9 years ago
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Ellen Pao: Vast Majority of Users Don't Actually Care About Drama
The last few days have seen Reddit, the internet’s Fort Knox of cat GIFs, tearing itself apart over the dismissal of Reddit’s unofficial liason between staff and the community. The disagreement caused some subreddits to go offline, turning the site’s front page into a barren wasteland — but according to CEO Ellen Pao, the ‘vast majority’ of users are uninterested.
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Someone on Reddit explained this very well: The same vast majority that doesn't care about the drama is the one that doesn't contribute anything; they're just lurkers.
It's mainly the minority of perhaps 10-15% of people who make posts, comment and moderate who are providing entertainment so that your site makes money.
This woman is beyond dense.
I was definitely a longtime lurker on Reddit who ended up coming here because I was sick of it.
So there. You can't get me Ellen! Ha!
I have come here with you and many others. I hope that our continued support of various communities that cherish level-headed, rational conversations over circle jerks will help enlighten those who deny the truth behind the internet; the consumers will always follow the producers. Otherwise you're just staring at an empty stage!
Circle jerks. I hated how almost all the major subs comments were filled with the same tired inside jokes. I want interesting content and meaningful discussions! Hopefully with the way Snapzu is set up we'll get just that.
I actually quit back in January because of all the regurgitated in-jokes (only to get sucked in again by the recent drama). It got to a point where I could guess the top comment for any given thread with decent accuracy about 3/4 of the time, which is not something I'm proud of. So, yeah, here's hoping this system holds that back a bit.
I know exactly what you mean about guessing the top comment before looking. At first it's fun, but then it gets old quickly.
I think any similar thread-based system will lend itself eventually to that kind of in-joke circlejerk when it's popular enough. If snapzu becomes as "mainstream" as reddit was, then I feel like it would be an issue here too. I kind of hope not though. It'll be interesting to watch and see.
It's sort of difficult because on one hand I'd like to have lots of content, but I also want thoughtful discussions; often you need a lot of people for the former, but a more exclusive group for the latter. (I'm grossly generalizing here but you get the picture)
Well, yeah, but I'm fearful that that's an exclusive thing, like either you can have consistently good quality content or a massive user base, but not both. Reddit's problem was that it's so big that it's in eternal september, where there's so many new users that they overwhelm the existing culture before getting assimilated.
And yeah, if Snapzu sticks around and grows the culture will eventually form its own inside jokes - honestly I think that's part of the fun of having a community. Reddit totally went too far with it, though, once people saw there was acres of karma to be had parroting the same used-to-be-funny bs back at each other.
Thanks for the wiki article, I hadn't heard of that before.
Yeah I agree. I'm hoping that, in its interactions and general user feeling, snapzu ends up becoming more like a forum than.. well, reddit. I like the reddit style of letting the community decide what gets promoted or demoted, but I also like the more close-knit, forum-like environment. In my experience, people tend to put more thought into their posts when it's in a forum context. And if it's a small forum -- kind of like how the smaller subreddits ended up becoming -- users actually get to know each other and recognize each other. Which is also a very nice thing.
I know reddit technically is a kind of forum but I can't for the life of me find words to make my meaning clearer.
I'm also curious to see how the gamified karma system on snapzu works out. I don't know if it will just be a fun thing to encourage thoughtful discussion, or if it'll become this.. major contest, like reddit. Even though reddit's karma was totally meaningless. I don't know if snapzu's karma will end up encouraging or discouraging thoughtless doing-it-for-the-upvotes comments.
Should be interesting.
At the end of the day, in-jokes are great if and ONLY if you're part of the in-group making them. The main problem with memification (is that a word?) on the internet is that it's a lot harder to be part of the "in-group" unless said group is both relatively small (>150 people) and includes a fairly regular communication setup. Diluted amongst tens of thousands, memes turn into "small talk," where instead of actual inside jokes and jargon, they're just the way we know how to talk to strangers without having serious discussion.
There's a few groups I used to belong to on reddit- I left most of them due to time constraints over the last year - that have private Skype rooms and IRC chats, and while they're as circle-jerk-ish as the rest to an outsider, the vibe I wound up with at the time was that of a group of friends just hanging out. We've all done that in real life, where our clique has old stories and references and buzzwords that make no sense to anybody else. It's a form of bonding. But that doesn't seem to scale on Reddit.
