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Reddit has gone from someone who understood 'The Internet' : “We will not ban questionable subreddits,” Reddit’s CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote in the aftermath of th

by kefka 11y ago

Reddit has gone from someone who understood 'The Internet' : “We will not ban questionable subreddits,” Reddit’s CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote in the aftermath of that catastrophe. “You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere — not because we don’t care, but because we care that you make your choices between right and wrong.” To the current CEO, Ellen Pao: It's not our site's goal to be a completely free-speech platform. We want to be a safe platform and we want to be a platform that also protects privacy at the same time.

alayne 11y ago
Numerous subreddits were closed on Yishan Wong's watch.
- dwmtm 11y ago
  Lip service is the first step.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  As far as I know it was just for stuff that broke the ToS. Not just because they didn't like them.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
geofft 11y ago
Hrm, well, Yishan supports Ellen's recent actions: http://www.quora.com/Reddit-Strengthens-Moderation-Spring-and-Summer-2015/What-does-Yishan-Wong-think-of-Reddits-new-anti-harassment-policy?share=1 http://www.quora.com/Reddit-Strengthens-Moderation-Spring-an...
natrius 11y ago
As someone who loves reddit, this dichotomy is the clearest sign that it has no future. Anyone who values freedom of expression and knows how to program can help build a decentralized reddit that no one controls on top of platforms like IPFS and Ethereum's Swarm. Every attempt at building a reddit clone fails because reddit enjoys tremendous network effects. But decentralization yields its own network effects—you don't have to start your own site to see your changes in the wild, you just fork the codebase and tell people about it. The useful changes thrive, the useless ones are forgotten, and everyone's still contributing to the core stream of submissions, comments, and votes that make the system work regardless of which fork they're using. reddit's competitive advantage isn't their technology, it's their community. Ironically, technology is going to find a way to take that advantage away.
- geofft 11y ago
  I wouldn't say I love Reddit, but I'm certainly an active user. But I'm not subscribed to any of the subreddits that were affected, and I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for this thread. There are lots of little communities that work well, with their own things they value. (There was a particular thread over on /r/OrthodoxChristianity, now removed, that would have been hilarious if it wasn't sad: a member of the community tried to convince everyone else to move to Voat. The usual talking points for that move didn't really go over well there.) I suspect one of the network effects is simply that people have Reddit accounts and know how the site works; it's not yet another site to sign up for, for a small-ish community of people interested in a thing. I think that's the sole reason, for instance, /r/rust works as well as it does; philosophically, the community doesn't align well with Reddit as a whole. I suspect that it's not users of any particular other subreddit (not even /r/programming) who are there, but people already using Reddit for many many other things. It's become one of the bigger discussion forums for the language, especially since the closure of the rust-dev mailing list. If you can build a decentralized Reddit-like system with no per-community account system and also with no spam problem, you may stand a decent chance at replacing it.
  - natrius 11y ago
    I agree with your prerequisites. I think they can be achieved.
  - termain 11y ago
    I'd suggest directed acyclic graph comments, too, so that a comment can reply to more than one other comment. Potentially super nice, but I haven't seen anyone implement them yet.
    - steve-howard 11y ago
      Though I'm sure HN's audience would appreciate it it would be quite hard to get a lot of traction when people think reddit is complicated as it is.
    - leod 11y ago
Shivetya 11y ago
Her wording should be. We want to be a profitable platform and some of you have to go for that to happen. The timing of the iAMA admin's removal coincides all to well with the recent Jesse Jackson AMA that went exactly as AMAs do and not how politicians want things. Most celebrities can handle abuse and such, but there are certain one's and definitely more politicians who will not tolerate it from the rabble. To them they are royalty and damn if they will suffer humiliation, rudeness, or the like, from anyone. So likely we will soon have amusement park reddit, where there is a hint of roughness but everything is policed, scripted, and shadowbans go out like candy on halloween. AMA will likely come back as service to "the important people" Ellen and her like want to associate with to the point all posts will be so filtered it should be renamed "Ask Me Approved Questions"

by kefka 11y ago

alayne 11y ago

Numerous subreddits were closed on Yishan Wong's watch.

dwmtm 11y ago
Lip service is the first step.
Houshalter 11y ago
As far as I know it was just for stuff that broke the ToS. Not just because they didn't like them.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

geofft 11y ago

Hrm, well, Yishan supports Ellen's recent actions: http://www.quora.com/Reddit-Strengthens-Moderation-Spring-and-Summer-2015/What-does-Yishan-Wong-think-of-Reddits-new-anti-harassment-policy?share=1 http://www.quora.com/Reddit-Strengthens-Moderation-Spring-an...

natrius 11y ago

As someone who loves reddit, this dichotomy is the clearest sign that it has no future. Anyone who values freedom of expression and knows how to program can help build a decentralized reddit that no one controls on top of platforms like IPFS and Ethereum's Swarm. Every attempt at building a reddit clone fails because reddit enjoys tremendous network effects. But decentralization yields its own network effects—you don't have to start your own site to see your changes in the wild, you just fork the codebase and tell people about it. The useful changes thrive, the useless ones are forgotten, and everyone's still contributing to the core stream of submissions, comments, and votes that make the system work regardless of which fork they're using. reddit's competitive advantage isn't their technology, it's their community. Ironically, technology is going to find a way to take that advantage away.

geofft 11y ago
I wouldn't say I love Reddit, but I'm certainly an active user. But I'm not subscribed to any of the subreddits that were affected, and I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for this thread. There are lots of little communities that work well, with their own things they value. (There was a particular thread over on /r/OrthodoxChristianity, now removed, that would have been hilarious if it wasn't sad: a member of the community tried to convince everyone else to move to Voat. The usual talking points for that move didn't really go over well there.) I suspect one of the network effects is simply that people have Reddit accounts and know how the site works; it's not yet another site to sign up for, for a small-ish community of people interested in a thing. I think that's the sole reason, for instance, /r/rust works as well as it does; philosophically, the community doesn't align well with Reddit as a whole. I suspect that it's not users of any particular other subreddit (not even /r/programming) who are there, but people already using Reddit for many many other things. It's become one of the bigger discussion forums for the language, especially since the closure of the rust-dev mailing list. If you can build a decentralized Reddit-like system with no per-community account system and also with no spam problem, you may stand a decent chance at replacing it.
- natrius 11y ago
  I agree with your prerequisites. I think they can be achieved.
- termain 11y ago
  I'd suggest directed acyclic graph comments, too, so that a comment can reply to more than one other comment. Potentially super nice, but I haven't seen anyone implement them yet.
  - steve-howard 11y ago
    Though I'm sure HN's audience would appreciate it it would be quite hard to get a lot of traction when people think reddit is complicated as it is.
  - leod 11y ago

Shivetya 11y ago

Her wording should be. We want to be a profitable platform and some of you have to go for that to happen. The timing of the iAMA admin's removal coincides all to well with the recent Jesse Jackson AMA that went exactly as AMAs do and not how politicians want things. Most celebrities can handle abuse and such, but there are certain one's and definitely more politicians who will not tolerate it from the rabble. To them they are royalty and damn if they will suffer humiliation, rudeness, or the like, from anyone. So likely we will soon have amusement park reddit, where there is a hint of roughness but everything is policed, scripted, and shadowbans go out like candy on halloween. AMA will likely come back as service to "the important people" Ellen and her like want to associate with to the point all posts will be so filtered it should be renamed "Ask Me Approved Questions"