Slashdot Mirror
Former Reddit Executive Sees 'No Hope' For Reddit (nymag.com)
An anonymous reader quotes former Reddit product head Dan McComas:
I think, ultimately, the problem that Reddit has is the same as Twitter and Discord. By focusing on growth and growth only and ignoring the problems, they amassed a large set of cultural norms on their platforms. Their cultural norms are different for every community, but they tend to stem from harassment or abuse or bad behavior, and they have worked themselves into a position where they're completely defensive... I really don't believe it's possible for either of them to catch up on the problem. I think the best that they can do is figure out how to hide this behavior from an average user.
I don't see any way that it's going to improve. I have no hope for either of those platforms. I just think that the problems are too ingrained, in not only the site and the site's communities and users but in the general understanding and expectations of the public... I don't think that they're going to be able to turn these things around...
I fundamentally believe that my time at Reddit made the world a worse place. And that sucks, and it sucks to have to say that about myself... I've got a lot of advice for start-ups, and it's not very fucking complicated. It's just: Think about the impact that you want to have on your users and on the people consuming your content and do the right thing... Don't be idiots about it. You're people, you see what's going on, you see trends that are forming, just fucking do something. It's not that hard.
I don't see any way that it's going to improve. I have no hope for either of those platforms. I just think that the problems are too ingrained, in not only the site and the site's communities and users but in the general understanding and expectations of the public... I don't think that they're going to be able to turn these things around...
I fundamentally believe that my time at Reddit made the world a worse place. And that sucks, and it sucks to have to say that about myself... I've got a lot of advice for start-ups, and it's not very fucking complicated. It's just: Think about the impact that you want to have on your users and on the people consuming your content and do the right thing... Don't be idiots about it. You're people, you see what's going on, you see trends that are forming, just fucking do something. It's not that hard.
Now that Mr. McComas has said he is/was part of the problem, how much money was he raking in for being part of that problem, and is he returning any of it?
I like these mea culpas, such as from Reddit or Facebook. "I was raking in the dough and living the high life, but yeah, we screwed you and probably society. Live and learn. Excuse me, my yacht awaits."
Whatever social norms that exist on Reddit, are the things that led Reddit to becoming the success that it is. Any attempt to "cure" it will kill the company, as it is killing Facebook and Twitter.
I don't personally use Reddit much myself, but I read it from time to time and the "culture" seems board dependent and overall fine. I think instead some people with more and more fascist (read: liberal) bents are alarmed that the platforms they helped create sometimes host WrongThink, and thus they would rather see the platforms burn than allow heretics to continue to speak...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think, ultimately, the problem that Reddit has is the same as Twitter and Discord: It's full of internet users.
Every day, another surface dweller strays too far from the spawn zone on Tutorial Island and gasps.
Every day, another 24 hours of Eternal September.
If your aim is to have a positive social impact you should be running a non-profit. A for-profit will always be conflicted between growth/profit and social aims, the investors and creditors, will put huge pressure to skew heavily towards the former
Members of Reddit communities self select, they choose to be there. If things are bad for you at r/weiner_pretzels, move on.
He used to work there, so he can see the future. If this theory worked, companies should temporarily fire people, see what they can divine about what will shortly pass, then re-employ them and fix the problem.
Guess what. That's how real people express and discuss their opinions. They speak out their beliefs (be it controversial or not), discuss, argue and shout. On rare occasions they jump to each other's throats. That's how we, human beings, behave when what we're hearing doesn't fit our vision of the world and that's normal. What's not normal is believing that political correctness should somehow be enforceable on the whole population. People use reddit because they value it for what it truly is - one of the few last places on the Internet where they can speak openly. If reddit execs try to take this freedom away, reddit will be as good as dead.
Yeah, there are some pretty toxic subreddits, but for many niches or specific interests they are really good. /r/spacex is pretty much the best place to discuss SpaceX and a lot of other New Space things, /r/math is pretty good for mathematical discussion that's more relaxing and not has high level as Math Overflow, etc. One of the real problems that Reddit has which is really a problem not just with Reddit but in many other parts of the internet is the bubble problem: people self-organize into subreddits not just based on interests but on beliefs. So one has left-wing or right-wing subreddits for example who just reinforce their preexisting political viewpoints. This mixes in really badly with confirmation bias and other standard cognitive biases.
Listen - I can empathize with the guy. I've made big complicated systems worth lots of money too. I also don't see much personal value in some of it either.
But it's not anywhere near as 'hopeless' or 'worsening' than he'd put on it. Communities of 'bad' folks will form anywhere, and the open nature of the internet means that random encroachment into 'good' communities will scale with the number of folks entering the system, and the tools they are using.
But that doesn't make it useless. Rome fell, and it wasn't useless. Everything turns to the music of entropy in different ways. Experience shapes what comes after.
