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Reddit might look a lot more like Facebook’s News Feed soon
Reddit has been talking about some serious design changes for a while now (getting rid of CSS styling, for one), and now we have more information on what it might look like. In an interview with Recode, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman unveiled an early version of a new design that takes its cues from Facebook's News Feed.
Reddit is stripping away some of its personality
Reddit's default design is a throwback to simpler times on the internet. However, moderators on the site's numerous subreddits put a bunch of work into making sure their communities stand out from each other by employing CSS (cascading style sheets) to change everything from banner images, fonts, icons and other aspects of the user interface. Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman said that's going to change, as the massive discussion board is undergoing an overhaul.
Reddit CEO apologizes for editing users' comments
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has publicly apologized for editing comments cursing him out. If you'll recall the CEO edited posts that contained "fuck Spez" and replaced his Reddit username with those of The_Donald's (a pro-Trump subreddit) moderators. All the vitriol directed at him was a result of Redding banning a subreddit called Pizzagate, which is dedicated to a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and a DC pizza parlor that's reportedly part of a pedophile ring.
Reddit CEO confesses to editing comments that insulted him
Like a lot of forums, the moderators at Reddit have the freedom to ban or allow whatever post or account they deem unsuitable. But Reddit CEO Steve Huffman went a step beyond that recently when he directly meddled with comments that were critical of him. Instead of "fuck Spez" (Spez is his Reddit username), he had edited them so that it would be directed at the moderators of The_Donald, a subreddit of Trump supporters. The reason? Huffman had been the target of a series of attacks from members of The_Donald after Reddit banned a Pizzagate subreddit devoted to a conspiracy theory that linked Hillary Clinton, a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant and a pedophile ring. Even though it's been debunked, users were still posting personal information of people they claimed were involved, which prompted Huffman and co. to remove it. This, unfortunately, incited many The_Donald users to harass Huffman, calling him all manner of insults. "I messed with the "fuck u/spez" comments, replacing "spez" with r/the_donald mods for about an hour. It's been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff," he said in a post. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly." If you think it's a little too much to edit people's posts and redirect insults at others, it appears that Huffman thinks so too. "Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again," he said.
Reddit will let advertisers sponsor your post
Reddit needs to earn money, and one that it's planning to do that is by letting advertisers put their cash behind your posts. In an interview with AdAge, co-founder Steve Huffman explained how his website is going to attempt to be as big with brands as Facebook. The way it works will involve companies searching Reddit for pieces of what advertisers like to call "viral content." Let's say that you spend a weekend making a giant replica of a Taco Bell hot sauce packet, and the fast food chain spots your artwork. Taco Bell could then hand Reddit some cash for it to spread the post around different subreddits and increase its visibility. The user that made the original post needs to consent, of course, and won't get any financial compensation, but will get a lifetime's supply of Reddit Gold, worth $3.99 a month, for free.
Reddit bans some of its most well-known racist communities
Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong predicted that racist and sexist users who agitated to push his replacement, Ellen Pao, out the door were actually sealing their own fates, and it appears that has happened. Newly-returned leader Steve Huffman just announced that as a part of its new Content Policy, Reddit will do more than just quarantine some of the most vile content hubs its members have built -- it will ban some of them. That includes r/Coontown and some of its spinoffs (but apparently leaves other gems to be shoved behind the curtain), which Huffman says are getting chopped because they "exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else." As the new CEO puts it, those communities were becoming what Reddit was known for, and making it hard to recruit people.
Former Reddit CEO says the site's about to be purged
Steve Huffman's going to reveal Reddit's new content policy tomorrow, but one of his predecessors is promising that it'll be a "purge." Yishan Wong, who ran the site between 2012 - 2014 and has spoken in support of Ellen Pao, has decided to "declassify a lot of things," airing plenty of dirty laundry in the process. Wong points to discussions he had with Huffman during his tenure, saying that the co-founder was previously unconcerned with protecting free speech and was blasé about censoring racist, sexist and homophobic threads. He goes onto quote Huffman as saying that "I don't think there's a place for such things on Reddit," giving you a clue as to the tone of tomorrow's AMA.
Reddit to host AMA about its policy on offensive posts
Reddit has been a bit of a mess lately. With the firing of a popular employee Victoria Taylor, unpaid moderators shutting down subreddits, and interim CEO Ellen Pao "leaving" and being replaced by co-founder Steve Huffman, it's not exactly business as usual at the self-proclaimed "front page of the internet." Now the company is trying to figure out how to deal with some of the more horrible portions of the site with an AMA set for July 16th at 4PM ET. In the announcement about the upcoming event co-founder Steve Huffman talked about some of the more loathsome portions of the site, "there is also a dark side, communities whose purpose is reprehensible, and we don't have any obligation to support them. And we also believe that some communities currently on the platform should not be here at all." Considering how touchy the community can be when faced with changes, this should be interesting.
