My partner is an archivist, they attend these sorts of conferences, and we've talked about this frequently. Archivists are at best apprehensive about AI, especially shoddily implemented versions like will almost certainly be the case here.
Accuracy is everything, and the way information in the archive is presented to visitors/researchers is paramount. Anything that moves that discussion around that presentation away from human beings into the realm of artificially generated pablum is going to be met with resistance.
Think of it like how /r/askhistorians on Reddit would rather let a question go unanswered for hours so a professional can provide a proper, sourced answer, than let some random user chime in with anything. That's putting an emphasis on accuracy and providing a completeness, rather than a rapid one.
>At the current rate, it will take until 2046 to completely transcribe this series with just humans!,” Lagundo’s presentation says. She said that an AI transcript of the dataset was 90 percent correct and that it intends to share these transcripts with the public in its official catalog in November or December.
What's the rush? Why would we settle on 90% accuracy today when we could do it right and get 100%? It's not like this is mission critical information. It's an archive. Take the time and do it right.
Moreover, why is this so important that we need to burn the energy from AI to do it?
> What's the rush? Why would we settle on 90% accuracy today when we could do it right and get 100%? It's not like this is mission critical information. It's an archive. Take the time and do it right.
Because someone will get a promotion for leading an "initiative".
Their point is why would would anyone involved in this presentation choose to dub this AI an "expert". They're addressing the overall dishonesty in labeling it as anything other than what it is. They rightfully do not want users interacting with an AI that sports a label that misinforms them about what they're talking to.
And that is a very valid concern. One of the chief issues with all of these chat bots is that they speak like humans with unearned authority. The output is presented with an air of knowledge that it simply does not have because it can't truly "know" anything.
Nobody is calling it an expert. It's a system prompt to make it perform better. This kind of deliberate misinformation it implicitly promotes with the employee quotes is exactly what I'm talking about.
It's very bizarre to see all these comments downplaying this, or implying the lack of E2EE by default somehow makes it less attractive to the average user than something like Signal.
Most people care about usability and interconnectivity first and foremost because the majority of their messaging activities are not so sensitive that they feel the need to sacrifice those things for mandatory E2EE. Call that shortsighted if you like, but it's far more common than this "encryption or bust" mindset around here.
If signal or some messaging platform could find a way to be E2EE capable all the time, with all the same usability and design as telegram, without unnecessary restrictions on users, and without it being a completely walled off garden from which your data can never be self-extracted, it would win this argument.
Same goes for things like Tutanota and a lot of these other data prisons that are cropping up which create privacy through taking away user agency.
Until then users will pick what they want for their own needs. Telegram met those needs for many.
isn't only the client side oss? server side logs/libs is more likely. isn't it amazing 30 guys handle a billion users and who knows what sort of ddos is unleashed against them.
Maybe because tech-savvy people understand the need and importance of encryption? There's of course always the exceptions that say they don't care about privacy, but that is fortunately usually a small group, at least in the tech-savvy world.
Both tech savvies and laypeople expect private/encrypted messaging app to provide the basic property that only the sender and the intended recipients can read it. This is achieved with end-to-end encryption. Techies know the term, and can understand it's not present. Non-tech people don't understand, and just rely on word-of-mouth that it's super secure, when it's not.
As someone who has hated something like 85% of all recent app redesigns with their wasted screen space and needlessly floating elements, Thunderbird's is one of the few that I actually kinda like, after I took a few minutes to tweak it to my liking.
That said, I completely understand the impulse. I do this a lot nowadays.
Something to keep in mind is authentication methods if you're using Thunderbird for certain accounts. Like just this year Microsoft broke QAuth functionality with Thunderbird, and I'm pretty sure you can't set up QAuth2 on Thunderbird 78 (at least without an addon).
You can probably count on that sort of thing happening more and more.
>Will Reddit as a business be better off without these users? Also maybe. There's definitely a case to be made that the community would benefit from more casual participation minus power tripping and over moderation from the top 0.01%.
Casual participation doesn't get the job done.
The idea that reddit would benefit without these users is just a complete misunderstanding of what reddit is and what creates reddit's value.
Google destroyed its own search engine, it would do the same to Reddit.
The fundamental problem is that reddit's primary strength, it's biggest point of value, is antithetical to the type of monetization that Google would implement.
I love that the CEO calls the users voicing their displeasure "noise".
When those users voice opinions on other things, it's called content. When those users voice their opinions against reddit, it's noise.
Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is.
The very people that give your platform its value are revolting against you, and you think it's noise.
What's your product? What do you create? In what way will Reddit thrive only with what you put into it? Where do you think the content you lace your ads between comes from?
If Reddit isn't going to value its communities, it's just going to turn into a clone of the bloated corpse of "I Can Has Cheeseburger", an endless stream of cat pictures and short videos, posted and reposted. High in traffic, maybe, but catering only to the lowest common denominator, stripped of the things that made it valuable to long-time users.
But that's probably fine with them. Reddit seems to have taken that the position that users are fungible, which (particularly when they depend on volunteer moderators) seems somewhat dubious to me.
That's exactly what it's going to become. Lop in the eternal September of new users aging-in every year that don't even know what it used to be like and they're set.
That's kind of all that Reddit is to me. There are some exceptions, but for the most part Reddit posters are some of the stupidest humans on the internet.
They are great fun with cat pictures and other stupid content. And you'll have the occasional laser-focused sub-reddit (that will be a loss).
The occasional laser-focused subreddit has been my bread and butter on reddit for the past 15 years.
I never access /r/popular or /r/all or any of the default subreddits, all my usage on reddit is from niche communities about my hobbies, and through the past 15 years each new hobby I started there was a subreddit to kickstart it full of information and a community. That's going to be the biggest loss.
Most of reddit the past 10 years has been shifting towards new users just lazily scrolling /r/popular but those users are not profitable, they don't generate value, the ads will be poorly targeted. The laser-focused subreddits is where the value of reddit as a platform comes from, I don't like advertising but I could tolerate targeting on those subreddits as it'd be relevant without invading users' privacy (like the old days of AdSense using the context of the page for ads, not profiling the user).
The vast majority is utter stupidity, I agree, but that is a part of reddit that you can completely avoid if you are a bit more of a power user... It will suck when it dies.
Like my username says, I'm definitely not anything close to a power user, but you're 100% right. Moving to a new city, need info on your current city, or just visiting somewhere? Check their reddit out, between searches, maybe the wiki, and asking questions, you're set. Got a question on random topics? Find the 3-4 subreddits and fire away, no need to worry about quora or stupid articles online. Worst case the community you ask will have some RTFM-attitude to them, but boom - now you got a manual. And like you said, new hobby? Bruh, hit the wiki & the sidebar, go through their resources, ask the community for more if you feel like it. Get detailed help for your issues inside a week, for sure. It's ridiculous how useful it is to have a curated list of resources and a community ready to talk you through those resources, on day 1 of your future hobby, for free. For pretty much all interests. Shit was glorious.
I've read about some people calling for a return to forums. That lacks the one-stop-shop-for-all-interests feel, though - besides, subreddits are quick to tell you about other online communities you should hit up. For some of the older folks on here, how were the old newsgroups compared to reddit? From the little I know - and I mean "I learned about newsgroups from a joke on the Simpsons" little - it kind of sounds like Reddit...
Creating an alternative to Reddit would be pretty easy, but the challenge is the critical mass of users necessary for anyone to ever replace it. (We are even using a clone right now.) Another challenge would be scalability, but this is not as difficult as it was in 2005(?) when Reddit came to life. They are playing a dangerous game disrespecting their users.
We're going to see a lot more clones in the coming weeks/months, which arguably also prevents most of them from doing their intended job as a replacement. Eventually, one will form when the dust settles.
It's a slow process, but an inevitable one. Twitter has demonstrated this, where it isn't this instant switch, but a slow burn. We're only now getting Meta's take on such a replacement for example. Same will happen with Reddit now people are aware how fragile it really is. I just don't see direct replacements happening this year.
Anecdotally I do see far more aggressive displacement on Reddit than I did with Twitter however, perhaps due to how impersonal Reddit is where most feel they can abandon it much easier than a Twitter account with many professional colleagues attached.
