> "In another top-secret document seen by the Guardian, dated 2008, a senior NSA official points out that Israel aggressively spies on the US. "On the one hand, the Israelis are extraordinarily good Sigint partners for us, but on the other, they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems," the official says. "A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US."
You promote your site on reddit very aggressively, and consistently smear reddit's moderators as bad guys. You're a liar, and definitely not some poor victim.
edit:
Things you have done include running a bot to constantly promote MediaCrush on reddit (which you refer to as, "a little spammy"), vote-gaming by upvoting your bot's posts, removing any and all of your posts where you receive negative press, and slandering reddit moderators.
Now that I notice you've edited in some arguments, let's clarify these points:
- We ran a bot that, upon explicitly being asked to by a user, would convert a post to HTML5 video
- Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out.
- We don't remove any posts where we get negative press.
- I've shared some choice words about a few moderators who I've had a bad experience with. However, I've qualified myself every time, providing plenty of reasons for why I feel the way I do.
The bot was a problem during the first few days of launch. It's hard to argue that it was spam when it only worked when summoned by a user. The vote gaming argument has merit - but we did stop once we realized that it was a bad idea. Even with all that in mind, these problems were only relevant during the first week or so of our lifetime, and doesn't really justify the relationship we've had with the admins from then out.
You'd think that when the users of Reddit were clearly so excited about the service, the admins would take a moment to get in touch and talk to us about it civily, instead of taking such a hostile (and really, anti-user) stance towards the service.
Side note: there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services - bots that don't wait for a user to request their help. These bots haven't had a negative impact on the competing services.
> We ran a bot that, upon explicitly being asked to by a user, would convert a post to HTML5 video
Your bot's account is gone, so there is little evidence to cite. However, I remember how present and obnoxious it was. Promotions for MediaCrush definitely did not appear solely when a user mentioned MediaCrush. It was enough of a problem that an admin on reddit asked you to stop:
> Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out.
Many other domains have been blocked from reddit for the same behavior (e.g. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg... ), but you consistently portray reddit's admins as people who had it in for your site in particular, which is dishonest.
> We don't remove any posts where we get negative press.
Yes, you do. They cannot be found from your user page anymore, but I've personally watched you delete your comments in threads where you promote yourself and get bad press.
> I've shared some choice words about a few moderators who I've had a bad experience with. However, I've qualified myself every time, providing plenty of reasons for why I feel the way I do.
You've said things that are explicitly untrue about reddit's mods and admins. Mainly that they were big, bad, imgur-partial bullies. Here is the supposedly hostile, anti-user stance that moderators took towards MediaCrush:
You're the one at fault for your problems with reddit, and it is low of you to pretend reddit's mods and admins are the bad guys.
> The bot was a problem during the first few days of launch. It's hard to argue that it was spam when it only worked when summoned by a user. The vote gaming argument has merit - but we did stop once we realized that it was a bad idea.
The bot that you ran promoted your site obnoxiously in many subreddits, and there are plenty of accounts banned via /r/reportthespammers that do exactly the same thing. I don't feel that you can argue it was not spam.
> there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services
This is a tu-quoque, and doesn't justify you in any way.
For what it's worth, I can vouch for what ghani is saying. It matches up with my memory of the events of Mediacrush on Reddit. I was actually going to compose a similar comment.
That said, the way ghani is phrasing the comments is upsetting. They're very rude. There's no reason to be rude even if you're right.
Also, the mods of Reddit are a huge problem. They are both the source of Reddit's strength and its greatest weakness. Having those kinds of moderators is the best solution anyone's thought of so far, but it's still horrible (at times).
I'm getting the feeling that you're defending the mods so vigorously because you're either a mod or friends with one, but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs. And since they have so much power, the few bad apples make a really big splash.
But, yeah... Cmpwn may want to consider being more transparent about their aggressive promotion of Mediacrush on Reddit. For what it's worth, I think it was just a miscommunication issue. People don't understand new things, and you can't blame them for not thinking that your new service is the best thing ever. It takes time, patience, and calmness to get your message through.
Dismissing hoverzoom as a non-issue was a very unfortunate decision. It was one of the most damning things you could have done. If I remember correctly, it happened before the recent hoverzoom controversy, and back then everyone on Reddit (me included) was in love with it.
Dismissing the inability to link directly to the mediacrush'd gif was also not a good move. If it's impossible to link directly to it, then you have to explain what can be done in order to give users something that simulates a direct link.
And,
We don't remove any posts where we get negative press.
I know how tempting it is to do that. I used to do it on HN. But trust me, letting your words stand and then pointing out what you've learned since then is way better than trying to censor yourself.
I hold the exact opposite opinion. And I believe reddit's growth over the last 6 years is affirmation of my opinion.
Before reddit had subreddits and mods, it was a virtual clone of this website. It was roughly the same size (possibly smaller) and had similar content. Then in 2007/2008 (can't remember, it's been a while) Reddit made the big change and added the new subreddit feature, each with its own set of mods. Mods who became responsible for the growth and health of their own communities.
Immediately after this change, reddit exploded in growth, and it still continues to see exponential growth today. One can easily correlate it's explosive growth directly due to subreddits and their mods. Mods who put in a lot of work and basically do the admins job for them (promotion, community outreach, fighting spam, etc).
Sure, you occasionally hear about a few bad apples here and there, but those cases are rare when you factor in the thousands of mods (150+ just for the defaults) that you don't hear about. I think risk and trade-off is more than fair and if I was an admin on reddit, I'd do it every single time.
Reddit's biggest asset is its mods, that I guarantee. I wonder how many man hours the mods put in collectively that reddit doesn't have to pay a dime for? I bet it's a large number. It's unfortunate because the admins don't seem to give a shit about their mods despite being the very engine that keeps their site tolerable. They've let them languish for years now with subpar mod tools.
