> Pretty obvious I would have thought: as long as reddit remains the platform of choice for all the worst hate groups in America, the harder it will be for them to attract advertisers.
Hate groups? Are you talking about the DNC, liberal media, lgbt groups or some other groups on reddit? Because reddit is now pretty much entirely DNC, liberal media and lgbt content.
Also, it's previous obvious from a naive social justice warrior perspective, but it's far more complex than that. The biggest problem for reddit is that it's fairly anonymous and they are fairly late to the mobile scene. It's one of the reasons why reddit now tries to "trick" you into providing an email address to create an account and even provide your cell number for authentication. It's why they are trying so hard to move their user base onto mobile with their redesign.
While google and facebook's ( and even apple/amazon's ) are able to glean data off of their user base, reddit is unable to ( for the time being ). Advertisers love targeted ads. It's difficult to target ads on an anonymous forum. Whereas on google and facebook, their users are willing to provide all their private information for free and these companies can leverage the information to upsell to advertisers.
> If reddit insists on turning a blind eye to open and unchecked racism
Why don't you check the racism? Go to reddit and fight it. Why should an open forum based on free speech censor racism?
> calls for genocide
You think reddit can shut down the DNC and RNC? The media? Hollywood?
> threats of physical violence
Then call the police. It's a criminal matter, not a reddit matter.
> and bucketloads of other abhorrent content its co-founder describes as "valuable discussion"
Abhorrent to whom? You? Using your logic, every sub should be shut down. Do you think the lgbt sub should be suspended because billions of people find that abhorrent?
> then that's the price they have to pay.
Their co-founders are multi-millionaires. And it isn't "abhorrent" content. It's reddit's insistence on being anonymous for much of its history. It was one of reddit's major selling points. It was HN's major selling point too until people who hated free speech gained influence.
It never ceases to amaze me how people on a "hackers" forum could be so blindly and naively pro-censorship.