Millions of creators on sites like YouTube and others never get credited or viewed even though their stolen content goes viral on bootleg accounts. It's a huge problem. Even replies and posts from other sites are hijacked for the same purposes now.
It laid the ground work for content theft going on everywhere now...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4geZL2xmM
does it require it or provide it as an option?
as far as I know you can submit image URLs just fine. gyfcat and imgur videos are regularly on r/all.
hosting multimedia content provides a better experience. does it have downsides? yes. just with google's AMP.
a bit offtopic, but tiktok creators' fund is already shortshelling creators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZapFzpP64
and this endless reposting of viral content ... well, it's ongoing since we have viral content. is it great? of course not, but it's not like the reddit CDN somehow changed anything with regards to this problem.
youtube has contentID ... "creators" are free to organize and advocate for reddit/IG/tiktok to introduce it (or lobby US/EU/China to mandate it or whatever)
Content theft on the internet is as old as the internet.
Reddit has even gone as far as to prohibit posting of OC by creators themselves by banning their posts and accounts when they post their own work, calling it "self promotion", while other accounts violate the rule with obvious immunity. They also ban subreddits after they are cultivated and curated too, many times for no good reason. I understand that spam needs to be controlled, but how moderation occurs on Reddit, it's totally not conducted in a normal nor reasonable manner at all.
Edit: In addition, just recently she managed to ward off a blatant thief and finally drive traffic from another hit to herself. But the income lost to the thief in the first few days? Forget about it.
The other major subs are also filled with shallow/unsubstantial content
But if you keep out of those it is usually ok
A lot of content creators spam Reddit to get clicks and eyeballs (obviously). Some subreddits have nearly become 100% YouTube threads. As a result some subs/admins have started to craft tighter requirements for the links posted to bring some sort of balance back to the content.
Also there's always old payment methods where crypto/NFT/digital payment services or even a bag of cash can be used under the table, though nobody can or would want to prove that of course, and of course it's not presented as fact because I have no stake whatsoever in reddit nor desire to see it made less skewed like it used to be in the past.... I've already given up on it myself, long ago when they banned me for no reason and took my sub.
Look carefully at each video you watch on any platform from now on for what products, slogans, and logos are placed in them, and the links/comments that are posted in the comments. There is advertising going on in the majority of reddit posts for something, even if most people don't know it. A lot of the time, even the music used in content is often being subtly imprinted across multiple sites so that it becomes an ear worm as a low-key psychological marketing tactic.
Many major companies are putting out completely engineered "low budget" home videos as ads, they're no longer marking paid ad posts as sponsored, and companies are regularly hiring the most popular and trusted creators to inject subtle advertising cues into otherwise organic looking viral videos. I'm pretty sure that most of what we see on social platforms with paid advertising options now is either staged/funded/enlisted/sponsored production, bot driven content, or low key psychological marketing. This does not include HN based on what I've observed, because they don't sell ad-based post boosting (as far as I know).
OC creators struggle often in futility to break past algorithm ratios just to be seen by small audiences if they don't have massive sums of money to pay for advertising for each post they make on each platform. Getting to the front page without the right funding may be damn near impossible by now, fair enough though, there are a lot of other users competing against you that have copied your style, branding, and/or content, so "F" it, maybe we're all doomed/
And that is the stuff behind subs blocking youtube and the strict self-promotion rules.
The main thing right now is bots. Endless copying & reposting of submissions, and even wholesale copy/pasting comment replies. The reddit staff have to know about this as it's been going on for a while, but seemingly don't care.
Without your presence amongst the people on that platform, and with the condemnation and final-judgement people like yourself dole out... how could you expect them to ever be any better or things to improve over the course of a decade?
Team values have all but disappeared. That is the real issue at hand.
We need to be finding leverage and educating them on how to think critically, while providing them with support and encouragement of lifestyles which improve their intellectual abilities. Not put them down and shut them out.
You may disagree - you may believe that there needs to be a culling like a lot of the entitled wealthy class, but that's just naive weak thinking from a group of individuals who couldn't build or run something themselves if their life depended on it. They're essentially nothing more than spoiled children living in a bubble. They have no foresight.
Old fashioned forums are still far and away the best 'system' for this, they're just not 'popular' enough any more, particularly with Facebook providing groups within their massive walls.
HN still keeps to its 'niche' well enough, much as forums have their usual genres that allow for clear moderation and purpose/values.
Our predecessors have homogenized products and services, reducing quality and efficacy - in many cases effectively shadow banning certain types of quality or goods, e.g. food which contains a ton of cancer causing chemicals, or video games which prey upon vulnerable youth and adults VS organic sustainably locally farmed fresh produce that empowers people and brings them together and video games that provide emotionally, socially, and intellectually rewarding experiences of a lifetime.
