Still hate what Reddit has done and avoid using their website. But I've changed my opinion on the viability of their new strategy. I think they'll be just fine. They originally became the go-to...
Still hate what Reddit has done and avoid using their website. But I've changed my opinion on the viability of their new strategy. I think they'll be just fine.
They originally became the go-to place for techies, atheists, gamers, leftists, etc. They had this awesome atmosphere where you could read about a topic, find an actual expert in the comments and casually ask them questions, read brilliant analysis of many topics in a laid back format, chat with others, and top it off with an AskReddit rabbit hole full of interesting responses.
Then it got very popular and quality degraded a bit over the years. The makeup of the site changed and because there were so many eyes there, grifters and corporations took notice. Extreme political views, ads disguised as content, and an influx of people from "the general population" started using the site and treating it like Facebook. We hit a point where you couldn't recognize usernames anymore and there was no sense of community. No expectations on tone or quality either. Remember when redditors would instantly dismiss comments for misspelling words or improper grammar? Not saying it was a good thing but there were definitely expectations around quality in the community overall. That's long gone.
Unfortunately, Reddit has everything it needs to survive now, at least for a good while I think. They lost their power users but they didn't want them anyway. They're creating a social media site that will exist in a niche that's been missing from popular social media.
I think they're making a Frankenstein of all existing social media. Content can be long or short, text or multimedia, high quality or low quality, a place where you can gain a following or stay semi-anonymous. Perhaps like a more in-depth and flexible version of Twitter. Basically, they're doing what they've always done but they're opening their doors to everyone and trying to attract the Tik Tok crowd to a new medium.
I think they'll probably be successful too. New Redditors already don't know what they missed. And they may not have been interested anyway. Reddit probably wanted the dinosaur users to adapt or die. That's just not what they're about anymore.
It took me time to see their vision. They really could create the next big social media craze. They're already huge and the content is already there. They just haven't had their day in the mainstream quite yet. Not like the other social media giants have. I absolutely hate it and won't be a part of it, but I think I get it now and I think it'll work.
Who knows, maybe one positive from this will be that people as a whole move toward a higher-quality form of social media. Not to be elitist about it - I know Twitter and tik tok have their uses and they're not all bad. But as a teacher, I would love to see kids and average people move away from mindless video shorts and toward longer multimedia/text posts. Maybe the "general population" is taking their first big step toward better content and more reading/writing.
It's a minor nitpick, but extremist political views have been on Reddit since the beginning. It used to be one of the extreme free speech venues until the problem communities grew large enough to...
It's a minor nitpick, but extremist political views have been on Reddit since the beginning. It used to be one of the extreme free speech venues until the problem communities grew large enough to spill outside their containment zones regularly.
I overall agree with the thesis of your post about deliberately wanting the legacy users gone. We block ads and think it's funny to link to goatse. They want something for bored teens to scroll that can be stuffed with ads (the trick is that the ads are now higher quality than the organic content).
They've certainly made a social media Frankenstein, but I don't think it's going to be successful to a degree greater than it is already. Reddit started as a link aggregator, a centralized content...
I think they're making a Frankenstein of all existing social media. Content can be long or short, text or multimedia, high quality or low quality, a place where you can gain a following or stay semi-anonymous. Perhaps like a more in-depth and flexible version of Twitter. Basically, they're doing what they've always done but they're opening their doors to everyone and trying to attract the Tik Tok crowd to a new medium.
They've certainly made a social media Frankenstein, but I don't think it's going to be successful to a degree greater than it is already.
Reddit started as a link aggregator, a centralized content discovery platform. It also became a replacement for forums and Google Groups later. Reddit did a great job with both of these things, but with the return of spez wasn't satisfied and started chasing a big social media payout in any direction they could. What's following a user? Why add a chat platform? Why add THREE chat platforms?? It's a Frankenstein all right.
Their app is a disaster. Their admin team has become a disaster. But most of all their leadership has been a disaster. They desperately needed someone to bring focus and vision, like Apple is famous for. Or they needed a Gretzky CEO, who understands that you need to be where the puck is headed, not where it's already been. Or just a boring af pencil pusher who wanted to do a good job running a massive link and forum aggregator that saw the long term value in slowly capturing entire chunks of the Internet.
Not trying to be a jerk, but a handful of your remarks are gatekeeping. If your train of thought is "popular/mainstream = bad," that's elitism. Not being able to recognize usernames everywhere is...
Not trying to be a jerk, but a handful of your remarks are gatekeeping. If your train of thought is "popular/mainstream = bad," that's elitism. Not being able to recognize usernames everywhere is a good thing, as it means there's more diversity. I only bring this up because I don't want tildes to have an artificially limited audience (in terms of varying skill levels, different hobbies/interests, different viewpoints, etc.).
But you make several good points as well. "Ads disguised as content" (AKA astroturfing) is a growing problem for all social media sites. It's hard to tell at first if someone is just passionate about a product, or being paid to push it.
And I think most people saw Reddit's plan to IPO was coming soon immediately when they announced the API changes. I agree that they will be successful, at least for a while. Many people simply don't care about the drama over not being able to use unofficial apps. There's still new content being pushed in a variety of large subreddits. I'm sure some content has been lost, but as long as their numbers look good to investors, they ultimately don't and won't care.
Appreciate the feedback. I suppose my comment does sound elitist and promote a sort of gatekeeping, although I hope readers will know my meaning and intention. Maybe I can clarify. I don't think...
Appreciate the feedback. I suppose my comment does sound elitist and promote a sort of gatekeeping, although I hope readers will know my meaning and intention.
Maybe I can clarify.
I don't think it was bad that Reddit grew or became diverse. But I did notice that Reddit seemed to grow too big, too quickly. It always had low-effort content and a dark side, but as it grew, these things became more than background noise. They eventually ate the site in my opinion.
When I talk about quality of content, I'm talking about effort. And instead of taking ten minutes to give detailed parameters for what that means (ironic considering the my comments on effort, I know), I'll just give a few generalized examples that come to mind:
A well-researched article with sources and a comments section full of healthy debate, expert opinions, clarifying questions, and further reading - this is a high quality, high effort post from all (or most) involved.
A 10 second Tik Tok with jokes or opinions (or alternatively, a garbage news article where a politician "slams" another politician), no sources, and a comments section where you know the top 10 comments/jokes before you even open the thread - this is a low quality, low effort post.
A post where someone is sharing a picture of themselves and asking, "Am I Ugly?" This is the worst type of social media in my opinion and it's likely unhealthy and toxic for every single person involved. You may have even seen comments I've made before on Tildes about these types of subreddits. I hate them so much that they're my go-to for when I need an example of horrible content.
There is room for the top two in varying amounts I think. But once I saw the lower two types showing up 20-30 times for every 1 time I saw the first type, I knew Reddit was long gone.
Maybe that's elitist of me but I think there is something to be said for it.
I'll add that username recognition isn't required for a good social media site. Just saying that there was a time when you could recognize some popular users on Reddit and I associate those days with better times for the website.
I welcome the opposing opinions and there is probably some merit to what you're saying. I just personally think the signal to noise ratio on Tildes is significantly better. Very little drama,...
I welcome the opposing opinions and there is probably some merit to what you're saying. I just personally think the signal to noise ratio on Tildes is significantly better.
Very little drama, name-calling is promptly removed, you can always find a substantive story or at least an interesting discussion on the front page, and you never see a thread where the top 20 comments are the same predictable jokes (some of which are even repeated verbatim in that top 20).
It's not perfect here. I myself have posted some things that I find to be basically garbage in retrospect. But my first Reddit account is from 2009 and I lurked there before that even. I saw a lot of pretty substantial shifts over those years and Tildes captures some of the aspects I used to love about old Reddit.
For memes and niche interests you either have to go to Reddit or the Fediverse unfortunately. But Tildes is a nice place to escape all the negativity and hostility on other social media sites. .
I think the exemplary tag and the joke and noise tags do a lot to encourage mindful and discourage mindless content. But it's on us to do better and reward excellence when we see it here
I think the exemplary tag and the joke and noise tags do a lot to encourage mindful and discourage mindless content.
But it's on us to do better and reward excellence when we see it here
Yeah, that's my opinion. I refused to use it despite having an account there for over 3 years before I really did become active. And I loved that it became that go-to place, though you point out...
Still hate what Reddit has done and avoid using their website. But I've changed my opinion on the viability of their new strategy. I think they'll be just fine.
Yeah, that's my opinion. I refused to use it despite having an account there for over 3 years before I really did become active. And I loved that it became that go-to place, though you point out the aspects I avoided: politics and opinions.
And that's why I loved it. But even at that, I finally "quit" it by just having the /~/crossstitch sub as my reddit homepage. Was a bunch of folks complimenting each other and making me feel like the internet wasn't a complete horrorshow.
Then when the shit hit the fan last year, I was able to drop off. Had an online Discord friend tell me about Tildes, and I haven't been back on Reddit since (aside from searches and the one time I did log in to check... I dunno what.)
Look me up if you want, I wasI shouldn't post this, right?... I'm fine with wishing it'd crash and burn but there are too many idiots out there that will prevent it. Just like FB/meta, etc...
The fact the term "reddiquette" disappeared was a bit of a hint, in hindsight.
No expectations on tone or quality either. Remember when redditors would instantly dismiss comments for misspelling words or improper grammar? Not saying it was a good thing but there were definitely expectations around quality in the community overall. That's long gone.
The fact the term "reddiquette" disappeared was a bit of a hint, in hindsight.
While I'm sure there were several bad choices by Reddit around that time, I think the actual reason was that the market was flooded with tech IPOs, and SPACs came to the forefront, during the...
While I'm sure there were several bad choices by Reddit around that time, I think the actual reason was that the market was flooded with tech IPOs, and SPACs came to the forefront, during the pandemic. Businesses hadn't done their due diligence in figuring out how tech-related companies would actually remain profitable and after a number of IPO-listing bubbles burst, even the most bullish bandwagon investment firms started pulling back on hyping these new listings.
In 2021 we saw a number of tech-related and tech-adjacent companies, including Robinhood, file for an IPO either as a direct listing or using a SPAC. By December of that year CNBC posted an article saying that 49 of 50 tech IPOs were in bear market territory by some metrics. Global Foundries, the spin-off semiconductor manufacturer that had belonged to AMD, was the only one that wasn't. And it was down 20% from its highest high. Robinhood was down 75% from its highest high (in part because of what I believe was a deliberate pump-and-dump and also because in 2021 people were shorting the stock due to the company's drama over independently stopping trades of GameStop).
IPO deal proceeds plummeted 94% in 2022, according to Ernst & Young’s IPO report published in mid-December [2022].
Not a single tech deal raised $1 billion [in 2022], after 15 IPOs raised at least that much in 2021, according to FactSet.
So I think that Reddit probably pulled out of negotiations because they saw that, in light of reversals of assumed profitability of anything tech, they were going to have their initial valuation get hammered right out of the door and it would be an uphill battle from there.
I think that Spez isn't under any illusions about the foundations of the empire he sits on. He just wants an exit strategy that's going to give him enough collateral that when the board replaces him he's able to sell his stock at a good price and buy a small shitty island on which to enjoy his delusions of grandeur. Or maybe sell off enough that he still has a seat but can be the multi-millionaire absentee board member he's always aspired to.
Reddit was pretty much the closest that was there to had to a true user driven information repository and public forum. And then they completely obliterated the social contract that had kept them...
Reddit was pretty much the closest that was there to had to a true user driven information repository and public forum.
And then they completely obliterated the social contract that had kept them going for the one and half decade. I guess I have no idea how it all shakes out. Given the possibility of ai moderation, of the shift in the reddit userbase and the lack of clear competitor they may or may not keep going.
The reddit that had any actual value is still not completely dead yet given the inertia and the archived information but that shift was there for a better part of a decade and the IPO will finish it once and for all.
It would be nice to again have actual forums with actually knowledgeable people about the topic aside from the few still going and the federated platforms may actually substitute them somewhat or more will be started now but discovery is a massive problem.
I guess I could rant a bit about addictive design elements and engagement maximalization and how ad based monetization destroyed useful internet(thanks the originally useful search engine running a comparison study I guess, though it may have got as bad anyway) but eh. Ads are likely(especially combined with the profiling) the most expensive possible internet monetization element for the user but cost is hidden so they took of and then got out of control.
IMO it’ll do good, more TikTok generation are frequenting Reddit, which directly affects content but no one cares about that at this point. Idk if you have been lately on Reddit, it has completely...
IMO it’ll do good, more TikTok generation are frequenting Reddit, which directly affects content but no one cares about that at this point. Idk if you have been lately on Reddit, it has completely changed and what they did with award system is so bland and distasteful.
I hope they burn. I am just utterly fed up with the enshittification model. It's an abhorrent practice. I basically don't use the internet any more, aside from this site on occasion, and ChatGPT....
I hope they burn. I am just utterly fed up with the enshittification model. It's an abhorrent practice.
I basically don't use the internet any more, aside from this site on occasion, and ChatGPT. That's it. Virtually everything has become an ad-pushing Data-mining nightmare that literally ruins mental health.
If I told my 20 year old self I would grow to essentially hate the internet, I never would have believed it in a million years. It is just so disheartening.
This is off-topic, but I didn’t feel like it needed a whole post to itself and it fits in well here: has anyone else started getting a block page from reddit when they have their VPN on?
This is off-topic, but I didn’t feel like it needed a whole post to itself and it fits in well here: has anyone else started getting a block page from reddit when they have their VPN on?
Yeah. The “whoa there partner” screen occurs randomly (?). I rarely visit but when I do it’s with the “old.” prefix. I think the block comes up when clicking a link in a post which may redirect to...
Yeah. The “whoa there partner” screen occurs randomly (?). I rarely visit but when I do it’s with the “old.” prefix. I think the block comes up when clicking a link in a post which may redirect to the “new” site, maybe? When it happens I don’t really take note of what’s going on because I really don’t care and move on. 😆
I try to exclusively use old.reddit as well and I want to say that I’ve been hit with the block page with those as well, but I haven’t done extensive testing. The block pages started a few weeks...
I try to exclusively use old.reddit as well and I want to say that I’ve been hit with the block page with those as well, but I haven’t done extensive testing.
The block pages started a few weeks ago, and the quickest workaround has been just to turn off my VPN (not a practice I want to get used to).
Next time it happens I might experiment with various logged-in states, old/new reddit, and VPNs to see if I can narrow what signal is triggering the block.
I assume it’s either due to fears of webscraping for AI training, or because they can use real IP addresses for ad monetization. Regardless, it’s degrading my experience and making me want to use reddit even less than I already am, but it’s hard when troubleshooting software problems and reddit has the only relevant discussion for a problem.
So I got hit with the “pardner” block again and did some testing. It appears it’s primarily based on a shared IP getting blocked on “new” Reddit (www subdomain). Using old.reddit will avert the...
So I got hit with the “pardner” block again and did some testing. It appears it’s primarily based on a shared IP getting blocked on “new” Reddit (www subdomain). Using old.reddit will avert the block page, and I assume most search engines are serving the www subdomain. Logging in will also avoid future blocks (but not save the IP block if not logged in).
Curiously, switching VPNs also got me around the block. My guess is that it was due to large amount of traffic coming from a shared IP passing some automated threshold at the load balancer. Not quite as spicy as some scheme to track raw IP addresses for advertising purposes, which I guess is a good thing.
I’m not going to move off my preferred VPN over it, just make sure I’m using old Reddit.
Thanks for the update! That makes total sense. Definitely a bad omen for old reddit though, given that they’re not even bothering to apply the same anti-scraping rules to it. The writing was on...
Thanks for the update!
That makes total sense. Definitely a bad omen for old reddit though, given that they’re not even bothering to apply the same anti-scraping rules to it. The writing was on the wall anyway, I suppose…
I worked for a tech company that considered dozens of start-up partnership proposals a year. The team that managed that was required to call in every available person from client execs to QAs just...
Exemplary
I worked for a tech company that considered dozens of start-up partnership proposals a year. The team that managed that was required to call in every available person from client execs to QAs just to do sense checks on the applicants. There were quite a few prospective "[reddit/twitter/youtube/Facebook]-killer startups" and the revenue plans often looked somthing:
"We expect x-million page visits a day. We have (x * y) ad-impressions per page and generate approximately $(xyZ) per page view. We also have the long term demographic data of our millions of users and based on community engagement and sentiment modeling, a broker can compline comprehensive user profile and by extension a strategic marketing/engagement plan (this often includes hints towards political, HR and security use cases). We can also use incidental browsing data from consumer advice and brand/product spesific views/posts to instantaneously deploy targeted marketing campaigns at a premium rate."
At that time there was aways an unrelated mention of the current flavor of the month (cloud, big data, web 3.0, blockchain) but I'm sure right now reddit has a very good case for (and probably building thier own) large data models and training sets. They also substantially increased API costs/features, which has driven off many power users but could prove profitable with parties that are willing to pay the price.
The make or break is always the costing and that often comes down to a few slides with generous, perfect-world estimations and lump sums that are "negligible at scale". And in reddits case they chose to take on a substantial image/video hosting load (probably related to that data model) and have invested heavily in a mobile/2.0 experience to compete with instagram(?) that is openly rejected by most dedicated users (but it does provide higher screen% ad space).
There's also the question of compliance and administration. EU is the biggest concern with GDPR and I'm curious what a comprehensive data audit would turn up. But the elephant in the room is moderation. What would a serious investor say to a company where the entier product is produced and managed by unpaid volunteers. "Low labor cost" is the first thought but consider the risk exposure. There is no screening, contract or code of conduct. Moderation teams are managed by tools that are inadequate (many of which were stripped away) and largely arbitrary controls. Moderators are often at odds with the administrators and control of massive subs can change with zero oversite and accountability.
There has been plenty of high profile incidents within the user base but I think being in a user in a small subset blinds people to the scale the site is operating at. Entire communities can be infiltrated and influenced by companies (I remember a particularly devious McDonald's campaign that pushed subtle ads to the top of multiple top subs) or third parties almost on a whim. Peoples relationships, livelyhoods, government and world view can be swayed by what they see on reddit on a regular basis. How long before it's front page news. "compromised mod accounts flood popular subs with CP for an hours before admins respond", "photos and home addresses of several hundred people posted to r/pics", "reddit mod and family found murdered in home."
When I started a decade ago, I'd say this was an impossibility. But right now there's a growing sense of radical negativeity around the site. More ragebait AITAH, more angry R/conservative, the very 'odd' shaping of conflict discussions (seriously every Israeli/Palestinian feels really fishy), the grown sense communal nihilism. I'm really glad I got off when I did.
Well this was a fun fever rant. I'm taking my meds and going to bed.
yeah it's not anything particularly groundbreaking. Would probably provide reddit at least marginal protection in a lawsuit based on the behavior of a mod, though, which is likely why it exists.
yeah it's not anything particularly groundbreaking. Would probably provide reddit at least marginal protection in a lawsuit based on the behavior of a mod, though, which is likely why it exists.
They don't actually enforce it, nor do the admin abide by it. My account was banned for Ban Evasion, which I did do, so I was okay with the 7 day ban. Then a few days later, they banned me another...
They don't actually enforce it, nor do the admin abide by it.
My account was banned for Ban Evasion, which I did do, so I was okay with the 7 day ban. Then a few days later, they banned me another 7 days for the same thing even though I didn't even use reddit at all during that time. I sent an appeal and they said they wouldn't remove my ban. Whatever, I'll wait 7 days.
Then 2 days later, they perm banned my account, all for once incident. They refuse to remove bans, or even reply to ban appeals. Users get banned for reporting content to mods, mods get banned for replying to mod mail. Reddit the company has become increasingly negative towards mods, and so have the users.
As useless as some reddit moderators are, at least they (mostly) care about their communities. If you ever have to deal with reddit admin, you see how bad reddit would be without moderators. Hell,...
As useless as some reddit moderators are, at least they (mostly) care about their communities. If you ever have to deal with reddit admin, you see how bad reddit would be without moderators.
Hell, the process of reporting things on reddit is usually the best out of all of the main social media sites I use. Facebook reporting is worthless, I don't think a single thing I've ever reported has ever been removed. Instagram reporting is better than Facebook, but they hand out automatic bans based on keywords, even if those words are used appropriately. I'm not sure anything that I've reported on threads has ever been removed either now that I think about.
That, in my opinion, is what made reddit nice. People who are actually cultivating their communities. Planting seeds, pulling weeds. But reddit, in their attempt to be like every other social media site, wanted to shit all over the moderators who actually keep their site from becoming boomer-infested Facebook. I still miss reddit some time, but I spend far less time on the internet now compared to this time last year, so it's probably for the best.
oh yeah it's absolutely perfunctory. I used to mod a small subreddit (once had a user threaten to cut out our tongues, that was fun!) and the admins were 100% useless
oh yeah it's absolutely perfunctory. I used to mod a small subreddit (once had a user threaten to cut out our tongues, that was fun!) and the admins were 100% useless
That's how I feel old.reddit powerusers are in. Even the janitors of million-subscriber subreddits misunderestimate the scale. Does anyone else remember /r/jailbait and The Fappenning? Close...
I think being in a user in a small subset blinds people to the scale the site is operating at
That's how I feel old.reddit powerusers are in. Even the janitors of million-subscriber subreddits misunderestimate the scale.
How long before it's front page news. "compromised mod accounts flood popular subs with CP for an hours before admins respond", "photos and home addresses of several hundred people posted to r/pics"
Does anyone else remember /r/jailbait and The Fappenning? Close analogs of those already happened over 10 years ago.
For that matter, remember back when there was /r/nword (plural, hard r; probably singular as well)?
I want to circle back to your point on scale and stochastic violence. 2012 Reddit had far more extreme extremist rhetoric. However, since it was presented as slurs which I will not repeat on this polite forum, it was the same fourteen hundred eighty-eight losers shouting FBI crime stats and Stormfront quotations to one another [thankfully, /r/stormfront was squatted by meteorology photographers before the neo-Nazis reached it]. If you weren't already that full of hate, any right-thinking person would be put off by such blatant hate spam and leave—hopefully inoculated against those ideas due to their presentation.
Several rounds of "cleanup" later, the rhetoric is less slur-filled, yet the likelihood of stochastic violence is at an all-time high. I attribute that to two factors:
If the likelihood someone is inspired to commit real-world violence by extremist rhetoric is 1 in 55,000 [picking some number that assumes they're already deep in the rabbit hole], it's unlikely that a gathering of 1488 online Nazis will spill into the real world. However, if there are 6.6 million subscribers—even at a 1 in 2 million chance of someone reading into a possible dog whistle, that's an expectation value of three attempted spillovers.
All the various "cleanups" sanitized the language, thus making it easier for the unaware to fall into the recruitment funnel by pushing the end result offsite. It seems to have had the side effect of spreading hateful rhetoric from being concentrated in hellholes into being mildly distributed throughout any popular sub. As you said, "an angrier /r/conservative." It used to be that /r/conservative and /r/The_Donald HATED each other. Conservatives hated MAGA for being fake conservatives; T_D mocked the boomer conservacucks. Now we're stuck with an awful fusion.
My time on reddit is precisely why I take such a cynical view on companies who take a public stand about the necessity of deplatforming.
It's never "just" the denazification they promised. Often, they do also sweep up the trash like /r/jailbait and /r/sexwithdogs—absolutely should be removed, but not Nazis. However, they also use it as a time to be rid of advertizer-unfriendly fun zones. For example, the entire point of /r/PicsOfHorseDicks was to bait the curious into clicking the link because "that's way too messed up to be, dude," and then make fun of them for being horrified that it contained exactly what it warned them it would showcase. Good for building communal lore; horrid for new user retention and reputational risk; not actively harmful to the outside world the way CP, white supremacy, racial separatism, and zoophilia are.
Now that knowledge of dog whistles is in the public consciousness, it destroys a pillar of good-faith discussion. This leads to people, especially those with a tenuous connection to reality, self-radicalizing because they assume benign speech is a dog whistle as well as overzealous Nazi hunters causing problems for normies who use unfortunate phrasing.
EDIT:
AITA has always been a creative writing community. When do you think it started getting angrier and how much worse do you feel it is than before?
Not who you're asking directly, and I avoid that subreddit so I can't answer it specifically, but even if the subreddit specifically hasn't gotten angrier, that's just because it was always rage...
AITA has always been a creative writing community. When do you think it started getting angrier and how much worse do you feel it is than before?
Not who you're asking directly, and I avoid that subreddit so I can't answer it specifically, but even if the subreddit specifically hasn't gotten angrier, that's just because it was always rage bait, and the bigger problem is that the rage porn subreddits have been getting bigger and bigger for years now. So even if one subreddit hasn't changed, it has changed other subreddits and led to innumerable similar subreddits.