I stopped lurking on digg for the same reason I'm now here: I am not (that) interested in controversy, I'm interested in reading cool stuff.
We'll see how this goes.
Except they're not going to lose all the content providers. They're going to lose some of them, yes, but not enough that they'll care. I've seen this happen before on reddit several times, sometimes because of a problem with the overall site and sometimes just with specific subs. A small but dedicated group of content providers would leave and the rest would pick up the slack. The people in charge -- moderators and admins alike -- just ignored the ones who left.
I don't doubt that even the people who left will not make a dent in Reddit's activity; but her statement is completely ignorant of the fact that some users provide more value than others. She just treats them all as a whole, further proving that she lacks the basic knowledge as to how the cogs that make her site run work.
All users are valuable, but some are more valuable than others.
Reddit is a business driven by ad revenue and to a lesser extent user donations. If the activity doesn't drop appreciably then they really won't notice. Focus will shift to safer, less controversial subreddits like /r/catpictures and /r/earthporn. The character of reddit will change but that won't prompt any soul searching as long as the revenue keeps up.
This is the reason why I'm glad that I left. Years back it was a place created by people who wanted to share ideas, where the principle of getting along.
I actually went back and searched for an example of the past: https://www.reddit.com/comments/bexqj/
Look at the complains from the users and the admin response. Would you see this happening now?
Of course not, because the emphasis has become, as you say, on the fact that "Reddit is a business". I'm not saying it's not natural to have money-making in mind, but leaving the user behind for monetary gain deserves to be punished.
I have this feeling that they have almost as many sysadmins and programmers with the same amount of budget, but more of their profit is getting greedily absorbed by their shareholders. Because why bother spending more money on infrastructure and customer support when you can just pocket all of that fat cash?
As far as I know, reddit's never really been that profitable, and in fact has been operating at a loss for several years... see this article from 2013 as an example. Also, it's a private company, so in order to have shareholders to be beholden to profit-wise they'd have to go public first, which also means that they'd have to have proof that they can be profitable... which is quite likely why Pao was brought in. That said, they do have a board of directors, but it's pretty much just Alexis Ohanian and maybe one other dude.
Not to mention there are highly niche subreddits that don't care about all the drama. Those people will probably stay and be business as usual.
I dunno -- I moderated (moderate?) two highly niche subreddits (one had about 15k subscribers, the other 7.5k), and while I wasn't that put off by the drama, it gets to the point where "community" is just more valuable. Have I left Reddit permanently? Not by any means, but I've vastly reduced my usage of the site. We've been seeing a little less activity in those "niche" subs, too.
If anything, those who stay behind will slowly see a drop in content 'quality,' while the 'quantity' of reposts and less engaging content will increase.
The loss of support, I think, will be gradual rather than sudden. This is just the beginning of unrest within the community. Is it a huge deal, in a real-world perspective? No. But within Reddit, people will fall away and move on.
this! They'll probably become what they hated the most, some buzzfeed or 9gag replicator.
I don't think this is the end for reddit, but it is one of many events which will dent its content aggregation monopoly. After the fatpeoplehate rigmarole and then this recent event, a large number of users who wouldn't have previously looked elsewhere are finding alternatives.
The number isn't high enough to destroy reddit and a lot of users aren't strictly moving per se, but signing up to other similar sites alongside reddit for the first time. As reddit hits more small bumps in the road (which is likely over time) I think the playing field will become wider and reddit will be seen more as 'one of the front pages of the internet'.
Yeah, it's going to take a long while before reddit actually dies - heck, some people still use AOL and Myspace. But, like how Facebook is starting to phase out in favor of Snapchat / Twitter / Instagram / Tumblr / etc, eventually the formerly invincible content aggregator juggernaut that is reddit will give way to whatever random content aggregator(s) next reach a critical mass of users.
But in this case, the moderators are also part of that small but dedicated group of people. And if they pack up & leave, that can spell big trouble for Reddit, since they do a monumental amount of work for the website.
Not unless in doing they can make a significant impact in the revenue coming into the site. See my other comment here. Frankly, I see the exodus of the semi-professional moderators of reddit as a good thing for the site. I would like to see the users regain some of their power within their own communities.
