Reddit is a site built on the backs of user contributions and engagement, and their new publication Upvoted doesn’t allow comments. This is BS.
Today Reddit launched Upvoted, a site with a dedicated editorial team that will cull and curate from Reddit’s top content. Popular stories are verified, rewritten, and repackaged for the ad market. This is an attempt to side-step the issue of Reddit’s massive, opinionated, and apparently uncontrollable community by cutting them out entirely.
Reddit — and its parent company, Conde Nast — have been struggling with ways to monetise Reddit, and this year has been introductory post:
The best part of Reddit has always been you: The anecdotes you contribute, the photographs and illustrations you post, and the comments you leave.
Then Ohanian neglects to mention that there will be no comments on Upvoted. The double-speak here is extraordinary.
These days, many sites have decided to turn off their comment sections. While it may leave their pages looking bland enough for ad dollars, this is a serious loss to both writers and readers. Writing for a reactive audience keeps you on your toes, and the ability for users to engage only makes articles better. Comments are an endlessly insightful resource and excellent sounding-board. Publications like to pretend that if they switch off these sections, the nastier elements of the commenting class will just disappear. In reality publications like Upvoted are losing a far greater chance of engagement and interaction. I would rather read through the trolls in order to receive the wealth of fascinating and well-thought out commentary than not at all.
Currently, Upvoted’s top story, on thwarted suicides, hangs out next to a sponsored post about hotdogs. On the Upvoted story, there will be no user reaction, no personal stories shared, none of the best of what commenting can bring: an expanded and enriched experience of the base material. We get why Reddit is doing this. But they’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater.