the community - we plan to use the same model big players like YouTube and Twitch have for rewarding content creation (actual money). This will be a fun ride which currently feels like David vs Goliath, but boy is it fun :)

wingerlang 12y ago
This is literally a reddit clone, what's your edge?
- atko 12y ago
  Bing is a clone of Google and Yahoo is a clone of... DuckDuckGo? Call it what you want, here are just a few distinctions: - built-in night mode (reddit does not have this) - responsive design which works great on mobile out of the box (reddit does not have this) - limited voting (new users need to gain a certain amount of points before they are able to vote without restrictions, reddit does not have this) - limited number of owned subs (reddit does not have this, one person can and does moderate hundreds of subs) - youtube-like score bar which graphically shows percentage of upvotes/downvotes (reddit does not have this) - user profiles which show statistics about user activity, for example, submission distribution and highest-lowest rated submissions (reddit does not have this) - better privacy, users can delete all data stored about them if they decide to leave and close their account (reddit does not have this, all data is kept and public even after user deletes his account) - youtube-like revenue sharing model (in development) where community is rewarded with real money (reddit does not have this) - based in Switzerland, no censorship policy as long as content is legal (reddit is like North Korea when it comes to this, censoring thefappening but leaving sexwithdogs) - no blatant ad submissions posing as regular posts policy (examples: a photo of a starbucks cup with a cute kitten inside which frequently reaches reddit frontpage or a video titled "look what I filmed with my GoPro") - ...constant dialog with community and very open to new ideas and improvement I hope this answers your question.

dimitrideag 12y ago

I´ts interesting, however the idea of Reddit to allocate 10% of their shares back to the Reddit community for me it´s more than something "cool" as Sam Altman said, and beyond the "a new way to think about community ownership". From another perspective, It´s just a good strategy to do your own IPO (go public) without the legal/bureaucratic way. It´s creating your own NY Stock Exchange with the idea to increase your value based on what your users are doing now (because it will be possible to buy, sell and trade between users). So, beyond the message that it´s for “giving back to the community”, Is it more a clever strategy to increase the company value, and even more the stockholders value? or I´m incorrect?

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

Just a interesting note: Currently (5PM EST) this news is #16 on the reddit front page with only 545 comments. I figured it would have been higher given the gravity.

sujosh 12y ago

I enjoy Sam's writing but I am wondering why is he doing this ? Of course, its his money and he has 100 % right to do with it whatever he wants but still -- 1. Reddit is site which promotes hatred. Radical men hatred is quite common to find out. 2. Almost all mods are SJWs. It is almost impossible to find or carry out rational discussion on reddit. This hatred is so strong that many FEMINAZIs recommend getting rid of men from planet. 3. Mods control everything. Free speech is illusion on reddit. #GamerGate proved that reddit collaborated with un-ethical journalists to promote hidden propoganda 4. Reddit ads are most useless things. 5. Reddit users are mostly illiterate or low wage earners or college students or BurgerLand workers or IT workers who are stuck at their job. Reddit will never achieve revenue it is expecting to achieve. 6. Reddit is owned by mainstream media powerhouse. 7. Reddit regularly participates in social experiments to modify user views and conducts social experiments. If all such things are happening why a partner at YC, who in other posting talks about morals, ethics, equality would want to invest in something this filthy. After all , Money changes everything, doesn't it ? PS - You can downovote me as you wish, or moderate this post but it won't change fact that Reddit is shithole and you can't deny it. All interested parties in Reddit wants to create rage, modify or alter people's opinion/view in US and outside countries and profit.

kvl7 12y ago
I completely agree with your points, and just created this account to post something similar until I saw your post. Reddit is indeed a shithole, filled with an extremely radical left-wing hive mind that is completely devoid of critical thinking skills.
- meowface 12y ago
  I don't completely agree. I support Gamergate and do not like SJWs or their movement, but Reddit is not run by or even heavily influenced by SJWs for the most part. The ruthless shadowbanning of people discussing Gamergate was mostly due to very poor research and reasoning by the admins, and the misinformed belief that some subreddits were being raided by 4chan. SJWs are still mostly a fringe group. In fact, reddit actually fired one of its admins a few months ago for going full-SJW and being clearly very biased towards /r/SRS. Now, some mods in some of the big subreddits lean a little more left or right politically. The userbase in general is not "extreme left" though, much more center left. Search reddit for IA's and thunderf00t's latest videos and you'll see serious support and upvotes in almost all subreddits. No offense, but this conspiracy theory mongering just makes this whole thing even harder to debate.

