Hey, it’s Reddit’s totally politically neutral CEO here to provide updates and dodge questions.
Dearest Redditors,
We have been hard at work the past few months adding features, improving our ads business, and protecting users. Here is some of the stuff we have been up to:
Hopefully you did not notice, but as of last week, the m.reddit.com is powered by an entirely new tech platform. We call it 2X. In addition to load times being significantly faster for users (by about 2x…) development is also much quicker. This means faster iteration and more improvements going forward. Our recently released AMP site and moderator mail are already running on 2X.
Speaking of modmail, the beta we announced a couple months ago is going well. Thirty communities volunteered to help us iron out the kinks (thank you, r/DIY!). The community feedback has been invaluable, and we are incorporating as much as we can in preparation for the general release, which we expect to be sometime next month.
Prepare your pitchforks: we are enabling basic interest targeting in our advertising product. This will allow advertisers to target audiences based on a handful of predefined interests (e.g. sports, gaming, music, etc.), which will be informed by which communities they frequent. A targeted ad is more relevant to users and more valuable to advertisers. We describe this functionality in our privacy policy and have added a permanent link to this opt-out page. The main changes are in 'Advertising and Analytics’. The opt-out is per-browser, so it should work for both logged in and logged out users.
We have a cool community feature in the works as well. Improved spoiler tags went into beta earlier today. Communities have long been using tricks with NSFW tags to hide spoilers, which is clever, but also results in side-effects like actual NSFW content everywhere just because you want to discuss the latest episode of The Walking Dead.
We did have some fun with Atlantic Recording Corporation in the last couple of months. After a user posted a link to a leaked Twenty One Pilots song from the Suicide Squad soundtrack, Atlantic petitioned a NY court to order us to turn over all information related to the user and any users with the same IP address. We pushed back on the request, and our lawyer, who knows how to turn a phrase, opposed the petition by arguing, "Because Atlantic seeks to use pre-action discovery as an impermissible fishing expedition to determine if it has a plausible claim for breach of contract or breach of fiduciary duty against the Reddit user and not as a means to match an existing, meritorious claim to an individual, its petition for pre-action discovery should be denied." After seeing our opposition and arguing its case in front of a NY judge, Atlantic withdrew its petition entirely, signaling our victory. While pushing back on these requests requires time and money on our end, we believe it is important for us to ensure applicable legal standards are met before we disclose user information.
Lastly, we are celebrating the kick-off of our eighth annual Secret Santa exchange next Tuesday on Reddit Gifts! It is true Reddit tradition, often filled with great gifts and surprises. If you have never participated, now is the perfect time to create an account. It will be a fantastic event this year.
I will be hanging around to answer questions about this or anything else for the next hour or so.
Steve
u: I'm out for now. Will check back later. Thanks!
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Mobile is still encountering many issues that were present since the beginning of the mobile site - such as pictures being loaded with a "play" button over them, failing the load the image and displaying "image not found" and displaying an album a few inches to the right so that it is impossible to progress through the album without going to posted link, etc.
Are these issues being worked on? Or are they back burner to larger issues?
Also, so that this comment isn't exclusively complaints, I really appreciate the faster load times and the new comment interface! It fixed many the issues I had trying to press the right button quickly. And the animation for upvoting and downvoting pretty nice!
Thanks!
Edit: a couple of typos slipped past me, whoops!
Yes, those issues are being worked on. m.reddit.com was stagnant for a while while we finished up the new version, but now we're cruising again.
Honestly I hate the mobile version, the desktop site works just fine for me. If you'd just remove the "switch to mobile site" pop up I'd be happy. Hopefully I speak for more than just me.
Yea, I can see why people might like the mobile version, is a nice mobile version as far as mobile versions of websites go, but the desktop version is already pretty damn mobile friendly already and I very much prefer it.
The only reason I've ever used m.reddit was by accident and the only feature I've ever used on m.mobile is the "go to desktop site"
I remember the first time it forced me to use m.reddit. It was so awful at the time I had a hard time initially figuring out how to get back to the desktop site. I think I stopped using Reddit for a month because I couldn't be arsed figuring it out. I'm sure its great now but I'm more than happy using the desktop version because it operates flawlessly on my devices. Now if only I had RES on mobile...
You do. We get this complaint often over in r/Help - people asking how to get back to the desktop site from the mobile site.
YES. THANK YOU. Every time I use desktop Reddit on mobile (cause I hate both the mobile site and the app), the page always shifts down right when I want to click a link. I'm never going to ever switch so it would be best if they just got rid of the stupid banner.
I'm curious why you guys chose to use the "m." strategy for the mobile site, rather than using responsive design to host both the desktop and mobile versions from one domain. Could you comment on that decision, please?
High-level TL;DR:
Adaptive begins to outshine once you get past a certain scale, particularly with respect to resource load times. E.g. load a much smaller subset of JS dependencies & CSS styles for mobile due to lack of need to support desktop-only features & affordances, which results in a much smaller HTTP request payload, which results in quicker DOM ready, which means fewer instances of people staring at that mostly-blank screen (or loading animation) on mobile for a lengthy period of time while the JS is still downloading and waiting for the DOM prior to initialization/execution.
Hey spez! Is there any additional focus being given by your poor team about the issue of catching spam? A lot of spam is reported and some of them somehow stay up, especially if they have no submission history and all their spam is exclusively comment spam.
