22 ms·
Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin
- hga 11y agoSome comments on why from the mod: http://www.reddit.com/user/nallen http://www.reddit.com/user/nallen
- minimaxir 11y agoMore Context into the events that possibly led to the layoff: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bxduw/why_was_riama_along_with_a_number_of_other_large/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bxduw/why_wa... Alexis Ohanian's response: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_has_riama_been_set_to_private/csq6ekp https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_ha... List of subreddits suddenly going private: http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bxjyu/list_of_subreddits_suddenly_going_private/ http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bxjyu/list_...
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago> Due to an unexpected Reddit administrative personnel change /r/science is temporarily private so that we can resolve the situation, our apologizes for any disruption this may cause. The doublespeak is weird. If it's a protest, say so. There's no direct relation between the employee getting fired and a subreddit that is not focused on celebrity PR going dark.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- delroth 11y agoYou've picked the wrong example here though. /r/science has hosted many AMAs in the past, so they are directly impacted.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoDid I? Can't /r/science keep on functioning without AMAs through an intermediary in New York that's supposed to read questions and type answers for the supposedly smart scientists doing those Q&A sessions?
- robwilliams 11y agoMany large subreddits are going private to force the admins to respond.
- pyre 11y agoI think that a clearer answer for @stefantalpalaru would be that the making /r/science private is the moderators of /r/science sending a message to the Reddit admins. They probably don't feel like grandstanding to the public over the issue. People that care about Reddit drama already know what's going on via other avenues.
- jasonlotito 11y ago> Can't /r/science keep on functioning Clearly the people best suited to answer this question do not think they will be able to do what they have been doing.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoClearly that can't be true. That subreddit is still valuable without AMAs. The people in charge just can't bring themselves to be honest with their users. Look at the re-opening announcement and spot the blatant lies and half-truths: > Today /r/science was briefly shut down, and in the interest of transparency we would like to address the reason for this occurrence. Following consequential changes in admin organization and AMA execution, the capacity of /r/science to continue hosting AMAs was impacted. Admin support has been crucial to the /r/science AMA program, and unfortunately these recent changes had the consequence of limiting that support, impacting several AMAs. By changing the status of /r/science to private briefly, we hoped to enable both Admin and the moderation to team to focus their energies on resolving these issues in a timely manner. Though this situation is ongoing, we are returning /r/science to public status in order to limit the inconvenience to the community. > The comments in this thread will be locked. They also don't care to explain themselves to their users so they just blocked the comments. Father knows best.
- rblatz 11y ago/r/Science also does AMAs.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago"also does" is far from "if we can't do AMAs in a NY office any more, we have to close shop"
- noir_lord 11y agoThey may just want to send a message to the admins without a formal declaration of war.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoBut going private is not subtle enough for that.
- radley 11y agoThey didn't go private to protest. That action simply cascaded into a large protest.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoWhat other reason is there to go private?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- noelsusman 11y agoThey wanted to force a response from the admins since they weren't getting anything from them.
- toufka 11y agoPLoS, the open-access science publication, was putting on an excellent series [1]. Given Victoria's role in that, her loss puts that significant scientific outreach in jeopardy. A sad casualty. It was fantastic to see the front-lines of cutting edge research getting asked, answering, and otherwise motivating a lot of really interesting public discussion. Even if they repost all that old discussion (all those links on the blog currently don't work), it won't be trivial to fill Victoria's role in the upcoming AMAs, if they hold them at all. [1] http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2015/06/update-on-plos-science-wednesday-redditscience-ama-series-upcoming-featured-plos-authors/ http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2015/06/update-on-plos-science-we...
- baby 11y agoIf you look at the backlash of the community on the subreddits coming back online, you can see how it was a mistake to involve the immature community of reddit into that moderator/admin tension.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Smerity 11y agoOne of the most telling points is from /u/imakuram, moderator for /r/books: "This seems to be a seriously stupid decision. We have several AMAs upcoming in /r/books and have no idea how to contact the authors."[1] They really shot the communities in the foot by not giving them any notice or support. Given that the key feature in ensuring the quality of Reddit is the moderation "donated" by the community, this is a deeply dangerous move, especially as many of the moderators are already irritated. If Reddit forcibly take control of the subreddits, I'd be surprised if we didn't see a Reddit civil war. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama_set_to_private_over_mod_firing/csq5v3u https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...
- minimaxir 11y agoAlexis is not helping matters either: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama_set_to_private_over_mod_firing/csqg24d?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...
- officialjunk 11y agoi see people talking about alexis, but don't see a user named alexis posting in this thread. i assume alexis uses a handle other than his/her name?
- jpeg_hero 11y agomega white knighting if I've ever seen it.
- voltagex_ 11y agoWhy? The mods of several subreddits hosting AMAs have been left high and dry, and there were posts from PR agents saying that they'd flown clients around and made arrangements only to have them disappear. I'd say that this is the beginning of the end of reddit but I just don't know what will replace it.
- kzhahou 11y agoNo. This is the reddit community wondering WTF is going on lately in the exec board room.
- fredkbloggs 11y agoSame thing that goes on in every exec board room: stupidity, ignorance, self-delusion, ass-kissing, change for the sake of change, and various forms of backstabbing. Unless Reddit's user base is comprised entirely of kindergartners, they know that already. They're not wondering what's going on; they're angry that what's going on is, at best, not what they want, or at worst, harmful and destructive. Probably nothing will come of it, but they figure they may as well try.
- chernevik 11y agoJesse Jackson had an AMA that did not go very well. Several of the most upvoted questions were simply disrespectful. The Reverend's answers were mostly boilerplate and often unresponsive to the question. The AMA seems to have been part of some PR rollout -- Mother Jones had an article three days ago about Jackson taking on Silicon Valley. The event seems to have failed the rollout's objectives. Not a great moment for anyone: The AMA didn't always feature the Reddit community at its best, but the Reverend didn't show at all well under the spotlight of Radical Transparency. Given all that, the timing and speed of the admin's firing hardly seems coincidental. Reddit seems to have blown up a number of ongoing events, and upset an important chunk of its community, which hardly suggests that her firing relates to some long-term issue. I can see why Reddit might feel the event wasn't handled well. But it is also very plausible that Jackson and his camp were deeply embarrassed, and insisted that someone be punished for that. So plausible, in fact, that I think Reddit really should give some account that demonstrates that this is _not_ what happened -- or admit that it did. It is very surprising that this whole thing hasn't gotten more coverage in the tech press.
- koko775 11y agoI'm pretty certain AMA disasters do not qualify as fireable. And firing the facilitator with a history of good AMAs for that reason is hardly an appropriate remedy even if that is so.
- contravariant 11y agoIt all seems like a pretty bad case of shooting the messenger.
- pgrote 11y agoListen, I just want to talk about Rampart.
- dsr_ 11y ago(Translation for the reddit-impaired: Woody Harrelson came to IAMA trying to do publicity for his movie Rampart. His cluelessness and apparent entitlement nearly blotted out the sun.)
- voltagex_ 11y agomhomde, your comment is dead.
- mhomde 11y agowhy? I don't think i said anything untowards...
- grecy 11y agoI wonder if Reddit is big enough to survive these kinds of recent outcries [1], or if it's destined to go the way of digg, etc. [1] Only a week or so ago there was a huge outcry about censorship, which resulted in a lot of negative personal information being posted about the current Reddit CEO. Now we have this.
