We are Reddit co-Founder Alexis Ohanian, Reddit GM Erik Martin, co-Director Nadeem Mazen, and a gaggle of entrepreneurs. We’re here to talk about Internet freedom and our mini-doc Silicon Prairie: America’s New Internet Economy - AMA!

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Believe it or not, @kn0thing is now real-life famous. EDIT: The comment above said something to the effect of "These guys are just internet famous. By the rules of IAMA this AMA shouldn't have been approved". I hope I am doing a public service here instead of just making it worse!

A real-life MAYOR OF THE INTERNET. Heh.

That was hilarious. You're so humble. I say you go full Branson on this one and just get a jet with your face on it and start taking Gore-like credit for everything that you've ever peripherally touched, that happens online. Get Open Internet tons of press in the process of being a diva and then at the end of the tunnel be like "surprise - I'm not a dick!" Then play settlers of catan. The end.

You mean /u/kn0thing?

Lol, I got confused. Where am I right now?

myspace

Bro, invest in my company it's the myspace of twitter and it's all about, like, foursquare check-ins for your pinterest. We're going to leverage market inefficiencies with first mover advantage, then ROI you hard until you black out!

So reddit big-shots; What subreddit do you each like and hate the most?

Not a reddit big-shot, but thought I'd chime in. /r/roomporn is an inspiration (and one of my upcoming projects is to make a /r/roomporn worthy schoolbus interior). I also find myself in /r/politics a lot, but sometimes it's a little intense.

Why does government keep telling us future bills won't have anything to do with internet freedom, but every single time, they do anyway? Thought after the first few, SOPA & PIPA, they told us it'll never happen again..

I think of this phenomenon as a matter of moneyed interests having a bit more bandwidth and consistency when they are trying to jam something through than we do as a more disperse online community. Groups like the Internet Association are beginning to lobby. But basically: politicians are going to revise goals based on what is politically expedient in the moment. At the beginning it may be expedient to join the tide of anti SOPA-PIPA. Then it becomes financially or politically easier to revise that thinking. We just need to be there at every turn with media, examples, arguments, campaign contributions and a whole lot more in order to support the politicians with strong moral and ethical views (and to turn those politicians who are more 'flexible').

What can we do to protect our Internet freedom? Also thanks for reddit.

Stay engaged! Sign up for the IDL, sign the Declaration, and download Contact Congress app and make sure your Rep and Senators' staffs know how you feel about what they're doing. It's a bit scary at first but remember these people work for you.

No, they SAY they work for us...but I'm old enough to know that your allegiance goes to the group or person that writes the checks.

I'm hearing this a lot in here. I get it. But I think it's not that simple. I don't think congress is a bunch of people who wake up every morning and they're like "how do I get reelected today and who's gonna give me some money?" and so we stand no chance. I think it's more like they wake up with a schedule more full with events, votes, appearances, bills to read, staff meetings, and lobbyist meetings than they possibly have time for. The most persistent people are those with the most money. And because congressmen want to be kind, helpful, and knowledgeable they take meetings with anyone who's persistent. Yes, it has the outcome that anyone with money gets more say. But I think the solution is to be more articulate, more persistent, more media savvy, and more organized as a group. We can't get despondent.

This made me think a lot of the movie Cube. Basically it says that the government isn't some big brother who tries to come up with ways to ruin ppls lives, its a group of ppl (probably relunctantly) doing their own little jobs with very little intent past "this is my job, lets hope i don't fuck it up." It's just people like us. Our actions and decisions combine with those of other ppl and they have repercussions that we don't necessarily intend or even see. Same for the government.

Totally agree. I guess I need to see the movie.

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To the organizationmobile!

That declaration link doesn't work :(

Internet Declaration Internetdeclaration.org it's dot com

Hey! Great job on the documentary! Here's a benefit of developing a social good in the Midwest: higher rates of volunteerism. Iowa ranks third in the U.S. at 38% while the national average is 26.8%. (See http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/rankings.cfm )

For our nonprofit "Internet in a Box" project, this translated into 18,000 hours of volunteer time.

Cliff! I'm going to have to call you about another one of our pro-bono projects related to volunteerism online. It's going on the giant whiteboard todolist right away :D

Great! And then we're encouraging young IT techs in Africa and India to volunteer in their communities as well. It's amazing to see what people can do with a little training and a lot of zeal!

Cliff_Missen_Inspiration_Points++

Like the rainforest that is quickly disappearing, it seems that internet freedom is also on the verge of collapse and that governments and corporations will fundamentally change how the internet will be used and who the internet will be given access to. The internet is the biggest tool we have to seek relevant information outside the conglomerate of media that is controlled by the few, giving us piecemeal of what seems like propaganda, either corporate, government or special interests. We, as the world's citizens need to defend against these erosion of internet freedom. Like the rainforest, we need to take active and monetary responsibility to save internet freedom from destruction and to prevent other future technology from being resigned to this same faith. What role are you as heads of reddit playing to save internet freedom?

Clearly, we need to make an Internet Freedom rap!

