Would you rather fight millions redditors or one unicorn? – reddit growing up story (2)

The online forum reddit launched in 2005 and was acquired by media group Condé Nast a year later. After the acquisition, the number of reddit users continued to grow, but the traffic failed to convert into revenue, and the founders Arron Swartz , Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian left reddit one after another. The relevant stories can be found in the first article of this series. At the end of 2009, reddit started the post-founder era, and waiting for it was one huge wave after another.

In late 2009, Dan McComas, who is also a redditor himself, had a whim in November: Why not use reddit to run a Secret Santa Gift Exchange ? He posted a post on reddit to test the water temperature. As soon as the post came out, he received more than 1,000 people who signed up to participate. McComas was overwhelmed by the number of people. He is also a programmer. He had to create a website to handle the application, and his wife was responsible for the logistics. After answering rounds of emails, private messages and even phone inquiries, more than 4,300 people from 62 countries finally participated in this unique gift exchange program, which became redditgifts in the future. In 2010, the McComas made persistent efforts, and as a result, more than 16,000 people exchanged Christmas gifts through the platform this year. Since then, the number of participants has ballooned every year, and McComas has begun to hold similar gift exchanges on other days. The scale of the program is beyond the two of them can handle. Fortunately, Martin, the head of reddit at the time, couldn't bear the meaning (and potential). )'s plans came to an end, so they lobbied Advance Publications (the parent company of reddit's parent company Condé Nast) to buy redditgifts for a bargain so it could continue to thrive. As a result, this year's ticket-playing hoax developed into a global event with nearly 200,000 people ( 2018 figures ) in the next decade.

Although reddit has continued to introduce new features and products, and the number of users has continued to grow, the company has still not been able to break even (reddit, which has not yet been listed, has never disclosed its financial status. In 2013, the then CEO Yishan Wong had posted on the company's website. Zhifa wrote that reddit is still in a state of loss). In order to expand the source of income, advertising has naturally become an inevitable choice for reddit. The company has launched an advertising plan earlier, but the income is meager, and reddit has even had a dispute with Condé Nast over advertising issues. In 2010, a group set out to run an ad on reddit in support of the Tobacco Act, which has garnered support from many redditors for helping legalize marijuana use. But Condé Nast, concerned that the ad might damage the group's image (it said in a statement that "As a corporation, Condé Nast does not want to benefit financially from this particular issue."), ordered the ad to be banned on reddit. The decision made reddit dissatisfied, and the team posted a public statement on the forum, saying that all employees were unanimously opposed to the parent company's decision, and what's more, they later published the ad for free to avoid Condé "Financial Interest" as referred to in Nast's statement.

This decision on reddit has naturally won a lot of praise from redditors. But the virtual applause still can't be turned into real employee salaries and servers, and the team still has to solve the problem of revenue and expenditure shortages. At this time, the reddit team decided to do a "crowdfunding": they launched the "reddit Gold" program, hoping to expand the source of income by recruiting paying members. As a result, they raised 250,000 US dollars in half a year. The success of the "crowdfunding" also made reddit decide to The fee plan is regularized (now renamed "reddit Premium") and will become one of the main revenue channels for the site in the future.

At the end of 2010 reddit was already a social platform with more than 400 million page views per month and 8 million visitors, but for a long time reddit's full-time staff has been maintained at around 5 people (!), the For a while, it was a blood change on reddit - "old ministers" like Slowe left one after another, and replenishing manpower naturally became the company's top priority. At the same time, this huge online community has become an independent virtual organism, and affects the physical world in different ways: every year redditgifts occasionally exchange gifts to connect people in different corners of the world; in 2010, redditors were Flood victims in Haiti raised $180,000 for charity; reddit has repeatedly mobilized netizens to express their opinions on different issues, and even instigated redditors to take to the streets to protest.

In 2011, a cross-party group in the House of Representatives proposed the Stop Online Piracy Act ( SOPA ). Many online platforms and netizens, including reddit, expressed their opposition to the bill, fearing that the bill would restrict freedom of speech. In addition to promoting anti-SOPA in major subreddits , Some subreddit administrators responded to the call of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to close the subreddit under their jurisdiction on January 18, 2012. This action has been supported by more and more administrators since then, and the reddit team has been paying attention to the situation. It was subsequently decided to shut down the entire website (Blackout) on the same day as a protest against SOPA. In the end, the motion was withdrawn due to strong opposition from netizens and Internet giants, and the Blackout also became one of the large social movements that reddit participated in. But as written in the book:

What he (referring to Ohanian) wasn't considering at the moment was that if this community of individuals could use their collective power for massive good, they could also commit terrible ills.