It might be beneficial for some subs. A lot of subs would suffer though. Foremost Iama I guess because with nobody organising amas from people that are not redditors it's going to be pretty hard. That will make a dent as amas are one if not the biggest magnet for new users. Other subs would have problems too, mainly those that are heavily moderated such as /r/science or /r/askhistorians (although I doubt they will leave).
I think it's something that could go either way. Getting some fresh new "power moderators" (ones moderating the major defaults) has the potential to swing reddit for better or worse. Some subreddits require a lot of work for mods, and many have been doing it for years. I suppose over time new mods would adjust.
There are also many communities that are moderated by users who seem to have no interest whatsoever in the subject matter of the subreddit. So actually interested users gaining control could be beneficial to them.
Yeah. Their management of subs (especially the default ones) is crucial for keeping people (lurkers and content providers) engaged in the communities. If they leave in droves, Reddit's going to face an upward battle of having to replace these lest their risk harming their profit margins.
Yeah, I think people underestimate just how important good moderators are. Not only do enforce the rules of the board, they're really instrumental in creating and maintaining a community... that's why I'm wary of Voat's focus on minimal moderation, in my experience that laissez faire mentality just ends up creating worse communities.
I thought Voat's goal was hands-off administration (barring illegal material of course). Moderation levels of the various subverses is up the individual mods to decide.
Oh, my mistake, I wasn't aware of that. I was under the impression that their 'no censorship' stance extended to lighter or nonexistent moderation as well.
I'll be interested to see if there are any entire community migrations from reddit to other competitor sites. I wouldn't have thought that would be a breach of Ts&Cs. I can imagine mods telling their community they're moving to snapzu and to use an affiliate link to sign up. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the invite system is dropped.
I think you're underestimating the backlash on firing Victoria. See reddit is currently trying to find a way to make money for it's investors. It needs to both grow larger and return more money per user in order to accomplish this. Current rumor on the firing is that Victoria was pressing back on a lot of these monetization strategies so they got rid of her. The simple fact is that Snapzu and Voat can exist being smaller than reddit, but reddit can't exist being smaller than what it is.
If reddit continues to hemorage users to other sites, investors will pull out and reddit will be sold all the same as Digg was. Afterall the primary reason Digg went down was the community's distaste in efforts to regulate power users, and it's monetization strategies. reddit was the promise land of a more equal impact of user contribution, and a more fair monetization strategy than what Digg delivered. Victoria was a band-aid on reddit's current functional deficiencies and a liaison between the community and delivering content which generated money. They just ripped off that band-aid w/o fixing the underlying issues.
It's possible that the backlash will grow into something that will have an effect on reddit's revenue stream. However, that still remains to be seen. I don't think people really appreciate just how many contributors there are and how diverse the demographics are. We look at the bigger ones like /r/politics and /r/atheism that have a strong liberal demographic and judge the whole site by them, but that's a mistake. There's a CNN article posted on reddit about over 150,000 names being posted to a petition to remove Ellen Pao as CEO, but what people don't realize is that 200,000 users isn't even a tenth of the biggest subreddits. The number of users, both active and lurkers, number in the millions.
Yes, this could grow into a real problem for reddit in general and Ellen specifically. But that doesn't mean it's guaranteed.
Having visited Reddit since 2006, I have to say those groups leaving always led to a drop in quality submissions and comments.
I don't doubt it. But it doesn't have to be quality for it to drive revenue.
She's the interim CEO. I'm getting the feeling they're just keeping Pao around because she already had a bad rep, so it's really easy to blame problems on her. They let her be "in charge" for a little while, implement some unpopular changes that they've wanted to do for a while, and let Pao take the negative hit for it. Then once they've implemented all the changes they want to make, they can let Pao go and seem like the "good guys" for it.
Maybe a little bit conspiracy theorist, but it's not entirely unheard of. We'll just have to wait and see.
As conspiracy theories go, that's not a terrible one. There are a lot of variables in play, though, so it'll be interesting to see which way the winds blow over the next few weeks going into months.
All I know for sure is whatever happens on Reddit, I'm going to be watching from over here on Snapzu. It's nicer here.
Taking lessons in political strategy from Baron Harkonnen, I see.
And the British conservative party. Look at what Michael Gove has been tasked with over the past few years. they keep the nastiest work for him to limit the character damage to their party.
