[junkculture]

I now log into reddit very rarely and only to correct errors in comments where I am actually somewhat experienced.

I've been gilded more than a few times and I've never come to know until the expiry notice shows up.

So it's actually hard to tell what the reddit gold buys one, apart from virtue signalling that one is a "supporter."

Now if the gold bought me to ability to turn off all comments, see what the mods have censored off the various subs, and actually extract some value off the site, I'd pay up in a flash.

But as it stands, reddit has lost any credibility that it ever had, and logging in that toxic mess provides no value to me and too much value to reddit.

In short, not a site worth supporting in any shape or form.

[AndrewCHM]

for what its worth, there are over 220 subreddits which have their removal logs made public, via this account: https://www.reddit.com/user/publicmodlogs

You can turn off comments by not visiting comment pages

[junkculture]

Well, I do run a content blocker on macos/IOS which turns off all comments on all websites, but that's a trifle limiting.

What annoys me about reddit comments are the pun "trains," endless reruns of old reddit jokes. Every conversation is swamped with these comments, perhaps deliberately, to drown out unpopular opinions. No wait, the Pao era introduced mass deletions instead.

[AndrewCHM]

the general consensus nowdays is that it was Pao being used as a scapegoat more than anything (I think knothing also straight-up admitted to scapegoating too? I can't remember off the top of my head)

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3dautm/conte...

[junkculture]

> scapegoat

I wouldn't be surprised that happened ultimately, but I really don't think that she was hired with that role/goal in mind. No one could be that evil. Could they?

If you look at the history of reddit over the years, they've always lurched from one crisis to another. An absence of adult supervision. Reactive solutions.

I would bet that reddit was under pressure to monetize somehow and ads (a la Facebook) on that "community" wouldn't cut it. I believe that they had an influx of funds around the same time, and the investors were looking to start getting some returns.

Their various stealth marketing schemes were suffering at the hands of the entrenched trolls. The unsavory subreddits were probably putting off established customers.

Maybe Pao just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

yishan's comment is interesting, thanks for linking to it. I didn't follow the whole Pao affair, but I do remember someone telling me that yishan might have been trolling reddit.

One thing jumps out at me from his comment. He calls Pao "the only technology executive anywhere who had the chops and experience to manage a startup of this size, AND who understood what reddit was all about."

Technology executive? Really? That's news to me. I thought she had spent her pre-reddit days in finance.

And she definitely did not understand reddit.