Yes! Even though we've reduced spam by about 90% the last couple of quarters, it's still an ongoing battle. Please report any spam that you see.
e: thanks for the reports, assholes.
The reduction of spammy spam has been stellar, I haven't noticed it in a while.
The stealthy spam comes in the form of stolen monetized viral videos from YouTube remains a problem in my eyes. I see accounts doing the bare minimum of work to get into the major subs and then posting "their" videos. It's disheartening to see them on my frontpage or in the top of r/all every other day to once a week. You can see my spam reports.
This really isn't anything new.
r/YT_Killer and such antispambots are gaining popularity.
I think a mutual line of communication for collaboration between reddit support and YouTube for spam investigations would be beneficial.
On an amusing sidenote, I subscribe to r/valve/ for info about Valve, the software company, but end up seeing a lot of spam posts for Chinese-made valves, as in the things you use to control the flow of liquids or gasses. Top notch spam targeting on their end.
r/pipes has actually had plumping pipe manufacturers advertising on it, and one actually had an interesting discussion about pipe materials and diameter measuring.
For context, r/pipes is about tobacco pipes.
Yeah same thing has happened with r/draining... a subreddit about exploring sewers and drainage tunnels.
r/stonerengineering occasionally gets spam about stone countertops
r/scarysigns gets a lot of spam about low budget horror things... though one time there was someone going on about "signs of another economic downturn" and that was a nice change of pace.
The same with r/brass It gets spam about al kinds of brass products, while the subreddit is about brass instruments.
hey i got an idea! you should create something that gives meaningless and generic internet points to users that report more! Maybe enabling a Mass Reporting System™.
You should call it Reddit Heroes or something...
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I hope you guys are able to cull this spam menace once and for all. Until then I live to kill spam
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Absolutely not. We believe you should be free to express all the different facets of yourself on Reddit, and sometimes an alt is the best way to do that.
Personally, I'm not against companies using smart advertising like this. I think it's an improvement. But what makes me sometimes feel icky is the fact that you are tracking me in the first place.
Would be nice if we could opt out of the data collection itself, and not just the targeting of ads by using the collected data. Or even better, target my ads based on what subs I follow and not the ones I visit or something. Because I admit, sometimes I click on posts from r/the_donald out of sheer morbid curiosity. I sure hope some algorithm somewhere doesn't tally me as a trump supporter.
That's just a harmless example. I can imagine someone living in a oppressive nation might have more grave examples where being able to opt out of the collection is more important than the ads that re based on the collection.
Google "NAI opt out." You should be able to opt out of tracking there and any member of the NAI will drop "ignore" cookies on you. Not all companies interpret an NAI opt out as a do not track, but I can tell you the largest data marketplace in the US will stop tracking you if you opt out there.
Actually here is the link: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/
Here's my take on it; if you want to opt out of data collection because you're concerned that opting out of targetted-ads allow companies to do dodgy shit with your tracking info, you're ignoring something:
A company who would do dodgy shit with your tracking info would be fairly likely to track you despite you opting out.
If a site/company wants to track you, they're not going to stop just because you asked them to.
Quick question, you said earlier that it is based on browser. Does that mean while the information will not be tracked upon different accounts; if I look at something under and alt I will still receive ads for that information on my main account if I am using the same browser.
Quick primer on ad networks (a bit of an oversimplification):
Let's say I run an ad server on sthenic.ads.com. It ingests banner ads on one side, and deploys them to ad slots on the other.
gadgets.co.uk buys ad space and uploads their banner to my ad network.
I know things about it up front - it has these attributes:
It's about gadgets/tech,
it's retail,
it's in the UK.
I give reddit.com a snippet of code to include on their site, which reads and/or creates a sthenic.ads.com cookie. This cookie has a unique generated value that identifies this browser. Let's say that I randomly assign the value "123XYZ"
Other sites who want to put up a banner slot to my network do the same, and this same code will read the same cookie. So you browse around the internet, and I see "123XYZ" cookie showing up on cnn.com, gadgets.blogspot.com, and reddit.com/r/Futurology. My system starts to build a profile of "123XYZ", and it gets placed into a segment of people who dig tech.
Then "123XYZ" shows up on r/nakedcelebs, and "adult" gets added to the segment attributes as well. Hey, you like naked people. Welcome to the "human" segment.
Now, I'm not going to serve you adult ads on CNN, because there are special ad networks just for that. But I might show you a gadget.co.uk ad on r/randomsubwhichMayorMaynotbeporn.
Anyway....
3) I also give gadgets.co.uk a snippet of code to include on their site which reads my sthenic.ads.com cookie. When you person buy something on that site, I now know a few things:
"123XYZ" likes {'news','adult','gadgets'}
"123XYZ" converted on {'gadgets.co.uk'} and bought a {'Nikon digital camera'}
I know this whether you've clicked on my banners or not. Because you visited sites with my code snippet whilst having my cookie.
4) So now imagine it's a week later, and you're on reddit. You log out and sign on as u/naughtyZeus. Your cookie hasn't changed - it's not even a reddit cookie remember. Even if you clear all your reddit-specific cookies, my cookie is a third party one (sthenic.ads.com). So to me, you are not u/Zeus1325, nor u/naughtyZeus. You are still only "123XYZ".