Would it really be 'hope', if the system never had to change, or be superseded by something better?
Reddit has some amazing communities in it - and endless challenges to it. Heck, I'm still here on Slashdot, so I'm definitely OK with being nice in the face of adversity and strife - so I don't see much of an issue for Reddit at the moment at least.
The kids will be fine, and so will randos online, on average.
Ryan Fenton
I tried reading the linked article but gave up after reading 3 paragraphs that contained many words without making any concise statement. Reads like the blabber of a literary critic.
He's a shitbag for even thinking he has the right to steer public sentiment or discourse. If everyone wants to call each other a fuck tard what right does he have to even consider changing that? He's no more special than his shitty shitty users, he just had a ban hammer at his disposal which made him an arrogant fucking shitstain of Humanity.
Reddit is just Usenet in 2018. It's a communication tool; I don't see a need for every community to be a comfortable space for everyone. Don't like a community? Start your own.
Have gnu, will travel.
... And I'm not sure he's ever stated concisely hat what the problems are.
I'm also really not impressed by the 'apologize for the internet thing', like the world would be better if everyone snarked for the New Yorker instead of building things. The
The situation with Reddit is in some regards similar to what happens on Slashdot.
And this ...
It all sounds remarkably similar for me to what's happening here, honestly. Hopefully the Slashdot moderators are listening and thinking about ways to value contributors who introduce comments which inspire critical, independent thinking. My own personal experience has been that Slashdot's karma system is not at all rewarding people who introduce novel arguments. Arguments are generally rated according to whether or not they diverge from that which we've all been taught, and there is no emphasis upon the inherent value of critique which inspires thought -- and over time, change.
Reddit has a problem. I'm going to handwave a lot about it, but if you cut through all the bullshit its people saying mean things I don't like (free speech) and helping Donald Trump. Reddit banned it but I'm so butthurt over it we need find someway to stop it before it even happens. There, I just saved you guys 5 minutes out of your life.
In one respect, toxicity is the canary in the coal mine; in another, toxicity is what stops certain "right-thinking" opinions from taking over and being accepted; in yet another, "toxic" expression has a powerful ability to teach valuable life lessons to everyone from the reader to the participant. Banning toxicity is denial of human nature and causes such ideas to ferment in private rather than in public. The ban will be seen as unfair, and because there is no example to prove otherwise (because it's fucking BANNED) a sort of martyrdom of ideas will inevitably form.
/b/ went from a few interesting things mixed with tons of trannies and flat-chested teens and chubby threads and furry hentai to nothing but dicks and "roll games" and thirty-tittied furries afterwards.
Pick a forum, any forum. They start out with free speech goals and then gradually move towards oppressive censorship; as the censorship grows, the forum goes to shit, but the people who are demanding others they disagree with be silenced always claim that "it's dying because it's TOXIC and YOU AREN'T TAKING ENOUGH ACTION TO PROTECT PEOPLE!!!11eleventyone" when it's really the opposite. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so censorship gets heavier, public platitudes about "preventing abuse" and "improving safety" and "making the community more welcoming" are spouted, and the site goes even further to shit.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, take your pick because it doesn't matter. All of them "do something about the toxicity" and that's exactly what kills them. 4chan was doing really great at NOT falling into this trap for a long time until Moot got a girlfriend and that girlfriend had ties to Zoe Quinn; 4chan's GamerGate censorship was a fat nail in its coffin;
tl;dr: Toxicity is the most important part of internet communities, because toxicity is humanity. No toxicity allowed, community slowly dies.
The search engine is the saving grace of Reddit, Twitter, etc. It doesn't matter how much traffic or crap is generated, to me, because I'm there for the search box. If I use booleans correctly, I usually find someone intelligent sending some information I needed.
Gently reply
We had nice, distributed, open source discussion platforms before companies like Reddit and Twitter swept in and tried to monetize everybody's discussions. So, good riddance to you. Hopefully, when your companies are history, we can return to more sane infrastructure. Unfortunately, you still will have your ill-gotten millions, Mr. McComas.
The only thing Usenet lacked was decent moderation. Either extend NNTP with moderation bits or come up with a secondary protocol and application to support it.
You might like RealPeople.io which doesn't have any ads and doesn't share data. Users pay a small yearly amount. No bots. No AI. No big VCs demanding a huge exit. No conflict of interest between the user and the platform. No incentive to keep users constantly glued to the service, and and no incentive for users to share all their private information. https://realpeople.io/
Seriously. Instead of trying to play PreCrime and Thought Police, why not simply do the following?
Give users all the tools they need to block any content they find "offensive" FOR THEMSELVES?
And hey, give them the ability to share these sorts of filters amongst themselves!