Developing for the lowest common denominator is the work of an MBA or Economist. It's parasitic behavior of an individual who actually has ZERO interest in the companies services or products or what they actually do for their fellow citizens, and instead do everything they can to divert from those goals in order to steal money and get away with it, effectively.
In the case of Reddit - they pretend to be too much, to do too much, while in reality when you weigh the damage they do to society and themselves VS. the profits they make. The point is, which I think you were making, is that they are catering to a very low bar in order to earn more money at the cost of damaging the foundations upon which their business stands, their own life as well - by damaging and corrupting, or driving away communities who would otherwise be empowered and empowering others (including the MBAs & Economists own families and friends).
The opportunity cost is rapid advancement of technology and stability of social systems, as well as the possible prevention of mass extinction events or prevention of fully blown dystopian realities. These people are literally trading a Jetsons like, badass future for.. short term parties on yachts because they can't get it otherwise. Do you see what I 'm getting at? If these people, these 1% "elites" and "leaders" in our society would just be team players instead they would most likely have the ability to go to the store in just a decade or two and buy themselves a brad pitt body, or a space alien brain, or cure any disease, or buy a perfectly pristine plot of land on the moon or mars (most likely less time than that because things tend to advance at exponential rates when people work together without so much impedance).
This is why I wish more people would start debating with these obscenely rich and powerful people because the people aren't going to cut it in this day and age. We live in unprecedented times where reaching a critical mass with just a bunch of uneducated people is simply no longer effective due to the tools of mass manipulation and fake news that there are. It's also reason to get your hands dirty with undereducated and underprivileged reddit users. All you have to do to get through to them is (A) use their language and (B) balance it out with validation, acknowledgement / mirroring / positive reinforcement of their good logic and behavior. They learn VERY quickly this way and can become formidable allies in a short time.
If we want to do this, we need simply to illustrate for the rich "elite" the opportunity costs of continuing down the path they're on. They are not intelligent business persons when you consider these costs. It's actually insane. It's like trying to compare a $48,000 salary in the early 2000s (after 2001) to infinity. There isn't a comparison, it's just stupid business practices all the way down. HOWEVER, we know they aren't exactly unintelligent either, so to say it's impossible to reach them and convince them is just silliness. They will wake up to it they just need someone they'll listen to, to explain it for them using their own language.
You're not making any sense at all and it seems like you've just completely shifted subjects to the algorithm and what makes it to the top.
I wonder - are you under the impression that you have to have a big following or be at the top to influence people? In that case, you should think about how you view top posts and reddit and realize that your target audience isn't bots or necessarily clandestine orgs, but people who could be considered low hanging fruit or "on the fence".
In fact it is best if you are a nobody. It's how you choose to use your words and how good you are at cutting through all the conjecture and b.s. logical fallacies. It's quite effective and doesn't require hardly any effort.
Your attitude, no offense, stinks it would seem. You basically skipped over everything I said, haven't appeared to consider any of the points I made and then switched subjects.
Are you debating here in good faith? Because it really doesn't seem that way at all based on your entire response.
Yes "Education" requires patient teachers, but it also requires a very specific environment without all of the above. You don't have to look to social media platforms for it cause that's not where education happens.
When I started on Reddit there was already an element of things having changed, a move away from niche technology discussion towards lowest common denominator stuff and discussion by meme.
In general this was fine as you could just move to smaller subreddits, and the bigger pages had fun cultures that permeated the others and gave it all a sense of unity and shared interest even when you were in your bubble.
The difficult change I've seen in the past few years is the rising number of hate and harassment subs, and Reddit tolerating them. If you scroll through the top of /r/BanFemaleHateSubs or /r/AgainstDegenerateSubs you'll see how bad things have become and how unsafe the general environment is.
It's not that discussion has become worse in an Eternal September way, it's that discussion has become openly threatening, with innocent women having their pictures and social media links shared for strangers to discuss rape and murder fantasy, and this gets 10s of 1000s of subscribers and Reddit routinely ignores reports about it.
The r/BanThisandThat subreddits are little more than morality police. Many of those posts will take statements out of context or regard any "cis-het" sexual fantasies as threatening to women.
> It's not that discussion has become worse in an Eternal September way, it's that discussion has become openly threatening, with innocent women having their pictures and social media links shared for strangers to discuss rape and murder fantasy, and this gets 10s of 1000s of subscribers and Reddit routinely ignores reports about it.