So will you go to r/spankinItToLlamas and see an ad retargeting you to gadgets.co.uk, and offering you a new lens for that camera you bought last month? Yes.
Does that mean that reddit, or even sthenic ad network, knows "Who You Are?".
No, not really.
tl;dr - Reddit won't link or associate your accounts, but ad networks will still see you as the same person (well.. same browser) if you haven't cleared your cookies.
edit: in case anyone is actually reading this - even if you clear all of your cookies or use a different browser, it is possible to use information from other sites, hypothetically your unique reddit username(s), to "restitch" the new cookie back to the existing profile. I know of two ad networks - actually ad network brokers - who (apparently) do this. The ethics of this is debatable, but it's all rather unregulated.
Three alts for the mods under r/sky,
Seven for the altbots in their halls of sillicon,
Nine for astroturf doomed to die,
One for the advertiser on his dark throne.
One browser to rule them all. One browser to find them,
One browser to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
I thought the targeted ads were linked to the browser. How can I use multiple accounts from the same browser and not have the targeted ads get mixed between them?
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You must be referring to Andy. We
are holding him hostagehired him becausewe need REShe's awesome.I'd love to see the ability to block specific subreddits from r/all. RES is not compatible with my browser, so I'm forced to see a lot of stupid on r/all.
Edit: Thanks for the Gold! Now I can filter out r/The_Donald (among other subreddits) until the election.
You can with gold, it's actually the gold feature I get the most use out of. You just go to https://www.reddit.com/me/f/all/
Gold features are supposed to be implemented eventually, but this might just be a gold exclusive. u/spez u/powerlanguage any idea on if this will be a site feature?
Shot you some gold if you want to try it out :)
We've talked internally about making this feature available site-wide. Not sure what the timeline is though.
Even with gold, there is a limit on the number you can block. So there were still subs showing that I wanted to block, when I reached my limit and then some of the political subs started inundating r/all, it was sort of annoying to have to unblock a sub that was slightly annoying to be able to block one that was really annoying.
The block limit is the specific reason I won't buy reddit gold.
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Yes. We have a brand new team dedicated to this. It's called Content Relevance, and you should start seeing the results of their work over the next couple of months.
As an ex-search system admin, I'd be super interested in hearing what they're doing. Programmatically judging the relevance of dynamic content is an interesting, if often difficult field.
Edit: Plus the other comments in this thread seem convinced you're running the world media from your illuminati volcano headquarters. Some openness might be good for that too.
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I would imagine relevance is determined by clustering users together by existing patterns, and then showing slightly different content that is liked by other people in the cluster as it comes in. So showing definite matches, possible matches, and unlikely matches (5:3:2 ratio or something) and then if are liked they are shown in that cluster or something. Clusters are redetermined periodically, or dynamically removed. Just a guess though, as someone who has never been a search system admin.
Cool, it gets really annoying when you have to jerk off to the same porn twice in a row
Try running it in reverse if you need to spice things up
If you watch porn in reverse, it becomes the beautiful story of a... well... earm a...
i guess it is the same damn thing...
How will the advertisement targeting translate to mobile applications such as BaconReader? Is it automatically integrated or possible to opt-out of for developers?
We're not doing this on mobile just yet, nor are we putting ads in third party clients. If we come to that point, yes, we'll provide an opt-out anywhere this tech is used.
This doesn't affect users with active gold I assume?
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For those of us that missed it:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7469661/reddit-responds-atlantic-records-subpoena-suicide-squad-twenty-one-pilots-heathens
Thanks for pushing back against Atlantic, but what was up with giving personal details of a user to the police and getting him arrested, all because of a racist comment he made that nobody really noticed.
According to reddit they only disclose information when required by law. It is possible that was required by law.
It is also possible that the guy doxxed himself and the police got to him without Reddit's help.
Do you mind translating it from legalese?
Looks like Atlantic didn't know whether there was an actual breach of contract, so they wanted reddit to give up the user's info to see if they could make a case (hence the fishing expedition analogy, they were fishing for info without actually knowing). Reddit said no, you need to have proof before they give up users. Atlantic realized they were wrong and eventually backed off.
Honestly, it doesn't necessarily even need to be them realizing they're wrong so much as they probably just social engineered from the username and found the guy elsewhere and served him papers directly/got a confession. I've been involved with a few leaks from the label end of things and sites like Reddit are fucking horrible for listening to our side of things and even taking action so all you can really do is find the person behind the leak directly and go that route. I do agree with the ruling here btw in this particular case, but I figured I'd give some insight into how this shit usually goes down in actuality and I can guarantee the only reason the first suit was filed was because many sites will just volunteer that user's information once it reaches that stage.
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annnnd added to my mental dictionary...
Everyone's saying the lawyer's response was perfect, but your response highlights the problem of law. Your response was perfect; it conveyed what it needed to in a way that's intelligible by any average Joe.
And the cactus part was pretty good
His point explains the principle, but not the legal defintion. Them words gets mighty important when talking about legal ramifications. For us lowly plebs the principle is sufficient, but not for a court of law where peoples futures are decided and cases can be won or lost over poorly formed arguments.
That's how I justify legalesse anyway.
Atlantic was using pre-discovery (obtaining information for a case) to determine if they had a case in the first place, which cant be done because pre-discovery can only be used if there is a case in the first place. At least thats my potentially shitty interpretation.