This powerful cyber army is a double-edged sword, and the world will have a better understanding of it in the coming years.

In 2011, the ownership of reddit was transferred to Advance Publication, the parent company of Condé Nast. After the transfer, reddit will continue to operate as an independent operation. The long-vacant reddit CEO position has finally been picked: Yishan Wong, who previously worked at Facebook, took over in 2012, and co-founder Ohanian is on the board. During his tenure, Wong raised $50 million in new funds for reddit, and expanded the company's team (the company's team expanded to 23 in August 2013), and the number of users increased from 35 million to 170 million ( What is the concept of 23 employees managing a website with 30 million users… ).

But while the number of users has skyrocketed, hate speech, doxing, false information, and cyberbullying have become more and more serious on the Internet. Community managers who communicate with the vast number of redditors have the deepest understanding of this. They have to deal with countless exaggerated remarks, pornographic photos, personal attacks, intimidation complaints, etc. every day. A community manager joked that her daily breakfast is "dick and coffee" - I don't know why some male netizens always love female netizens. Sending photos of male genitals, netizens have no choice but to turn to reddit for help. In some serious cases, community managers even need to refer the incident to the police or suicide prevention agencies for follow-up, and similar incidents have become the daily life of community managers. What's worse is that some redditors point their finger at the company's employees, greeting them with foul language, intimidation, and pornographic photos at every turn, and even the employees are harassed and stalked. Some employees suffer from post-traumatic sequelae (PTSD) from working in a negative, depressing environment for a long time, while many more leave the company because of the stress. Dell Frost, who briefly worked on reddit in 2015, called this period the most unpleasant period of his career:

Child molesters, child porn, vicious stalking, rape threats, serious harassment, people taking the harassment offline, and people filing police reports on each other. I had to report one person to the feds. So much shit. I dealt with that on a daily basis.

Of course, community managers alone cannot monitor reddit's bizarre and problematic forums, so they also rely on administrators who are obligated by redditors. As the front-line staff of reddit, once the administrator finds abnormal situations in the discussion area (such as a surge of watering messages, threatening comments, etc.), they must report to the community manager, and they will also assist the community manager to delete non-compliant posts (such as Obviously illegal content such as naked photos of children), or explain, warn or even punish the members involved, so there is a delicate relationship between community managers and administrators: they appreciate the help of the administrators, and understand the administrators Dealing with disputes may involve some unsightly means. Even when an administrator manages a subreddit while posting indecent content in other discussion areas, community managers often turn a blind eye to the administrator's contribution. However, a report in 2012 exposed this grey partnership and caused an uproar.

u/Violentacrez is an active redditor, he often publishes indecent content on various subreddits (such as photos of women's genitals, sexy photos of underage girls, etc.), but at the same time he is a very capable subreddit moderator. , he often cooperates with employees to deal with disputes in the discussion area and ban illegal content, and his ability is even recognized by many administrators. Slowe, who has been in touch with u/Violentacrez, described him this way:

We just stayed out of there and let him do his thing and we knew at least he was getting rid of a lot of stuff that wasn't particularly legal. I know I didn't want it to be my job.

However, in October 2012, reporter Adrian Chen revealed his true identity. Afterwards, u/Violentacrez negotiated with reporters to ask Chen not to publish his identity, but Chen still published the report. After the article was published, u/Violentacrez lost it. At work, reddit administrators were furious after learning the news. They believed that this violated the "no bottom line policy" that reddit has always advocated, and many administrators even believed that u/Violentacrez had paid a lot to reddit over the years, so he Angry at the experience of being fired. An administrator left a message:

As moderators, we feel that this type of behavior is completely intolerable. We volunteer our time on reddit to make it a better place for the users, and should not be harassed and threatened for that.

Another senior administrator also noted:

Without assurances of anonymity, I have little motivation to put the many hours I spend moderating.

Afterwards, many administrators banned the posting of links to Chen's reports in the subreddits they managed, and netizens also opened new subreddits to promote the anti-Gawker movement (Gawker was the platform for publishing reports at the time, and the website has now stopped updating). The official attitude of reddit is to raise the flag undecided: the team initially banned the posting of relevant news links on the whole site, but this measure was cancelled one day after the implementation, but the subreddit administrators were allowed to decide whether to enforce the ban. The incident put the reddit team in an embarrassing position: on the one hand, the report did violate the reddit policy of not having a bottom line, and allowing the posting of the report is more like offending a group of volunteer administrators who have been loyal and dedicated for many years; on the other hand, as the media of the fourth power There is no obligation to abide by the so-called "no bottom" regulations on the reddit station, and for reddit, which once participated in the anti-SOPA movement and held high the banner of freedom of speech, the prohibition of posting this report is contrary to the spirit of reddit, which makes the media think that reddit It's just a matter of censorship of speech under the pretense of being a backlash. The results of this not-so-special investigative report have become the focus of attention of major media and netizens. It reveals the conflict between freedom of speech and individual rights; it highlights the gray area where press freedom and personal privacy overlap; it is more important Raise the public's attention to a long-hidden question: as a platform for netizens to post information, what responsibility should reddit and social media bear?