- fixxer 11y agoI still read it (programming subs mostly), but I logged out after the censorship fiasco. Reddit has strayed pretty bloody far off course.
- pgrote 11y agoNo one knows why Victoria was let go, right? Even respecting privacy of employment decisions, it was handled horribly. I honestly have no idea how/why reddit management makes any decisions anymore. Instead of transparency it's obfuscation. This is just the latest. When she is involved in a AMA it seems to go well. Better than well, actually. When I see that she is helping out I pay more attention due to the fact there is someone helping guide the person in responses. The AMAs are a big reason I enjoy reddit.
- anonymousab 11y ago>or if it's destined to go the way of digg, etc. Does Reddit's competition of today have as much reach/popularity as Digg's did when that exodus occurred?
- adventured 11y agoWon't matter. There's no real lock-in among text / link content communities. They're trivial to build, there will never be a lack of new variations. Reddit doesn't even have possession of the vast media (youtube, imgur) that gets posted to its service, making it that much easier to replace. Imgur will probably see among the greatest benefit as Reddit erodes.
- Kodix 11y ago
- mhomde 11y agoWhat a circus reddit has become. There's probably/hopefully more to this story but still. It will be interesting to see if reddit forces the hands of the biggest subreddits to open again. Which raises an interesting question, who "owns" a subreddit, the mods? the subscribers? reddit? I also wonder if it's a good idea for a community like reddit to have "public facing" administrators Many of the biggest subreddits are revolting against the "governing" and gone private in protest, for example: /r/Iama /r/science /r/movies /r/gaming /r/history /r/art /r/AskReddit /r/law
- seanalltogether 11y agoI'm actually surprised that reddit allows default subreddits to go private or disable themselves in any way. Each community should absolutely be able to moderate themselves, but at the same time being a default subreddit carries extra responsibilities.
- mhomde 11y agoI think a lot of the reddit administration tools, subreddit settings etc is still is catching up to its popularity
- blhack 11y agoCarries extra responsibilities with no actual rewards. Reddit is run by volunteers, remember...
- 27182818284 11y ago> a default subreddit carries extra responsibilities. Tell that to the admins that just cut a beloved person without prior consultation or a continuity plan. I'm blown away by what Reddit has been doing in the last few months. I thought it was just me being a get-off-my-lawn old user (since I've been on Reddit like 7-8 years or something) but then I had a young copyrighter (early twenties) talking to me about leaving Reddit for "other places" and that blew me away. I hadn't realized it was starting to trickle down for lack of better words.
- 11y ago
- dageshi 11y ago/r/videos just went dark Seems likely to me that the problem is now too big for the admins to fix even if they wanted too. They couldn't moderate that many large subs, they don't have the manpower. There's going to be an impressive amount of bad publicity hitting reddit tomorrow, I hope to hell they have a good explanation lined up cause they're going to need it.
- blhack 11y agoIt's kindof astonishing what is happening over at reddit right now. "The internet" has it's own culture, and the people running reddit right now (one of the places where this culture is the strongest, imo), seem to have no idea how to interface with it. It honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users keep getting pissed off at them. I know there are still people like kn0thing over there, but...what else is going on? Is there anybody over there without a business degree? Because it really doesn't feel like it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- forgottenpass 11y agoIt honestly feels like it got taken over by silicon valley middle management marketing types or something, and now they just can't seem to figure out why the users keep getting pissed off at them. I can't agree more, back in the jedberg/HueyPreist days the staff felt like reddit users, now you get the feeling the office just looks at the community as a magic box of unpaid labor. Anyone putting in real effort is better served doing things under their own brand, the handful of people who put in effort under reddit's brand are in an exploitative relationship. This has moved beyond a reaction to the firing, this is a huge vote of "no confidence" towards the admins in general (see some of the more specific gripes in the reddit threads covering it).
- lingben 11y agoreddit is one of the simplest and easiest sites for a new user to learn to use. Somehow, Ellen Pao doesn't know how to use reddit, nevermind what the culture and community that has built over a decade truly means. She meant to send someone a pm but did a selfpost instead and then hurriedly erased it and banned everyone that responded to the selfpost: https://archive.is/9RFIp https://archive.is/9RFIp Reminds me of my grandmother sending me a picture by sending the c:/ link in the email.
- bobbles 11y agoPeople don't give a shit about 'reddit' as a thing, what they care about is the content people submit and the subreddits that foster the communities. They seem to be going through their own Digg v4 moment here, completely disregarding users because they think they're big enough to survive without them.
- emdi81 11y agoFelt I should share this. There are a number of really good established alternatives with great mods and admins for those who wish to branch out and check out something new: www.snapzu.com - Excellent content and friendly community. Has a unique XP/Leveling system and ability to post content into multiple subs. www.empeopled.com - Gives you more influence based on the amount of up-votes you've received. Use influence to steer future of the site. www.theneeds.com - Good content but a lot of it looks automated, possibly using bots. No discussion so you lose a lot of that community feel. www.hubski.com - Classic alternative, been kicking it around for 4-5 years, but still little activity. Community is small but nice. www.spreadit.it - A dark themed reddit alternative that is similar to reddit and easy to use. Content and community is lacking however. Note: I didn't mention the voat boat because I felt they have a little too much hate/racism on there.
- coolnow 11y agoReddit still has those subs about beating women and lynching black people, right? Get over yourself, voat is better than every single example you listed.
- emdi81 11y agoYou keep telling yourself that, maybe some day the truth fairy will come along and grant you your wish.
- JonTarg 11y agoI thought the super secret internet clubs era was over. How old are you? Most people on voat cross browse. There's even a plugin to put both aggregators in the same page. I don't get where this idea that voat is that "den of pedos and fat haters" is coming from. Anyway, +1 for Snapzu.
- btown 11y agoThe admin in question, Victoria (/u/chooter), is still posting, and gives every indication that it was not an expected nor voluntary departure: https://www.reddit.com/user/chooter https://www.reddit.com/user/chooter /u/karmanaut, one of the most prolific moderators, gave some insight into why this is such a big deal: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_has_riama_been_set_to_private/csq204d https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3bw39q/why_ha... > We had a number of AMAs scheduled for today that Victoria was supposed to help with, and they are all left absolutely high and dry (hence taking IAMA private to figure out the situation) She was still willing to help them today (before the sub was shut down, of course) even without being paid or required to do so. Just a sign of how much she is committed to what she does. > The admins didn't realize how much we rely on Victoria. Part of it is proof, of course: we know it's legitimate when she's sitting right there next to the person and can make them provide proof. We've had situations where agents or others have tried to do an AMA as their client, and Victoria shut that [...] down immediately. We can't do that anymore. Part of it is also that Victoria is an essential lifeline of communication. When something goes wrong in an AMA, we can call and get it fixed immediately. Otherwise, we have to resort to desperately try messaging the person via Reddit (and they may not know to check their messages or even to look for these notifications). In fact, it seems that they actually cut off active IAmAs in progress. https://twitter.com/edfrenkel/status/616653911835807745 https://twitter.com/edfrenkel/status/616653911835807745 If there's anything to be learned here for the larger technology crowd, it's this: There are human single-points-of-failure just like there are in hardware. And if you can't avoid having a SPOF, don't kick it in the face out of nowhere and expect the world to continue chugging along like nothing happened.