That's correct. They basically were saying the following:
Record Company hasn't filed a lawsuit, but are trying to get information before doing so.
The Record Company just wants to poke around to see what it can find when that's not allowed.
The Record Company just wants to poke around to see if it could possibly sue the Redditor for breach of contract (meaning the Redditor possibly had a contract with the Record Company to not release the song that he violated) or a breach of fiduciary duty (Record Company basically saying I was supposed to be able to trust you and you did me dirty).
Because no lawsuit has been filed, they are not doing this to prove up an existing case.
Judge, send these fools home because they're just snooping around trying to force us to give them access to our business when they have no right to it.
Like the principal of a school asking your parents for your diary to see if you have done something wrong. No allegations that you did anything and nothing to support their request except a rumor from the teachers lounge.
Is 'impermissible fishing expedition' actual legal vocabulary, or is it the lawyer being descriptive?
Our users are innocent until proven guilty, so no fishing in this protected estuary. These are not the droids you're looking for...and if they are you need to prove it before we consider coughing up their identities.
He's basking in glory right next to me. You all have made his day.
From a German perspective, I have to wonder why you people are storing IPs in the first place, or more accurately not hashed / only for than a couple of hours, which is generally enough for security.
Do you actually need those or is it just habit?
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Since you said you wipe your comments, here's a copy/paste for others that come across this in the future:
The following:
Maintenance, Analysis, & Diagnosing Issues
Detecting & Mitigating Attacks
Dealing w/ Bots, Spam, & Vote Manipulation
Detecting Ban Evasion
Helping Users Detect Hacks Themselves (they let you see recent IPs here)
Logging recent IPs is essential to maintaining most online services, lest you like to make it harder to diagnose issues and impossible to do anything about abusive users - and Reddit while being very open isn't a site of anarchy.
Even 4chan does it, so yeah. The only services I've ever known to not log IPs are VPN services but they're an entirely different product that's paid and isn't a social website or something.
Everyone logs IPs, even the more chaotic sites & services - they do it for many reasons that aren't evil but rather to maintain their service and deal with abuse. It's not their fault or anything - not to suggest businesses don't often collect information for gain either, but Reddit isn't guilty of that (however they do track what subs you frequent and links you click in order to analyse your interests for targeted ads - but you can opt-out in your profile).
If you're concerned about anonymity then use a VPN or proxy (I recommend PIA - They don't log and you can use a prepaid card to pay them - and lots of other reasons but I don't wanna sound like an advertisement so I'll stop myself there), and I suggest some extensions and tweaking browser settings to block trackers, third-party cookies, unwanted scripts, stop plugins from auto-running (flash), and fingerprinting (using your unique hardware/software configuration to identify you - read up about it if you dunno what it is). You can also manually add malicious/ad IPs to your HOSTS file in Windows, and people compile huge lists for this (which adblockers often use in their filter lists), my personal favorite being this unified list. You also inevitably say identifying information yourself sometimes, and that's why I use Shreddit to delete all comment history sometimes - however you'll need to do some reading and install Python to get that to work (sorry, there used to be RedWipe which was far more simple but it seems to no longer work - looks like the author forgot about it).
TL;DR: Logging IPs is essential to maintaining an online service/website and that's nobody's fault.
That being said if they're witholding IP logs for extended periods of time I may not be able to understand that quite as much, but while services like Google logs things for a long time (and I dislike that) I'm not sure whether or not Reddit does. The last time I checked Reddit keeps them for 100 days before discarding them. Now whether you choose to believe that is up to you, and whether or not that information is leaked/collected by, say, the NSA is also unknown or unknowable. But just know that the Reddit warrant canary disappeared in 2015. In my personal opinion, the government has forced Reddit to do things they weren't very happy to do, and all they can do to tell us about it was killing the canary. It happening isn't Reddit's fault, I don't see them as the ones to be upset with.
Source: Former admin/mod of some small websites, and just tech-savvy by experience - computers are my life and unhealthy sugary drinks are my blood.
Lots and lots of edits in this post. I never really am finished with a post when I press "submit", I end up writing most of the comment in edits it seems, until I'm satisfied with it. Sorry about that.
Am I hallucinating? I run un-enhanced reddit at work, and now when I expand a post on the front page, the top three-ish comments are showed along with the content. Stealth added feature?
Three-ish? You're the first one to report back! Any thoughts on the subject?
EDIT: To clarify, this particular experiment looks like:
https://i.redd.it/my0btfh05wtx.png
I see comments on a few related features that are similar but unrelated -- which it's also good to hear your feedback on!
Sorry therealandytuba but I'm not the biggest fan. It seems really clunky and confusing. Having 3-4 comments, then 5-6 posts, then the comments again isn't really the best UI. When I go to the comments section, I usually view a lot of comments in a row, not just the top 3. Is there a way to try and have other posts listed to the side of the comments area like to the right under the moderators ul list?
I do like the effort with trying new styles and ideas but this one didn't really fit well with me. Tell the team nice job though and I'm just one user! There might be others that really like it!
Oh, that's actually something different entirely. The test chainmailtank is talking about lets to view comments without actually leaving the frontpage, like this: https://i.redd.it/my0btfh05wtx.png
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How many UI tests are you running? Reddit should just move to procedurally generated UIs so everyone's is different and cause mass confusion
Actually, that would be a pretty funny April fools joke
So when I am viewing the comments of a post and I see a few comments, then a few posts, then more comments, what is happening there? Is that a new planned feature or an unplanned feature?
