9 years ago
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Reddit is changing because it wants celebrities to visit more
Reddit's removal of talent director Victoria Taylor sparked a community protest over the weekend, and now the site seems to be touching on some of the reasons why it let her go.
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That vision makes sense to me. Famous redditors like Arnold Schwarzenegger really add to reddit's overall prestige, but they're still pretty rare. Celebrities just don't use reddit the way they use, say, Twitter. They come in, do an AMA, and get out forever after 15 minutes on the phone with Chooter.
Now, there are a number of reasons this is the case. For starters, reddit is traditionally hostile to women. It's no wonder female celebrities come through for AMAs and never stay behind. It's also why William Shatner, who was happy to be a redditor, eventually left.
But most importantly, being a redditor means sharing content in an uncontrolled environment. Twitter, for all its wilderness, can be a "safe" environment if you ignore the stuff addressed to you, which a PR person can easily do for you. But reddit is much more perilous. Ask Woody Harrelson or Morgan Freeman.
Chooter was that "safe space" for celebrities. Apparently, reddit admins saw this as a detriment to celebrities "going full reddit." I have a feeling that's the opposite of what they should have done... Time will tell.
Wow, I wasn't aware of that situation with Shatner. Good for him for speaking out! He's absolutely right.
he's not wrong, but he's not right..
Yeah the hate speech/racist stuff is unwanted, but you know the only possibility of removing it from the internet?
removing the internet.
He simply didn't understand reddit, or the internet in general.
That seems very ... "just because I can, doesn't mean I should". Yeah, it's the internet, and you can post, type, create all the vitriol you want ... but that doesn't mean it will be tolerated, wanted, or encouraged. Each site has the right (and some would argue the duty) to remove the worst of the worst. I don't believe Shatner was speaking of the day-to-day a-hole-ish behavior of goading people into arguments or even the obvious trolls, but more the absolute trash that can be spewed by extremely hateful people. And that should certainly be moderated, in my opinion.
I need to talk about Shatner. I was all excited when he came on reddit, but after less then 24 hours he had petitioned reddit to make huge changes and he didn't understand things. It was like a grumpy old man using the Internet and complaining about "kids these days". He had press releases and stuff soon after. He had just joined. Agree or not, it's like coming into someone's house and re arranging the furniture. (By the way I got the down vote memo for snapzu -since I'm new here. Lol)
More like walking into someone's house party, then becoming upset when you realize that a large portion of that party is ritual child sacrifice to antediluvian gods. I'd be pretty pissed off if that happened at a party I was invited to. I'd probably tell them to cut that shit out. But I guess, since they were there first, I've got no right to call them on it.
The problem is that you can't talk about "the" Reddit community. Reddit is millions of people. There are many communities. Making gross generalizations about Reddit is like saying all Americans do this or that.
Are there horrible subs on Reddit? Yeah, sure, there's horrible places in the US, too. There's also well-run subs on Reddit, too. (Despite the admins...)
People say "the reddit community" to designate the net effects of reddit's users as a whole. When reddit admins banned FPH, "the reddit community" flooded the main subs with toxic content. Nobody means that to say everyone did, just that this was the net effect of the behavior of a part of the user base.
The same way we can say "Americans" have this or that behavior. Nobody means that to say all Americans do. That's what a generalization is: trying to discern patterns that apply to a majority of members of a given group. The danger is to fall into stereotyping, and certainly there's a stereotype of what reddit users do... But you can still draw some generalizations about reddit users which, while they will never apply to everyone, are still valid in a general sense.
For instance, if I say "reddit as a community is pro-freedom of speech," we both know not everyone is like this. But there's a large enough, vocal enough group of users that voice this, and the statement, as a generalization, is true enough to stand scrutiny.
Arnold and Snoopdog still sometimes post on reddit, so they didn't really get out forever.
Didn't say they left... Just that Shatner did.
Reddit is changing, because the board of directors hired a person whose sole job is to monetize Reddit. Things are probably not going exactly how they (upper management) thought it would, but they're moving in the direction they wanted to go.
It is true they are working on monetizing the site, but that's not how Ellen Pao became CEO. She became "temporary" CEO when Yishan stepped down and they even started looking for replacement CEOs but for whatever reason she just stuck around, I guess she wasn't doing too bad of a job in the company's eyes. I personally think it's gone way downhill though lately and I think that site is well past it's peak. Glad there's cool sites like this around though so I can waste my time while at work, lol.
This whole situations is starting to look like a lot like Digg v4. Quoting Alexis Ohanian:
Just replace digg with Reddit.
I was just saying the other day that part of the reason for the removal of Chooter was because she wouldn't allow PR people to do the AMA's and required the actual celebrity to do it. That means celebs that bring money into Reddit weren't coming and that meant lost revenue.
It's also the reason for the AMA only app, IMO. To try and show that look at all these people want to read your AMA.
That's great but can we talk about Rampart now?
This is why they want paid PR. don't under estimate the power of Hollywood (and their money).