Naturally, the above-mentioned problems cannot be solved in an instant, so the problems continue to come one after another. On April 15, 2013, a bomb attack occurred in the Boston Marathon in the United States. The whole United States was shocked. Even netizens on reddit also talked about it. Some netizens immediately opened r/FindBostonBombers to focus on the case, and countless redditors devoted themselves to it. Looking at all the photos or videos of the scene, in order to find clues to solve the case, we are convinced that with the wisdom of netizens, we will be able to find the key to solving the case. They once identified a runner and coach through the scene and Facebook photos. Some redditors pointed out that one of them was similar to a man next to the terrorist. The two also left the explosion site an hour before the terrorist attack. Netizens So they suspect that they are related to the terrorist attack (what kind of logic is this?). Some tabloids made follow-up reports based on the relevant information. As a result, the pair of coaches and runners were forced to "turn themselves in" to the police station after the report was published - but they did not want to admit that they were terrorists, but were worried that the report would be published. Afterwards, their personal safety would be threatened, and it was later proved that they had nothing to do with the terrorist attack.

Although the administrators of r/FindBostonBombers have repeatedly emphasized not to release unverified information and disclose personal information, and they have also kept deleting related posts, the huge power of netizens has overwhelmed the administrators, and similar "clues" still occupy the entire page. . Three days after the incident (April 18), the FBI finally released a photo, pointing out that the two shadowy figures in the photo were the only confirmed suspects in the case. Redditors rushed out from time to time to focus their "investigation" on the two, which resulted in two consequences: first, they found a high-resolution photo of one of the suspects taken by the runner; Netizens pointed to a man who disappeared last month (Sunil Tripathi) as a likely suspect. After the post was posted, a bunch of easy chair detectives clenched their "clues" like sharks smelling blood. They kept searching for his background, the reason for his disappearance, and his last whereabouts. With more and more "clues" from netizens and the facts of the case appearing to be "uncovered", some netizens couldn't hold back and left threatening posts on Tripathi's Facebook page to implement a trial without trial. The Facebook page was actually set up by Tripathi's parents to collect information and clues about their son's indulgence. As a result, the original page full of sympathetic messages was quickly washed up with foul language and abusive remarks. Tripathi's parents and relatives Even received interview inquiries or intimidation from the media and strangers. It was not until NBC reported on April 20 that Tripathi was not a suspect that the relevant talk gradually diminished. A few days later, Tripathi was found floating in the river. After identification, it was determined that he had been dead for several weeks. The witch hunt came to an end. Serious injury to Tripathi family.

Although netizens did find some important evidence in their "investigation", they were more of a chase, resulting in more rumors, affecting the direction of the investigation, and even requiring the police to mobilize resources to refute rumors. What is even more unfortunate is that after some innocent citizens were labelled as "suspects" by netizens, they faced countless harassment and even life threats both online and offline, which were all revealed in this incident. Erik Martin later apologized to the public, especially the Tripathi family, for the incident. He mentioned in the article:

This crisis has reminded all of us of the fragility of people's lives and the importance of our communities, online as well as offline. These communities and lives are now interconnected in an unprecedented way. Especially when the stakes are high we must strive to show good judgement and solidarity.

(This Boston terrorist attack "investigation" somewhat reminds me of the various "investigations" that Hong Kong netizens conducted during the anti-extradition movement, in which true and false information was also rampant. But unlike the Boston terrorist attack, the anti-extradition movement Most of the "investigations" during the period stemmed from the fact that the police's information was opaque, and even covered up and distorted the truth, not to mention that the police were the main suspects in the whole incident. When the credibility of the police and the government was lost, the society began to lose ground. In the absence of independent investigations by reliable institutions, the result is an abnormal phenomenon of countless online investigation groups, which is also a tragedy for society.)