She comes with a background as investment analyst, this kind of people hardly ever cares about what makes a company great, what creates user loyalty or anything else WE care about. They only care about growing numbers. For her, if there's a mass exodus, like Digg's one, she'll sell Reddit to the highest bidder and claim victory for having "returned the investors money with profit".
Exactly this. I don't think this event will cause much change, but it sent me looking for other sites. I think it will go downhill from here, and someother site will pick up the slack. It will certainly be gradual rather than sudden, but I see Reddit becoming the next Digg Downfall unless they change something quick....and that change should be removing Pao.
I'll be the first to say it: this woman gets far more hatred than she deserves. She thinks she's just doing her job. And there is so much racist and sexist bias against her all over reddit, as a fellow woman of color, it makes me supremely uncomfortable. :( Sure she's made some questionable choices like firing Victoria, but things like banning FPH I'm 100% behind. This must count as some form of cyber bullying, should it not? Sorry if my comment upsets anyone, but I really wish people would cut the woman some slack.
I have to disagree with you there. If this was Bill Gates or Tim Cook, people would want them out just as badly as they do Pao. Since she became interim CEO she's shown a compete lack of understanding of Reddit, it's core principals, and most importantly it's userbase. Her high-horse attitude hasn't helped her either, which is why a lot of people are viewing her apology with a lot of skepticism.
If she really want's to improve Reddit she needs to get her hands dirty and be a part of Reddit. Not a shmuck behind a desk dictating polices.
I understand where you are coming from, trust me I do. But food for thought: If it was Bill Gates would he have to endure the same kind of racial slurs and misogyny for his perceived incompetencies?
Nobody wants her out because she is a woman or a minority. They think she is incompetent, and in their attempt to criticize her, they fall back on petty insults (which is definitely A problem, just not the same problem.)
I think of it like getting cut off while driving. You might be angry at the driver, and yell insults based on age, race, gender, looks, baldness, big nose, whatever… You don't hate this person because they are say, bald, but it's the easy thing to pull out and insult with.
People hate her based on – paraphrasing Pao herself – 'behavior'.
To be fair, 1990's Bill Gates DID get a lot of flak for being an evil, loser nerd, a thief, a villain, (even a fee antichrist references that I can remember anyhow), etc. Maybe not sexism or racism as blatantly as Pao (which is sad, but angry people are stupid in large groups). But people all over the world hated Billy-G a lot more than on just one website, and they were vicious about it. Hell, many people still do.
Here's the thing: we already know about her history. We already know that she's married to a crook, and both are very ligitatious. She plays the gender card, and he plays the race card. We know that she knows nothing about Reddit or the technology involved in it.
So, starting out, most of the audience isn't going to be in her favor. And then after stumbling for 9 months with bad decisions, yeah, most of Reddit hates her. The reactions are fairly predictable, actually.
Honestly I haven't seen any of that on Reddit. But, maybe I've haven't been to the subreddit's where it's happening. My interests on there are mostly PC Gaming, My Little Pony, and Linux.
Hey, a couple of us have been starting up a pony community on here if you wanted to check it out. There's a /t/mylittlepony, /t/mlplounge, and mine.
Thanks. I had joined the MLP one, didn't know the lounge was on here as well.
Well it would be hard considering he is a different race and a he.
But the part I think you have wrong is that you suggest in your first post that racism and sexism is the root of the issue, and it is not. She is absolutely terrible at her job, and there are a bunch of idiots using race and sex based insults. I don't believe anyone over there has suggested she is terrible at her job because of her race or sex, but because of her actions.
I think making it out as if people are suggesting that, as your first post does, is equally disappointing but in a different way.
From this weekend's events, and her response, my intuition leads me to believe that "improving Reddit" is not her primary goal. Her initial efforts at damage control were directed toward the Mainstream Media. Only today did she get around to addressing the Reddit community.
Her actions make more sense if her goal is to groom Reddit for an Initial Public Offering, rather than keep users/contributors/moderators content...
I strongly disagree. I think the criticism she is receiving is well deserved. The issue wasn't with simply banning FPH, it was that other, significantly worse subs weren't banned. As a woman of color, I would think that you would be much more concerned with subs like: /r/CoonTown/, /r/Beatings/, /r/punchable_children/, /r/punchablefaces/, /r/TheRedPill/, /r/Beastiality/, or /r/spacedicks/ (among many more). If you're going to ban something, make sure you ACTUALLY ban it, don't just cherry pick to suit your own personal agenda. And in regards to the Victoria issue - the "black out" wasn't to show solidarity with her, it was primarily to protest the lack of communication between admins and mods, along with other, more sub-specific issues.
