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Social Networks Communications Networking The Internet

Reddit To Transform Into a Social Network With New Profile Pages (digitaljournal.com) 130

Posted by BeauHD from the things-we-need-more-of dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Journal: Reddit has announced it has begun trialling a radical new profile page design that's reminiscent of Facebook and Twitter. It will evolve the discussion board site towards being a social network by enabling users to post directly to their new profile page. At present, posts on Reddit have to be directed into a specific sub-Reddit community. You can't simply write a post and have it appear across the network which can make it difficult to get your voice heard. Unless you've got some reputation in a relevant sub-Reddit, your posts may end up going unnoticed. That could soon change. Last night, Reddit announced it's working on a drastic revision of its user profile page experience. The site has commenced testing of an early version of the design. According to a report from Reuters, just three "high-profile" users currently have access to the feature. When the new pages are eventually opened up to all, they'll showcase the user's profile picture and description. Below the header, posts from the user will be publicly displayed. The user will be able to add new posts to their page, without submitting to a sub-Reddit. Users will be able to follow each other to stay informed of new posts, effectively creating a social network atmosphere above the discussion boards.
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Reddit To Transform Into a Social Network With New Profile Pages More

Reddit To Transform Into a Social Network With New Profile Pages

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  • Make my words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:03AM (#54087269)

    This kills the reddit.

    • Re:Make my words (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:30AM (#54087423)

      Yea, this is their digg moment.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thomn8r ( 635504 )
        I wish I had mod points

      • Re:Make my words (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Demeritus ( 4908691 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:53AM (#54087551)
        It's not the first time I've felt sold out by Reddit, and I can't even be sure it's the last. I find myself back there for the pros even though they continue to do absurd actions (admin editing user posts, banning some subreddits for breaking rules but not others, blah blah blah). I do know I had to sign up for an account here, though, because if I can ween myself off Reddit now, I think that's better than struggling with it as it takes me down with it eventually.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by joboss ( 4453961 )
        Their marketing guys want it.

    • Modding and censorship "killed" Reddit long ago. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @10:06AM (#54087625)

      Reddit has been essentially "dead" for a long time now. It's no secret that mod abuse runs rampant there, and censorship has been very problematic.

      Hell, it was only a few months ago that, as reported by Slashdot, the CEO was caught editing user comments [slashdot.org] and then begged for forgiveness [slashdot.org]. That's the sort of incident that cannot be forgiven, ever.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by joboss ( 4453961 )
      That was my first thought and I came here to post it. Boy was I shocked to see my comment here already.

      I tend to agree not only from things like Google plus, as in people want to be anonymous but personal experience in the industry. It's a rookie mistake and a deviation from their core business. Perhaps a guru could make it "work" in a business sense but I doubt it. Probably more to do with making their bans more effective. The more people invest the more they have to lose and the more compliant they are

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @11:18AM (#54088115)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I've been to Reddit 2 or 3 times total. I found it to be a total confusing mess and didn't hang around. It's got a horrible reputation all over the internet so far as I can tell, and they're going to play the 'social media' card? LOL, you're right, this'll kill Reddit, and that's probably a good thing. Of course so far as I'm concerned, ALL 'social media' should go the way of the dinosaurs, too..

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Reddit is a collection of lots of different subforms. Some of those are good, some are bad. The suicide and depression forums were very helpful after I attempted suicide.

    • This kills the reddit.

      Nope, this buries it. Reddit died a long time ago when their management went batshit crazy political.

  • Why needlessly abuse intransitive verbs?

  • I see... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Reddit plans on being as successful as Digg.

    • Digg previously wounded itself because it threw out all of its user's work, and then compounded the insult by preventing them from commenting. It's a ghost town.

      Reddit appears to be adding something, not taking something away.

      If that's the case, I doubt it'll hurt them in any way. What remains to be seen is if it will benefit them. That will depend on how they manage (and limit) the new capabilities, and how their user base views what they do.

      Facebook is certainly ripe for competition.

      • I'm fairly open-minded about it. As long as they don't make Digg's mistakes, a Facebook competitor is a good thing.

      • I agree, I am not seeing a mass outcry for any competition at the moment. Actually I am seeing this across a lot of markets today.

