Well... Reddit is a deeply misunderstood community because its actual function is not governed by policy, it's governed by folklore. In order to know that folklore you have to do a lot. The more you do the less interested you are in interacting with those who don't understand the folklore. So it's easy to look at this and go "ohhhhh shit major change" when in fact what you're seeing is posturing ahead of a major business play. Reddit Inc. has always reserved the right to stomp the shit out of any community they feel like. They banned f7u12 for 2 days for fucking with the CSS. They took down an even dozen circlejerkers hangouts for violating site rules (I oughtta know, I goaded 'em into seven of them). They took down /r/jailbait essentially because SomethingAwful threatened them. Previously they'd taken down /r/jailbait when violentacrez modded those said same circlejerkers (in part, to goad me). They don't give a fuck. They really don't. They want you to think they give a fuck because the more they stomp on communities, the more time they have to spend stomping and they have barely better community management tools than the paltry array moderators have to work with. If you check that thread, you'll see a couple hundred communities mentioned that are worse than fph that aren't banned - this is how it starts. Now that they've opted to pull one offensive subreddit, the "you pulled X why not Y" discussions commence and all of a sudden, their thinly-spread team has to get into community management. Assuming you mean it, that is. About that "thinly spread team", by the way. Reddit raised $50m on a half-billion-dollar valuation in September. Supposedly they pulled in eight million dollars in ad revenue. Yet the front page still shakes you down for donations (Reddit Gold). Does that seem like a disconnect to anyone else? Reddit Inc was, in the private corners of the site, raked over the coals for years over subs like /r/beatingwomen, /r/creepshots, /r/coontown and the like. They never once answered why /r/beatingwomen was allowed but /r/stormfront wasn't; the answer is pretty obvious though. They knew they'd face a lot more bad press for neonazi subreddits than they would for shock subreddits. But that was before the VCs started seeing the writing on the wall for Internet 2.0. Everyone is eager to get the payout ahead of '99 Mk. II. You don't have to read Pando every day to see that Secret cratered, to see that Snapchat is overvalued, to see that Groupon was a harbinger not a fluke. The money in Reddit wants their money out of Reddit. The only way they're going to get that is if they can sell Reddit before it craters. They're not going to be able to do that if Reddit is associated with the Fappening, Creepshots, FindBostonBombers and every other scandal under the sun. When even Twitter says "you know, we prolly oughtta do something about stalking and harassment" it becomes pretty obvious that Reddit needs to say "We are doing something about stalking and harassment." Take a look at your post. Now take a look at this post. do you see the part that's missing from your post? Yup. Code changes. When even twitter is willing to tweak the code to look like they're doing something, a blog post without any demonstrable engineering change is the clearest signal there is of "business as usual."
I'm suggesting that at the very least, the money in Twitter wants not to lose their money. Twitter has been under the microscope of late as their numbers start to wear thin, as their revenue streams start to pan out and as they start to get more press for harassment than breaking news. As a consequence, Twitter issued a "there there, everything's okay, we're more than just a rage engine" and changed policy and code. Not saying it'll mean much in the end, but it got the subject changed from Twitter to "something other than Twitter." Reddit has pretty much been one long downhill slide of bad publicity since Obama showed up to do an AMA. This is the sort of move one makes if one wishes to staunch the bleeding without actually doing anything.
Twitter somehow "doesn't work". It worked in the very early days, but the filtering tools just aren't there - or rather, they're not there for the average user's capability. It started out as "microblogging". Well, a blog is a destination. Sure, you can subscribe to it (if you have the know how, most don't). But back in the day, would you have subscribed to several hundred active blogs? Hell no. So it's really just like being on your own bridge over a section of a very fast flowing river, and missing nearly everything. And barely even having the time to do that.
Destinations have been heavily deprecated in favor of surge traffic. That's why even the New York Times writes clickbait titles and why RSS feeds are no longer supported by Google. Ryan Holiday pointed out that Twitter's sole claim to glory is breaking the news of Osama Bin Laden 8 minutes ahead of a White House announcement. 8 minutes.
Oh undoubtedly, but Twitter has become the conduit for other destinations. The dumb pipe. The surge happens, and everyone is off to the NYT or BBC or whatever. Is there any way to track, for example, how many of your Followers actually saw a particular tweet of yours? (Assuming they didn't click on it). So often I hear companies saying "we'll put it out on Twitter" but what is "out" in that context? Who is there? Whereas Facebook (which personally I loathe) has a far quieter, more in depth feed, and individual pages within it are far more like destinations if you're interested enough to actually go to a company page on there. I've actually tried going to corporate Twitter accounts before to get their news/information: it's impossible. It doesn't aggregate in a useful way. It doesn't look useful.
Twitter's penetration remains pathetic. Their die-off rate is also heinous. Followers are likely to be bots and traffic is easily purchased. Facebook traffic is genuine. I hate them both, but Twitter is a paper tiger.
I registered here only to say thank you for clearing this up for me. I guess this website's better cuz it doesn't have as much money as Reddit yet. But it'll go the same way cuz everyone wants to succeed in this world.
I'm not 100% certain I agree with you on the Bubble 2.0 idea. I think that some sections of the net are ripe for that kind of explosion(or implosion), sections which things like Reddit are firmly seated in. But I think its not just a business issue. I think its a user society issue as well. We're desperately looking for a new form of social communication over the net, one that's fairly standardized but which any one can get involved in. What that means in the long run, I'm not exactly sure.
There's "what you want" and "what you will pay for." In order for change to come, someone has to be remunerated (either financially or spiritually) for what they do. Reddit needs to make money. It has not done so for lo these many years. In the runup to the next dotcom crash, that's been okay... many many companies have not been required to make back any of their cash because they're "disruptive" and "some sections of the net are ripe for that kind of explosion." But 4chan has never made money, and never will. Amazon barely makes money, and never will. Facebook? Facebook makes phat stax. They will continue to do so for as long as their ad platform works, which they're kind of fucking up right now. But at least they have somewhere to start. Reddit has the ability to target individual customers yet self-serve remains the biggest clusterfuck in the history of advertising. Anyone with half a clue starts to look at "the most hateful site on the Internet", contemplates the fact that it will never make money, and decides that their money is better invested elsewhere.
They've been fucking up their platform. The feed is kind of a gerrymandered nightmare and it's caused ROI on ads to plummet. They're still the best bang-for-buck for local advertising, but not nearly by the percentage they used to be. They're also really polluting everyone's feed with clickbait bullshit and they make it really tough to see the posts you care about, which drives down visibility. I know I didn't install FB in my new phone, and I got it in November. People have a lot of Facebook fatigue.
This might interest you: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000We're desperately looking for a new form of social communication over the net, one that's fairly standardized but which any one can get involved in.
There was a discussion this morning in a reddit sub where I'm subscribed called /r/watchpeopledie. Sounds pretty crass just from the name, and a decent percentage of regular users wouldn't be bothered to look much further. Some of the people subscribed there are concerned that the this is exactly the logic that will follow - they've banned a sub for disliking the obese but not a sub where people watch murders and executions and talk about them (and let's be honest - sometimes make jokes)? The sad thing is, it would really be a shame to lose that sub. It's one of the few I've found where community policing works actually works, there's rarely disrespect (and what exists is almost always downvoted to oblivion), the moderators are just as involved as the regular users - most people there seem to be on the same page. The consensus seems to be that these "fringe" subs are safe as long as they refrain from brigading. I guess we'll find out. And who knows? As a moderator of /r/serialkillers, maybe my opinion on what's appropriate is skewed.