I've seen the generic racist and misogynistic comments towards her in Reddit threads, but it's hardly shocking when you look at who is upset (see the above list for reference). I've also read a lot of constructive and well justified arguments against her (in fact, that's all I've seen on Snapzu so far). If you're going to be offended by Reddit, there is a LOT more out there to be offended by... And if you want an example of the internet tearing apart a CEO for poor business practices who isn't a woman or visible minority, look up Steve Ballmer.
I just made a post about what I was trying to say. It's not even about Ellen Pao necessarily. I can't reply to all the responses here individually so posting it here; some of you might wanna check it out.
I don't know much about the other subreddits you mentioned, but /r/watchpeopledie doesn't seem like it fits with them if they're of the hateful, exploitative variety. Graphic, gruesome, and horrifying content is posted in /r/watchpeopledie for sure, but its community generally isn't about glorifying or promoting violent death like it's a good thing (granted no one's all that bothered when an ISIS member gets killed). More often than not the comments have to do with the context of a given death or deaths (i.e. where, when, how, and why), where not to go/what not to do, how scary and/or messed up it would be to die and/or be killed in a certain way, and how fragile life is, not "hahahahahaha die motherfucker die!!!".
I thought about your comment, and you're right. It doesn't fit with the others. So I edited it out and replaced it with /r/punchablefaces.
I find it odd how OP is upset about the hate towards Ellen Pao, and yet supports the banning of FPH while so many more systematically oppressive subreddits were simply ignored. I would think that she would be upset that so, so, so many other, significantly more offensive subs still exist, while one that doesn't even target an oppressed minority was removed.
It's also worth mentioning that I have noticed maybe one slur-driven insult to every 20 or so justified criticisms, and I believe those insults are just people who are too lazy or uneducated to make a relevant comment (or maybe it's just the websites I frequent). But when we do come across it, the options are 1) ignore them, 2) educate them, or 3) get upset and feed their anger.
**I feel like I should note that I am neither supportive nor against the FPH subreddit - I wasn't subscribed to that sub, and I never went to /r/all so it literally doesn't affect me in any way. I do, however, oppose the CEO twisting and molding a community driven website to fit her own agenda, while at the same time treating the most active members of said community like an afterthought.
Yeah, /r/watchpeopledie isn't about hate or 'justice' or anything, it's morbid curiosity. It's for the people who ask 'What does a person look like after they get shot?'.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize Ellen Pao without engaging in sexism or racism. Given the details of her career, she seems like a bad fit for the reddit community. But, I believe that she is pretty much being paid to be a scapegoat for investors wanting to see returns on their investment.
But many people on reddit ARE engaging in racism and sexism; are we really supposed to be okay with that because we think she's bad at her job?
I think racism and sexism is disgusting, but I expect it and think that there should be platforms on which it is okay to express it. I also think it's perfectly acceptable to ban it on other platforms. You don't have to be okay with it. That's not what I'm saying.
But to reduce the dislike for Pao down to its crudest form is not doing justice to the situation.
Define "many". It's easy to generalize a large population like Reddit by seeing a few comments from the minority.
You make a good point, but I don't think there is anything we can do. A large community like Reddit is bound to attract bad people with bad behaviour. A smaller community will be much more reasonable with its criticism, as you can see here on Snapzu. I don't think anyone here is okay with making racist and sexist remarks about Ellen Pao.
It's at least part of the reason I decided to check out Snapzu. There are a lot of racist and sexist and horrible people out there. When reddit gets big enough and becomes more representative of the general population, these people come out of the woodwork.
I really wish we could do more to eliminate that sort of thinking. It has to happen, but it'll take a long time and an obscene amount of work. For the time being, the only true recourse is to run away and group up with other rational people. (That's not to say Snapzu's community is inherently better than reddit's. Were this site to get as big as reddit, I'm sure we'd face the same problems. So it goes.)