That's what the average hooman being wants tho, why do you think Tiktok is so popular. Most of the content on there is scripted bullshit/fake scenarios and some dumbass' face "reacting" to some other content. That's what people like...for some reason...
I agree. I think that this is a turning point for Reddit but not towards failure: they’re ditching the hardcore nerd audience that made them. But they’ve long since outgrown that audience and will likely (as a company) do just fine without them. As a community there will be a notable loss.
They better get their buck quick before investors realize what that means for the future of content on reddit.
Because much as some folks here seem to believe, there IS actually more to reddit, reddit as it exists today, than just ad impression counts. I'm not some social media genius but the way that this being talked about by some people, who I guess haven't been a part of reddit over 17+ years, I am flabbergasted at how y'all think these things grow and thrive.
Reddit has grown and has thrived, now the company is prioritising turning on the money tap. They’re prepared to lose X users if it means they can monetise the remaining users by Y amount.
I’m not saying this as a defence, I’ve also been using Reddit for 15+ years and I’m disappointed by what I see. I’m just clear eyed about the game plan.
I totally agree. I just think the mental calculations some folks are doing don't even come close to accounting for power users, mods, and the amount that some of those pissed off users made reddit what it is.
I guess I just find it baffling that people think that the site will have the same value it had today (to users and advertisers) if it is loses its soul. I don't even think I'm being idealistic. I've been through this before. Reddit is more than a view count, or else people wouldn't care they way we do. Did? Something.
My name's not Steve and I don't think anyone would hire me to consult, but oh I dunno, this sure wouldn't be the way I'd go about it. I've actually read some horrifying hypotheticals on how reddit could've boiled this frog a lot slower, probably quiet silently.
In some sense, as a non-share holder who wants to see people build these communities in the open, I appreciate this approach.
I think that started with the redesign. It's so weird looking at some of the default subs, just pure trash imo, yet there are still the incredibly diverse, bespoke communities ranging from knitting to woodworking. Users in those subs are the real losers out of this.
Those "incredibly bespoke communities" are almost entirely people posting images of a professional/elaborate project, and then asking for feedback in the form of "hey you guys this is the first thing I've ever made please give me some feedback but go easy on me OK?"
It's a massive circle jerk and echo chamber of regurgitated opinions. So in other words: exactly like the rest of Reddit.
And it's also people posting reviews of some tool, or long tutorials on some technique, or answering questions from beginners, or collecting a FAQ with the basics/intermediate level of learning of a hobby which becomes an intro manual of what you probably need to learn as a foundation.
It can be also a massive circle jerk but if that's the only thing you can see from niche subreddits you are coming into this with a massive bias and ignoring the good parts, and these good parts are missing from most of the rest of the web.
I feel that your opinion is the same, just an attempt at a massive circle jerk about how terrible reddit is. It is, but it's also not and if you sincerely can't see how useful reddit is for a wide range of hobbies it's probably because you're a little myopic.
> they’re ditching the hardcore nerd audience that made them
If it's just the nerd audience I'll bet Reddit win without thinking. But it's more than that: they're ditching some mods who rely on 3rd party apps, and some users who stay on Reddit for NSFW content.
So yeah, I still think Reddit will be fine, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
Reddit (the company) controls the platform. They can just install new mods if the current mods arent doing their job. I doubt most users would even notice that the mod names have changed.
Facebook spends $500m annual on moderation. That's a top-down estimate of moderation costs for a large website.
You can try to do a bottom-up estimate, but how much do you think it costs to moderate the (8th?) largest domain on earth? More or less than that? More or less than what Reddit's current operating income is?
Steve's out here slandering would-be partners, lying to employees, and shoving increasing mountains of poop under the rug. We're approaching 4D-chess big brain energy here.
Also, let's not keep conveniently leaving out that a growing number of subs are pledging to continue the protest.
Eh...the real problem with shutting down Apollo is that it makes the volunteer moderators lives much harder. Those are the people who provide any value to reddit as a platform.
The protest could end today, the 3rd party apps go...and if the volunteer mods go with it, then the site as a whole tumbles onto a decline that eventually kills it.