- minimaxir 11y agoIt's not even that: apparently the mods weren't notified of the organizational change because "we were busy handling the day's flow of AMAs and taking care of those AMA guests took priority." https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama_set_to_private_over_mod_firing/csqe9a6?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...
- caskance 11y ago
- Uhhrrr 11y agoThis is just amazingly tone-deaf on Reddit's part. I don't even read IAMA regularly and I knew Victoria was well-liked. What is Ellen Pao paying attention to if not their highest-profile subreddit? Did she have no transitional plan?
- vonklaus 11y ago> This is just amazingly tone-deaf on Reddit's part. They do not think like a business. They are a storage mechanism for other peoples content which their users generously provide for them to index. They don't make content, they don't generate revenue, they are stuck in a web2.0 model being valued on a per user basis. Reddit probably can't recover as community, but almost certainly not as a business. > What is Ellen Pao paying attention to Ideally the calls for her resignation, but it is to little to late probably.
- codezero 11y agoI'd go further and say their users don't provide content, but instead act as evaluators and filters for others' content. The thing is, almost anyone can evaluate content for basic human emotional or intellectual value. The community built up around shared interest and that is itself hard to replicate in a way that achieves critical mass.
- vonklaus 11y ago> I'd go further and say their users don't provide content, but instead act as evaluators and filters for others' content. my post was a bit unclear, i meant they literally provide it to the site by finding it and posting it. They act as the first tier of the filtering mechanism(votes being secondary). > The community built up around shared interest and that is itself hard to replicate in a way that achieves critical mass. reddit itself, and many other companies/communities are caught in the trap of placating a vocal minority and exercising to broad of a control on the culture. The Y-Combinator ethos is basically this. Make something that enough people love, rather than a lot of people really like. This revolt is backlash against changing a well-ingrained culture to try an please discrete sub-groups. Whether these sub-groups are "right" or "wrong" was largely a question of the communities sentiment expressed in posts and votes. When reddit altered the culture here they lost critical mass. It is happening on 4chan right now as well with people moving to various cloned image boards. Reddit needs it's users a lot more than users need reddit, so we will see what will happen. I am short on reddit and bullish on community choice though.
- arprocter 11y agoOriginal HN discussion here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9821281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9821281
- forgottenpass 11y agoI get that reddit is trying to run a successful business, but I don't think the staff is well served by assuming that the users will be happy little community-created-content worker bees no matter what they do. Users DGAF about the business. All of the admins that were any good at interacting with the community are on the "reddit alum" section of the admin list (read: former employes). And more often than not, the staff doing the high-quality and visible community management was strangely the sysadmins and programmers. Edit: not strange at all, I just realized that they were probably the only admins that were legit users too. Which would explain why I'd lump pre-sale spez and kn0thing in with people who actually interacted, they posted with their real usernames while also running all the sockpuppets making the site look alive.
- Nexxxeh 11y agoPao actually tried submitting a PM to a subreddit. Not a screenshot, the actual URL for the PM. If she has an area of expertise other than "diversity", she seems to be flubbing it.
- istvan__ 11y agoShe is not only non-technical but also a criminal just like her husband. This is insane that she can kick out legitimate people from a community that was build ground up. Interesting read about Ellen Pao (I dont know if it is true or not): http://pastebin.com/8y4VUf4U http://pastebin.com/8y4VUf4U
- jrockway 11y ago[citation needed] on all of that.
- istvan__ 11y agohttp://time.com/3904431/ellen-pao-appeal-sexism-case/ http://time.com/3904431/ellen-pao-appeal-sexism-case/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Fletcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Fletcher
- zobzu 11y agoI work in the silicon valley and I got quite a few promotion offers denied because I'm a white male and that's not promoting diversity. Heck, I didn't even mind it so much as long as the other candidates are +- qualified. But by that logic, I guess I should sue! ;-) Oh wait...
- istvan__ 11y agoIt kind of funny how people turn their heads away about this situation. Anyways, I just finished reading the Fortune article from 2012 and it has more color to the story. http://fortune.com/2012/10/25/ellen-pao-buddy-fletcher/ http://fortune.com/2012/10/25/ellen-pao-buddy-fletcher/ I am wondering how long it takes to destroy reddit entirely.
- exelius 11y agoAaand this is how Reddit does. Because this is basically how Digg died and created Reddit. Who out there has a reddit clone ready to take up the torch? Communities are fickle, and if you fuck with them they will abandon you quickly and en masse.
- meesterdude 11y agovoat is a clone; but I don't think reddit as a platform is strong enough. I think it works for a lot of things (obviously) but other things it sucks terribly at. Still, getting communities right is hard. Obviously. I have something in the works but, it's fairly different, and you know how these things can go south. But i think this is good. it will spur innovation in the space, and thats good for everyone. Well, except reddit.
- philtar 11y agohttp://voat.co http://voat.co
- TeMPOraL 11y agoA tangential point, but I really abhor this style of writing: "/r/IAmA, /r/AskReddit, /r/science, /r/gaming, /r/history, /r/Art, /r/videos, /r/gadgets, and /r/movies have all made themselves private in response to the removal of an administrator key to the AMA process (... lots of other text ...) Major subreddits, including /r/4chan, /r/circlejerk and /r/ImGoingToHellForThis, have also expressed solidarity through going private." So you read the fist part, building a mental model of what's going on ("ok, so these subs went private, which means others listed did something different"), only to have to update it because someone decided to split the list in two, probably going for style. I see this happening particularly in news reports and it's really, really annoying. You may actually fail to connect those two separate parts together if you're skimming.
- detaro 11y agoThe first list references the title (although "default" subreddits would be the better term), the second one are additional ones that are not in the default list.
- lamby 11y agoMm. I think it's being adopted here precisely because it is used in "professional" news reports. Same with prefixing things with "Breaking:"..
- zzleeper 11y agoSomething related I saw posted today is the news that the guy in charge of community at Digg ( /u/LordVinyl ) when the fallout occurred was hired to be in charge of shadowbans, something that has seemingly increased a lot (maybe due to the Ellen Pao issue). The /r/videos post is down obviously, but a mirror is here: https://voat.co/v/MeanwhileOnReddit/comments/192235 https://voat.co/v/MeanwhileOnReddit/comments/192235 The problem is that the poster and everyone else was subsequently banned, which created a bit of a backslash.
- arprocter 11y agoHere's the live thread - https://www.reddit.com/live/v6d0vi6c8veb https://www.reddit.com/live/v6d0vi6c8veb
- imgabe 11y agoWell, I'm sure glad I don't have to work tomorrow. I don't know how Reddit is going to fix this. Unless they have photographic evidence that Victoria was literally eating puppies alive, I don't think they're going to win the community back to their side. I understand that if you're going to fire someone, you can't very well go around telling a bunch of people that you're about to do that. They still should have had a better plan in place to pick up the slack first.
- jpgvm 11y agoInevitably when you fire a competent person you are going to piss people off, even if you can adequately replace them. People just don't like to see people that are clearly competent be fired. The reasons really don't matter to them. (and maybe they shouldn't?)
- 27182818284 11y agoI hate to do what is an essentially a "me too" post of sorts, but as an old, old Reddit user, I'm really confused by the moves made in the last few months. I can't think of another time I've been immediately like, "Why?!" in reaction to Reddit's actions. Usually when I see a new feature, direction, policy, etc, my thoughts are, "Huh. Makes sense"
- goldman60 11y agoMy only why moment I can think of was removing the vote counts on comments, (?|?)gate. But that was a minor little blip on the radar and I wasn't super bothered by it.
