Engadget: Google is making it easier to find search results from Reddit and other forums. “Google is making it easier to find search results from Reddit and other forum sites. The search engine is adding a new module that will surface discussions happening on forums across the web for queries that may benefit from crowd-sourced answers.”
MakeUseOf: How to See Deleted Reddit Posts. “When you’re browsing Reddit, finding a deleted post with tons of upvotes is annoying. A brief look at the thread title and your curiosity takes control, leading you into wondering how great it would be if you could just time travel to the past and see what the deleted thread was all about. Well, that’s not possible—only the time travel part. We’ll show you five different ways to view old, deleted Reddit posts and comments so you can satisfy your curious mind.”
Ars Technica: Discord’s new feature looks a bit like Internet forums—with a dash of Reddit. “Discord announced a new feature on Wednesday called ‘Forum Channels’ to allow for more organized and asynchronous discussions within servers. The intent with Forum Channels seems to be to make it easier for specific conversations to continue for extended periods without the worry that a topic change or another simultaneous conversation will bury a subject in the annals of chat log history.”
TechCrunch: Reddit launches a new developer portal to give third-party apps and bots a boost. “Reddit is announcing today that it will open up a waitlist for developers who want to build software for the platform using a new toolkit from the company. The company plans to pair the new toolkit with a directory of third-party software extensions that moderators and Redditors alike can browse from to craft a custom Reddit experience. The new portal will offer tools and other resources to empower devs to build software extensions to enhance the social network’s existing experience.”
University of Michigan: Moderating online content increases accountability, but can harm some platform users . “Marginalized social media users face disproportionate content removal from platforms, but the visibility of this online moderation is a double-edged sword. A new University of Michigan study about two online platforms—Reddit and Twitch—suggests that greater visibility means increased accountability, but the actions can also bring more attention to the offensive content, further harming marginalized people.”
MarketingBrew: Reddit’s advertising policy seems to differ from subreddit to subreddit. “R/mileycyrus. r/mensrights. r/daftpunk. r/floridaman. These are the subreddits where, for one reason or another, Reddit doesn’t appear to allow advertising, according to a third-party tool. The results, pulled from the 2,500 most popular subreddits run through an API called Pushshift, show that despite spending the last decade courting advertisers and trying to address brand-safety concerns, Reddit’s actual brand-safety approach appears to be cautious, making it seem somewhat unpredictable and inconsistent.”
Mashable: The 22 most useful free iPhone apps, according to Reddit . “Redditors are providing an online public service by recommending extremely helpful iOS apps that are absolutely free. There are adventure apps, sleep apps, education apps, sleep apps, mental health apps, food apps, sleeeep apppppps. Yeah, you get the point. Check out our compilation of the best free iPhone apps that Redditors love.”
Techdirt: Congress And The SEC Are Getting Basically Everything Wrong In Trying To Respond To ‘Meme Stocks’ . “There’s an underlying myth that the entirety of meme stock investing was about ignorant investors doing silly things, but doing so en masse to effectively counter for their own ignorance. And, surely, there were some retail investors who just went along for the ride, for the lolz, or whatever. But especially with the original meme stock, GameStop, the core of that deal was a retail investor who had done a ton of research, had a real game plan, and a real argument for why the stock was undervalued.”
Make Tech Easier: 8 of the Best Reddit Clients for iOS and Android. “Whether you are a Reddit lurker or spend hours a day on the site, finding the best experience on your smartphone is important, but finding the best Reddit clients for iOS and Android isn’t always easy. This list includes the best Reddit clients for your mobile in no particular order.”
Input Magazine: Inside the subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters. “Because others don’t understand the thrill of busting shoplifters, people like [Alex] McLeod are increasingly turning to Reddit to find people who do. He’s one of the many shoplifting-prevention staff employed by corporations across North America who’s joined r/LossPrevention, a 55,000-member hub for corporate employees battling crime.”
TechCrunch: Reddit is buying machine learning platform Spell. “Spell was founded by former Facebook engineer Serkan Piantino in 2016 to provide a cloud computing solution to allow anyone to run resource-intensive ML experiments without the high end hardware that would normally be necessary. The company defines its mission as the pursuit of ‘the best possible platform for anyone looking to develop powerful, reliable, and safe software using Machine Learning and AI,’ according to their website.”
Fast Company: ‘If we grow Reddit, we are going to make the world a better place’ . “Founded by Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, Reddit has long been one of the most-visited websites in the U.S. But its user base of 50 million daily active users does not rival Twitter’s 229 million daily users or Snapchat’s 332 million, let alone Facebook’s 1.96 billion. That would seem to leave plenty of room for [Pali] Bhat to instigate product improvements that result in more growth—a critical goal as Reddit works its way toward an IPO.”
Northwestern Now: Unpaid social media moderators perform labor worth $3.4 million a year on Reddit alone. “The social networking platform Reddit relies on volunteer moderators to prevent the site from being overrun by problematic content—including hate speech—and ensure that it remains appealing for users. Though uncompensated, this labor is highly valuable to the company: According to a pair of new studies led by Northwestern University computer scientists, it’s worth at minimum $3.4 million per year, which is equivalent to 2.8% of Reddit’s 2019 revenue.”
NewsWise: No ‘Echo Chambers’ in Reddit Climate Debate. “University of Exeter researchers examined the topics, information sources and the existence of different communities in Reddit climate discussions. They found little evidence of echo chambers – contrasting with previous research on Twitter which found discussions of climate change often occur within polarising echo chambers. However, the study did find evidence of polarisation, with the most common topic in climate-related posts and comments being “incivil debate” (containing name-calling and unfriendly language).”