So last things first, I did mean the actual AmITheAsshole sub but the were a few times when something popped up and I could not tell the difference. The 2 examples that come to mind recently is...
So last things first, I did mean the actual AmITheAsshole sub but the were a few times when something popped up and I could not tell the difference. The 2 examples that come to mind recently is someone not wanting a handicapped relative stealing her wedding spotlight and someone constantly reminding their family how the stepsister ruined everyone's future. Each story has reasonable explanations but ragebaiting is a solid engagement strategy and it's own issue.
But with that sub in particular, it's not in the inflammatory and outrageous posters of AITAH, but rather the situations people find and put themselves in. Its concerning that so many people are in relatively benign situations but feel pushed to a point that they cant/wont even consider compromise or lasting consequences. Yes there are times when it is completely justified but there's often a long term cost to the catharsis of getting your way. Maybe it's just my personal social values, but being 'technically in the right' is not worth ruining relationships or my reputation. To paraphrase a post that sticks with me: "It doesn't really matter if you convinced 5000 internet strangers that you're not an asshole, especially if every person in your real life thinks you are."
Anyways, I largely agree with your point of over sanitized speech. It is an idea I've been discussing for a while and my best friend maintains that unmoderated comms was the best social development tool. You learn to filter out all the trash and make meaningful connections with whomever is left. I tend to agree, especially when I see online discussion dance around bannable words and try to stay "ad-friendly".
There's just so much wrong with having online social etiquette be dictated by the requirements of advertisements. And the worst part is that they don't actually care about a truly healthy ecosystem, just the appearance of one. So much harmless humor and character was wiped off the web while literal nazis and sex traffickers are free to refine their message and prosper because they don't directly break ToS (they're not assholes because they're technically in the right). It's like every website is a chuk-e-cheese, but some have Hitler and Tate animatronics teaching you about how the world was better when things were in the right order. Maybe it's not as obvious as I think it is and the only time to take action is after we mess up the morality of a generation.
And to your point of those big leaks and stories that happened: I don't usually like voicing my concerns, mostly because I'd sound lake an alarmist conspiracy nut. So please feel free to dismiss this take. But for a while I can't shake the feeling that social media puts un on the knifes edge of a truly catastrophic cultural event. Far bigger than some leaked nudes or Intel docs on a Minecraft server.
These sites are being pumped with ungodly amounts of data, managed by algorithms I think no one truly understands and creates a shadow reality that maximizes engagement by representing a world that aligns with your intuition. And now with data models trained and equipped exactly what you want, you can have the world exactly as you see it. Generate art that isn't held back by wokeness and the inclusiveity quotas of California, get the perfect girlfriend that meets traditional standards, talk to a therapist that really sees thing from your point of view.
I've been to the seedier ai hubs and it's wild. People celebrating politicians hanging from the gallows, powerful and prominent women being 'put in their place', parents, schoolmates, random profile pictures. I said in a previous post that one think what tampered the shock of 9/11 in our community was the fact that we still needed to go outside and deal with the real world. But after the pandemic, there's been this change in people that I can't put my finger on. I don't know if it's main character syndrome or social dissociation or people just being their authentic selves with no filter. But their is just an air of society building up to... something.
Exactly. Sending your classmates to Last Measure may still count as sexual harassment under some jurisdictions, but it's roughly zero harm at the societal level. If I were in charge of a social...
So much harmless humor and character was wiped off the web while literal nazis and sex traffickers are free to refine their message and prosper because they don't directly break ToS
Exactly. Sending your classmates to Last Measure may still count as sexual harassment under some jurisdictions, but it's roughly zero harm at the societal level.
If I were in charge of a social media policy, calls for violence to any individual, doxxing, and calls for genocide would be strictly banned. However, the genocide talk would fall to the bottom of the ban queue in favor the doxxing and violence against individuals tickets. Slurs and generally being an edgy bigoted ass would be tolerated so long as they stay within their respective containment boards. Once the slurs spill out, they're banned (at least for a few months).
Generate art that isn't held back by wokeness and the inclusivity quotas of California
As I'm sure you've seen this is a major complaint about corporate AI art raised in the seedier AI communities.
The appeal is probably that they have one of the biggest social media platforms where you can disguise your advertising and brand building as relatively organic looking. And while yes the quality...
The appeal is probably that they have one of the biggest social media platforms where you can disguise your advertising and brand building as relatively organic looking. And while yes the quality is undeniably decline... well that was just inevitable to make the site more brand friendly.
The people of Tildes are a rarity. Sure, we're engaged and many of us came here following the Reddit exodus, but most people simple do not know and do not care. I have one friend that also posts...
The people of Tildes are a rarity. Sure, we're engaged and many of us came here following the Reddit exodus, but most people simple do not know and do not care. I have one friend that also posts on Tildes and cares about all the Reddit garbage going on (sup, friend.), but I know many more people in life that don't care, didn't notice or just aren't engaged and still regularly browse, sending me links from reddit or telling me about something they saw on there, with some regularity.
Wouldn't this really be true of any social media? The platforms simple provide the space and some tools. It's the users who do the interesting stuff with it all. Not that Tildes is looking for an...
The users produce all the content and mod the website.
Wouldn't this really be true of any social media? The platforms simple provide the space and some tools. It's the users who do the interesting stuff with it all. Not that Tildes is looking for an IPO (Deimos...? 👀), but Tildes wouldn't even be half as interesting without all of you. I know some like Twitter weren't profitable (or barely profitable), but FB and YouTube, I think are pretty profitable.
Though I also get that reddit is basically just a gigantic forum. Even in 2005, when reddit started, that wasn't exactly a novel concept on the Internet, considering the history of forums, Usenet, and BBSs. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, and many others at least had concepts that, at the time, were largely new or different enough from past social Internet concepts. We saw what happened with Digg. And obviously there are somewhat decent enough replacements for reddit like the Lemmyverse, and of course, the plethora of forums that have existed and continue to exist. So maybe that is a bit different.
I do think reddit users' overall angst towards ads and monetization, more so than on other platforms, will hurt reddit inc's prospects at generating revenue. Probably already does. In addition, reddit is unique among the big platforms in that the vast majority of users are anonymous. Screennames, instead of real names, are the norm. I know nothing about advertising and building user/customer profiles and aggregated data. But I have to think that anonymity makes that a little harder than on Facebook or Twitter, where real names are the norm. Plus on those sites, especially FB, users give all sorts of information: age/birthday, location, interests, social networks, and more. Reddit doesn't collect any of that. You don't even need an email to register an account, which is why throwaways are so common. Without that, is it that easy to still build user data that can be monetized?
I think Steve Huffman claimed before that it was actually an advantage for reddit. They have data on users that people feel more comfortable sharing under the guise of anonymity than they do on...
Without that, is it that easy to still build user data that can be monetized?
I think Steve Huffman claimed before that it was actually an advantage for reddit. They have data on users that people feel more comfortable sharing under the guise of anonymity than they do on other platforms without that anonymity.
I had a chance to interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman at our conference last week, which was interesting and a lot of fun. And when I asked Steve about monetization, or simply ‘making money’ he replied with what I thought was just a funny statement:
We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook – we know your dark secrets, we know everything…
Reddit now asks you, fairly aggressively I'll add, if you want to log in using your Google address. They're pushing towards real names behind the screen names. So you can already see that it's a...
Reddit now asks you, fairly aggressively I'll add, if you want to log in using your Google address. They're pushing towards real names behind the screen names. So you can already see that it's a problem they're trying to solve.
Anonymity protects people from bad behavior targeted against them more than it enables bad behavior. We've had many years of examples of how a real name being associated with an account doesn't...
Anonymity protects people from bad behavior targeted against them more than it enables bad behavior. We've had many years of examples of how a real name being associated with an account doesn't prevent people from being actual Nazis, harassing people, or self-documenting crimes they committed. The larger social media sites, such as Meta products, all have attached names.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to directly put my real life identity out there in Reddit threads. That's just inviting more harassment and stalking.
I believe that's exactly why they're actively seeking to drive their long-term power users out. Replace us with advertising naive zoomers on official phone apps.
I do think reddit users' overall angst towards ads and monetization, more so than on other platforms, will hurt reddit inc's prospects at generating revenue.
I believe that's exactly why they're actively seeking to drive their long-term power users out. Replace us with advertising naive zoomers on official phone apps.