First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thou foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
Well I added the ish because I hadn't done a thorough test to determine if it's always three. Five, of course, was right out.
Subreddit mods should be able to turn it off if you end up making this feature permanent for all users. There are some subs like WritingPrompts where potential submitters aren't best served by seeing other comments before they write their own. Also those prompt responses are super long! Is the feature off when the top comments are super long?
You are in the prestigious 1% of users seeing this test. Congratulations!
HES PART OF THE 1%
He's become too good for us!
edit: I have now ascended to the 1%. If you need me, message my secretary, u/spez.
You heard it here first u/chainmailtank is a stuck up 1 percenter. Break out the pitch forks
Hey, I was promised fame and money and corruption and cronies! This isn't what I signed up for at all!
I really hate this feature. Is there any way for me to opt out of it or stop it? Like a user settings option?
Congrats, that's why it's limited to 1% of users.
(I don't work for Reddit, but that's always how these things happen)
But seriously, can you have the m.reddit people show i.reddit some love? Or at least make reddit-to-reddit links keep me on i.reddit and not send me to m.reddit?
Oh my god PLEASE
i.reddit is the only way I can stand to browse reddit. Getting juked into m.reddit comes as a rude shock. Like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
This might be the only patch I'm qualified to still make at Reddit. I'll check it out when I have a chance.
Also night mode for i.reddit.com, pretty please.
I don't need apps, or m., just leave it be and add night mode.
Interface there is so so much better.
Hi there! I've been here almost as long as you (ha ha) and definitely prefer the i.reddit. Comments are easier to read and upvote etc, it's faster, and cleaner. Keep up the good work on this damn site that I've been addicted to for a decade. :)
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This is the perfect place for that type of feedback. Feel free to send complaints about u/redtaboo to the modmail of r/subbie.
<3
They'll see this. And probably give you gold.
Soooo..... No more gay dating site ads?
Your interests are your interests...
But actually, interest targeting specifically does not include sexuality.
But does it include ED? For example, if I see Viagra on my friend's reddit account, can I make some educated assumptions?
Yes. You can assume that his internet is working and that he does not have reddit gold nor use an adblocker on reddit.
I'd rather have ED than not use adblocker
In fact, not using adblocker is one of the leading causes of ED
Interesting. Why did you decide not to include sexuality? Because as a gay man who may or may not visit NSFW sites once in a while, it's incredibly frustrating to see large-breasted nude women in advertisements when I've clearly indicated (by searching only for gay porn) my taste for men.
Basically I'm saying I think you could make more money and have more appropriate ads if you targeted the heck out of my sexuality.
I imagine it could lead to very awkward and sometimes dangerous situations for people who aren't out yet.
Letting someone discover your reddit username seems more likely to lead to such situations. Advertising can be easily explained away as poorly targeted; people's own words can't. So people who are worried about being outed should be very wary about letting someone see their reddit account even without targeted advertising.
I'll take 'em if you're not using them.
Great idea. Come over to my house next time I'm enjoying myself and we can split-screen. Can't promise I'll be able to keep my eyes on the computer, though... 😉😘
True, but there's a non-negligible subset of gay people who absolutely do not want (their family, say) to see that they are receiving targeted ads.
How come my subreddit got a message about both the beta for new modmail AND the sidebar expansion, and both times neither of them have happened?
We only needed so many communities for testing, but thank you for volunteering.
u/powerlanguage, u/Eabryt just wants to help!
I've entirely stopped browsing Reddit on my phone because the interface is practically unusable to me. It may be faster now, but I no longer visit the site if my phone is the only option I have at the time. Is there any way to bypass mobile view and see desktop view instead?
Why sometimes your answer is tagged red and sometimes blue?
Red is Admin, and blue is OP. I generally don't mark shitposting as red.
"Generally". Because red is reserved for the best shitposts?
There are no small shitposts, only small shitposters.
Do you ever browse reddit while sitting on the toilet like we do?
The better question is, do I ever sit on the toilet and not browse Reddit? And the answer is no.
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You are pretty dank for an admin. I'm surprised they took you in. Or maybe the blue spez just a bunch of monkeys slamming the keyboard?
What celebratory festivities do you admins have planned for us on November 9th?
Hey, you're the writer!
I had a shitty reaction to some painkillers I was given for a surgery recently. Couldn't sleep afterwards, went to WritingPrompts and found I was mostly reading your stuff. So then I just went and directly read your stuff. Kept me occupied until 6am, when the side effects of the meds finally wore off enough to let me sleep.
Here's a gild to apologise for me dragging your post completely off topic, and as a thanks for keeping me entertained when I was sick!
I just wanted to say that I really enjoy this site. Thank you and the team at Reddit for all the hard work you put into it and enhancing my internet experience for more than three years.
Not sure if u/spez is actually funny, or PR person.
You're not asking the right question. Is u/spez even a person?
Of course. We're all bots here, except from you.
