by francopoli

Everyone seems to agree that something went very wrong for r/news on what should have been a crucial day for the subreddit. But the reason for that is the subject of heated debate, with the sides of the argument falling along the now familiar fault lines of Reddit’s ongoing culture war between free speech absolutists who believe Reddit has become too “politically correct” and those who believe the site needs to do more to limit the frequency and spread of hateful, harassing and abusive speech on the platform.

One of the problems that Web 2.0 has is the issue of unpaid volunteers moderating the content that you need in order to keep your product around long enough to look at the ads. There are a few, very few, good places left on Reddit; the mods there make them worth visiting. /r/news has 8 million subs, how in the hell can you moderate that? and how can you as a company allow non-employee randoms dictate the face of your company? Slashdot still sort-of works, so does Fark, hell Digg kinda works now that the stigma of Digg 4.0 is ancient history. I wish I had the answer to this and access to VC cash, but I'm just some dude who's been on the 'net 30+ years.

I was on a hill, in the deep rurals of Indiana with no phone, no net, no outside world for two days this weekend. Looks like I picked the right weekend to get out of Dodge.