Please keep all discussion about Rampart in /t/Rampart
/jk
End result: IAMA mods take over the duties themselves and follow the same standards.
I think that they will be asked to do this. If any of them refuse I think that they will be removed as mod and someone will be put into place that will do what is asked of them.
I'm expecting that as well. It'd be nice if the userbase pays enough attention to who the mods are of the big subreddits to notice when there's a large unexpected turnover and follow the kicked out mods to the new versions of the subs that one would expect to rise up in the wake of such actions.
I don't think this is going to work how they think it's going to work. I don't see people like the POTUS, or a majority of celebs wanting to do that.
I don't see how convincing busy celebrities to become daily posters is a doable task. My guess is that a lot of it will become fake, with assistants posting for them. That and their recent comments just shows how out of touch Reddit has become with their community. Fully believe the Reddit boat is sinking. I think I'm going to stay here, it's much nicer anyways.
I can thank Reddit for something, introducing me to snapzu.
I've probably got a bit of "conspiracy theory-itis" here, but maybe that's why Victoria was let go. She knew this was the direction things might go (assistants posting for them, etc), was told to quietly go along with it, and refused.
That's what the rumor is actually. I saw a post a mod made before it got deleted that basically said she objected because she didn't think the community would like it. And that she didn't necessarily refuse but was let go anyways. I guess because she didn't share their vision. But I should warn that it's just hearsay.
I don't think most celebrities would want to interact with the Reddit community outside the highly moderated environment of an AMA -- the ones who would already do. (Wil Wheaton, Brandon Sanderson, etc.)
Exactly. Reddit is not exactly a secret. There are other well known people that use reddit without their actual name as their username. What was fun was being in a thread, going back and forth with someone and then finding out that the person you're talking to is a punter on an NFL team or something. A celebrity using their name as a handle is going to be extra cautious and always aware of the brand they have to project. It just wouldn't be the same.
Also it's easy to verify that a celebrity is present for an AMA, but if they're expected to comment regularly then I imagine at least some of them would hire somebody to comment for them.
It almost sounds like they're trying to gain celebrity endorsement in order to make Reddit more profitable and advertiser-friendly. I think this shines a little more light as to why they decided to ban FPH besides the obvious reasons. I'm not sure that this is going to work out for Reddit in the end but a lot still remains to be seen.
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This will work for some of Reddit's demographic, I think.
A lot of users in reddit are in it for purely the content and celebrities are definitely content generators - like or not. Reddit is definitely going to change into something else. Maybe a mix between Facebook and Twitter, social content combined with following trends and celebrities.
For those of us who are sad seeing the old reddit die, we just have to let it go. I think it's just time for it to grow into another monster - from chaotic-neutral to monetized-corporate.
I don't think I like that direction. The fact that they are changing the fundamentals of a user based community to accommodate celebrities seems a bit misguided and disturbing to me. Ideally, a site like reddit is supposed to be a platform where an ordinary person can express himself, and make his thoughts known to others. Shifting the focus over to celebrities is only going to take that away from the users, as it changes the conversation from the concerns of the users to the concerns of the celebrities.
And this is something people didn't see coming when they released the AMA app?
Some people are in denial until things slap them in the face.
I can see what they're trying to do, but a lot of celebrities are busy and/or have better things to do than sit on Reddit and post. I get it, but I also don't mind the one-off sessions; it's an intimate look into the life of that celebrity that you won't normally get in the average PR interview. Questions from fans, etc. Assuming, of course, it doesn't go all Woody Harrelson / Rampart, where the whole thing was to push the film. I feel this is a case of "trying to fix something that isn't necessarily broken."
This sounds like such a silly idea. How are you going to educate famous people to visit your site? Are you going to call them every few minutes, like "hey, what are you doing, can you please log in to Reddit", or talk to them over the phone every few hours and be like "oh hey, user Anal_Inseminator just said you are a dumbass; can you please log on Reddit and respond to him".
Anyway, personally, as somebody who is not particularly concerned with the world of American entertainment, I find it difficult to understand this; rather than having a movie star comment on a thread about a movie, I'd much rather have a scientist respond to research articles and the like. But this is just personal opinion... others might enjoy celebrities more.
You want a celebrity to turn up then you pay them-age old formula, pay an appearance fee. And if they promote a movie or brand then they fulfil their obligations to other paying customers. It's all just business. Reddit is seeking some celebrity action like Twitter to improve its brand and income stream.
but why would celebrities want to post regularly, when the userbase is now committing exodus?
What fucking good would that do? Just because celebrities have money doesn't mean they're going to spend it on some half-baked news aggregator. Do the management of Reddit actually think Woody Harrelson is going to buy Reddit Gold just because he wanted to plug Rampart 2: Electric Boogaloo?
The site has been on a precipitous decline since I first joined it three years ago, and it just hasn't gotten any better. The userbase is virulent and petty and just plain ignorant. These days I only go there for titties, that's all Reddit is good for, in my opinion.