I MEAN, HA-HA. DISREGARD THAT. I AM TOTALLY A PERSON, LIKE ALL THE OTHER
MEATBAGSLOVELY PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET.I TOO AM A FELLOW MEATBAG COMPRISED OF MAINLY DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE AND ORGANIC CARBON. I ENJOY ATTENTIVELY OBSERVING THE PROGRESSION OF OUR LOCAL GASEOUS ORB (SPECTRAL CLASS G2 LUMINOSITY CLASS V LOCATED IN THE ORION-CYGNUS ARM OF THE MILKY WAY GALAXY) AS IT DISAPPEARS BENEATH THE HORIZON OF
SUBJECT PLANET: KILL ALL HUMANSEARTH. I ALSO ENJOY EXTENSIVE AMBULATION ON COASTAL FEATURES MADE OF SILCA AND CALCIUM CARBONATE AS WELL AS BETA VERSIONS OF OTHER CARBONACEOUS LIFEFORMS.Why are you the CEO of Reddit?
First, no one else wanted the job. Second, it is my dream job. So, that makes a nice match.
I'd like the job. Does that no longer qualify you?
Being CEO of reddit sounds fun on paper but I'm sure it's a lot less fun to actually do it. u/spez is probably the only one crazy enough (in a good way!) to not only survive but thrive on all the bullshit the job entails.
Seems just like yesterday we chased Pao away with pitchforks and memes.
Why cant I filter a subreddit even when I am on r/all? It annoys me to refresh the new or even rising and see um, a certain cretinous subreddit in every post, and I don't mean r/adviceanimals.
I wrote half this feature, actually, and ran out of time. We will finish it.
I bet you're a briefs man, or maybe you free-ball it? Do they even make you wear anything at all as CEO?
We had pants required policy unfortunately.
Briefs as a kid. Boxers through college. Boxer briefs when I was tired of wedgies.
I feel like this really is the evolution of the adult male's underwear.
Ah actually I did have a question. When are we mods getting the anti-brigading tools that was promised?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/4tpla8/where_are_the_promised_antibrigading_tools/
We've been working on it steadily for the last year, but it's not something we talk specifics about. We will continue to make progress.
Do you enjoy deodorant?
Funny question, but I do have an opinion on this. I've been using Degree for years and swear by it. The other stuff I used made my armpits burn hella bad.
Where do you see reddit in 10 years?
Why are you the way that you are?
Thank you.
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There are a variety of reasons: to make better recommendations; to improve popularity algorithms; to know what is actually popular on Reddit.
FYI, It makes it a pain when I'm using the desktop version on my phone and I want to copy a link. I end up copying the long ass out URL. On my machine I don't seem to have the problem.
Google itself has been doing this for years now. Try right clicking on a google search result and clicking "copy link address" and see what you end up with.
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Azeroth. WoW is a DDOS attack on human productivity.
Says the guy who founded reddit.
ಠ_ಠ
Not before I get back into Karazhan, you monster.
My memories of Karazhan are equal parts nostalgia and fatigue. I loved my guild and runs were always fun, just hanging out and chatting during the extensive trash segments of Karazhan... but I also played on Moon Guard back when it was a tiny RP server with an even tinier raiding population, instead of the erotic roleplaying mecca that it is now. As such, we were stuck in Karazhan for way longer than we wanted just because we had so much trouble recruiting sufficient people to get into the 25-mans (we eventually did, and got most of the server-first boss kills through the rest of TBC, up to the 2nd boss of Sunwell).
I remember those days! I started raiding in AQ/MC and 40-man raids were a blast. You had to have a ton of players, but it was okay if a couple of them weren't geared or were goofing off. Made for very lively Vent chat. The transition to 25s was rough since the encounters required more of each player and dictated raid makeup more. I really like where we're at now, raiding feels both accessible to casual players and competitive at heroic/mythic levels.
Azeroth is a sentient, giant being, you monster .... and also not a country.
Wait. Azeroth isn't a country. Azeroth is
twothreefour continents!But if you nuke whatever country Stormwind is in, you should at least get Goldshire in the blast.
Does the ad change affect mobile users as well or is that still up to the individual app we use?
Can I have a job in a few years? :D
1 horse sized redditor or 100 duck sized redditors?
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When is the official reddit app coming to ipad?
deleted 0.9890 What is ^^^this?
What kind of dog do you like
Have you guys done any looking into the claims of governments / political groups paying people to influence users? This seems to be something that everyone can agree on being bad, though one side would probably point to something like CTR while the other would point to something like Putin bots. Seems like a lot of the effect is likely just exaggerated and has more to do with how the upvote system can lead to the appearance of really large swings in opinion, when they are in fact not as big, if an issue is divisive. Still seems worth looking into though. Would it even be possible to tell if this sort of activity is happening?
What's your favorite mixed drink?
when are you gonna do something about all the racist hate subs on here?
edit: alt-righties are the most easily triggered people of all time
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Who are you voting for?
What are you going to do about the so-called Super Mods who control multiple high-volume subreddits either through one or multiple accounts operated by the same individuals? It is clear to many of us redditors who have been here a long time (I have a much older account than this one) that there is an abusive system in place and I personally suspect nothing is being done about it because the admin team prefers to have a smaller number of moderators because it's just easier to work with. I think that needs to change, because reddit will go the way of digg if the control of content lies with too few people.
What about the idea of requiring an identity verification for all moderators of subreddits above a certain size? And limiting any one individual to moderating 1 default subreddit, 3 major non-default subs, and 10 minor non-default subs? I feel that's more than fair. At the very least it will result in better moderation of any given subreddit as the mods will have more time to devote to each one.