  • Well, it was fun Reddit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gatkinso ( 15975 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:17AM (#54087371)

    Can't see any upside to this.

    • Yeah, but if you don't use it, I don't see a lot of downsides either. It'll sit as unused as my profile page on most PHPBB boards I'm on.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Why would people post on subreddits when they can control who says and does what on their page.

        It will turn into a popularity contest of who can get the most people to "follow" them on their profile.

        • How is this any different than starting your own subreddit?
        • Considering most subreddits I or others I know visit are subject-based (r/psvr), external news-driven (r/japan), or niche (r/bowling), I don't think anybody is going to follow u/foo just to see him talking about how his grandpa loved the PSVR, an earthquake in Hyogo-ken, or how he needs help dealing with dry/oily lanes.

  • No, no, no, NO, NO! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:18AM (#54087381)

    We use reddit specifically because it isn't a "social network". Don't try to turn it into one!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Reddit probably want to disassociate themselves with anonymous forums like 4chan by making identity part of the site. People are less likely to cause problems for Reddit if they are invested in their accounts rather than treating them as throwaway.

      I think Reddit has realized that in order to survive it can't be as hands-off as it wants to be, and history shows that it tends to screw up when trying to encourage good behaviour.

      • As a SJW I am sure you like this change. God forbid a forum should be "hands off" and allow comments that aren't approved by the SJW masters.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          No, I'm against turning things into social media or requiring the submission of personal data.

          Have you noticed that every time you make an assumption about who or what I am or what I think, it's wrong?

        • Even 4chan has some censorship (they removed pedo stuff if i remember correctly). Comunication between masses of people without any censorship are a platonic ideal, not a reality.

      • The problem is that making identity part of the site is one of the reasons people abhor FB, especially if you don't want your personal picture on the account. All it takes is one person reporting the account.

        Reddit already does well with getting rid of obvious trolls, be it alerts or shadowbans. We don't need another site demanding "papers, please" to use it.

    • One of the things I like about reddit is that who says something is a lot less imortant than what they say.

      I'm sure I'm not alone in almost never reading usernames attached to a post.

  • Transparency please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:26AM (#54087401) Homepage

    What about more radical changes towards transparency?

    Shadow banning (only you can see your own posts), censoring, strange moderation, etc. etc. etc. have become a bane of many subreddits.

  • Soon we will need to host our subs elsewhere. Quite coincidentally, I was just about to start doing that in order to host a private sub, so this doesn't even add an action item to my to-do list. :/

    It is kind of weird how out of touch the reddit management is with the users, if they think this will increase, rather than decrease, the number of participants. The reason reddit _works_ is that it's not a social network and they don't sniff your butt all the time the way facebook does. Sigh.

  • Slashdot still the best 'format'. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:33AM (#54087443)

    Decline in popularity aside, Slashdot still reigns supreme as the best 'format' for online discussion. I have to hand it to the creators for sitting down and thinking through how to do moderation and anonymity. Reddit seems to have just re-invented PHPBB and all the other forum software with this.

    -1 to +5 limits bandwagoning. I've seen stuff recover from initial -1 to 5, on Reddit once the bandwagons and bots take over it's near impossible for a post to change the direction.

    Limited voting rights. Random moderation points. Meta-moderation. Even something as simple as not being able to moderate and comment on the same thread. 90% of Reddit is "I disagree, I'll downvote then tell them why they're wrong".

    AC accounts are all equal. No account needed in the first place or a simple checkbox if I am logged in. (Plus some hilarity of "I'm posting AC because I work for..." and then they forget to check the box.)

    In the golden days browsing at +4 was nothing but decent discussion of tech topics. (Or people complaining about how that isn't news for nerds). Sure the trolls show up and people have been screaming about GNAA since I can remember but they're quickly down to -1.

    If there's someone that I find insightful or hate I can friend/foe them *server side* and moderate a bit further.

    It's not perfect but given everything that's come along since then it's still better.

    I wish someone would give the codebase a good rinse and expand it to more news discussion. It's not Reddit, Facebook, Digg or anything else that I've found.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I wish someone would give the codebase a good rinse and expand it to more news discussion. It's not Reddit, Facebook, Digg or anything else that I've found.