- personjerry 11y agoThis seems like an abuse of power to me. The people who have closed the subreddits are the moderators. These moderators should represent the desires of the users. In this case, they are instead caring for their own personal feelings/ease of moderation through communication with the Victoria. As a result, hundreds of thousands of redditors are cut off from their friends and fellow subredditors. Even the AMAs are cut off. I think this is wrong. Consider this: What if the redditors, while this protest was going on, found an alternate site and all started posting there instead? Then the mods would've just effectively stripped themselves (and Reddit, Reddit admins, etc.) of power. While I don't know Victoria so I cannot sympathize, I can at least understand the moderators' cause. However, the method which these moderators have chosen to demonstrate with hinders the community, and for that reason goes against what moderators represent, and so should not be supported.
- nickynix 11y agoYou should read "Atlas Shrugged". These moderators built the community they wanted to thrive; they work for the community they desire. They are not slaves to the masses. If others want to create their own communities, then so be it. But the moderators that have closed their subreddits do so because they are their communities, even if Reddit controls the platform on which they live.
- shock-value 11y agoI would imagine that users by-and-large support the shut-downs (I do, as a user). Moreover, I don't think Reddit is the sort of site that fosters friendships. A sense of community, yes, but not individual friendships. And anyway, PMs and such are unaffected so you could contact an individual without issue anyway. > Consider this: What if the redditors, while this protest was going on, found an alternate site and all started posting there instead? Then the mods would've just effectively stripped themselves (and Reddit, Reddit admins, etc.) of power. Why is that a problem? If the mods are actually acting in the best interests of their communities (which, in your scenario, are able to re-form on another site) then that's a positive result for them (in an altruistic sense).
- X-Istence 11y agoYou do realise that these moderators are unpaid and don't report to anyone, least of all the people using reddit.
- istvan__ 11y agoPretty sad that the free speech is disappearing from the internet with the speed of light and it gets replaced with propaganda. Victoria was a well known character of the reddit community and she did a lot for them. Sad to see her gone.
- MrBlue 11y agoGo to: https://voat.co https://voat.co
- FLUX-YOU 11y agoThey need a kickstarter or patreon for more servers :(
- stormbeta 11y agoToo bad most of the community there is made up of the worst of reddit. Maybe if enough normal users moved there it'd be worth it, and maybe that will actually happen if reddit doesn't figure out how to salvage this, but until then, there's nothing on voat worth wading through the sewage.
- Kodix 11y agoIf I recall correctly (it's down right now, not a big surprise) about half of the users are subscribers to voat's fatpeoplehate. Those excellent people are the grassroots of the community you'd be joining.
- pixl97 11y agoYou may be forgetting that Reddit was built on the same 'shit'. A huge portion of the real content of Reddit was porn and other repugnant topics. The admins of the time faked a huge portion of their posts to form communities around them.
- Aaronontheweb 11y agoMy experience, having actually used Voat, is that this is not the case. I've engaged people in the /v/gaming, /v/programming subverses and everyone's been friendly and polite to me thus far.
- chippy 11y agoAgreed. People move from one site to another because the other site is better, not because the first site is worse. There's a difference between push and pull that makes a good or a bad community. It's why reddit and digg and facebook and twitter grew - they were better than the other sites, they pulled users in. Voat is being used because reddit is pushing.
- sergiotapia 11y agoGood riddance to Reddit. Let it burn and go the way of Digg V4. Time to move over to something more grassroots. Reddit has too many shills, too many paid-for content and way to much thought policing. Time to go!
- thought_alarm 11y agoQuickly! Everybody back to Usenet!
- alayne 11y agoJust make sure you stick to alt.*, because of those fascists who control RFDs.
- nutate 11y agoIf people could invent better moderation over nntp... it looks like people were looking at it even in 2010: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6048 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6048
- nandhp 11y agoIf someone could figure out how to efficiently implement voting and moderation on Usenet, they'd have an excellent distributed replacement for reddit.
- draven 11y agoI really loved Usenet when I discovered it (I never posted though.) The moderation capabilities were not well developed, but it was way more client-centric and decentralized. I wonder it there's a market for a modern reboot of usenet.
- jpindar 11y agoSssshhh!
- golergka 11y agoI have a question that will sounds like a rhetorical just for the sake of mindless bashing, but actually I want to ask it honestly, and I don't pretend that I know the answer. Have Pao done anything good for Reddit since she's been appointed CEO?
- ForHackernews 11y agoReddit admins have consistently shown themselves to be clueless in the past. They're only ever reactive to some scandal or PR disaster. I've never seen them try to get out in front and actually lead their community.
- idointernet 11y agoThis isn't another Digg V4. It's a riot - http://gizmodo.com/256982/breaking-digg-riot-in-full-effect-over-pulled-hd-dvd-key-story http://gizmodo.com/256982/breaking-digg-riot-in-full-effect-...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nickfromseattle 11y agoFor those with PR, marketing and community management experience - if you we're in a position to try and solve this, what would you do to minimize the damage and move the community on as quickly as possible?
- adventured 11y agoThere are only three action approaches. 1) Distraction. Good luck with that, but you can try to redirect the attention. Start a fire somewhere else, make a big announcement, etc. One problem with this, is there's a lot more animosity in the air at Reddit than just what relates to this specific situation. 2) Negotiate and directly engage with the community. Some variation of giving in to their demands. Console them. Either give them what they want, or make them feel like you're doing so. The users power everything of value on Reddit - there is nothing without them. 3) Stonewall them. Refuse to bend. Let the community know that this is how it is; much like what Pao did when talking about how Reddit was no longer going to be a platform for completely free speech. This approach rarely turns out well, especially given how little leverage the Reddit company has, and how easy it is to replace Reddit (relatively speaking). #2 is the only workable option. Reddit will only follow that option if they decide the viability of the service is at risk, and they may realize that too late.
- lawnchair_larry 11y agoAre you actually a PR/marketing professional, or are you just volunteering your personal speculation?
- adventured 11y agoThe third part of the parent's conditional: experience with running or dealing with online communities (from building and operating sites that have them, since the 1990s).
- baby 11y ago1. I would ignore most of the attacks. Don't "you'll get over it" or don't even try to moderate any of the posts/comments. 2. Most of the mods are realizing their mistakes right now, if you can see the subs who are coming back online they are just getting insulted and downvoted over and over for giving up on the black out 3. Use that + give them better tools to moderate their subs = you have the mods on your side 4. They need a martyr story, Ellen Pao is getting harassed all over the place, people trying to doxx her, people photoshoping her pictures over and over, people making bad jokes about her (racists, sexist, etc...). They need to make it look like this is a bad thing, like she's suffering, like the reaction of these people who are a minority of reddit are causing to the people administrating reddit. I think that would be good if it came from some mods of subreddits or from some rumors in random subreddits. Seriously, I see Ellen Pao as the new Britney Spears. In a few years people will love her (if she hasn't killed herself from all of this harassment). 5.? They could fire Ellen Pao and hire someone from the community. But I doubt this would change something in the long run. 6.? They could make the whole management process of reddit more "open" like buffer does. Eventually, things like that are doomed to happen. A company needs to fire people, needs to take decision that their users will not like so they can monetize their website, etc... It's also good to notice that things like that often goes away pretty quickly, the last drama lasted a day, I don't think this one will last more than a day or two either... Most people didn't even realize. This is an interesting topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3bz9pm/how_has_your_front_page_been_affected_by_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3bz9pm/how_...