Some of the things that volunteer mods defend against is bot spam, repost spam, karma mining, abusive comments, and brigading. Unless Reddit has AI solutions for all of these (not a real suggestion - it's an arms race against similarly-AI-using spammers, and if Reddit had the engineering culture of ByteDance then it would have already built the moderator tools people had been requesting since 2015!) then its niche and generalist subreddits alike will lose their culture and quality faster than one can blink an eye.
I moderated a subreddit once. It sucked all the joy out of Reddit for me. Every time I visited the site, I got stressed as to what new nonsense happened.
Fun stuff I had to deal with include: The admin's "Anti-Evil Operations" frequently deleting user comments with no explanation. A persistent pedophile who just wouldn't go away. Getting guilt tripped by a severely mentally ill guy whenever we had to ban him (and his many alts) for breaking the rules. Doxx. Gore. Brigading. White supremacists. Racists with their "racial crime statistics". An impossible to moderate Reddit Chat (there were no chat moderation logs at all). And much more.
I completely checked out of moderation when I remembered that I wasn't getting paid to deal with any of the above. And since then, I've had much more appreciation for all the moderators who were willing to put in time and effort into maintaining a community for free.
This comparison doesn't really work because 4chan boards tend to be pretty strictly moderated. It's just that the threshold of what's considered acceptable is lower.
This is actually a great way to protest. If the subreddits going dark for two days isn’t enough, start posting porn or other bad type of content to popular subs that don’t have many mods.
As someone that has been using reddit for a decade and a half, I agree with you. We the old timers are stuck in the "good ol' days", when reddit didn't have any subreddits, discussions were mostly about technical topics, and the meme du jour was to put dollar signs in Microsoft's name.
I think it has stopped being that a long, long time ago, and Steve kept track better than us what the new demographics of reddit are. I am sad that the reddit I enjoyed is no more, but I am looking forwards to the new crop of discussion platforms (or whatever else) that will crop up.
The only moat Reddit has is the critical mass of users. Numerous clones exist (such as Hacker News), and a new minimum viable product could be built in a couple of weeks. But once you have the users, it is pretty easy to keep them... unless you make them turn against you.
It will never have the one thing that people come to Reddit for right? NSFW. Not porn precisely, but a range of freedom of expression that goes beyond the narrow band of expression allowed on Zuck’s platforms.
Reddit has always tried to thread the needle of having 4chan-like freedom without 4chan-like anarchy. That’s the secret to its success.
I kinda agree, but on the other hand, the statistics were sad. The site I used [0] is currently down, but from what I remember, even with so many subreddits being private, posts per minute went from 1.2k to 1k, and comments per minute from 8k to 7k (talking about the peaks of the curve in both cases).
That is a pretty low reduction and imo shows how those of us who care are not a majority, and the whole thing might end up being nothing more than a gamer-protest.
edit: back up, peak comments from below 7k to below 6k; peak posts from about 1.2k to 1.1k
>Hoffman continues to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit is.
No, you and others' wishful thinking lead you to a fundamental misunderstanding of what Reddit and Hoffman are. This is just the standard "how to run a business" MBA crap at play. The website you think Reddit is doesn't exist; and that doesn't even matter, as for them it's just another black box that makes money.
Accuracy is everything, and the way information in the archive is presented to visitors/researchers is paramount. Anything that moves that discussion around that presentation away from human beings into the realm of artificially generated pablum is going to be met with resistance.
Think of it like how /r/askhistorians on Reddit would rather let a question go unanswered for hours so a professional can provide a proper, sourced answer, than let some random user chime in with anything. That's putting an emphasis on accuracy and providing a completeness, rather than a rapid one.
>At the current rate, it will take until 2046 to completely transcribe this series with just humans!,” Lagundo’s presentation says. She said that an AI transcript of the dataset was 90 percent correct and that it intends to share these transcripts with the public in its official catalog in November or December.
What's the rush? Why would we settle on 90% accuracy today when we could do it right and get 100%? It's not like this is mission critical information. It's an archive. Take the time and do it right.
Moreover, why is this so important that we need to burn the energy from AI to do it?