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lmc
Nice story, but BS.
"Reddit’s latest Series F of $410 million dollars was funded by two lead investors. Fidelity Management and Research and Khaira Capital."
The only source I could find that company is involved is crunchbase, which anyone can edit.
mik3y
I agree with you. I should have looked a little more closely before the lazy crosspost, especially considering the 'source'..
narrator
I occasionally look at a few very niche subreddits, but for news, Reddit is complete garbage. Reddit has been kind of dead to me since 2016. They were the first big victim of the ongoing anti-free-speech wave that started in 2016.
cyanydeez
You also mean they were victims of social media propaganda and gaming the system
/R/the_donald was consistently getting bullshit content to the front page using bots.
If you're pro free speech you'll need to answer towards the onslaught of bot based content generation and fake users
jimmaswell
The amount of bots on most social media is just staggering.
I had a weird one on Reddit the other day, and in thinking back, I rather wish I had saved it than just reporting it.
There were a comment under one post from 2 different users that was exactly the same. It was a somewhat well though out comment on the shorter side so it caught my eye. When I looked at both the accounts they had the exact same post history, but this was the only comment on the same thread. The other comments were dups of each other on different threads, and they didn't appear to post on the same posts anywhere else in their history.
There was otherwise no other information that would have pointed at them performing any bot like behavior.
__del__
oh you
pixl97
The amount of bots on most social media is just staggering.
I had a weird one on Reddit the other day, and in thinking back, I rather wish I had saved it than just reporting it.
There were a comment under one post from 2 different users that was exactly the same. It was a somewhat well though out comment on the shorter side so it caught my eye. When I looked at both the accounts they had the exact same post history, but this was the only comment on the same thread. The other comments were dups of each other on different threads, and they didn't appear to post on the same posts anywhere else in their history.
There was otherwise no other information that would have pointed at them performing any bot like behavior.
logicalmonster
> /R/the_donald was consistently getting bullshit content to the front page using bots.
Just curious, how do you know for a fact that bots were involved in boosting the content? I mean, I'm sure that's possible, it's just that the level of energy/enthusiasm there among the users was extremely high to the point that I think it's reasonable to think that the subreddit's success was mostly just people being enthusiastic and wanting to upvote everything.
As far as bot based content-generation goes, that seems a little far-fetched to me given the level of humor and quality of the memes. Human humor to that level seems beyond reach of whatever technology was state of the art in 2015-2016 or even now.
cyanydeez
There's a filter on reddit that is a "1hour/top" that basically shows content that's quickly upvoted.
I've watched this tab for many years because it strikes the right balance between new and interesting content.
During the trump election. Everyday there were multiple posts to the sub getting upvoted and this went on for months.
Also, multiple people analyzed the content voting for that subreddit and it significantly deviated from every other major subreddit.
I get you're trying to claim "there's no way to be statistically certain" but the evidence in the Mueller report and elsewhere makes it clear, internet propaganda is a real problem and is documented.
superkuh
My solution to this was not to look at the front page and heavy RES filtering for my own personal preferences. It worked well.
But eventually the push to gentrify reddit from the venture capitalists demanding profit on their millions made reddit corporate start banning even completely legit, but unprofitably controversial, subreddits. I left after they banned r/gundeals for having the temerity to exist and post links to and discuss firearms and firearm accessory deals online.
All the bot stuff you're talking about came well after the gentrification and switch to user profile centered posting to absorb the Facebook refugees. It seems like the Facebook bots just followed the Facebook users to reddit.
cyanydeez
I personally don't care about specific content if it's authentic.
The problem is when a forum becomes a synthetic medium for shills.
zarriak
You say this like they didn’t already have this issue with jailbait half a decade before td. If they had at all come up with a reasonable policy after experiencing many issues before the Donald. Even if you say ok that was only for nsfw reddits they also had to deal with fatpeoplehate.
It is absurd to say that the problem started with robot or mechanically generated content. They haven’t ever been effective or smart in developing content policies that work.
fartcannon
Yeah, and while it can be helpful to get answers to things when google fails (which is nearly always nowadays), there's so much astroturfing and shilling that those answers are often worthless.
undefined
jmull
I don't understand this... Reddit has been very heavily moderated since I've used it (I don't remember dates, but well before 2016). mods can pretty much censor whatever they want for whatever reason they want.
undefined
jpeter
And reddit is still 100x better than old school forums because it's way easier to find the thing you search for
nunez
the small, niche, subs still have quality discussion for the most part, but I agree with you on the whole. i've been slowly scaling back my Reddit consumption this year because of it.
webscout
https://biztoc.com for anything business-related
lizardactivist
It's a pro-American global community where very little that attempts to break the echo is allowed to remain visible. It wouldn't be surprising if there is U.S. gov money somehow coming into it via other less-obvious routes.
nceqs3
You ever seen the front page? There is little to no "pro-American" content.
0des
voakbasda
No, both parties are “pro-America”, but they each have vastly different ideas of what their America should look like. Theses parties are actively engaged in a civil war in the courts, which is increasingly spilling out into acts of violence.