- akhilcacharya 11y agoThis implosion has got me thinking - what would an alternative site to better? How could this be improved? If we do see another Digg-esque migration, where will those people move?
- shmerl 11y agoIt should be something decentralized and open.
- HamSession 11y agoAgreed fully, this and machine curation of news stories.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- httpagent 11y agoI'm going to offer a wild suggestion - What if reddit is being purposefully dismantled to break up the social hive it represents? Is it possible that current events are he fruition of a purposeful strategy?
- stormbeta 11y agoHonestly, I wouldn't even be mad if that was actually intentional. Reddit's community in the larger subs has been getting really awful of late.
- MBCook 11y agoHere here. The whole dust up over /r/fph and the few other little subs kinda horrified me. I think reddit has often veered too far into laxness (the LONG existence of /r/jailbait) and there is still an amazing ton of blatant rule violations going on. The only problem I had with the /r/fph thing was how inconsistently enforced it was. It seemed like a ban against a relatively small group so they wouldn't have to deal with pissing off one of the bigger problem subs. It ended up looking like a fake token gesture.
- jrochkind1 11y agoYeah, it's probably the Illuminati. Or the Greys.
- rblatz 11y agoIf that is what is happening, is that what the owners want? Or is that what leadership wants? The leadership has very little money sunk into reedit, but the owners have a lot more. I'm sure leadership is willing to gamble that they can disrupt the hive without killing it. But will the owners continue to go down that road?
- httpagent 11y agoWith billions (and billions) of dollars being poured into this year's election cycle, it makes sense for the string-pullers to dismantle any vestige of true grassroots organizing. It seems like the "real" money would be invested in disrupting organic organization and favoring controlled and curated organization that favors their whim. I just can't get this damn tinfoil cap off my head.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago/r/netsec went down too, quite surprisingly.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 11y agoThis does feel a bit like "Internet" culture meets Sarbanes Oxley (which comes into play when you are publicly traded). There was a story about how unprofitable Reddit is [1] and given that one would expect it to start running out of cash. And when that happens it has to either get more VC funding or go to the public for additional funding. But if you're going to file an S-1 you really have to get your SOX compliance in order, and generally that has things like executives swearing that there isn't any illegal stuff going on, with jail time penalties if there is. And lawyers tend to be really conservative when it comes to "illegal" (advising against anything even nominally bad). I, of course, have no inside information, but I'm not the only one wondering about this. An inability to raise funds would kill Reddit, and this "strike" action would seem to just accelerate that (fewer page views, fewer ad clicks). [1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/reddit-ceo-admits-once-bowed-130338011.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/reddit-ceo-admits-once-bowed-1...
- chillingeffect 11y ago> illegal stuff going on All of the conditions of SOX seem to be about financial disclosure, with the most general "crime-like" thing having to do with financial fraud. I don't SOX has much to do with e.g. online harrassment or pornography. It was enacted in response to financial and accounting scandals around 2000. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
- ljk 11y agowow what's crazy to me is that I was on reddit today, but didn't know about this till I saw this thread. And even after going back to reddit I couldn't see any information on this until I cilcked /r/all.. looks like reddit censorship scandal is going out of hand :/
- trcollinson 11y agoI have heard a lot of people here and in reddit say, "well we should just make something better and leave!" Maybe a lot of that talk is just anger or discontent coming out right now. The community is up in arms. The moderators are frustrated at both corporate reddit and the website/tools available to them. Users are mortified. But in all seriousness, I want to explore the question, why don't we? What is stopping us from replacing it? -- Technical challenges? No that doesn't seem right. Many of us build and scale applications far larger than this. The tools and technology are there. -- Building a community is hard? This seems more in line with reality. Building another community like this is high risk and low reward maybe? -- Sites like this aren't the solution any more? This could be it. But if this isn't the solution, what is? I haven't thought of all possibilities. But really, why not just replace it? *edit: fixed typos, typing on phones is hard.
- innguest 11y agoPeople want/need x, where x : forum threads :: IRC : chat.
- wiml 11y agoThat was Usenet. How many people even remember when there was real discussion and community on Usenet?
- pixl97 11y ago>Many of us build and scale applications far larger than this. In general you do so with a huge corporate budget. >Building another community like this is high risk and low reward maybe? That's the answer. You only have a few ways to monetize the product. Direct advertising; banner ads. The ad market is going to crap though, everyone has them, large numbers of users block them, and payments are very low. Direct payments for features. Reddit has 'Gold' as a means to get premium features and help pay for the site. The other way that has been bandied about, but with no direct evidence that it occurs is indirect advertising. For example a movie star paying for an AMA to advertize for their new film. Even then those things only work if you can get the people to come to your site in the first place. It's highly likely a large number of social sites have a good deal of vice in their founding. People come to the site looking for porn or other somewhat socially unacceptable topics, but end up staying for the other parts of the community. As the site grows you run in to the inevitable 'great purge' which can cause serious issues.
- astrowilliam 11y agoThis is the exact reason why we started PushdUp. As a long time reddit user I was getting sick of the drama that was happening and decided to take it upon myself to create something different. We are still in VERY early alpha so there are bound to be some bugs. Come join the revolution. http://www.pushdup.com http://www.pushdup.com , feedback is welcome and encouraged.
- wingerlang 11y agoLoading animation in the beginning, I'm bored already. After loading, it just looks like some clickbait buzzfeed or auto-generated "read these 5 articles more, please" because of the big pictures set in a grid.
- astrowilliam 11y agoThanks for the feedback. We are playing around with different layouts to see what people like more, so far the big picture layout isn't exactly what we are looking for but we are still working on it. I'm wondering if you actually read the article titles or if you just closed it down before noticing any of them?
- ljk 11y agohopefully your site takes off! i felt like he was a little too harsh, the site does look a little too simple maybe that could put some people off
- astrowilliam 11y agoThanks, man. I want to keep it super simple, no distractions. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I have a vision and I'm working towards it. Glad you stopped by.
- wingerlang 11y agoI did not read them, no. Just went back and did, nothing special. Same like every website (this is not criticism, although I don't like clickbaity titles in general, like "Xi Jinping has run into the one thing in China he can't control". Grid layout is still shit, It makes it harder to skim and keep track of where you were.
- oh_sigh 11y agoTo complete the blindness trifecta, now all they need is for an admin to "seize" control of a subreddit(maybe /r/iama, since they apparently have devoted an entire department to it)
- socrates1998 11y agoI get that Reddit is a business, but I don't get how they are handling their business right now. They are pissing off the user base while not making any money. Did they think a "lose/lose" solution was the direction to go in? Regardless, they are just really fucking things up. They can't seem to figure out what they are doing. Do they even have a plan?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ljk 11y agosad that reddit turned out this way, completely opposite of what Aaron Swartz's vision documentary about him - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ
- paulgayham 11y agoSo much fucking drama. Can they not keep their site clean of this shit?
- chatmasta 11y agoSo who's going to capitalize on this? Lots of users are pissed off and want to leave. People are pushing "voat.co" really hard, but it looks like a weak clone of reddit that will ultimately suffer from the same problems. This would be a good time for someone to figure out a decentralized solution to the links+comments app. There is lots of research into decentralized reputation and recommendation algorithms. Combined with cryptocurrency there could be some real potential.