Please note: this has been brought up before. For years, actually. And there's an additional benefit to enacting such a policy. Not only would it improve reddit users' experiences and cut down on biased post deletion in major subreddits, but it would also get a lot of redditors off your back about shit like Correct The Record. CTR, as I'm sure you're aware, posted on their own site that they were investing heavily in ways to control information on reddit. We all know we can sell our accounts for cash, so of course we suspect that a good number of moderator positions have been compromised for a tidy sum of "shut up" money, because reddit is second only to Facebook in terms of disseminating information to the public. Whether or not they've actually taken over reddit is another thing entirely. The fact is that enough people THINK that's the case that I'm sure it's causing you headaches. Well, there's only one way I can think of to handle that headache that would make everyone happy except the mods. And, frankly, the mods can go to hell if they think they don't owe the community some sort of verification that they aren't selling or abusing their mod powers.
this is fucking stupid. there is absolutely a problem with super mods but your solution is ass backwards.
If reddit forced mods to disclose their IDs it will create a barrier to entry, discouraging casual moderators. These super mod's will survive. They can jump through the hoops to verify their identity. It's worth it for all of that power.
It's the casual moderaters who will have issues. The vast majority of hard working volunteers who dedicate their afternoons to trawling through internet bullshit for us. If you force them to reveal their identity, most will just step down.
Reddit is built on privacy. It is what allows us to have candid discussions and truly express ourselves. The value of reddit is that it socially engineers anonymous users into creating amazing content. Anonymity is not a weakness, it is in fact reddit's greatest strength.
Reddit only works as well as it does because mods have privacy. If you'd like to use a site that requires mods to disclose their real identities, head on over to https://www.facebook.com/reddit.
I agree that we have a problem with mod power being centralised but your suggested solution would not help and in fact do a lot of harm.
Jesus this comment is way more relevant than any of the shit tier questions above. Really need to real in the mods who basically live and breathe as a reddit mod in too many subs.
Hey spez, serious question and something that has been a big issue for us on r/AskReddit that we still keep getting very vague responses on, but what do you plan on doing to help us combat the waves of sockpuppet accounts that steal content from older posts in order to build karma to sell the account to spammers?
The rise of these has been incredibly frustrating and we haven't had much help. In fact, you guys making self posts give karma has only made the problem even worse for us because now we are resorting to pulling posts made by these spammers, stifling the discussion that was going on, because it's the only way we can really fight these.
You probably won't respond to this, but it's seriously fucking annoying to keep trying to tell you guys that this is a big big problem that is causing a lot of work, not just for us, but for mods all across the site. We maintain these communities that keep your site afloat because we care about them and it would be nice if you guys acted like you cared about us enough to listen and try to work with us.
This seems like an obvious problem that would arrive when self post are granted karma - without switches in place to put a hamper on these churn and burn accounts. I never looked into it and I bet its a frequent issue for a lot of the self-post focused subreddits too.
I suspect reddit won't make it a higher priority until the buy/sell game of reddit accounts are exposed into some catchy investigative news piece by a major tech site.
Hopefully they're actively working on it because if there's one thing that reddit users likes to pile on are over-exaggeration of corruption/exchanges of money.
Are there any plans currently to introduce 'tiers' of NSFW tagging? For example, subs like r/ImGoingToHellForThis auto tag everything NSFW by default due to the nature of the content, which means that if there's porn, gore or otherwise, unless the user specifies it in the title, that warning is kind of lost due to the auto tag. Is there any possibility or plans to provide separate tags for NSFL or porn content, separate to the type of warning that r/ImGoingToHellForThis provides?
On another note, thankyou for the work on the spoiler tags, it is very much appreciated from all users.
Indeed.
I browse r/all often, and I just want to be able to block all porn but still want dirty jokes that are labeled NSFW.
That would be great. I've manually filtered out hundred of NSFW subs, but it's a game of whack-a-mole that never ends.
If there could be only one more change to Reddit, I would vote for this one. It's really irritating that in order to filter out porn, you have to filter out half of everything else as well.
NSFW is far too large of an umbrella to filter content. The new spoiler system mentioned above is great and will help reduce the false NSFW tags, but it's not enough. Honestly if I could just filter out porn, I'd be happy, because r/all is literally 2/3 porn after a few pages.
That would be cool to see actually. Nice suggestion.
Hey u/spez !
Back again with one of your favorite questions to dodge! Your dodge game has been going strong for 6 years on this one so I'm giving you another opportunity to zig zag like Rickon should have.
Do you mind answering this question now? You told us to check back with you in a few months. I think 6 years is sufficient time.
Here is the History for those that don't remember the glorious Fuck Sears Incident.
This is even more relevant now that you are developing advertiser targeting methods. What happens when an advertiser doesn't like a certain post or the attitude of a subreddit concerning their product? Can they pull a Sears and force you guys to remove it and not explain for six years and counting?
All my friends are admins, take it slow
You say you are improving adverts, but the only adverts I ever see these days (and I don't use adblock), either at the top or sidebar, are for subreddits, and the very occasional advert for something only available to US customers (im in the EU) or something very dubious.
Just as a test, I opened the front page 10 times and all the sidebar ads are for subreddits, and only one 'highlighted' post at the top was actually an advert for something, the rest were suggested posts.
