Reddit Launches "Upvoted" News Site: Bitcoin not Welcome
Reddit is not exactly known as a safe haven for constructive posts, friendly comments or honest moderators. In fact, this “front page of the Internet” has become rather toxic in some cases, as readers can turn on each other in a heartbeat. However, there is also a great amount of valuable content to be found on this platform, which is part of why Reddit has become so successful. Regardless of all of that, Reddit will be launching a news site, and commenting is not allowed.
Also read: Bitcoin.com Adds A Dedicated Canary Warrant
Reddit’s Censorship Trend Continues Unopposed
Any site or platform is only as strong as the people supporting it. In the case of Reddit, there seems to be a fair bit of grumbling and annoyance, yet people keep flocking to this online platform for some unknown reason. But even a platform like Reddit needs to come up with something new — and potentially positive — to steer away from all of the drama and negativity.
Upvoted will be the name of the platform, which refers to the term “upvoting,” indicating how popular certain content is compared to other submissions on the Reddit platform. Upvoting has been a topic of heavy debate as of late, as there are quite a few users gaming the system by upvoting their friends’ content, and downvoting anything else. This type of behavior is not endorsed by most Reddit moderators, but no one seems to be willing to tackle that problem head-on.
However, Upvoted will be a “news site,” combining the highest-ranking content from the Reddit community. That being said, all of the aggregated posts on Upvoted will not feature the upvoting mechanism. More importantly, comments will be disabled for all of the content posted on this news site, for quite obvious reasons.
Not every category will be featured on Upvoted either, as the main focus is on news, sports, lifestyle issues and animals. These content limitations seem to hinder the potential of this new platform, as Reddit is best-known for its wide variety of categories, communities and topics of debate. Limiting it to just these four main categories does absolutely nothing to solve the actual problems plaguing the Reddit platform.
For now, Upvoted will be managed by a team of 10 editors, lead by Vickie Chang. In a centralized manner, this team will be responsible for putting together the content on the platform. Early indicators point towards stories, infographics, videos, podcasts and illustrations, all of which will be part of the Upvoted platform on a regular basis. Last but not least, every piece of content will link to the original post on Reddit in some capacity.
Right now, the plan is to post somewhere between 10 and 20 stories per day on the Upvoted webpage. As time progresses, that number will be increased to 40 postings per day, which is an enormous amount of content to consume for website visitors. Commenting or upvoting content posted on Upvoted will take place through a new subReddit, which can be found at /r/upvoted.
Quite a few Upvoted users will be put off by the idea of monetizing this platform through paid and sponsored stories. There are no plans to host banner advertisements — for now at least — but Upvoted has to be monetized from day one. Sponsored content seems to be a logical choice, although it will also contaminate the validity of the platform in general. It seems as if Upvoted is telling advertisers that any form of promotional content will be posted “if the price is right.”
No Place for Bitcoin, Blockchain or Other Digital Currencies on Upvoted
It seems like Reddit and Upvoted want to play it safe, by only allowing content that is — generally speaking — free from the toxic atmosphere clouding other subreddits. /r/Bitcoin, which is being tightly controlled by the same group of people running Bitcointalk and the Bitcoin wiki, has an especially controversial reputation. Content is removed by moderators, users are banned without warning, and censorship is in full effect.
Other digital currency-related subreddits face a similar fate, as derogatory comments and childish behavior are part of the everyday experience. Once these places get cleaned up — and existing ego tripping moderators are removed from their positions of power — Bitcoin-related content might become a part of Upvoted. However, for now, that only seems to be a distant dream.
What are your thoughts on Upvoted? Will you be using this news aggregation platform, or will it be another failure for the Reddit owners? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Wired UK
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Reddit, Upvoted