Yup, and with that large a userbase there'd inevitably be some scandal where (pulling some super unlikely scenario out of nowhere) someone creates a tribe dedicated to posting sexualized pictures of minors. Then the Snapzu admins would have to step in and take it down or risk massive social or even legal repercussions, a small but loud segment of users would cry censorship and a chunk of the community would splinter off to the next platform (followed slowly by the rest of the users), and the cycle would repeat anew.
It'd be nice if we, the users of Snapzu, could put together a manifesto detailing what ethical atmosphere we want to maintain here. We could definitely learn from the mistakes of reddit regarding hate speech, sexualizing minors, etc. As long as it's made clear from the beginning that this isn't an anarchistic platform with 100% free speech, but still encouraging discussion from all walks of life, we shouldn't have a problem.
I agree with you that many of the comments about her on reddit are outright horrible. However, there is an underlying truth to the criticsm. Since she took over as a CEO the change in business strategy away from users and towards revenue-generating has been pretty obvious with less than desirable results for the users.
Many men in similar position of authority (politics, sports, business) who also think they're doing their job get way more or as much hatred as she does. But A) we're not used to see a woman/PoC's in a position of power, and B) we're used to think of women/PoC's as sort of "inherent victims". So when a woman/PoC is A) in a position of power and B) fucks up badly enough to get the same kind of hate a white man gets, we automatically fall back on our "inherent victim" prejudice and robs women/PoC of their ability to reap hate by their own actions like white men do; which is, ironically, both racist and sexist.
It wasn't even her decision to fire Victoria. After reading her announcements today and seeing how she is being downvoted everywhere I kind of feel for her. I didn't like her at first, but she is making good points and trying to address the community as best she can. Too bad this all came too late, as people's opinions against her has formed ever since the FPH drama.
At the end of the day she is the CEO and the face of Reddit. If Reddit fucks up, as in any other company the CEO will have to take responsibility. This fact along with her bad past reputation and slow response to this drama really drove people to hate her, in my opinion.
She's right, but she misunderstands what that implies.
I personally don't care about the drama. I used to go to reddit to read interesting content, and I don't care enough about reddit to make a fuss about its internal politics. Which is why, when FPH "spilled over" the frontpage or when hundreds of subreddits went dark because the administrators can't manage their community leaders, I certainly don't care enough to tough it out.
Hence, I'm here. And I'm willing to bet reddit will go on bleeding away all of those users who don't care any more than I do.
I think we are seeing the difference between internet user interaction and BRANDED internet user interaction. There's so much that comes to mind when you say the word 4chan, or Reddit, some of which includes previous experiences on those sites or even broader stereotypes that have developed over the years. On one hand we have come to a point where the user has had enough disrespect and is willing to acknowledge the amount of disconnect between the mods and the CEOs, blah blah. On the other, the majority of Redditors don't give a damn about what a CEO has to say. The point behind these sites is the interaction and the feeling we get from those interactions. Whether it be laughing or thinking about a debate you had later on while washing the dishes. These things stick with us throughout the day and a CEO is not going to make that experience better, or even boost monetization. That experience can't be improved, it can only be moderated. Essentially, the internet is a wild colony of bees that is willing to move to a new hive if it feels like their hive has been hijacked and transformed into a corporate machine. Something something bee metaphors.
Shes just said this on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3cbo4m/we_apologize
Going through her responses on that post makes me think two things: 1) She doesn't want reddit to hate her but she doesn't care very much about what reddit wants, and 2) reddit has an entitlement problem that often overshadows its legitimate complaints/ideas/suggestions.
I came here because I thought the darkening was a good reason to check out alternatives. I suspect reddit will continue in more or less the same vein for a while yet, and I will keep checking in, but I'm quite happy to make Snapzu my home base now.
This should of been done last week. I can't believe it took this long to make an announcement on Reddit about it. It'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out.
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From Ellen Pao in the link:
ROFL! Oh, wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.
That's the worst excuse I've seen or heard uttered from an adult in many many years. My son can do better than that. Does she not realize that she is the CEO and she can put out whatever statement she wants on the front page? I have seen blog posts that get downvoted down to zero, and yet it's still going to go to the top of the page because it's an admin-controlled sub.
I don't care... But I am interested in how this will all shake out. I suspect Reddit will be back to normal by the end of the week. But maybe it will also just die?
As toxic as most of Reddit is now, I care less and less what happens there.