> Having those kinds of moderators is the best solution anyone's thought of so far, but it's still horrible (at times).
Seems to work for wikipedia. I think it works for reddit too. It's just the users and mods over on reddit have more of a community platform so the dirty laundry is more visible. Everyone loves drama...
> but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs.
Making exceptions to rules is a problem in of itself. Just because it's something "you" want to see, doesn't mean someone down the road isn't going to bring it up and throw it in your face a week, a month even years down the road. "You let this guy do that, why not me! Censorship! Censorship! Witch-hunt!" There are drawbacks to making exceptions to rules which were laid down for (usually) very good reasons. It's easy to ignore them when you're not the one who has to look and deal with the bigger picture every day.
You can't be serious? What about that moderator who was recently censoring every single post about Tesla off of /r/technology? Then he posted "this website is for insulting people and cat pictures" or something similar in his comments.
Moderator actions like that are unacceptable, there is no oversight, and the admins are way too lax about letting mods get away with blatantly being so user-hostile. And let's not forget that companies are figuring out that bribing moderators + paying for votes is one of the best ways to get their content featured.
Now that this conversation has developed a bit, I'll leave my response.
>Your bot's account is gone, so there is little evidence to cite. However, I remember how present and obnoxious it was. Promotions for MediaCrush definitely did not appear solely when a user mentioned MediaCrush. It was enough of a problem that an admin on reddit asked you to stop:
"Promotions" did appear only when asked. There were two occasions where we used the bot ourselves to introduce it to the public - you can't use a bot you don't know about, we had to do it ourselves. From that point out, it was never manually triggered.
>> Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out.
>
>Many other domains have been blocked from reddit for the same behavior (e.g. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg.... ), but you consistently portray reddit's admins as people who had it in for your site in particular, which is dishonest.
Automated vote gaming and bad-faith use is what got those domains banned. I do agree that the admins weren't entirely wrong in that, but I maintain that much better communication should have been in place. We weren't promoting things in bad faith, no matter how you spin it. The actions of the admins beyond this point are more nails in the coffin, though - it's not _just_ that they shadowbanned the bot.
>> We don't remove any posts where we get negative press.
>
>Yes, you do. They cannot be found from your user page anymore, but I've personally watched you delete your comments in threads where you promote yourself and get bad press.
The bot was shadowbanned, and its comments and posts deleted by moderators. Not by us.
>You've said things that are explicitly untrue about reddit's mods and admins. Mainly that they were big, bad, imgur-partial bullies. Here is the supposedly hostile, anti-user stance that moderators took towards MediaCrush:
The majority of Reddit users (not including moderators) supported us. I lost my temper, but I believe I was in the right when criticising the moderators for their choices. The KarmaCourt thing was a mistake, but it was at someone else's suggestion and seemed like a good idea at the time. The moderators were clearly in the wrong - their own userbase overwhelmingly supported us.
>The bot that you ran promoted your site obnoxiously in many subreddits, and there are plenty of accounts banned via /r/reportthespammers that do exactly the same thing. I don't feel that you can argue it was not spam.
It _only came when asked for_. This is a _very_ important distinction. Do not spread misinformation by claiming that it spammed Reddit without being asked after - it did not do that.
>> there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services
>
>This is a tu-quoque, and doesn't justify you in any way.
Meaning that the status-quo was set, and other bots were on Reddit doing similar things and not being punished for it. We had role models.
>[sillysaurus3:] I'm getting the feeling that you're defending the mods so vigorously because you're either a mod or friends with one, but from the perspective of someone who just wants to see good content, they are at times the exact opposite of what Reddit needs. And since they have so much power, the few bad apples make a really big splash.
I get a simliar feeling myself.
>Dismissing hoverzoom as a non-issue was a very unfortunate decision. It was one of the most damning things you could have done. If I remember correctly, it happened before the recent hoverzoom controversy, and back then everyone on Reddit (me included) was in love with it.
This was after the Hoverzoom ad controversy. I don't think this was a major contributor to slow adoption.
>Dismissing the inability to link directly to the mediacrush'd gif was also not a good move. If it's impossible to link directly to it, then you have to explain what can be done in order to give users something that simulates a direct link.
I did, on a few occasions. Keep in mind that these screenshots ghani posted are out of context, don't represent the full extent of our communication with moderators, and are intentionally chosen to paint us in a bad light (not that they aren't valid criticisms - they're just not the whole story).
That was deleted by moderators and admins, and the account it was posted from has been shadowbanned. We had nothing to do with that. I will admit to deleting some of my own posts - ones that happen to use MediaCrush as a drop-in Imgur replacement, but not as a promotion - when they don't do so well.
I think that covers all the points here. The message to take away from this is that MediaCrush participated in some activity that might be considered a bit spammy, but that there was a precedent we followed, and the response from Reddit's admins and moderators was unwarranted - especially in the months later.
The moderators deleted your comments of you defending yourself? If that's true, then that's terrible.
My first inclination is to be suspicious of your claim, but that's just evidence of how thoroughly Reddit moderators have convinced people that they rarely do terrible things.
Absolutely no personal attacks on Hacker News, please. People who do that repeatedly—or even once, if they have no good history as a contributor here—will be banned.
The subreddits are as close as you can get to being illegal, but I think there's still a large (or at least significant) difference between the two. My only basis for that is my gut reaction, but I think it was what jquery was getting at. Not that they're truly unrelated.
I know Google Adsense pays out a bit for "impressions", just displaying their ad on the page. I'm not sure how much revenue this really generates for very small sites though.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-...