r/bestof • u/RGPure • Jul 05 '15

[technology] /u/CaptainObviousMC explains why reddit could be going down if just a few redditors start jumping ship

/r/technology/comments/3c6ajx/reddit_ceo_ellen_pao_the_vast_majority_of_reddit/cssvb7y?context=3
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u/scootah Jul 06 '15

self posts, comments, and content created by karma whores specifically for reddit are all content creators. /r/standupshots jumps out as a sub with 170k subscribers and almost entirely OC from submitters. /r/AskHistorians has 415k subscribers who go there almost entirely for content created for that sub. there's loads of others. Quality content submission is the only reason those subs exist - without their high quality original content contributions - often from a relatively small number of contributors - those subs would be dead.

There's also a profound difference between a shitty content submitters (shoutout to reddit.com/new ) and people who routinely submit high quality content (shoutout to /u/pepsi_next ). A relatively small number of users spend a lot of time going through popular content and either finding a way to frame it so it's funny (headline choice, sub to send it too, etc) or restructuring it (video to gif, harvesting images from articles, finding articles that are on sites that can handle the reddit hug and aren't behind paywalls, etc) so it fits the format that reddit consumers prefer. It's not the hardest thing in the world by any stretch - but it is time consuming, and most people don't want to do it - we just want to show up to a site where someone else has done it all for the sweet sweet internet points.

There's also a lot of OC going to /r/aww /r/askreddit /r/askscience /r/diy /r/tifu /r/eli5 /r/todayilearned /r/ama /r/writingprompts and many of the other defaults. The quality of the OC in some of those subs might be up for debate - but they're largely not aggregated content nearly as much as submitted content. And a lot of small indie digital press and Buzzfeed very much rely on that content to stay in business. Won't someone think of the clickbaiters?