Then these companies don't have to expend the capital required for meatspace moderation, since everyone is their own moderator.
And they don't run into problems like overzealous or biased moderators.
End of discussion!
Seriously. Allow adults to BE adults and choose FOR THEMSELVES what they DO and DO NOT wish to see!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yeah, he was fired because of pissing off the users:
> "You have to grow more." Ultimately, that is why Ellen and I were let go.
Miss Pao and her team didn't understand the Internet and wanted control by means of opinion police. The user base revolted. So now it's revenge time with a bitter and wishful "there is no hope" argument thrown at what has grown to be the 6th most visited site on the Internet.
The friendliest online forums i find are for more niche interests, like hobbies and arts. Users tend to be a little older as well. I wouldn't say I find Reddit oppressive, at least the subs I visit, but the platform does suffer from loose moderating which means most threads degenerate into memes and rubbish - but I can't blame the platform really - it's what happens when you get a crowd. Niche forums are smaller and nicer...
Every successful online community I've known had a core group of individuals making tireless sacrifice for the betterment of the whole.
Eventually this core group simply wears out. The battle is eternal, and the wages are next to non-existent (some social coin is achieved, but this only goes so far). To put this into Jordan Peterson terms, lobster status biology goes back 300 million years. You can issue a challenge in three words. There's an innate implication that everyone who ignores the challenge has backed down. This causes the troll to feel good (the weird enhanced social status placebo effect of a good electronic shunning , but there it is).
I guess that's one of the core problems: online, a troll can't tell the difference between successful intimidation and being actively shunned. And in the face of ambiguity, the vigorous work the seam.
In academia (also a trollish culture, but with higher table stakes) the way publication works is that every paper needs to assert its value add, ideally in the abstract (though sometimes this only hints at the value add and you have to snap to the concluding remarks before deciding that you've just been trolled by incremental resume fluff).
Here on Slashdot, what's the value add of yet another recitation of Hayekian orthodoxy? It's an age-old dynamic. The proponents believe that the only reason this hasn't worked is that not enough people have clearly heard and understood the unique and powerful and central wisdom of this view of the world (comprehension is inherently modelled by partisans as congruent with agreement).
It's complicated, because everyone is at a different point in the learning curve.
I believe that Hayekianism has the same fundamental flaw as the theory of evolution: it certainly tells you something valuable about certain modes of screwing up, but doesn't actually encode much tangible wisdom about the dynamics of complex systems. If you posit that an entire species gained a new genetic resource in a single generation, you're surely full of crap. The theory of evolution has slapped you down. If you posit that some smart guy pulling all the master levers of a large, complex economy is the way of the future, you're surely full of crap. Hayek has slapped you down.
But if you're trying to say something detailed and constructive about how either of these systems actually works, neither theory takes you anywhere deep. The devil is in the details. Surely, no theory at all is better than a hopelessly wrong theory (especially when certain hopelessly wrong theories tend to give people in power giant woodies). But that's not good enough, in the long run. When did humanity fold up our intellectual tent and decide that merely not being hopelessly wrong was good enough for the long haul? We know about a million times more now about the nature of complex systems than Darwin or Hayek knew (which is still just scratching the surface). A single Google data center now rivals the world economy in total complexity, as Darwin or Adam Smith once understood this, and we're only about another thirty years away from where a single data center overtakes the complexity of the world economy as Hayek once understood this.
If Dawkin's Blind Watchmaker was held to the same standards as neural networks, we'd been in the middle of a giant Darwinian Winter right now, because we've not yet managed to adduce intelligent life from first evolutionary principles. In that explanatory realm, the mere possibility that history might have performed this feat is considered sufficient (for many working scientists). We also haven't been able to show that it's wrong (I suspect the proof would be rather larger than we could commit to disk on the cylindrical margins of a modest data center).
In practice, this edifice is not much more falsifiable on particulars than it's principal rival: And Then a Miracle Happened (inherent in the notion of a miracle is that it doesn't leave behind much paperwork—or even striking anomalies in our
I deleted my account months ago after ridiculous vitriol directed at me over a couple videos I linked. No, not that type of video, just some minimally technical stuff relating, of all things, to 3D printer print cooling fans. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either...
What have we become?
The summary is way too vague, making references to a "problem" that it doesn't explain.
Anyway, I made myself keep rading, and at one point in I finally spotted this, which I suspect is the entirety of Reddit's actual problem:
And that's pretty much that. Reddit's problem is that it isn't profitable. Not surprising, considering how usable (i.e. not plastered with ads) it is.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Serious question.
There was a huge cultural shift that occurred in the early 2000's. I used to think eternal September, but now think it's something else, perhaps how or what is taught in schools.
The cultural Marxism has been ramped up significantly. The Eternal September has been replaced by the Eternal October.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.