Angostura 12y ago

I'm intrigued by the final paragraph: > Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I’m excited to watch it play out. Has anyone seen him set out his big vision? I'm not sure that I have.

arfliw 12y ago
He hasn't, beyond his 'reddit is city-state' thing.

n0body 12y ago

Reddit - full of kids

septerr 12y ago

The giving back to community approach would, in my opinion, be more deserved by a community like StackOverflow. I always feel grateful to and am amazed by the SO community.

moron4hire 12y ago

Reddit is barely above 4chan in my mind.

arfliw 12y ago

Does anybody know of a sub where stuff like this link would make the front page? And techmeme type stuff (fundraising etc)? I can't find anything like that. It certainly isn't /r/technology or /r/startups

mmcclellan 12y ago

Just wanted to say that this is a fascinating thread. It's eye opening to see just how differently I use reddit than others. I have numerous 6+ year accounts and I don't know what the hell most of this stuff means: subscribing, moderator tools, banning, All I know is nearly anything I want to learn about, there is some passionate group of people on reddit discussing it. I just type in my address bar: site:reddit.com litecoin rig or site:reddit.com flask api, and open a half dozen tabs. Because of the compact layout, I can race through hundreds of comments really quickly and waste like milliseconds on trolls. They've probably lost track of how many "How can this thing grow up, without becoming wack" discussions they've had. I think my answer remains, "it probably can't."

paulhauggis 12y ago

I wonder what's going to happen when they find out that the majority of the top users on Reddit are under 18.

simonblack 12y ago

I think it's time we re-invented Usenet by making the subreddits tree-structured. Or at the least, by making a tree-structured list of subreddits. At the moment there are thousands of subreddits but the only way to find them is by playing with the 'random' button and hoping for a bit of serendipity.

jgh 12y ago
I kind of like this idea.

sytelus 12y ago

How do these people get time for reading reddit, twitter, FB and blogs? Just reading HN once in a while sips away pretty much all of my "free" time.

circuiter 12y ago

Excellent. The comments here simply further the notion that HN is slowly turning into reddit.

liotier 12y ago

> First, it’s always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don’t own any of it. If it bothered you that much, you would let users publish their contributions as cc-by-sa !

opinionedated 12y ago

They allow shit like /r/greatapes and a entire super racist network of subreddits like /r/ferguson and shit, but hoo boy if you're Jennifer Lawrence they'll bend over backwords to shut down /r/TheFappening to get rid of your nudes... While simultaneously ignoring /r/Photoplunder, which does the same thing but to people who aren't famous. And lets not even start on banning /r/creepshots but not /r/CandidFashionPolice, which is THE SAME FUCKING THING. I mean shit, if you're going to have standards, at least be consistent. And don't get me started on /r/netsec and it's shitty anti-disclosure philosophy.

jcfrei 12y ago
I like to believe that due to the anonymity on reddit it provides a much better reflection of our society - and hence also exposes some of the deeply ingrained hypocrisy.

jgalt212 12y ago

Not to be a prig, but I think Sam leading a VC round outside of Y Combinator while he's president of Y Combinator at the very least represents a conflict of interest* and at the worst is an abuse of power. *conflict of interest is pretty much the standard way of doing biz in the Valley as I understand it.

smrtinsert 12y ago

And to think, this could have been Digg, had it not been for a n unwanted design revamp and the Great Exodus.

ser_ocelot 12y ago

The problem with Reddit for awhile now has been the default subreddits. How about no default subreddits?

MarkMc 12y ago

Can anyone recommend a good subreddit? Something where people are thoughtful and respectful. Perhaps something like HN without the tech...?

dazmax 12y ago
http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit "A subreddit for really great, insightful articles, reddiquette, reading before voting and the hope to generate intelligent discussion on the topics of these articles."

orionblastar 12y ago

Actually the problem with Reddit are low-functioning people who join subreddits for the attention and trolling. Most of them a griefers and almost all of them are looking for porn and other stuff like that. I have a few small subreddits I get on that seem to be free of that: http://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordianHumanism/ http://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordianHumanism/ http://www.reddit.com/r/OS2/ http://www.reddit.com/r/OS2/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/ http://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/ http://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/ http://www.reddit.com/r/ebookdeals/ http://www.reddit.com/r/ebookdeals/ http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/ http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/ http://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ http://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ You will find better content on those Subreddits even if they don't have a lot of members on them like the others that are so popular that they get the low functioning trolls and attention seekers who cause only trouble. The DiscordianHumanism subreddit was created because of the trolls on Atheism and SecurlarHumanism and sort of combines Discordianism with Humanism for a different take on the world, etc. A lot of the subreddits where you ask for advice, you often get bad advice and a groupmind who votes up bad advice and votes down good advice. This is because the low functioning people outnumber the mid-functioning and high-functioning people. You will find a lot of the low-functioning people are under 18, and posting from their parent's basement with no supervision.