Neither here nor there, but in the last year or two, it was surprising to see how many people on reddit had no idea that there was a desktop site, because they arrived on mobile, via the official...
Neither here nor there, but in the last year or two, it was surprising to see how many people on reddit had no idea that there was a desktop site, because they arrived on mobile, via the official app, and only accessed it via the app.
I could understand people not knowing old reddit, since old reddit users are a tiny minority and have been for quite a while now. And admins rarely say anything about old reddit. As an aside, that often surprises old reddit users; they often still think they're a sizable chunk. "Anecdatally," based on the stats in my main sub, us old reddit users are anything but!
But coming across people not knowing about the desktop site was mindblowing. Yet they - as mobile users -are the majority! It's almost like that standing vs sitting while using the toilet thing. Each group exists, but most don't know that other groups exists. We all just assume everyone uses reddit like each of us does.
Reddit is changing for sure. But as someone who joined the site in my early 20s and is more or less still on in my mid/late 30s, a part of me wonders if it's a bit "old man yelling at the clouds.," and complaining about the Eternal September. Idk. I'm not old, but I'm certainly outside of reddit's main age demo and have been for a while. We've all changed and re-made reddit over the years; it's not surprising that a new generation is doing the same. If that's what they want, and that's what reddit inc. wants, well, whatever. If reddit is the next imgur or 9gag, so be it. I just won't mod anymore. And I pretty much don't; I'm a MINO: Mod-in-name-only =P
Blanket statements need not apply (as usual with most topics). I’m a zoomer (I think?) after all and despite looking like a fairly normie user, am stacked up in terms of ad-blocking, privacy...
Blanket statements need not apply (as usual with most topics).
I’m a zoomer (I think?) after all and despite looking like a fairly normie user, am stacked up in terms of ad-blocking, privacy protection, etc. – and of course knowing what a file system is and that you can structure data in directories (; much unlike others in my peer group, as has been previously posted and discussed here.
I used Reddit very intensively up until the API shutoff mid last year. Mostly through Apollo (still the best iOS app ever made), and sometimes desktop with browser extensions/aforementioned adblockers. Nowadays I avoid it like the plague, if an answer is only available there I’ll make the visit as short as possible, logged-out on old.reddit.
I for one like the small web, a lot. Of course I am aware I’m probably, unfortunately, in the minority with that sentiment, though.
If it weren’t for the administrative effort, I’d probably consider again opening up a Mastodon instance which I could sell my friends as a “private group Snapchat” alternative for shitposts/memes and such.
If you do find a good answer there, don't forget to submit the post/page to archive.org. The last wave of account deletions has made some of those posts useless. It's also a way to share the...
If you do find a good answer there, don't forget to submit the post/page to archive.org. The last wave of account deletions has made some of those posts useless. It's also a way to share the content without sending any ad revenue to the company.
Not uniquely so. Gen X has even better online savvy than Millennials. Who else were the ones to trick their annoying younger cousins into opening Lemon Party dot org?
Not uniquely so. Gen X has even better online savvy than Millennials. Who else were the ones to trick their annoying younger cousins into opening Lemon Party dot org?
They might not be able to do the personalized advertising at the level Facebook does, but it seems pretty easy to just serve specific ads in specific subreddits or just based on certain keywords...
They might not be able to do the personalized advertising at the level Facebook does, but it seems pretty easy to just serve specific ads in specific subreddits or just based on certain keywords in the discussions.
I think it is pretty normal that some users do not want ads at all. You shouldn't expect that the road to success for fb means that all social media could do the same. Each such platform has a...
I think it is pretty normal that some users do not want ads at all. You shouldn't expect that the road to success for fb means that all social media could do the same.
Each such platform has a different userbase with specific needs and wants. I for one can't stomach adds in a forum I follow regularly. Which is why I am pretty happy to be here in tildes.
Reddit userbase is likely transforming to something different than what it once was.
Parts of Reddit could already be AI generated. GPT-3 has existed for a lot longer than the shiny chat interface existed to put it on the public's radar, and there's already a ton of rehashed...
Parts of Reddit could already be AI generated. GPT-3 has existed for a lot longer than the shiny chat interface existed to put it on the public's radar, and there's already a ton of rehashed threads copied wholesale by bots. Having an LLM automatically argue with people doesn't seem like a stretch.
Still hate what Reddit has done and avoid using their website. But I've changed my opinion on the viability of their new strategy. I think they'll be just fine.
They originally became the go-to place for techies, atheists, gamers, leftists, etc. They had this awesome atmosphere where you could read about a topic, find an actual expert in the comments and casually ask them questions, read brilliant analysis of many topics in a laid back format, chat with others, and top it off with an AskReddit rabbit hole full of interesting responses.
Then it got very popular and quality degraded a bit over the years. The makeup of the site changed and because there were so many eyes there, grifters and corporations took notice. Extreme political views, ads disguised as content, and an influx of people from "the general population" started using the site and treating it like Facebook. We hit a point where you couldn't recognize usernames anymore and there was no sense of community. No expectations on tone or quality either. Remember when redditors would instantly dismiss comments for misspelling words or improper grammar? Not saying it was a good thing but there were definitely expectations around quality in the community overall. That's long gone.
Unfortunately, Reddit has everything it needs to survive now, at least for a good while I think. They lost their power users but they didn't want them anyway. They're creating a social media site that will exist in a niche that's been missing from popular social media.
I think they're making a Frankenstein of all existing social media. Content can be long or short, text or multimedia, high quality or low quality, a place where you can gain a following or stay semi-anonymous. Perhaps like a more in-depth and flexible version of Twitter. Basically, they're doing what they've always done but they're opening their doors to everyone and trying to attract the Tik Tok crowd to a new medium.
I think they'll probably be successful too. New Redditors already don't know what they missed. And they may not have been interested anyway. Reddit probably wanted the dinosaur users to adapt or die. That's just not what they're about anymore.
It took me time to see their vision. They really could create the next big social media craze. They're already huge and the content is already there. They just haven't had their day in the mainstream quite yet. Not like the other social media giants have. I absolutely hate it and won't be a part of it, but I think I get it now and I think it'll work.
Who knows, maybe one positive from this will be that people as a whole move toward a higher-quality form of social media. Not to be elitist about it - I know Twitter and tik tok have their uses and they're not all bad. But as a teacher, I would love to see kids and average people move away from mindless video shorts and toward longer multimedia/text posts. Maybe the "general population" is taking their first big step toward better content and more reading/writing.
It's a minor nitpick, but extremist political views have been on Reddit since the beginning. It used to be one of the extreme free speech venues until the problem communities grew large enough to spill outside their containment zones regularly.
I overall agree with the thesis of your post about deliberately wanting the legacy users gone. We block ads and think it's funny to link to goatse. They want something for bored teens to scroll that can be stuffed with ads (the trick is that the ads are now higher quality than the organic content).
They've certainly made a social media Frankenstein, but I don't think it's going to be successful to a degree greater than it is already.
Reddit started as a link aggregator, a centralized content discovery platform. It also became a replacement for forums and Google Groups later. Reddit did a great job with both of these things, but with the return of spez wasn't satisfied and started chasing a big social media payout in any direction they could. What's following a user? Why add a chat platform? Why add THREE chat platforms?? It's a Frankenstein all right.
Their app is a disaster. Their admin team has become a disaster. But most of all their leadership has been a disaster. They desperately needed someone to bring focus and vision, like Apple is famous for. Or they needed a Gretzky CEO, who understands that you need to be where the puck is headed, not where it's already been. Or just a boring af pencil pusher who wanted to do a good job running a massive link and forum aggregator that saw the long term value in slowly capturing entire chunks of the Internet.
Instead they brought back spez.
Not trying to be a jerk, but a handful of your remarks are gatekeeping. If your train of thought is "popular/mainstream = bad," that's elitism. Not being able to recognize usernames everywhere is a good thing, as it means there's more diversity. I only bring this up because I don't want tildes to have an artificially limited audience (in terms of varying skill levels, different hobbies/interests, different viewpoints, etc.).
But you make several good points as well. "Ads disguised as content" (AKA astroturfing) is a growing problem for all social media sites. It's hard to tell at first if someone is just passionate about a product, or being paid to push it.
And I think most people saw Reddit's plan to IPO was coming soon immediately when they announced the API changes. I agree that they will be successful, at least for a while. Many people simply don't care about the drama over not being able to use unofficial apps. There's still new content being pushed in a variety of large subreddits. I'm sure some content has been lost, but as long as their numbers look good to investors, they ultimately don't and won't care.