- jacky_chan 11y agoWho gives a shit!
- antjanus 11y agoI'd love to hear some people's opinions: what's the next reddit? Where will people go? I've been looking at alternatives ever since all the stupid crap with mods came out (mods messing with submissions, resubmitting under their name, and deleting stuff they didn't agree with) and some of my favorite subreddits started to rot. And now, it feels like Reddit is really falling apart. Any suggestions?
- keithwhor 11y agoWithin the next two weeks we're going to see just about every Reddit clone and/or variation that exists spring into action. One of them will be lucky enough to gain enough traction to replace Reddit, though it will take a couple of years for the transition to complete. I have next to no doubt that these are the death throes of Reddit. I'm not personally invested in these politics (though it is fascinating to watch unfold), but what I can say is that I'll gladly move away should the opportunity present itself. What I care about at this point is I would like to consume content and for some reason I can't. So now I'm sitting here writing a comment on Hacker News to publicly showcase my discontent when I could have been enjoying cat pictures. Edit: Reminds me of HipChat. It went down on a workday for a long period of time and I knew about Slack, our engineering team was swapped over by end of day. I don't particularly care why your service is down, whether it's a service outage or a coup, I just care about how long it will be down for and whether or not I can expect this to be a pattern.
- antjanus 11y agoI'm sure there will be a hundred clones. I do hope someone will just try a brand new way of doing content and people will be like "Oh yeah! That works really well!" I've been disillusioned with reddit when I saw that the niche subreddits no longer get updated :/ and the bigger subreddits are ruled by an iron fist of mods. The content doesn't refresh as often as I'd like either (in the 2nd tier subreddits, the ones that aren't default but are still really popular). Anyways, all good points. I used HC and Slack both and have to say that they seem almost identical to me.
- 11y ago
- pdkl95 11y ago"You'll get over it" Many HN readers should recognize that as the words a certain admin of fark.com. For those that don't recognize it, the short version of the story was the admins had developed a new front-end to Fark, but they didn't make a general announcement an update was going to happen. The just deployed it one morning... and left for a convention. When the change was discovered a little while later... well... lets just say it was not a popular change[1]. More importantly, nobody know what was going on, making emotions run even higher due to the lack of communication from the admins. So after being left to stew for 4+ hours - and over 10k posts from confused and angry users - an admin does the absolutly worst thing possible, and made a single post with those four words: "You'll get over it". There were three main reactions to this. Many of us closed the browser and went back to work or otherwise avoided the drama. Maybe 10-15% of users spent the next day flaming the admins at about 10k posts/hour. Finally, about 1/3 close their accounts and left, permanently. I suspect reddit is in the middle of a similar situation right now. The reason I'm bringing this up is that the Fark story doesn't really end there. Years later, Fark admin Joe Peacock gave one of the more important talks[3] (at NOTACON 8) I've ever seen, about what exactly went wrong, and the bad decisions that made a catastrophe inevitable. Joe discusses what may be the most important lesson for anyone managing a place where users choose to spend their free time: if you don't involve your user in the decisions and changes that affect them, they wil simply find another place to hang out. [1] which some of us still[2] partially-revert: https://userstyles.org/styles/60176/fark-theme-un-v3-0-release https://userstyles.org/styles/60176/fark-theme-un-v3-0-relea... [2] when I remember; apparently haven't posted last year's fixes sigh [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI (in typical fark style, a few of the talk's slides may be borderline NSFW) TL;DR - just watch [3], where a fark.com admin gives some *very good advice on how to interact with your users.
- HappyTypist 11y agoThis is a great talk for anyone managing communities. Reddit's current situation does bear many resemblances, especially with kn0thing's "Thank you for the feedback. I hope you change your mind about reddit, but if not, you're entitled to your opinion." response.
- andyl 11y agoThe blacked-out subreddits have millions of users. Wow. AMAgeddon.
- elchief 11y agohttp://www.randalolson.com/apps/default_subreddit_status.html http://www.randalolson.com/apps/default_subreddit_status.htm... If you want to see which default subreddits are running or down /r/netsec and /r/programming are down.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoOne thing I find amusing about the whole history of social networks is that by far, 4chan has been the longest running consistent platform and with the least governance. There is something to be learned there, not sure what it is though. edit: Actually metafilter is older, but way less popular/influential.
- andrewflnr 11y agometafilter is less popular by design, as a survival strategy. They throttle new account creation when it heats up. That's probably going to become more common.
- NoahTheDuke 11y agoI would guess it's less popular because it costs money to post. On the other hand, so does Something Awful, and that site's significantly more popular than Metafilter.
- swalsh 11y agoIt would seem that it has something to do with the ambiguity of ethics on the site. Things such as can we charge for posts, can we moderate content we disagree with etc. 4chan happens to be the least ambiguous community
- HappyTypist 11y agoMarc Bodnick commented on why Victoria was fired: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png I consider him to be a reputable source and the claims are very plausible. Out of touch management never know how out of touch they are.
- ionforce 11y agoWell at least we know she was someone principle. Also, terrible management? "You disagree with me? You're fired."
- Eupolemos 11y agoIf it is true - it almost feels like a parody. I'm not saying I don't believe it, just that I'm keeping my mind open.
- BashiBazouk 11y agoAnd at the end of the day right before the long 4th of July weekend. Out of touch is right...
- bgilroy26 11y agoThis s the best information we have so far, but it's confusing. There have been a bunch of video IAMAs before
- ljk 11y agomaybe the porposed video IAMAs will be rampart-like "IAMA"s? that'd fit with the suggestion about going more commercial
- celticninja 11y agoVideo AMAs are easier to sanitise. They ask for questions then give the 10 most upvoted to the guys to provide a video response. Of course the 10 most upvoted may not be easy softball questions so they can remove these and the guest never knows about them. Right now the guest knows the questions but can refuse to answer them but then it is apparent they are ignoring difficult questions. With a video AMA they get to distance themselves considerably from anything out of their comfort zone.
- SixSigma 11y agoOh the schadenfreude "I was subscriber to fatpeoplehate hate, so I did nothing; in fact I applauded it."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ScootyPuff2000 11y agoI had a lot of fun on reddit (I was a verified "shitlord" on FatPeopleHate), but it never was monetizable. It's not a business and will never be, no matter how many users they get.
- bashinator 11y agoTop comment from that gizmodo article: "Reddit is legitimately full of the most self important toxic people ever. It’s also home to a huge variety of all manners of genius and hilarity." I will miss it. As an Old Person™, reddit was the closest the modern Internet has come to replicating the heyday of Usenet in the 80s/90s. But because it's controlled by a single corporation instead of federating among all internet service providers, it succumbed to the corruption of the pursuit of captial. RIP.
- im3w1l 11y agoWhy did usenet decline?
- DanBC 11y agoEternal september; lack of moderation combined with massive trolling / spam / sporge / hipcrime flooding, etc; ISPs stopped offering Usenet access as part of their packages; to most users it's baffling in comparison to something like Imgur or Reddit. An nntp2 / nntp3 could be brilliant.
- cyboris 11y agoGenerally its symptomatic of a business not understanding how it works any more. In any business, employees will be fired, employees will leave. The weakness here was that Reddit seems to have no business continuity plan for the one subreddit that gets the best publicity. Anything that attracts presidents, and A-list stars should have been able to lose an admin with minimal chaos. Misunderstanding the role of a critical employee lead to this and now they have to struggle to catch up and figure out what the heck Victoria really did.