      You should try SoylentNews. It's like a Senile Slashdot for Old People.

    • Slashdot is missing a few key features. For instance, there is no inbox. I cannot see when people have replied to my comments other than going and clicking on each one of my comments individually. By the time I get around to responding to a reply, it's probably past the point where the person I'm responding to is going to even read my reply.

      • I get e-mail notifications. They come to my real Inbox. The only comments that don't are AC.

        It's how I found this comment. [imgur.com].

        Bonus is I don't have to keep refreshing the site to check my inbox. I know that isn't in the best interest of the advertisers but I can continue to check my e-mail if something comes up but close out of Slashdot and concentrate on getting *some* work done.

        [Also, HTML is so 2000. Please support some flavor of markdown].

      • Yeah, you do. I get an e-mail for every response, including AC. I used to get an e-mail for every time one of my posts was moderated, and considering that I routinely go from 2 to +5 to -1 and back again in a single post, that was a bit of overkill... But check your settings, there are many options here for notification.

      • What? No. On the front page, in the right column, there is a box with every reply and moderation made to my comments, right there, I can even delete them one by one or erase all from one click.

        • Interesting. I don't see this, and I don't see how to enable it in the options. I even turned off my adblocker to see if I had blocked that entire column.

    • Like you say, the modding system here isn't anywhere near as atrociously broken as the ones at Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, and similar sites.

      But as good as it looks compared to those awfully flawed approaches, we still need to admit that the Slashdot approach is also fundamentally broken and detrimental to this site.

      The fact that a comment can easily go from -1 to +5, or even the other way from +5 to -1, shows a severe lack of consistency. The +5 to -1 case is particularly concerning. In that case

      • I now have to constantly browse at -1 because poor modding often results in the most insightful and worthwhile comments ending up at -1

        I don't know that I've seen too many insightful (or even useful) comments at -1, but I browse at -1 because otherwise the threads don't make any sense: somebody posts a top-level comment, it gets downvoted to -1, and 50 people respond to tell him why he's wrong. With browsing set at 1, all I see are the responses.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The main issue outstanding on Slashdot is that controversial posts can end up with low scores. -1 mods should become -0.5.

      Better for a troll to be a little more visible than for a good but controversial post to get modded into the oblivion of -1.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        There's a slider bar where I can change what I see to include items moderated into oblivion, if I agree with that post and have mod points I can move it back up

        That's what makes it work

        Likewise you can identify questionable posts that have (Score 5, Flamebait)

        I like the Slashdot system a lot, it is a reflection of the community (for good or ill) it doesn't pretend that everyone is a shiny happy person nor a point of view is invalid (no matter how inane)

        TBH I still come here for the comments, it's about the

  • For God's sake WHY??? (Score:3)

    by rpresser ( 610529 ) <rpresser&gmail,com> on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @11:34AM (#54088235)
    Don't we have enough Facebook already? Reddit was something special.
    • Reddit hasn't been special for several years now. Right after Reddit realized they could capitalize on selling power to astroturfing marketing groups, things went down hill pretty quick and in a fairly noticeable way if you paid attention. Moderation increased dramatically, many of the popular subreddits were taken over and comments got a lot "funnier", "punnier" or in general more facebook-like. Now, the latter could be a result of the mass appeal of reddit reaching a critical point, but it honestly happen

  • Huh? (Score:3)

    by edibobb ( 113989 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @12:29PM (#54088817) Homepage
    It's not April 1 yet, is it? I'd add more, but I need to update my MySpace profile.
  • I use Reddit because Facebook is useless to me and I hate profile sites. All they're doing is attracting more idiots. You're going to see more Tumblr-like high school/middle school girly posts. A bunch of Big Bang Theory fans wanting to be nerds too, but not intelligent enough to reply to posts without trolling (some Slashdotters) or trying to start a discussion when I ask simple question. It's already bad enough. Also, this will completely break a lot of third party open source apps for Reddit, a lot of wh
  • Slashdot is next.
  • will it transform into not suck?
  • I've heard that up to 27% of who you are arguing with in those places are Bots. So good luck on de-tangling the mess they put out.

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