• orcrist@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    For anyone out there who doesn’t want to browse to TikTok, the short version is that the Reddit communications staff refuses to comment on information that’s being used for upcoming stories, and instead they say that they will issue corrections after the fact.

    This is of course an old tactic that companies have tried to use to discredit reporters, but it doesn’t work very well when you tell everyone that you’re using it.

    • muftiboy@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      gosh spez must be the dumbest person alive. how on earth does he manage to not kill himself every day out of sheer stupidity -.-

      • baggachipz@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        From a New Yorker interview years ago:

        Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”

        • Givesomefucks@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          It’s the result of Prosperity Jesus.

          They believe they’re wealthy because they have natural talent. It ignores lots of people are more talented, and never got the same opportunities to be successful.

          In a real apocalyptic disaster, they’d be the ones real leaders sentence to death (either overt or shunning them from the group) to set an example for the rest of the group.

  • MrFahrenheit@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    At a similar time as The Verge was threatened I noticed some articles changed their tune and switched to downplaying the Reddit situation. The one I recall is Gizmodo reporting that Reddit traffic was back to normal.

    It’ll be interesting to see how things play out at the end of this week when the 3rd Party Apps go offline, but to be honest I’m happy to say my new home is Kbin.social and don’t see the need for an active Reddit account, though I may lurk from time to time if I’m looking for some particular information that’s not yet on Kbin.

    The game changer for Fediverse is stable mobile applications, once the Apollo shaped hole on my phone is filled I think it’ll be pretty much a drop-in replacement.

    • EnthusiasticWhale@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Eh if traffic has returned to normal it’s up to their journalistic integrity to report it.

      If it hasn’t then they are lieing and it hurts the brand more

      • collegefurtrader
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        1 year ago

        You’re 15 years too late to see “journalistic integrity”, son.

        Its all about the motherfucking clicks!

        • HeartyBeast@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I think you’re brushing with a much to wide brush. There’s certainly still journalism with integrity out there.

      • chagall@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        traffic has returned to normal

        This is a very non-specific statement. As a former moderator, Reddit gave us lots of metrics to measure “traffic”. Site visits, unique visits, engagement… all of these can be used to talk about “traffic”. It’s also not hard to spin up a couple bots, talk about site visits, not unique visits and call everything “normal”.

        Metrics, especially vanity metrics are very easy to twist if you have a narrative to tell. And boy, does Reddit, Inc. have a narrative to tell.

        • Givesomefucks@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          Yep.

          The first thing they taught us in my graduate level statistics class was:

          Anyone can make a statistic that backs up their bias. You’re here to learn how to accurately represent a situation with statistics, and be able to point out when others are misusing statistics

          That’s the hard part

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        “Reddit Claims Traffic Has Returned to Normal”

        Versus

        “Reddit Traffic Has Returned to Normal”

  • Thorned_Rose@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Well done The Verge for not caving to the ridiculous machismo posturing. Reddit PR keeps digging their own grave deeper and deeper.

      • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        ‘Most users’ will care when they lose all the content they relied on for their late-night doomscrolling.

        • Stovetop@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I’m assuming most of the doomscrolling content comes from bots. It’s all articles with clickbait titles auto-posted by the social media arm of news/blog/journal/etc. sites, then upvoted by bots for visibility to try to lure as many people in as possible for that sweet ad revenue.

          • eleitl@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            My experience, based on fringe, very technical communites differs somewhat. But you can only lead horses to water, not make them drink.

  • SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.net
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    1 year ago

    “We’re just going to passive aggressively fact check you afterwards to discredit you” seems like a pretty 2020 playbook to me.

    • tal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Oooh, good to see it that you made it over from Reddit. I tend to avoid linking my account names – one more thing to make life difficult for eventual data-mining – but you probably know me as an American who comments rather a lot on /r/Europe. Saw you comment on the /r/ModCoord thread on all this too, hoped that you might show up here. :-)