- jaguarmagenta 11y agoThe side effects of a subreddit not going dark are amazing. I'm waiting for the admin response.
- tptacek 11y agoAlex Ohanian's comments about this ridiculous tire fire, and the Reddit community's unhinged responses. Priceless. https://www.reddit.com/user/kn0thing https://www.reddit.com/user/kn0thing
- dandanisaur 11y agoI've seen some of 'Alexis' comments and it really seems like he doesn't give a shit. 'Make something people want' amirite? what a joke.
- tptacek 11y agoSorry, Alexis. A little buzzed last night.
- DanBC 11y agoWow, the downvotes go back for days. His last comment with a net upvote is 9 days ago.
- quantisan 11y agoFrom the post: "As much as Victoria is loved, this reaction is not all a result of her departure: there is a feeling among many of the moderators of reddit that the admins do not respect the work that is put in by the thousands of unpaid volunteers who maintain the communities of the 9,656 active subreddits, which they feel is expressed by, among other things, the lack of communication between them and the admins, and their disregard of the thousands of mods who keep reddit's communities going. /u/nallen's response above is an example of one of the many responses to these issues."
- mcintyre1994 11y agoI'd probably call /r/IAMA reddit's strongest content asset in terms of publicity, I seriously can't believe there's such a disconnect there. When I found out about Victoria helping them out and all the work she was doing - and then the IAmA app, it seemed the admins got that, but I guess not.
- unfunco 11y agoI'm really not trying to troll here. Reddit started going badly downhill (where it was a visible and public departure from what it was previously) from around the time that Sam Altman personally invested in the company nine months ago, an announcement that almost ruptured my cringe-pipes. I laughed internally at the notion that he thinks he's altruistic by giving 10% back to the users, whilst in the same announcement he mentions reddit reaching a billion users. So, Sam was boasting that of his shares he owns 90%, whilst each of the "shareholders" (a reddit user) has 0.0000000001% – and that's exactly what I expect from investors. Then Yishan Wong resigns, it felt more like a pushing, one month after Sam invests, and is replaced by Pao; who has a history of going after previous employers because she's angry that she's a woman. Nobody has the nerve to fire Pao because they're afraid of being called sexist. This is Silicon Valley at it's most entertaining.
- yoklov 11y agoWell, if they fired her at this point, I doubt anybody would believe that was the reason. Not that I have an opinion on the subject of what reddit should do.
- revelation 11y agoIt's like Reddit is this persistent YC nightmare that he feels he needs to "right the history" on it and somehow make it successful. And they're just massively failing at every step. Out of touch, out of clue. Reddit the company is at this point completely removed from the actual site. They went back into startup mode but you would never know it looking at the site. No new features, same old shitty reliability, nothing.
- beedogs 11y agoIf anything, the site has gotten markedly worse from a reliability standpoint in recent months.
- rayalez 11y agoA time like this is an excellent opportunity to create a reddit competitor. Current alternatives(like voat.co) are focused on completely avoiding censorship and moderation, thus attracting the worst of reddit. I am curious, what are your thoughts on how one could go about attracting the best of reddit? I am working on a personal project that is very similar, but I wouldn't try to compete with reddit to attract all the haters and celebrity-gossip kind of people. Do you have some ideas about what kind of startup could attract the most intelligent and creative parts of the community? (right now my project is focused on writers, "reddit meets fictionpress", but it would be very easy to pivot into something broader, if I can come up with a smart way to do that)
- ivanb 11y agoFrom the outside view it looks like people of Reddit are unsatisfied with their government and so they destroy their own motherland in an attempt to overthrow said government. Looks very much alike any coup d'etat. Human nature is in play again. It will lead to civil war and huge damage to the community. In the end there will be no winner.
- rawnlq 11y agoFor people comparing this with Digg v4 you should remember digg was already on a steady decline long before it completely imploded with the redesign: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=reddit+digg#q=digg%2C%20reddit&date=6%2F2006%2061m&cmpt=q&tz= http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=reddit+digg#q=digg%2C... But reddit on the other hand still seems to be growing and haven't hit an inflection point: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=reddit http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=reddit Even the recent fph drama barely caused a noticeable blip in traffic and was easily recovered from a few days later. This event might be the start of the inflection point but reddit isn't going to die overnight anytime soon.
- thrillgore 11y agoI can't wait for sama to make a statement about this.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- chippy 11y agoUltimately this is about large companies needing to make more money using internet communities. To do this they have to change the community to make it mass market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_adopter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_adopter may help for the following. We in Hacker News are a small percentage of the "Innovators" set. We are not who reddit is wanting to appeal to now. Reddit started with Innovators like ourselves as a small site and grew to encompass "Early Adopters" from the other Internet communities, it has been growing out and nearly full of "Early Adopters" - it needs to get more people, and to do this it changes the demographic. It needs people like our relatives and co workers who just use Facebook. It needs to grow because more people equal more money. They can and do accept the loss of the original Innovators and some of the Early Adopters as part of the cost to draw in much more revenue. Thus, removing hateful subreddits, cleaning up the place is part of that. Another is increasing mass market interests - adding celebs and politicians. Another is increasing revenue through sponsored posts, like what Twitter is doing. Allegedly the reason why this admin was fired was because she was against increasing the amount of corporate sponsored/promoted AMAs, and she was more in favour of community friendly content.
- throwaway538779 11y agoHacker News is behaving weirdly with respect to this story: It's been up for 9 hours and has 714 points but is lower on the front page than "What was the technology stack driving the original Ultima Online servers?" which has been up for 18 hours and has less than half (307) the points. What's going on here?
- sentenza 11y agoThis thread reads more like reddit than it does like HN. So probably somebody behind the scenes sent it on its path downwards. Might even be the right thing to do, since the whole situation is far from known and opinions boil over. Who knows.
- DanBC 11y ago"behind the scenes" also includes users who flag. There's a small karma threshold for flagging, so many people are able to do it.
- LiquidFlux 11y agoHave HN admins addressed comments regarding weighting concerns in the past?
- DanBC 11y agoYes, dang sometimes comments about whether posts were demoted by them or by user-flags. I think they prefer people to email these questions?