Meanwhile, many moderate Americans stand on the sidelines in total disbelief, as they both work destroy the principles on which the country was founded.
beamatronic
It depends on your definition of “America”. Do you mean “white Christians” or do you mean “all men are created equal”, separation of church and state, etc.
sophacles
> In addition, two of these articles are identical, while supposedly having been written by 2 different people at 2 different news sources. Jasmine Andrade from Clear Publicist and Christopher Harpur of Daily Scanner somehow wrote identical articles about Jivteshwar on the same day.
Or a press release went out and was republished by 2 different places. This happens often. Sometimes they'll get reworded and sometimes not.
Edit: republished has 1 'l'
yangity
Nothing to see here folks.
From Reddit’s press release (https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-secures-funding-to-con...):
> We will raise up to $700 million in Series F funding, led by Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC. and including other existing investors, at a post-money valuation of over $10 billion.
version_five
It's [removed] now, what did it say?
version_five
User peppustimbus replied with the archive version but is shadowbanned. This is the link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220513210317/https://old.reddi...
This could just be a wealthy family office, I have first hand knowledge of one such company that would have no website or information online other than a few things in filings but manages several billion dollars.
HWR_14
This post claims that the person controlling the family office is now 18, and is also spending money to be philanthropic. This could be someone who inherited money trying to buy their way into legitimization/importance in the world, tech world especially. Which is honestly a far more reasonable use for inherited money if you want to do something interesting with your life than "bought yacht, coke, women".
If the totally unsupported claim that it was dirty money in the first place, it makes even more sense to spend money to become legitimate himself. The only evidence was his last name, no idea if it's common, is shared by someone who is claimed to be a drug kingpin in an online article.
Certainly a rich young man investing in something he believes in sounds more plausible than Reddit cooking the books and doing so in such a spectacularly bad way.
xixo
And down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole we go! I love your theory, and it's very plausible. In a way this just boils down to "was the money 'good' or 'bad'?" and "will the money be used for 'good' or 'bad'?". It's fun to speculate, it's best to know more of the truth.
My hope this will blow up a bit so we get more information (it's in the public's best interest to know more). This is the way all "conspiracy theories" should go, at least those with credible theories to test.
t0mas88
But for most of those there is some information on the family where the money came from. Like they ran some kind of business. In this case the only information to be found on the family is that someone with that family name is a drug dealer. Makes it even more suspicious where the money came from.
thrown12
Ironically enough I know of a family office for who the most accurate information was a reddit post. It was from some rando on the other side of the world who spent a few months stalking peoples 15 year old facebook profiles to find the connections between them.
It was astonishing that someone who by their own admission was working part time at a gas station making less than minimum wage did more due diligence than anyone they had worked with including a number of three letter agencies.
The post has since been deleted and the account banned.
mikeryan
I also know of a family fund with no public presence that’s an active, large investor with zero presence. You google their name and get results very similar to googling Kharia Capital (I’d say the name of the fund I know, but the lead is a friend and I want to respect his privacy). I’m sure many, if not most family funds do share more info but in this case it could be one who doesn’t.
I guess what I’m saying is that you can’t assume it’s somehow nefarious based on this profile. Also at least one result for Khaira explicitly says it’s a family fund.
jhugo
Another person with that family name is a Canadian professional ice hockey player. A lot of family names are pretty common, it turns out.
loceng
Reveddit.com for all your deleted user/comment needs; just copy/paste the URL of the comment/thread/user.
Edit to add: Huh, it's not showing. Normally it would - https://www.reveddit.com/v/conspiracytheories/comments/up1cw...
filiphorvat
0des
It shows zero content
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fortran77
This is actually very curious. People in a reddit group for purposely discussing "conspiracy theories" are getting banned...
ryanSrich
If you’ve frequented the conspiracy subs this happens so incredibly often that I was fully expecting the OP to be banned when I clicked the link.
SemanticStrengh
An obvious evidence for conspiracies
johannes1234321
> The company’s website is https://www.khairacapital.com. It is mostly blank pages with zero information.
This is Larry Ellison's real estate and investment company: http://www.lawrenceinvestment.com/index.php
Waren Buffet's https://berkshirehathaway.com/ is also famous.
Keeping somewhat low profile is quite normal for these investment firms.
happythebob
That's stupid that a r/conspiracy post would end up here.
93po
Seems ridiculous to ban the user, remove the post, and lock the comment section. In a conspiracy theory subreddit of all places. This is like the perfect content for a subreddit like that.
Once again proving that the moderation model of Reddit also completely ruins reddit 95% of the time
kkfx
I suggest another point of view: why companies like Reddit, but also Twitter, do exists? Does ads ONLY justify the invested amount of money?
I bet anyone will answer: "surely not!" and than the point: why we do not came back to Usenet quickly instead of keeping up such services who happen to be unbalanced in usefulness terms?
nothing2see2
Not a fake company, it's a family office. Most likely thing is it's a rich kid investing his parents' money. Also possibly it's a rich kid who got rich himself in EMEA so HN hasn't heard of him.
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The company probably isn't fake, but this does bring up an interesting question: what's the point of forcing companies like reddit to publicly reveal their investors if their investor can be just a company name in a filing cabinet with no record of who owns it?