Appreciate the feedback. I suppose my comment does sound elitist and promote a sort of gatekeeping, although I hope readers will know my meaning and intention.
Maybe I can clarify.
I don't think it was bad that Reddit grew or became diverse. But I did notice that Reddit seemed to grow too big, too quickly. It always had low-effort content and a dark side, but as it grew, these things became more than background noise. They eventually ate the site in my opinion.
When I talk about quality of content, I'm talking about effort. And instead of taking ten minutes to give detailed parameters for what that means (ironic considering the my comments on effort, I know), I'll just give a few generalized examples that come to mind:
A well-researched article with sources and a comments section full of healthy debate, expert opinions, clarifying questions, and further reading - this is a high quality, high effort post from all (or most) involved.
A 10 second Tik Tok with jokes or opinions (or alternatively, a garbage news article where a politician "slams" another politician), no sources, and a comments section where you know the top 10 comments/jokes before you even open the thread - this is a low quality, low effort post.
A post where someone is sharing a picture of themselves and asking, "Am I Ugly?" This is the worst type of social media in my opinion and it's likely unhealthy and toxic for every single person involved. You may have even seen comments I've made before on Tildes about these types of subreddits. I hate them so much that they're my go-to for when I need an example of horrible content.
There is room for the top two in varying amounts I think. But once I saw the lower two types showing up 20-30 times for every 1 time I saw the first type, I knew Reddit was long gone.
Maybe that's elitist of me but I think there is something to be said for it.
I'll add that username recognition isn't required for a good social media site. Just saying that there was a time when you could recognize some popular users on Reddit and I associate those days with better times for the website.
I welcome the opposing opinions and there is probably some merit to what you're saying. I just personally think the signal to noise ratio on Tildes is significantly better.
Very little drama, name-calling is promptly removed, you can always find a substantive story or at least an interesting discussion on the front page, and you never see a thread where the top 20 comments are the same predictable jokes (some of which are even repeated verbatim in that top 20).
It's not perfect here. I myself have posted some things that I find to be basically garbage in retrospect. But my first Reddit account is from 2009 and I lurked there before that even. I saw a lot of pretty substantial shifts over those years and Tildes captures some of the aspects I used to love about old Reddit.
For memes and niche interests you either have to go to Reddit or the Fediverse unfortunately. But Tildes is a nice place to escape all the negativity and hostility on other social media sites. .
I think the exemplary tag and the joke and noise tags do a lot to encourage mindful and discourage mindless content.
But it's on us to do better and reward excellence when we see it here
Yeah, that's my opinion. I refused to use it despite having an account there for over 3 years before I really did become active. And I loved that it became that go-to place, though you point out the aspects I avoided: politics and opinions.
And that's why I loved it. But even at that, I finally "quit" it by just having the /~/crossstitch sub as my reddit homepage. Was a bunch of folks complimenting each other and making me feel like the internet wasn't a complete horrorshow.
Then when the shit hit the fan last year, I was able to drop off. Had an online Discord friend tell me about Tildes, and I haven't been back on Reddit since (aside from searches and the one time I did log in to check... I dunno what.)
Look me up if you want, I was I shouldn't post this, right?... I'm fine with wishing it'd crash and burn but there are too many idiots out there that will prevent it. Just like FB/meta, etc...
Just makes me feel older and fartier. :(
The fact the term "reddiquette" disappeared was a bit of a hint, in hindsight.
Hm. Which round of bad choices by Reddit was happening right around that time?
While I'm sure there were several bad choices by Reddit around that time, I think the actual reason was that the market was flooded with tech IPOs, and SPACs came to the forefront, during the pandemic. Businesses hadn't done their due diligence in figuring out how tech-related companies would actually remain profitable and after a number of IPO-listing bubbles burst, even the most bullish bandwagon investment firms started pulling back on hyping these new listings.
In 2021 we saw a number of tech-related and tech-adjacent companies, including Robinhood, file for an IPO either as a direct listing or using a SPAC. By December of that year CNBC posted an article saying that 49 of 50 tech IPOs were in bear market territory by some metrics. Global Foundries, the spin-off semiconductor manufacturer that had belonged to AMD, was the only one that wasn't. And it was down 20% from its highest high. Robinhood was down 75% from its highest high (in part because of what I believe was a deliberate pump-and-dump and also because in 2021 people were shorting the stock due to the company's drama over independently stopping trades of GameStop).
Things were even more bleak for tech listings in 2022:
So I think that Reddit probably pulled out of negotiations because they saw that, in light of reversals of assumed profitability of anything tech, they were going to have their initial valuation get hammered right out of the door and it would be an uphill battle from there.
I think that Spez isn't under any illusions about the foundations of the empire he sits on. He just wants an exit strategy that's going to give him enough collateral that when the board replaces him he's able to sell his stock at a good price and buy a small shitty island on which to enjoy his delusions of grandeur. Or maybe sell off enough that he still has a seat but can be the multi-millionaire absentee board member he's always aspired to.
Reddit was pretty much the closest that was there to had to a true user driven information repository and public forum.
And then they completely obliterated the social contract that had kept them going for the one and half decade. I guess I have no idea how it all shakes out. Given the possibility of ai moderation, of the shift in the reddit userbase and the lack of clear competitor they may or may not keep going.
The reddit that had any actual value is still not completely dead yet given the inertia and the archived information but that shift was there for a better part of a decade and the IPO will finish it once and for all.
It would be nice to again have actual forums with actually knowledgeable people about the topic aside from the few still going and the federated platforms may actually substitute them somewhat or more will be started now but discovery is a massive problem.
I guess I could rant a bit about addictive design elements and engagement maximalization and how ad based monetization destroyed useful internet(thanks the originally useful search engine running a comparison study I guess, though it may have got as bad anyway) but eh. Ads are likely(especially combined with the profiling) the most expensive possible internet monetization element for the user but cost is hidden so they took of and then got out of control.
IMO it’ll do good, more TikTok generation are frequenting Reddit, which directly affects content but no one cares about that at this point. Idk if you have been lately on Reddit, it has completely changed and what they did with award system is so bland and distasteful.
I hope they burn. I am just utterly fed up with the enshittification model. It's an abhorrent practice.
I basically don't use the internet any more, aside from this site on occasion, and ChatGPT. That's it. Virtually everything has become an ad-pushing Data-mining nightmare that literally ruins mental health.
If I told my 20 year old self I would grow to essentially hate the internet, I never would have believed it in a million years. It is just so disheartening.
This is off-topic, but I didn’t feel like it needed a whole post to itself and it fits in well here: has anyone else started getting a block page from reddit when they have their VPN on?
Yeah. The “whoa there partner” screen occurs randomly (?). I rarely visit but when I do it’s with the “old.” prefix. I think the block comes up when clicking a link in a post which may redirect to the “new” site, maybe? When it happens I don’t really take note of what’s going on because I really don’t care and move on. 😆
I try to exclusively use old.reddit as well and I want to say that I’ve been hit with the block page with those as well, but I haven’t done extensive testing.
The block pages started a few weeks ago, and the quickest workaround has been just to turn off my VPN (not a practice I want to get used to).
Next time it happens I might experiment with various logged-in states, old/new reddit, and VPNs to see if I can narrow what signal is triggering the block.
I assume it’s either due to fears of webscraping for AI training, or because they can use real IP addresses for ad monetization. Regardless, it’s degrading my experience and making me want to use reddit even less than I already am, but it’s hard when troubleshooting software problems and reddit has the only relevant discussion for a problem.
Just to give you a lead on what to test first: I’m pretty sure the
Refererheader value is a big part of what triggers the block.So I got hit with the “pardner” block again and did some testing. It appears it’s primarily based on a shared IP getting blocked on “new” Reddit (www subdomain). Using old.reddit will avert the block page, and I assume most search engines are serving the www subdomain. Logging in will also avoid future blocks (but not save the IP block if not logged in).
Curiously, switching VPNs also got me around the block. My guess is that it was due to large amount of traffic coming from a shared IP passing some automated threshold at the load balancer. Not quite as spicy as some scheme to track raw IP addresses for advertising purposes, which I guess is a good thing.
I’m not going to move off my preferred VPN over it, just make sure I’m using old Reddit.
Thanks for the update!
