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Comment by TarpitCarnivore | Hacker News Reader

One thing I've always found interesting with Reddit related news is users will say things like "You (Reddit) never told us..." or other similar statement. It just always came across as an odd sense of entitlement as if Reddit should run every idea, change or whatever by their users for approval.

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Some users seem to feel like they are the true owners of the site, and that the corporation exists to serve them and fulfill their needs. This is another example of the corporation's failure to manage expectations. They seem to have lost control over the site they created.

Isn't there an element of truth to that sentiment though? The situation with Reddit is reminiscent in some ways to Digg's downfall with the release of v4 (which ironically contributed significantly to Reddit's growth). What is Reddit without its users?

Is Reddit now directly comparable to Digg v3 -> v4? I feel like because Reddit has so many subs it can easily survive without people in some of the larger subs. When all the drama was happening a few months some sub reddits I read had a fair amount of members who had no clue anything was going on.

I guess the way I'm thinking of it as is the vocal majority the right representation and worry for reddit? Think about the petition they tried to get going. The number of signatures was minuscule comparative to the total number of users.

I think that just exacerbates the problem though as the "power users" of reddit move away from the vitriol of the default subreddits, the vitriol becomes more visible on the surface. So the larger subs end up less and less attractive to users new and old.

I'm sure Condé Nast has been asking themselves that question a lot lately.

> Some users seem to feel like they are the true owners of the site, and that the corporation exists to serve them and fulfill their needs

So you think that reddit has any value at all after you remove the top 20% of users that generate 80% of the content? I think those users you speak about are fairly accurate in their assessment.

I understand this can work with some communities of smaller scale (here or MetaFilter) but I feel like Reddit is well beyond a tight, niche community. I would say that line of think is more appropriate for sub reddits.

IN the early days new features were almost always presented as ideas from the community.

Subreddits started as a way to categorize posts, due to a certain influx of meme's and some users said "hey, can't we mark them, so I do t have to see them" and then later these tags developed into forums of their own.

Apparently the idea was actually from Paul Graham, but it was never presented as a corporate idea.

When your users quite literally run the site by adding and commenting on content - the user has all the power by design. Without the users, you have no content and without content you have no visitors and without visitors you have no advertisers.

Do something your user base disagrees with? They'll go elsewhere. The site then dies out into obscurity like Digg and a new site will take over.

Not just adding and commenting - the users also moderate. IMO reddit users, particularly people who post topics and/or moderate, have every reason to feel some ownership.

Not that they own it technically. But like you say, reddit dies if they leave.

> an odd sense of entitlement as if Reddit should run every idea, change or whatever by their users for approval

I think that's because Reddit has fostered the idea that its users form real communities and it has let them self-administer to a large extent. In modern society, that comes with expectations of something like a democratic process. People then get angry when Reddit violates those expectations and acts like an autocratic corporation.

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