The comparison I think is even more apt than rainforest is that the free and open Internet is like an estuary or wetlands. It's where all sorts of connections, informations, and input swirl and mix together. It's chaotic and constantly changing and therefore perhaps not easy to understand nor as easy to value and protect. Yet, they are one of the most productive natural habitats in the world.

In terms of economic impact and media diversity, the open internet is just like those estuaries, it's where much of the new life is created. We need to do a better job illustrating this for our elected officials and a mainstream audience (and this was the main motivation for the bus tour), by showing the impact that even small companies like hudl & dwolla can have. Each of those companies employs under 100 people (I think) but they have a huge economic impact in terms of efficiency gains, and they also have a huge impact on their customers' lives. A platform like Etsy has a big multiplier effect, because enables small businesses like Scarlett Garnet Jewelry to start up and develop their stylish & unique products without much capital or access to markets or overhead.

As far as what we at reddit are doing specifically, the best thing we can do is create/promote a space where people can discuss, plan, scheme, learn, argue and organize, like we did by promoting /r/SOPA over a year ago. If we needed a specific subreddit created for each new problematic bill or other threat, we'd eventually run out of sever space.

So we created /r/Stand. It's intended as a place to discuss various threats to internet freedom. We'll also be wrangling various experts (cause we certainly aren't) to make regular appearances and give updates on what's going on in Congress, international bodies, etc.

edit: formatting

Everything in this post is genius.

I definitely encourage you to download a free copy of the film and check out what Ben Huh of Cheezburger Network has to say - his articulation of the issue lines up with yours. And it's a good way to talk about this behemoth: "conservation". I think the issue is that a lot of the govt. infrastructure is broken: easily influenced, low accountability, zero investigative reporting. That pretty much means it's up to us to be 1) more influential (read: half a dozen people calling congresspeople about key issues every single day could make all the difference) 2) holding congresspeople accountable by quantifying their (negative or positive) impact and releasing these studies, 3) investigate (citizen journalism!)

I think the reddit folks do a great job inspiring people along these lines. but it's really up to us to organize. If I had a list of 6 people willing to help organize part time, I'd put tons of time into thinking through this in greater detail. Can I get a "and my axe" from the congregation?

What Subreddit do you wish was on the default Front page, just didn't make the cut for some reason or other?

I can't wait for the default subreddit frontpage to go away because it's a hangover from how reddit started (when we launched user-created-subs it took years before we had critical mass across subreddits so we needed defaults on the frontpage so a new user experience didn't suck). The future of reddit needs to be an onboarding experience that shows new users the diversity of subreddits to subscribe to (just like onboarding a new twitter user).

I actually think this would be huge. It's a given on sites like pinterest. The UX issue is (and cliff missen brings this up in his bonus featurette!) how do you suggest subreddits and up and coming threads every so often, that are interesting but not necessarily inside the user's chosen wheelhouse. Maybe like an adjustable "things that are popular" factor to inject into a user's subreddit stream and a "things that are weird" random x-factor to inject into the stream. Both would be the minority of posts, but would meaningfully expose users to other subreddits?

So guys...what is making the midwest such a premium place for new tech startups? What are the best cities to work in for tech companies and why?

I want Erik to chime in here because he has opinions. I was blown away by Cherokee St. in St. Louis. That experience inspired me to bring more art/tech/culture/community building back to Cambridge which is more of a traditional "tech hub" but in a way lacks some of the fast growth, cultural potential, love-of-city, and community cohesion that I saw on Cherokee St.

Although the majority of people on Reddit readership are fairly up to date on tech news and are informed about SOPA, PIPA etc... This represents a very small majority of people on the internet.

What are the next steps in getting more people engage in the topic that don't care or don't know enough to care about the subject? For instance, Jill/Your Aunt/Your parents/etc etc who only knows how to Facebook and say... e-mail.

This is a super question - and it helps highlight what I mean by "ubiquity of digital video storytelling". There's a quick animation in the video that summarizes sopa/pipa and why we care. But we need more discussions/summaries and more "here's what happened/here's what's next".

Hey there awesome people!

From what I know about you guys, you're all "stoked about life." You wake up and go to work energized and excited to do what you're doing. Your enthusiasm for what you do is infectious. Most people just don't have that.

So my question is, how did you find your individual passions and what would you suggest for those of us who are still searching?

Well! This is like my favorite topic. I actually teach a course about this as faculty at School of the Museum of Fine Arts. I have always been a bit anti-deskjob (possibly to my detriment), so I run around finding fun projects, pouring my all into them, and then desperately trying to break even on life/rent/project costs. It's always worked out well. I was able to start [Danger!Awesome laser cutting and 3d printing](www.dangerawesome.co) this way with no money and is pretty much the system I rely on to extend /explore the idea of "things I love" and to fund those things. Any specific questions about how I fell into this program/approach?

When making a team for an entrepreneurial venture, what features would you recommend looking for in members?
Edit: What features would you advise avoidance?

This is such a great question.