That makes total sense. Definitely a bad omen for old reddit though, given that they’re not even bothering to apply the same anti-scraping rules to it. The writing was on the wall anyway, I suppose…
I worked for a tech company that considered dozens of start-up partnership proposals a year. The team that managed that was required to call in every available person from client execs to QAs just to do sense checks on the applicants. There were quite a few prospective "[reddit/twitter/youtube/Facebook]-killer startups" and the revenue plans often looked somthing:
"We expect x-million page visits a day. We have (x * y) ad-impressions per page and generate approximately $(xyZ) per page view. We also have the long term demographic data of our millions of users and based on community engagement and sentiment modeling, a broker can compline comprehensive user profile and by extension a strategic marketing/engagement plan (this often includes hints towards political, HR and security use cases). We can also use incidental browsing data from consumer advice and brand/product spesific views/posts to instantaneously deploy targeted marketing campaigns at a premium rate."
At that time there was aways an unrelated mention of the current flavor of the month (cloud, big data, web 3.0, blockchain) but I'm sure right now reddit has a very good case for (and probably building thier own) large data models and training sets. They also substantially increased API costs/features, which has driven off many power users but could prove profitable with parties that are willing to pay the price.
The make or break is always the costing and that often comes down to a few slides with generous, perfect-world estimations and lump sums that are "negligible at scale". And in reddits case they chose to take on a substantial image/video hosting load (probably related to that data model) and have invested heavily in a mobile/2.0 experience to compete with instagram(?) that is openly rejected by most dedicated users (but it does provide higher screen% ad space).
There's also the question of compliance and administration. EU is the biggest concern with GDPR and I'm curious what a comprehensive data audit would turn up. But the elephant in the room is moderation. What would a serious investor say to a company where the entier product is produced and managed by unpaid volunteers. "Low labor cost" is the first thought but consider the risk exposure. There is no screening, contract or code of conduct. Moderation teams are managed by tools that are inadequate (many of which were stripped away) and largely arbitrary controls. Moderators are often at odds with the administrators and control of massive subs can change with zero oversite and accountability.
There has been plenty of high profile incidents within the user base but I think being in a user in a small subset blinds people to the scale the site is operating at. Entire communities can be infiltrated and influenced by companies (I remember a particularly devious McDonald's campaign that pushed subtle ads to the top of multiple top subs) or third parties almost on a whim. Peoples relationships, livelyhoods, government and world view can be swayed by what they see on reddit on a regular basis. How long before it's front page news. "compromised mod accounts flood popular subs with CP for an hours before admins respond", "photos and home addresses of several hundred people posted to r/pics", "reddit mod and family found murdered in home."
When I started a decade ago, I'd say this was an impossibility. But right now there's a growing sense of radical negativeity around the site. More ragebait AITAH, more angry R/conservative, the very 'odd' shaping of conflict discussions (seriously every Israeli/Palestinian feels really fishy), the grown sense communal nihilism. I'm really glad I got off when I did.
Well this was a fun fever rant. I'm taking my meds and going to bed.
I think your view of reddit's moderation problem is thoughtful, but it's worth noting that reddit does now have a mod code of conduct.
And, like almost all codes of conduct, it did not seem to change mod behavior or user experience in any way.
yeah it's not anything particularly groundbreaking. Would probably provide reddit at least marginal protection in a lawsuit based on the behavior of a mod, though, which is likely why it exists.
They don't actually enforce it, nor do the admin abide by it.
My account was banned for Ban Evasion, which I did do, so I was okay with the 7 day ban. Then a few days later, they banned me another 7 days for the same thing even though I didn't even use reddit at all during that time. I sent an appeal and they said they wouldn't remove my ban. Whatever, I'll wait 7 days.
Then 2 days later, they perm banned my account, all for once incident. They refuse to remove bans, or even reply to ban appeals. Users get banned for reporting content to mods, mods get banned for replying to mod mail. Reddit the company has become increasingly negative towards mods, and so have the users.
As useless as some reddit moderators are, at least they (mostly) care about their communities. If you ever have to deal with reddit admin, you see how bad reddit would be without moderators.
Hell, the process of reporting things on reddit is usually the best out of all of the main social media sites I use. Facebook reporting is worthless, I don't think a single thing I've ever reported has ever been removed. Instagram reporting is better than Facebook, but they hand out automatic bans based on keywords, even if those words are used appropriately. I'm not sure anything that I've reported on threads has ever been removed either now that I think about.
That, in my opinion, is what made reddit nice. People who are actually cultivating their communities. Planting seeds, pulling weeds. But reddit, in their attempt to be like every other social media site, wanted to shit all over the moderators who actually keep their site from becoming boomer-infested Facebook. I still miss reddit some time, but I spend far less time on the internet now compared to this time last year, so it's probably for the best.
oh yeah it's absolutely perfunctory. I used to mod a small subreddit (once had a user threaten to cut out our tongues, that was fun!) and the admins were 100% useless
That's how I feel old.reddit powerusers are in. Even the janitors of million-subscriber subreddits misunderestimate the scale.
Does anyone else remember /r/jailbait and The Fappenning? Close analogs of those already happened over 10 years ago.
For that matter, remember back when there was /r/nword (plural, hard r; probably singular as well)?
I want to circle back to your point on scale and stochastic violence. 2012 Reddit had far more extreme extremist rhetoric. However, since it was presented as slurs which I will not repeat on this polite forum, it was the same fourteen hundred eighty-eight losers shouting FBI crime stats and Stormfront quotations to one another [thankfully, /r/stormfront was squatted by meteorology photographers before the neo-Nazis reached it]. If you weren't already that full of hate, any right-thinking person would be put off by such blatant hate spam and leave—hopefully inoculated against those ideas due to their presentation.
Several rounds of "cleanup" later, the rhetoric is less slur-filled, yet the likelihood of stochastic violence is at an all-time high. I attribute that to two factors:
My time on reddit is precisely why I take such a cynical view on companies who take a public stand about the necessity of deplatforming.
EDIT:
AITA has always been a creative writing community. When do you think it started getting angrier and how much worse do you feel it is than before?
Not who you're asking directly, and I avoid that subreddit so I can't answer it specifically, but even if the subreddit specifically hasn't gotten angrier, that's just because it was always rage bait, and the bigger problem is that the rage porn subreddits have been getting bigger and bigger for years now. So even if one subreddit hasn't changed, it has changed other subreddits and led to innumerable similar subreddits.
Good point about the size making it spill out into adjacent communities. So many problems of scale.
So last things first, I did mean the actual AmITheAsshole sub but the were a few times when something popped up and I could not tell the difference. The 2 examples that come to mind recently is someone not wanting a handicapped relative stealing her wedding spotlight and someone constantly reminding their family how the stepsister ruined everyone's future. Each story has reasonable explanations but ragebaiting is a solid engagement strategy and it's own issue.
But with that sub in particular, it's not in the inflammatory and outrageous posters of AITAH, but rather the situations people find and put themselves in. Its concerning that so many people are in relatively benign situations but feel pushed to a point that they cant/wont even consider compromise or lasting consequences. Yes there are times when it is completely justified but there's often a long term cost to the catharsis of getting your way. Maybe it's just my personal social values, but being 'technically in the right' is not worth ruining relationships or my reputation. To paraphrase a post that sticks with me: "It doesn't really matter if you convinced 5000 internet strangers that you're not an asshole, especially if every person in your real life thinks you are."
Anyways, I largely agree with your point of over sanitized speech. It is an idea I've been discussing for a while and my best friend maintains that unmoderated comms was the best social development tool. You learn to filter out all the trash and make meaningful connections with whomever is left. I tend to agree, especially when I see online discussion dance around bannable words and try to stay "ad-friendly".
There's just so much wrong with having online social etiquette be dictated by the requirements of advertisements. And the worst part is that they don't actually care about a truly healthy ecosystem, just the appearance of one. So much harmless humor and character was wiped off the web while literal nazis and sex traffickers are free to refine their message and prosper because they don't directly break ToS (they're not assholes because they're technically in the right). It's like every website is a chuk-e-cheese, but some have Hitler and Tate animatronics teaching you about how the world was better when things were in the right order. Maybe it's not as obvious as I think it is and the only time to take action is after we mess up the morality of a generation.