I suspect the whole "AMAgeddon" will abate quickly and reddit will appear back to normal... But I also definitely think we're past reddit's prime, and from now on it will stop to grow in subtle but irreversible ways.
It won't be a Digg-like exodus... More of a MySpace die out.
This is what I've expected for a while, especially after how the community reacted and recovered from the FPH drama. I don't think reddit is going anywhere anytime within the next few months, maybe even a year or so. There is not going to be some epic mass drop-off of users like digg. It is going to be a slow departure of content creators. Trust and loyalty is something that is extraordinary hard to build on a website and reddit has lost a LOT of it. The amount they have lost from their most loyal sections of their fanbase is almost irreversible with a great admin team, and the current admin team is currently seeming quite subpar. Since they've lost that trust, ever single mistake they make will slowly cause more and more people to depart. Eventually, people will have no reason to be providing their content to the site and will leave for greener pastures, and the people who only come to consume that content will follow the creators, not the site.
That's been my general philosophy watching all of this drama happen. Morally, I could care less about FPH. I don't know Victoria as a person, and while I wish her the best, I have no emotional investment in her employment at reddit. I don't care about the mod tools there because I was never a mod of a subreddit more than 10 or so large. However, it has seriously made me question putting my content there. I think the admins handled the banning of FPH terrible and treated the members as uninterested consumers rather than a dedicated fanbase. I think the way they handled the Victoria situation was extremely unprofessional and makes me doubt the forward-thinking of the staff. The fact that they have promised mod tools for years and never followed through shows a lack of interest in the actual community and its requests. I understand they have apologized, but that doesn't make up for the fact that they have ignored their community for literally years. Why should I trust that they are suddenly going to change after years of saying they are and not.
So in essence, I distrust the admins. I distrust reddit as a business. Why should I spend my free time building a community there if I don't trust them to actually work with me in return. So over there, I'm no longer a content creator. I'm just a content consumer. And the moment the rest of the content creators jump ship, I'm not turning back.
Yep. I have a feeling that the users that submit good content will trickle out until all they have is standard, average material...like /r/funny style, but in most subreddits. So eventually, people that want the material we're used to will be at another or several other sites. Regardless, I think Reddit will be fine for a while.
I would be one of them. I don't care about the drama around her or the firing of Victoria. I stopped caring about reddit drama around the time they saw that reddit moderators were "collecting" subs that they had no interest in and wouldn't respond to user complaints about how moderation was being abused.
The way she puts it seems a bit condescending, like the thousands of people who left don't matter, and that she has no reason to change the way she is running things.
Right? It honestly seems like she's just pretending nothing is wrong and ignoring all of the people who left. Sure most people probably don't care - but all of the drama surrounding it is also something a lot of people won't like dealing with even if they don't have an opinion on it.
I find it interesting that she made these statements to other sources (BuzzFeed etc), rather than address them directly to the Reddit community.
She actually have made an announcement on reddit, but not before talking to other sources first.
The problem is that she went to those sources first. She's the ceo of reddit so shouldn't that announcement been made there first? It just seems like she's only trying to appear sincere to the general public and not to the users that matter.
As spaceghoti said, I too don't care about drama. What I do care about is if a site is run well, if my feedback matters to mods and admins, and if I can be guaranteed that the site will run well without half the website up in arms over every major change. Reddit fit none of those categories, so I left, and many others have as well.
This article actually hasn't been shared at reddit, yet. I just posted the article on reddit, and I hope to see the shitstorm of anger that arises, because what she said is like a slap in the face to the purpose of the reddit blackout
I agree that it's accurate to say that most users don't care. I've had mixed feelings about Reddit for a long time... and the drama did not really contribute negatively to my output. All it did was show me Reddit alternatives which I found I liked much better. If I liked how Reddit worked, looked, etc. I wouldn't have left for the internal conflict it just had.
I think it's because the Reddit community isn't handling it well. The posts and spam are so immature, nonproductive, and unorganized. I understand that the Reddit user base is younger, especially during the summer with the kids on summer break, but the posts and memes are just annoying. If the Reddit community rallied with direction, I think they would have a lot more power and control on the situation.
I don't think that's possible, there are literally millions on the site and some people are going to post stupid memes, jokes, and Hitler comparisons. It makes it all seem immature, but there is really nothing anyone can do.