Firstly, social media accounts aren't secret. Anyone who publishes to a Twitter or FB account cannot claim a retroactive right to privacy. The other contention I have is that Reddit should not punish a written expression of thought merely because it's unpalatable to a certain section of its userbase. Pandering to a moral minority sets up a precedent for the most loudest performing "victims"-of-the-day to decide what everyone else is allowed to say, hear, or think.
Call it morality police if you want but it's targeted sexual violence against minors and women who don't consent. I guess your morality and mine don't align. If I'm in the "morality minority" on this one then that's very sad and I would encourage yourself and other members of "morality majority" to reflect on how women are treated in your society.
Out of interest, would you mind sharing your Facebook or Instagram profile here, so that someone could share you pictures on a subreddit for rape and murder fantasy about you, linking back to the account? It's only fantasy right, would be a shame of the morality police ruined the fun.
I'm all for illegal and non-consensual content subreddits to be banned. That's not all the mentioned "Ban This and That" subs are asking for, so I won't accept their moral opinions beyond the issues of non-consenting and illegal materials. They are prescribing a sexual morality, one which I, and I think many reasonable people, disagree with or at least have qualms with. If you don't believe me, r/BFHS seems to be a hotspot for anti-kink and anti-porn activists who suggest that women with kinks need to "heal"[0]. If that's not moralizing, I'm not sure what is.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/BanFemaleHateSubs/comments/unaa88/c...
The function of the community is to draw attention to outright abuse that is happening on Reddit in the open. That is a broad mission and will definitely attract a range of people. Some may be moralists or however you want to paint them. Does that mean we should turn away from them or what do you suggest?
Maybe you could join the effort and be a voice of the reason you believe in and speak out against what you perceive as unhealthy "kink shaming" and ensure the topic stays on hand against things that are definitely not "edge cases" (which from my experience is the majority of what's posted).
No doubt it's imperfect "at the edges" but what isn't? It seems dangerous to draw attention away from _the huge issue in the middle_.
Some actors will use it as advertising space but I don't think the blame for that should be put onto the shoulders of those fighting it.
Do you have an idea of how this issue could be avoided without turning a blind eye?
Like how r/tumblrinaction got banned recently, the members of the sub didn't report themselves for racism and transphobia.
In my view this is just a symptom of the wider populace gaining access to internet forums and the cultural shift mass internet usage brought. As in, there have always been darker corners of the internet, just that the people who frequented them had to have some level of nerdiness/geekiness and {nerds}∩{violent racists} is smaller than {whole population}∩{violent racists}.
Back in 2010 there would be discussions about places like /r/jailbait, about the tradeoffs between free speech and public safety etc. Now there are subreddits openly sharing child pornography with links to the social media accounts of the children and their families, and Reddit auto responds that these things don't violate their usage policies when reported.
Secondly, they also have large numbers of participants from a range of backgrounds with a range of motivations. The subreddits they are discussing tend to have 10s of 1000s of followers actively engaging in various levels of harassment, I doubt that's a single sock puppet.
Thirdly, do you have a source for anything you're claiming?
Finally, if what you're saying is true then someone is posting child pornography to Reddit. Regardless of his intentions we should be concerned about that.
The user revealed their name in an interview here: https://www.fastcompany.com/3026860/a-brief-rundown-of-the-s...
According to one of the sources linked in a sibling comment, this user was arrested for domestic violence. A quick look at their user profile shows they are the top mod of r/garland, which isn't far from where the arrest occurred.
That's how I read the original comment.
You mean transgender people? Because that's a pretty offensive description
Your second point is simply false. There are plenty of real women active on Reddit, and many active as moderators. Yes I am sure of it.
The comments were often equally low effort with memes and weak jokes rising to the top. This was especially infuriating in places like /r/askreddit where the only chance of seeing replies that weren't clear fabrications or jokes was to specifically ask for serious replies.
There were really only 2 ways for a subreddit to be good. It either had to be small and relatively close-knit or it had to have rules against low effort content and solid moderation enforcing those rules. But since communities will naturally grow as people find them and because people hate when moderators remove their posts, Reddit ended up exactly where it was destined to.
But bottom line is that perhaps the single most disruptive event an online community can experience is a large sustained influx of new members. It just will not be the same before and after.
This is also why the 'powermods' are so damaging: without proper, attentive moderation an influx of new users invariably leads to a decline in quality.
Half the subreddits in /r/all are so homogeneous that it's impossible to tell if a post was in /r/muderedbywords, /r/nextfuckinglevel, /r/damnthatsinteresting, /r/unexpected, etc.
And that's not to mention all the bots...
I wonder if this is done on purpose, to nudge people into thinking of individual users not as people but as voices of a "hivemind".
Even today, usernames are de-emphasized in the UI in contrast to names of threads or subreddits. That's most prominent on the front-page ("r/all") where posts don't show the usernames at all, only the names of subreddits - producing the odd impression that the subreddits are authoring the posts and not individual users within the subreddit.
