Why does Reddit have to become a media empire?
The formula for doing that is pretty well-known by this point:
We'll see a ban on throwaway accounts and a push for real names, then a ban on third party URL shorteners, then interruption ads, and finally some sort of paywall.
Reddit is a useful piece of internet infrastructure, and I'd be pleased if it would stay that way. It doesn't need to become its own media empire with its own Rupert Murdoch, etc.
Some things that could be improved:
- opt-in home pages that are tailored at specific audiences. The standard one is pretty low quality.
- more detection/policing of voting rings and vote fraud in general.
> Why does Reddit have to become a media empire?
Because investors have poured a ton of money into it expecting it to be a media empire.
This is what I detect in Reddit's new ideas: the fear that the existing site is good enough for most people and its population has therefore stabilised... which would be pretty bad for certain kinds of investor looking for a big one-off return instead of a consistent dividend.
Oh god. There are no "investors". Reddit is owned by Conde Nast's parent company. The only other shareholders are employees.
Wrong.
Reddit has recently received substantial outside investments: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/01/reddit-se...
I stand corrected.
URL shorteners have no value except to hide spam links and add someone else's ad interstitials. I should hope they'd be banned!
> opt-in home pages that are tailored at specific audiences. The standard one is pretty low quality.
How is that distinct from multireddits?
> more detection/policing of voting rings and vote fraud in general
One thing that'd help with this is better mod tooling for detecting when it's happening on a reddit you mod.
it'd probably have multireddits underneath, but multireddits don't currently play a part in onboarding
as far as detection tools for mods, https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/4tpla8/_/d5j7uo...
Yeah, I read that comment. I'm hoping they can give us at least some form of tooling around this, though. The inability to do even basic things as a mod seriously sucks.
>then a ban on third party URL shorteners
aren't they banned already?
from the reddiquette[1]:
>please don't use link shorteners to post your content
[1] https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette
I really wish that Reddit would however add HN-style about boxes.