And to your point of those big leaks and stories that happened: I don't usually like voicing my concerns, mostly because I'd sound lake an alarmist conspiracy nut. So please feel free to dismiss this take. But for a while I can't shake the feeling that social media puts un on the knifes edge of a truly catastrophic cultural event. Far bigger than some leaked nudes or Intel docs on a Minecraft server.
These sites are being pumped with ungodly amounts of data, managed by algorithms I think no one truly understands and creates a shadow reality that maximizes engagement by representing a world that aligns with your intuition. And now with data models trained and equipped exactly what you want, you can have the world exactly as you see it. Generate art that isn't held back by wokeness and the inclusiveity quotas of California, get the perfect girlfriend that meets traditional standards, talk to a therapist that really sees thing from your point of view.
I've been to the seedier ai hubs and it's wild. People celebrating politicians hanging from the gallows, powerful and prominent women being 'put in their place', parents, schoolmates, random profile pictures. I said in a previous post that one think what tampered the shock of 9/11 in our community was the fact that we still needed to go outside and deal with the real world. But after the pandemic, there's been this change in people that I can't put my finger on. I don't know if it's main character syndrome or social dissociation or people just being their authentic selves with no filter. But their is just an air of society building up to... something.
Exactly. Sending your classmates to Last Measure may still count as sexual harassment under some jurisdictions, but it's roughly zero harm at the societal level.
If I were in charge of a social media policy, calls for violence to any individual, doxxing, and calls for genocide would be strictly banned. However, the genocide talk would fall to the bottom of the ban queue in favor the doxxing and violence against individuals tickets. Slurs and generally being an edgy bigoted ass would be tolerated so long as they stay within their respective containment boards. Once the slurs spill out, they're banned (at least for a few months).
As I'm sure you've seen this is a major complaint about corporate AI art raised in the seedier AI communities.
The appeal is probably that they have one of the biggest social media platforms where you can disguise your advertising and brand building as relatively organic looking. And while yes the quality is undeniably decline... well that was just inevitable to make the site more brand friendly.
The people of Tildes are a rarity. Sure, we're engaged and many of us came here following the Reddit exodus, but most people simple do not know and do not care. I have one friend that also posts on Tildes and cares about all the Reddit garbage going on (sup, friend.), but I know many more people in life that don't care, didn't notice or just aren't engaged and still regularly browse, sending me links from reddit or telling me about something they saw on there, with some regularity.
Wouldn't this really be true of any social media? The platforms simple provide the space and some tools. It's the users who do the interesting stuff with it all. Not that Tildes is looking for an IPO (Deimos...? 👀), but Tildes wouldn't even be half as interesting without all of you. I know some like Twitter weren't profitable (or barely profitable), but FB and YouTube, I think are pretty profitable.
Though I also get that reddit is basically just a gigantic forum. Even in 2005, when reddit started, that wasn't exactly a novel concept on the Internet, considering the history of forums, Usenet, and BBSs. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, and many others at least had concepts that, at the time, were largely new or different enough from past social Internet concepts. We saw what happened with Digg. And obviously there are somewhat decent enough replacements for reddit like the Lemmyverse, and of course, the plethora of forums that have existed and continue to exist. So maybe that is a bit different.
I do think reddit users' overall angst towards ads and monetization, more so than on other platforms, will hurt reddit inc's prospects at generating revenue. Probably already does. In addition, reddit is unique among the big platforms in that the vast majority of users are anonymous. Screennames, instead of real names, are the norm. I know nothing about advertising and building user/customer profiles and aggregated data. But I have to think that anonymity makes that a little harder than on Facebook or Twitter, where real names are the norm. Plus on those sites, especially FB, users give all sorts of information: age/birthday, location, interests, social networks, and more. Reddit doesn't collect any of that. You don't even need an email to register an account, which is why throwaways are so common. Without that, is it that easy to still build user data that can be monetized?
I think Steve Huffman claimed before that it was actually an advantage for reddit. They have data on users that people feel more comfortable sharing under the guise of anonymity than they do on other platforms without that anonymity.
https://thenextweb.com/news/reddit-knows-your-dark-secrets
Reddit now asks you, fairly aggressively I'll add, if you want to log in using your Google address. They're pushing towards real names behind the screen names. So you can already see that it's a problem they're trying to solve.
The best thing about reddit was that you could create an account without even providing an email address. I used to call it anti-social media.
Anonymity protects people from bad behavior targeted against them more than it enables bad behavior. We've had many years of examples of how a real name being associated with an account doesn't prevent people from being actual Nazis, harassing people, or self-documenting crimes they committed. The larger social media sites, such as Meta products, all have attached names.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to directly put my real life identity out there in Reddit threads. That's just inviting more harassment and stalking.
I believe that's exactly why they're actively seeking to drive their long-term power users out. Replace us with advertising naive zoomers on official phone apps.
Neither here nor there, but in the last year or two, it was surprising to see how many people on reddit had no idea that there was a desktop site, because they arrived on mobile, via the official app, and only accessed it via the app.
I could understand people not knowing old reddit, since old reddit users are a tiny minority and have been for quite a while now. And admins rarely say anything about old reddit. As an aside, that often surprises old reddit users; they often still think they're a sizable chunk. "Anecdatally," based on the stats in my main sub, us old reddit users are anything but!
But coming across people not knowing about the desktop site was mindblowing. Yet they - as mobile users -are the majority! It's almost like that standing vs sitting while using the toilet thing. Each group exists, but most don't know that other groups exists. We all just assume everyone uses reddit like each of us does.
Reddit is changing for sure. But as someone who joined the site in my early 20s and is more or less still on in my mid/late 30s, a part of me wonders if it's a bit "old man yelling at the clouds.," and complaining about the Eternal September. Idk. I'm not old, but I'm certainly outside of reddit's main age demo and have been for a while. We've all changed and re-made reddit over the years; it's not surprising that a new generation is doing the same. If that's what they want, and that's what reddit inc. wants, well, whatever. If reddit is the next imgur or 9gag, so be it. I just won't mod anymore. And I pretty much don't; I'm a MINO: Mod-in-name-only =P
Today's high school seniors weren't even born when you graduated.
What have I ever done to you?! ;_;
Now excuse me, I have to lay down. My neck and back hurts for no reason at all. Ugh, so cold out...
Zoomers are naive and so are boomers, apparently. That just leaves Us Millenials, The Generation Who Are Uniquely Self-Aware And Savvy.
edit: /s
Blanket statements need not apply (as usual with most topics).
I’m a zoomer (I think?) after all and despite looking like a fairly normie user, am stacked up in terms of ad-blocking, privacy protection, etc. – and of course knowing what a file system is and that you can structure data in directories (; much unlike others in my peer group, as has been previously posted and discussed here.
I used Reddit very intensively up until the API shutoff mid last year. Mostly through Apollo (still the best iOS app ever made), and sometimes desktop with browser extensions/aforementioned adblockers. Nowadays I avoid it like the plague, if an answer is only available there I’ll make the visit as short as possible, logged-out on old.reddit.
I for one like the small web, a lot. Of course I am aware I’m probably, unfortunately, in the minority with that sentiment, though.
If it weren’t for the administrative effort, I’d probably consider again opening up a Mastodon instance which I could sell my friends as a “private group Snapchat” alternative for shitposts/memes and such.
If you do find a good answer there, don't forget to submit the post/page to archive.org. The last wave of account deletions has made some of those posts useless. It's also a way to share the content without sending any ad revenue to the company.
Not uniquely so. Gen X has even better online savvy than Millennials. Who else were the ones to trick their annoying younger cousins into opening Lemon Party dot org?
To be clear, my comment was sarcasm.
Also, millennials also tricked their annoying younger cousins into opening lemon party dot org.
They might not be able to do the personalized advertising at the level Facebook does, but it seems pretty easy to just serve specific ads in specific subreddits or just based on certain keywords in the discussions.
I think it is pretty normal that some users do not want ads at all. You shouldn't expect that the road to success for fb means that all social media could do the same.
Each such platform has a different userbase with specific needs and wants. I for one can't stomach adds in a forum I follow regularly. Which is why I am pretty happy to be here in tildes.
Reddit userbase is likely transforming to something different than what it once was.
Can we apply it to most AI companies?
Parts of Reddit could already be AI generated. GPT-3 has existed for a lot longer than the shiny chat interface existed to put it on the public's radar, and there's already a ton of rehashed threads copied wholesale by bots. Having an LLM automatically argue with people doesn't seem like a stretch.
Especially once we have the computing density to run a good enough model locally in our pockets.