HN's UI is sort of similar on the first half: Users are de-emphasized here as well, but there are no subreddits to emphasize instead. Though I think it would be interesting if someone made an alternative frontend for HN that presented threads in the style of an old web forum, with user identities shown prominently
I think it works frightenly well sometimes. Ask yourself:
- How many engaging conversations have you had on HN in the last year?
- How many people do you know on HN?
> - How many engaging conversations have you had on HN in the last year?
- None that I remember, thank goodness. One man's conversations are another man's flame wars.
> - How many people do you know on HN?
- At the very least, knowing HN users' affiliations and posting tendencies is key to quickly blocking unwanted ideological noise, whether it concerns international politics or programming languages.
This is IMO the approach that makes the most sense. Let users ignore other users, rather than enforcing bans/shadowbans on the whole userbase.
While I personally would rather not block anyone, I think everyone should have the ability to police the content they see, but in most cases not what other people see.
On HN when I like a users comment I will go through their post history, and if enough of their comments are of good quality, I add their comments to my RSS reader through hnrss. Reddit does this slightly better, where you can add users to your 'friend's list' and then they give you an option to see the latest comments from all of your friends. Both ways do context of the comment poorly.
The other thing I do on Reddit is have thousands of sub-reddits filtered out through RES. Basically anything bigger than a million subscribers is useless, and often even 100k is to much.
Are there non traditional communities like Tildetown that you enjoy?
It's been an arduous process but I've managed to replace Reddit with a few forums, HN included, that are still alive to this day.
And I've completely banned myself from Reddit. It's hard given how much information is stored on that site.
It's likely now all just a random assortment of content from whoever pays the most for ad promotions on their posts, without violating community standards and policy, and occasional celeb posts here and there... of course.
The algo likely only does light duty when something bad on the platform makes the news... They have to make sure paid ads run as promised, and a lot of people buy ads, there is likely no more space for unpaid algo picks, as the Internet now runs 24/7 worldwide with over 8 billion potential customers.
In fact TikTok is widely said to have the best algorithm for determining someone's interests.
If you're someone like a musician, makeup artist, or web developer (for example) TikTok floods you with success tips, tutorials about how people went viral, with tips on pay for promotional ads on the platform, and a constant stream of thought leadership programming to keep you struggling and spending time and money on growth. It's quite hostile to anyone who just wants to develop listeners and viewers, or anyone who wants to market a product independently. Big businesses can just have a meeting with TikTok reps, pay a fee, and get prime promo placement. When you run a small business, without lots of employees, managing social media presence becomes a huge mountain to climb, and TikTok won't meat with you unless you're very popular or wealthy (and willing to spend) already.
Everyone on the platform has a different perspective, TikTok's algo is good at determining that and maximizing what can be earned from each user, but it's not fair nor transparent at all, and it creates a situation where no one can question things because there are others that will always say their TikTok experience is "going just fine". User experience all depends on the user's personas.
Sounds like the ideal opaque platform to brainwash people with "organic", shallow and easy to watch content.
The perfect backdoor for an open society.
Truly a missed field goal... Someone responsible should be spoken to rather harshly about this dereliction of duty, and the db should be at least reverted back to it's 2010 state. heh. :/
I agree though that just about all changes made to the reddit website itself have been for the worse. Perhaps the story of digg.com will play out again?
They don't even touch on the Eternal September of reddit. Every thread is full of the most mundane observations possible, lazy puns, entirely expected The Office references and sayings which have been said literally thousands of times before -- followed up by someone going "this is the most perfect comment" all of which is wildly upvoted.
It feels like it is being botted by a simplistic lazy circle jerking ML text generation algorithm. Maybe it is. But it is definitely drowning in https://xkcd.com/1053/.
An Subreddits can only help you towards alternative mainstream until they grow too big.
the success of this comment is a far better illustration of Eternal September
Pretty much since the day I found out about reddit in... 2008-ish?, everyone in the online communities I knew thought it was filled with awful pseudointellectual teenagers and college students, that the upvote/downvote system was horrible and encouraged people to post low-effort content, the moderators were overzealous and clueless, and in general there was no sense of community due to the size of the site + lack of individual identifiers beyond usernames, like avatars and signatures from a typical internet forum of the day. Basically, reddit is just as bad today as it was a decade ago.
But I'm sure for people who had their first internet-social experiences on reddit, they remember it a lot more fondly.
I will concede that objectively speaking, "new Reddit" is an abject failure (and the fact that old.reddit.com continues to exist is a testament to the such) and that it's much more heavily astroturfed by major corporations now.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September