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mard | 5 years ago

Free speech stands against the financial interests of social media. Reddit is the real estate for ads, and the best value for top global advertisers are safe spaces that are free of controversy. In the end, it's the advertisers that decide what is allowed to be published there.

discuss

dogma1138|5 years ago

Unless you’re willing to pay for it you can’t have social media that isn’t a real estate for ads or at least some sort of commercial interest.

Arguably even HN despite being technically a pro-bono side project serves the commercial interest of YC (and possibly others) if it didn’t and especially if it would have a negative impact on them it wouldn’t be around.

And HN is a very niche social media (if you can even call it that) with strict rules.

Anything with wider appeal has to be monetized.

The only monetization we have for the Internet is attention/value extraction from the user base.

account42|5 years ago

Unless you’re willing to pay for it you can’t have an encyclopedia that isn’t a real estate for ads or at least some sort of commercial interest.

Unless you’re willing to pay for it you can’t have an operating sytem that isn’t a real estate for ads or at least some sort of commercial interest.

Or maybe you can.

hdjdbtbgwjsn|5 years ago

HN is a very strictly policed safe space.

sebmellen|5 years ago

I have no doubt their investors play a role as well. Though some argue the Tencent investment is good for Reddit [0], I can't help but wonder what the nudging looks like behind the scenes.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/tencent-reddit-nononono/

secondcoming|5 years ago

Having advertisers control online narrative is very worrying and an unintended consequence of Brand Safety. There is no financial reason for reddit or youtube to distribute content they can't monetise, especially if that content is popular.

starfallg|5 years ago

The question is who should have this control in media? Traditional media had gatekeepers that allowed for extreme (but popular) opinions to be suppressed.

We've seen what it looks like when opinions form in a bubble online without oversight and spirals out of control in the real world. From conspiracy theories and extremism to doxxing the wrong person in mass murder.

We should be aware of the limitations around a model based entirely on unfettered free speech. Otherwise we are just ideologues trying to put out a fire with more fire.

CapricornNoble|5 years ago

>>it's the advertisers that decide what is allowed to be published there

1. How much would/should advertisers care about their "brand image"? Cancel Culture has taken the long history of corporate boycotts and connected it to a hair-trigger, with massively amplified effects compared to the per capita aggrieved consumers. The leverage that advertisers exert on publishers is a rational risk-avoidance policy in these times of massive outrage-induced revenue losses.

2. How much of the risk-aversion in advertising is related to demographic shifts in the personnel making up the advertising and public relations departments?