Especially since writing up a couple of paragraphs of nuanced criticism takes a heck of a lot longer than just calling her Hitler-Satan.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think Reddit will die out because of this. Sure, this blackout was huge and the active contributors to Reddit are the ones revolting, but I think it will take a few more fuckups for Reddit to really die out. Not to mention there are many many niche subreddits with huge subscriber bases that won't care about all the drama.
Then again, Pao's statement is just damage control. She is not addressing the Reddit community, she is reassuring the investors and outsiders that she did not fuck up. Otherwise she would have made a statement on Reddit.
Can we please stop discussing Reddit on Snapzu? If we continue talking about Reddit, we will never become a fully-pledged community.
I don't really agree with your second sentence. Yeah, there are a lot of snaps about reddit right now, and I'm sure that's partly because there are a number of current/former redditors here. On the other hand, it's impossible to deny how popular of a site reddit is, and there's clearly some important stuff going on with it right now. It's a popular topic in "internet culture," and it's not surprising or necessarily bad that it's being discussed here. I think the number of discussions about reddit will fade as the current drama fades anyway.
I typically browsed /r/all and a few select subreddits - more so to keep up with current events, have a bit of a laugh, and have something meaningful to discuss with my husband and/or kids at he dinner table. However, it had become increasingly difficult to sift through the sheer amount of crap, reposts, and meaningless inside jokes. And now it's nearly impossible to sift through all the garbage.
I walked away mostly because there was very much a hive-mind mentality. If you did not agree or have the same opinion, then it was to the stakes with you to be burned for heresy. Pao is giving me that same impression - that she doesn't really care what others have to say unless they toe the same ideals as she does ... and I kind of hate that.
Also, I much rather a community that isn't toxic to newcomers. I never felt welcome at Reddit. I actually felt very unwanted ... and that's fine.
As someone else said, even if people who just casually lurk and look at content don't care about this latest drama, if those who produce and curate content (the content-posters and mods) decide to leave, then the lurkers will pack up their bags and leave as well due to the lack of content. Of course, this is all depends on how many content-providers leave Reddit.
Um, what?
Aside from that, it's a nice summary of the whole affair, gives the important details without getting too wrapped up in them.
I suspect people will slowly stop caring enough about Reddit because of drama they don't care about enough to put up with it. I don't see Reddit dying out anytime soon, but to me, its exponential growth period is over - grow rate will slow down until it gets to a point where content quality just won't be there enough for people to visit the website, until it just stops to matter. It probably won't implode like Digg did, but its prime time is, but IMO, Reddit has been under the spotlight for the wrong reason one time too often.
Reddit is not dead, but it's not what it was anymore. Pao fails to see this, I think. I left cause I don't really care, not because I do.
It's not that I don't care about the drama, it's that I want to avoid the drama. I was hoping if I went to Snapzu my front page wouldn't all be about Reddit...
I think for sometime more this will still be a hot topic :( It's being picked up by CNN money and other large news sites as current events and deserves representation here. I'm focusing on the quality of conversation here, even about a competing website, rather than the reason for the conversation to garner more appreciation for this site, its community, and its setup.
As a former (and admittedly current) reddit user, I didn't care about the drama so much as I did about what it demonstrated about reddit's in-house leadership team. As much as I love this site as an alternative, until it reaches a critical mass, I don't think it will be a daily, let alone, an hourly destination on the web for me.
we care we try to avoid it
I've been on Reddit for over five years, and the "drama" has escalated both in frequency and severity over the last few months. I didn't care about the FPH debacle, but I don't agree with some of the personnel decisions made which have an impact on the site recently. I think the recent events have permanently changed the way I think of Reddit, and made me realize the Internet is a big place; there are plenty of other places to go for content, discussion, etc...
I don't hold any love for Reddit, since it doesn't cater to the folks that actually make content very well. However, if anyone is looking at this situation and not shaking their head at how absolutely bugfuck stupid the admins are handling their community, I don't know what their wakeup call will be,
I understand where she's coming from, though I tend to agree that she is misjudging just the level of frustration from moderators and users with the site. However, that is not why I'm using reddit less and less. For me, reddit has just become much less interesting over time, with the small communities being some of the only ones with any real value remaining.
SO, to have a website like snapzu that is made up of smaller communities with less, but higher quality, content makes far more sense for me at this point.