Coming to 2014 on August 31st, another larger storm engulfed reddit. A batch of indecent photos circulated on reddit. The protagonists are a group of popular song, movie and TV actresses and models. From the perspective of shooting, they should be self-portrait photos. It seems that hackers have stolen photos from the parties' iPhone or iCloud. After that, post it on graph beds like 4chan or Imgur. Once the photos are forwarded to reddit, with the convenient subreddit system—of course there is a dedicated r/TheFappening for such hot material ( Fappening : a combination of Fap+happening, Fap should be a profane onomatopoeia [?], and more The wonderful thing is that netizens also deliberately added the word "The" to the name) ─ ─ and the efficient scoring mechanism, the related photos quickly became popular topics. It didn't take long for a group of reddit employees to receive notifications one after another: because the website traffic surge system issued a warning, after checking by employees, they found out that it was thanks to Fappening (it's hard not to think of the flash car door incident in Hong Kong in 2008 ). In a short while, there will be crazy calls from the media and star managers, and all the reddit staff are very busy in an instant.

The official response at first was that only photos of underage girls would be deleted, and other photos were not removed because they did not violate any laws (one of the reasons was that the link to the image was posted on reddit, not the image itself). The processing method is also the same as other indecent photos on the site. The decision naturally drew strong lashings from the victims, and even some reddit staff felt it was inappropriate. Wong later wrote on the company's blog, emphasizing his sympathy for the victims' plight, but insisting that legal but immoral content would not be removed. He called on netizens to be self-disciplined and be responsible for their own decisions when exercising their right to choose, and the company will not force users or choose on their behalf. As a result, netizens made a clear choice in action: more than 100,000 people joined r/TheFappening in one day...  

At the same time, the reddit staff were already too busy: deleting naked photos of underage girls that were constantly being re-uploaded, removing a lot of bottling links that took advantage of high traffic and cheating click-through rates, making sure the site could handle the continued surge in traffic without Will hang up, deal with crazy inquiries and complaints from major media and managers... After five days of fighting with servers, nude photos and abuse, all the employees are physically and mentally exhausted, but r/TheFappening still shows no signs of cooling down, responsible for Alex Angel, who leads a group of community managers, decided to shut down r/TheFappening with the team and the system on the verge of collapse -- just hours after his boss posted a post explaining why the district wasn't shutting down. What's even more ridiculous is that the reason for closing the site is not naked photos, copyright infringement or privacy, but amazing traffic and crazy spam messages. Although Wong didn't blame Angel's decision afterwards, he was inevitably frustrated by the changing circumstances. This repeated action has also made reddit the object of ridicule by the media and netizens. This belated decision to shut down the website has also hurt the victims even more, and the image of reddit has been in a straight line. In the past week, the team has been working all night to clean up spam messages, repair the overloaded system, and repeatedly watch some photos that violate other people's privacy and are indecent. All this is done to satisfy netizens. The desire/desire of star nude photos, which makes the morale of employees drop to the bottom. Engineer Jason Harvey later shared his feelings in the report:

This nightmare of the weekend made myself and many of my coworkers feel pretty awful. I had an obvious responsibility to keep the site up and running, but seeing that all of my efforts were due to a huge number of people scrambling to look at stolen private photos didn't sit well with me personally, to say the least.

If there is any good news in the whole incident, I am afraid that reddit traffic reached an all-time high this week, and this is also the "good news" that Harvey is ashamed to announce.

After the Fappening battle, everyone on reddit felt exhausted. Among them, Erik Martin, who was the longest in reddit at the time, handed in his resignation letter when the Fappening scandal broke out. Other employees were also very angry and dissatisfied with Yishan Wong's way of doing things. On the other hand, Yishan Wong has been busy raising funds and formulating the company's development blueprint for the past two years. Now he has to deal with a major crisis, and the heavy work pressure makes him feel overwhelmed. After the incident, he referred to the advice of his advisers and asked the board of directors to recall all reddit employees scattered on the east and west coasts of the United States, and even as far away as Ireland, to the Los Angeles headquarters (!). He also proposed moving the current Los Angeles headquarters office closer to where he lives, so that he could cut down on his daily commute (!!). The decision naturally aroused strong dissatisfaction among employees. Many employees resigned because they could not cooperate. The board of directors also believed that the relocation plan was too hasty and did not fully agree to Wong's request. Wong was very disappointed. As a result, in November 2014, Wong was in a certain After returning home from get off work, I didn't go back to work the next day (!!!). (I often hear people say that the young X / Y / Z generation "leaves without saying goodbye" when they go to work, but I didn't expect a similar situation to occur in a high-level CEO... )

2014 was a rocky year for reddit, and despite reddit's Fappening campaign being criticized and the CEO leaving in anger, the company managed to survive the crisis. 2015 will be the 10th anniversary of reddit, can reddit celebrate its 10th birthday with a group of redditors? That's left to be revealed in the next article in this series.