- kuyfiuyg 11y agoThis is why they should have kept the lisp codebase
- alfiedotwtf 11y ago#RedditRevolt sudo sh -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 http://reddit.com " >> /etc/hosts'
- whizzkid 11y agoI am not sure if this the truth (sounds like it to me) but in that case, I am 100% on Victoria's side. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png:medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI9iYW7VAAAzzJN.png:medium
- PavlovsCat 11y agoI didn't take the FPH drama very seriously, but this looks kinda bad to me, so far. https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3byzzp/admins_have_seized_control_of_rpics_mods_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3byzzp/admins... for extreme irony, compare this https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama_set_to_private_over_mod_firing/csqg24d?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam... with this https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3bz8jp/right_now_admin_ukn0thing_aka_alexis_ohanian/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3bz8jp/right_now_admi... I still don't know what to think of it, and I can't keep up with it either.. but I just hope it gets thoroughly archived and documented on sites other than reddit and imgur. Because while I won't condemn reddit on a whim and call it a bad actor, I also don't find any of this trustworthy at all. I'd even say, unless the /r/pics "takeover" was the "root mod" (or whatever it's called, I never made a subreddit) locking out all other mods, if this was actually admins protecting "their" assets, made by the community, that'd surely be crossing the line for me. As would be paying lip service to mods as to how swell everything will be to get mods to get subs back up, while people with scheduled AMA still don't know how to get in touch with the people Victoria had the contact info for. I don't have a link for the last bit, and it was just a claim by someone anyway (didn't check if they actually were involved with AMA stuff), so don't take my word for it - but that mod mail really does read so fluffy while making no real commitments to anything, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Anyway, I would rather see blacked out subs in support of something I agree with, than active subs that are testament to a shameful episode and state of things. They have my support to black out all the things, for days, weeks and months. For how ever long is necessary. If reddit becomes a place putting effort into again, I'll enjoy it like nothing was ever gone. Otherwise, might as well go out with a bang and some pride. There is infinitely more where reddit came from, and maybe a better site will be born because of all this somewhere down the road. Maybe reddit can reform, but it clearly needs some boundaries, so this blackout has my full support. Enough already, users and communities are not dough to be shaped however one wishes, to be disrespected like helpless dependents. It's a bit like that Fight Club bathroom scene: "We cook your meals, we take care of you when you're sick, and we also make the sites that pay your salary worth visiting. Do not fuck with us." Yeah I know I'm being a bit dramatic, please take this with a grain of salt. It makes me sad rather than angry or indignated. Still, I don't think this is cool, at all. It's just not on.
- sudioStudio64 11y agoThe intense vitriol about Ellen Pao makes me very suspicious of most complaints from vocal redditors. I'm not even really sure why the anti-fem crowd hates her so much. But man...wow. If some of the things that I've read today are to be believed, the firing of this admin was a stupid act. Reddit and several other "web 2.0" companies made it big on "user generated content" which always seemed like it had the potential to turn into a gross corporate overlord milking their user-cow for all it's worth. It seems like there are a lot of valley companies that just want to slap a sticker on your culture and hand it back to you. Or they want to say that the rules don't apply to them because they are so new and communicate with their employees through an app or some other horse shit. In the end, it sounds like this young woman (the admin they fired) did her job well and it sucks when people aren't rewarded for that.
- orbitur 11y agoA large subset of vocal redditors hated Pao the moment she walked through the door. Now everything that happens on her watch is considered evidence of her awfulness. Goes to show you just how powerful the MRA subreddits are. I used to be staunchly "free speech above all", but seeing how blind hatred can fester and spread has filled me with a lot of doubts about us, as a group of humans.
- sudioStudio64 11y agoI'm with you there. A couple of years ago a group of people that I was attracted to due to their professed reliance on reason and scientific method turned out to be virulently anti-female. And then this fringe hatefulness just seems to have pervaded everything...even computing forums that are dedicated to what I thought were relatively dispassionate topics that are quite arcane have had death threats lobbed at people who just have a different opinion. It's fucking weird.
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoAs a long time redditor I think I can help shine some light here. When Yishong Wang left abruptly there was a real pull from the community to bring Alexis back - or if not him then someone who was "from reddit." When Pao was announced the thought was "why is a lawyer taking over?" She reeks of 1%ers which redditors love to bash on when they see one bleeding (not Elon Musk of course). Within just a few months Pao made some major moves that directly impacted reddit staff and could be attributed to her presence - namely eliminating salary negotiations, which caused a big stir. The banning of specific hate-speech subreddits at her direction pushed large segments of the community against her for a variety of reasons - some cause they were just mad they lost a platform and other stating that it was anti-democratic censorship. Her massive public lawsuit, which was panned as frivolous across the web, basically killed any remaining credibility she did have with the community. When she lost the suit it was like fuel to the fire. Now pretty much anything she does is toxic.
- torgoguys 11y ago819 points, 421 comments, 12 hours old and still this is close to the bottom of the front page. Clearly HN users are finding this interesting. I guess I don't understand the HN ranking methodology at all...
- sudioStudio64 11y agoThe people claiming that Reddit needs to be more consistent keep saying that they only censor something when it bubbles up to the top. That's pretty much the only content moderation model that has EVER worked. No one likes it, and it seems hypocritical, but its what the entire internet does. Look at Google. France complains about Nazi related material. They block Nazi material in France. They index massive amounts of porn, and take down individual images that offend people. It's sub-optimal, but it largely works. Now, the thing that has changed is that normal people have started getting a dose of the kind of speech that they consider "hate speech" IRL from sites like Reddit. What they are demanding is that fringe positions remain fringe positions. Something as mainstream as Reddit will not be allowed to serve up red pill/racist/homophobe/far-right content. They will keep doing this stuff until that content goes somewhere else. Maybe that's a good thing...I don't know, but at least having it in one place made it easy to see what crazy people are up to these days. Know your enemy, etc. As for the corporate thing...that's always going to seem schizophrenic...corporations aren't rational people. They make snap decisions that seem reasonable in the moment because they lack functional memories. Fuck em. Want something different? Find a way to spread the cost of running something like Reddit over a larger group of people in a decentralized model. And then get ready for the us vs them to move to "inner circle" vs "outer circle"...
- totalcookie 11y agoThis feels so much like the AOL volunteer revolts from 20years ago. Unpaid people vs. management.
- kzhahou 11y agoEllen Pao has zero trust from the community. A lot of people said this was because Pao is a woman and reddit is sexist. But then explain this reaction to Victoria. Here's a thought: the reddit community despises Pao because Pao is in no way part of the community. She's a bizdev-turned-investor corporate suit who seemingly came out of nowhere to now run the site. She's posted very few times since becoming interim CEO. In fact, only 56 posts. * 3 short messages when her interim-CEO position was announced. * 9 when she posted the new privacy policy. * 8 for Nepal earthquake relief. * 9 posts for the reddit 10-year anniversary. This, to me, is lame. This is a classic senior executive move where they hide in their office all year round and no one has a clue what the fuck they do, if anything, but they emerge just during the victory celebrations. Since becoming interim CEO, she has an average ONE post every five days. One posted message -- not even one submission every five days, which would be meatier. By contrast, Jack Dorsey has an average 5 tweets a day since twitter started. Is there any doubt Dorsey uses his own product? Well, we can see that Ellen does not use the product that she is running (unless she has some anonymous accounts). She made a gaffe recently where she posted a message publicly to a user that was meant to be private -- fair or not, that solidified the narrative that she is not a Reddit user.
- Mahn 11y agoI have no inside information on Reddit management, but as an outsider who's watched reddit grow over the years, I get the impression the core problem with Reddit right now is not Ellen Pao per se. Ellen Pao was brought in as a person to run Reddit as a business and make money and that's exactly what I presume she is trying to do, the issue here is the vision of the company as a whole, the people (investors, shareholders?) who thought Ellen Pao was a necessary and good candidate to be the CEO. Investors, shareholders, founders, etc seem to have a very clear vision of turning Reddit into a money making machine, but no matter how you slice it this is not going to work out well with their community in the long run. It doesn't matter if Ellen Pao or Mark Cuban is the CEO as long their vision stays that way. Not that there is anything wrong with a business wanting to make money, but in my humble opinion, Reddit is a particularly bad candidate for that and would be much better off adopting a non-profit model ala Wikipedia.
- python490 11y agoReddit got "corporate" a long time ago. The lashing back was bound to happen.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]