Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

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I'm so split on Reddit. While I agree with most of what you said the decline in quality of both content and comments, and the extreme moderation which has occurred over the last 4-5 years would really worry me if I was an investor. Presumably as a public company they would come under even more scrutiny for edgy content and feel the need to moderate content even more. And in general as the size of a social site's user base increases, the quality of the content drops as content starts to reflect the common denominator of its users.

I also feel like all social media the there are very toxic aspects to Reddit. I used to be very active on there, but after receiving constant abuse and very few constructive replies I now rarely participate in discussions there. Again with the company going public like Facebook and Twitter, Reddit could come under more scrutiny for this.

Assuming you buy for a fair valuation I don't think it's a bad investment per say, but I think there are a lot of risks there. I find myself wishing for an alternative to Reddit a lot these days because I really miss the high quality discussions I used to have there 10 or so years ago.

I agree with you about the abuse aspect. That's one thing this could change. I would for example change the voting system to not allow a negative score. It doesn't happen often, but it still doesn't feel good that people disagree and not only do they not upvote, but they downvote until you get negative score.

In my opinion if you disagree don't upvote, or at least downvote until 0. So people know the overall sentiment is negative, but there's not need to show how negative it is. If it's so bad to be offesive or innacurate, then report it. But downvoting until it's negative feels really overkill and feels like at the moment everyone not only disagrees, but hates you.

The constructive replies you talk about depends on the subreddit. There are subreddits that are literally lifesavers. For example subreddits to overcome emotional abuse and abusive relationships, you'll find support there that is simply amazing and not abusive at all. Or subreddits about certain niches that people are passionate about.

Unfortunately toxic people are sadistic and get a kick out of abusing people, so it's bound to happen. Best way is to report it, so the moderators either warn the person or ban them.

Wouldn't that present the same issues that removing the "dislike" counter on YouTube videos did?

For example, that video by The Verge where that guy builds a PC in the stupidest way - it's got thousands of likes for some reason but 10s of thousands of dislikes because it's not the way you should build a PC

Now the dislike counter is gone, those who see the video think "oh this has thousands of likes. It must be good".

Downvoting does attract idiots and pile-ons, but it does serve a purpose as a a lose indicator of content/comment quality

Based on previous IPOs of internet giants I think Reddit is a good bet but obviously lots of dynamics about the inner workings of cash flow etc that a layperson is only guessing about.

One area that seems inevitably would have to change is Reddit’s linking to pirated video clips. I’m sure the clips won’t go away but would be altered in a way so that reddit has deals with copyright owners and unskippable ads are played.

Ultimately all these media funded platforms under-weight advertising to begin with to build a user-base so become worse to use once established.

I would want to take a closer look at their engagement metrics. Of course they will officially show rising engagement, but in what form? Because for niche subs the engagement (active users) is reducing in many subs. People run to discord mostly, which is only partially better, but doesn't suffer power mods yet.

Rising engagement could also come from content that got linked and from people just visiting the page.

Buying votes for reddit is allegedly quite cheap as well.

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