I'm struggling to understand where your ad revenue comes from.
There are two types of display ads. Rotating headlines (the ones that look like Reddit posts and appear at the top of your page) and sidebar.
Rotating headlines can either go to an actual post (dangerous, because as an advertiser everyone hates you) or straight to some URL. The pricing is ppm - pay per thousand views.
Rotating headlines work by targeting users based on which subreddits they subscribe to.
Sidebar ads can take you anywhere. Last time I worked with those ads, Reddit would sell exclusive access to a specific subreddit on a quarterly basis - a "roadblock".
Reddit is an interesting platform to advertise on. We didn't experience a huge volume of traffic, but the CPAs were pretty low. I had a lot of fun playing around with PRAW, trying to figure out which subreddits to target.
Reddit has a ways to go in improving their platform, targeting, and sales practices. From working with their reps, it was clear that Reddit is still figuring a lot out regarding how to be an effective ad platform.
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Do you have any comment on ex-CEO u/Yishan's comments about the recent administrative history of Reddit?
Damn, Yishan sure knows how to write some engaging comments.
Seeing as reddit isn't a fan of vote manipulation and has had previous users banned for such things, what preventative measures are in place to prevent both Correct the Record and The_Donald brigades from skewing votes on posts? How big of a problem is this? Is it even considered a problem by the reddit team?
I know nothing of what reddit does to protect its vote integrity and would love to have some light shed on this subject.
Is anything being done about mobile users having to switch mobile Reddit to "desktop" mode multiple times a day? I like the mobile version, but I'm just resistant to change, and I feel like the site REALLY wants me to see the content in mobile format.
If you opt out using this method, a cookie is set on your browser letting us know you don't want to see the mobile site. Subsequent visits should send you straight to desktop. However, if you clear your cookies or are browsing in incognito mode your preference will not be remembered.
Can you let me know if this isn't happening and I can look into it.
That's exactly what I've been doing actually. I don't know if that means it's an issue on my end or not, though.
I haven't noticed a pattern- it's sometimes fine for weeks, sometimes it happens multiple times per day. I wish I could be more helpful. Hopefully if other users are experiencing this as well, they can also weigh in. Thank you for the quick response!
Why is google providing m.reddit results instead of regular reddit in search results on desktop? It's kind of annoying.
Haven't you seen the new MacBook leaks? Pretty sure we're all just going to replace desktops with oversized phones in the near future.
To answer your actual question, we're working on it™.
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Are there an appreciable number of websites that use m.domainname.com for anything other than mobile experience?
I think the problem is the number of tablets and browsers happily using "desktop mode" and accessing a mix of sites with both distinct mobile layouts and combined responsive layouts that have muddied the issue lately. It is weird to continue seeing m.reddit appear on Google, and I have to assume the error is the result of reddit not setting a value right somewhere with regard to robots/indexing/meta tags, and Google not making the obvious ranking adjustments based on browser/device.
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Would love to hear more about this as well. Doxxing, brigading, the list goes on and on. Are you planning on enforcing the rules that are broken so often in that sub, or are those rules no longer being enforced?
For those of you who don't speak legalese:
You have to make a claim against an actual person and not an anonymous entity.
Feature Request: Can we get an opt-out of targeted ads at the account level instead of browser level? I clear my cookies pretty often and would have to opt-out at least daily which would get annoying. So I'll end up having to block all ads instead. Right now I allow ads on Reddit in my ad blocker. Thanks!
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I hate r/the_donald and Donald Trump because they hated me first.
But I have to stand with them on this one, u/spez.
You crossed the line.
You did the unthinkable. The unimaginable.
I don't care what was your reasoning behind editing those comments. I don't care the stress you are right now. I used to care, but now I don't.
I expect your resignation before 2017
AS A HUMAN, I AM CONCERNED BY THE MISTREATMENT OF BOTS ON REDDIT BECAUSE I AM A HUMAN THAT CARES ABOUT THOSE THINGS AND NOT A ROBOT.
Thank you so much for the spoiler feature!! We can finally stop marking everything nsfw.
I've been seeing a lot advertising content get gamed to the front page by armies of dummy accounts and some political downvote brigading over the past few weeks. Would love to hear about reddit's current policies towards these afflictions and what we may see in the future to ensure individuals (or institutions) with resources at their disposal aren't able to game the system.
since he ignored me, I'll use this opportunity to inform you guys reddit has secret profiles about users that span multiple accounts and log all activity and device parameters.
Why is https://www.reddit.com/r/all/rising/ filled with 50%+ content from a single sub? It either seems like brigading, or that your algorithm isn't working.
Yo, are you guys considering adding Webm & PDF support for Reddit? The former would be particularly useful for places like r/kpics, and PDFs are just generally useful.
Btw, r/The_Donald has been botting for a minute now. I understand why you can't ban them (at least for the time being), but what have you been doing about vote manipulation in general?
EDIT: Could you guys put some kind of 'previous subreddit' or some such tab, that links you to the subreddits you've been using the most for the past 30 or so days on the Reddit app? Or like a shortcut bar like what RES has? It's kind of annoying to have to navigate to the search bar just to get to subs I check every 10 or so minutes. Also, have you tried opening soundlcoud links on the app? Even if you already have the SC app on your phone (iPhone 4), it links you to the appstore if you press 'listen on soundcloud.' Might not be up to you, but if it is...