Do have: -An agreement and personalities that allow partners to describe feelings at any time (even if they are irrational) with the intention of strengthening the partner bond -I've watched a lot of entrepreneurs in the cambridge community who were proponents of "yeah we all have strong personalities and argue til we're blue in the face, but we do it out of love and we just want the product to be successful" fail pretty hard. There's only so much tough love your company can take and often it just manifests as anger, condescension, and greed. So I say go for a full team of meek people who know what the common goal is over those "win at all costs" people any day. Almost everyone at Nimblebot blames themself when something goes wrong and it's wonderful to be able to tease out the actual root cause of an issue without the added stress of "he said she said" or "I know i'm right on this one so can you just sign those tps reports, thaaaaanks" -balance: everyone needs to be able to "run fast" for the company, juggle multiple job responsibilities, and still (appear) to be a human out in real life. that's not super easy.

Reddit gets billions of page-hits per month, which translates to a lot of eye-balls on critical issues, and sometimes a lot of money put toward some really great causes. We've seen Reddit contribute to curing diseases, building schools and fences, planning rallies and meetings, and sending people on all sorts of adventures, etc, etc,.

What we have is social media that actually creates social action. That's pretty damn miraculous.

Any plans to proactively tap into Reddit as a place for social action/entrepreneurship? I don't just mean posts that make things available, I mean really bake functionality into the website that would make it a platform for the kind of beneficent movements we've seen in the past?

Overall - nothing needs to change, Reddit is great, but it has the potential to become even greater. Does anyone see any other meaningful things that can be done to evolve the site and keep it meaningful?

I'd be interested on Erik's view on this. As for Nimblebot, we are working on a video layer that makes user-action and user-participation a bit easier. So when you're watching a TED video thinking "That's amazing work, I should really get involved in something like that" you can instead click a button that leads you to a) connects you with the practitioner in the video b) connects you to the resources they want you to have to be effective as an activist or c) initiates some kind of voice call/form email/whatever that you need to fill out in order to, for example, email your congressman. The key here is adding this interactivity without bothering the user as they watch video - a constraint that we've created effective UX around. I can't wait to see existing platforms for communication really "turn the corner" to become platforms for action.

If people take one thing away from your new mini-doc, what would you want it to be?

Wow, great question. I would say that it's three mini-ideas blended into the same theme: a) people think you have to be in a startup hub to get your tech company going, but it's clear that's not the case b)entrepreneurship + community building/economic growth go hand in hand which is huge for smaller cities in America c) if it only takes 6-8 entrepreneurs in a given city to start making a vibrant startup "scene" (see Brad Feld's book "Startup Communities") that means that 100 of us could revitalize the entire country if we just stay focused and connected.

Questions for the guys who hosted the bus: Have there been any noticeable changes in your community since the Internet Freedom Bus rolled through? Did it prompt anything?

Yeah - I am with Jordan. We weren't on a colonial journey, bringing light into the jungle. We were just telling stories and making new connections. If anything, we were learning/researching and they were lecturing/informing. If anything changed, it's that each of these companies have yet another experience/avenue for disseminating their important work.

I am really impressed with Widernet. Getting knowledge to people that otherwise would not have the access to is changing the world. Sometimes I take for granted all the information just at my fingertips when I access the internet. Allowing a database with eGranary to spread knowledge on a local network in countries that couldn't afford the internet is amazing work. I was wondering if you all know of any example of any type of censoring when these databases are installed in certain countries? I'm hoping it gets there as is.

I'll leave this to Cliff or Nick, but just want to say that they're not only an incredible project, they are also incredible people. And insightful on all range of social justice/internet freedom/poverty alleviation topics!

That's odd, clicking "Reddit" in the description for Alexis and Erik doesn't bring me to where I thought it would.

We're full of surprises.

Hmm, not as fulfilling as I thought it would be. Zing? Although, I must say, I never used the reddit competitors even when they were popular. No cute [mascots](www.breadpig.com).

Is there going to be a sequel?

Great question! I guess the answer is "Kind of." We're working with Alexis and CEA to make sure that the communities we visited have sustainable video storytelling equipment and training. We want to make it our business that emerging startup hubs keep telling these stories, keep affecting lawmaker policy, and increase connectivity between hubs. We're providing a lot of these services probono and securing the funding for equipment packages and local storytelling/advocacy/activism mentorship in each location. Michael Petricone should chime in on this one!!

There are a lot of important "causes" in the world. (Rainforest preservation, feeding the hungry,eyc)

What cause(s) would you fight for if we didn't need to fight for Internet freedom?

I'm obsessed with low-tech/high-impact technologies that can have a big impact on economic growth, education, etc. all over the world. My intiation to this work was through Amy Smith of D-Lab at MIT.

I'm spending some of my time supporting the social entrepreneurs who help create (and more importantly, make sustainable) worker cooperatives, drip irrigation installation and maintenance, water purification, night-lights (can't eat/can't work/can't read if you can't see!), mobile charging stands, etc.

If you could remove one website from existence, what would it be?

Pick your mainstream news site. These guys are doing shitty journalism. And it hurts my soul. And every single journalist reporting for these sites has a secret pain. A nagging doubt... "what have I done? what am I part of? can i really do anything to change all this...i've been backed into a corner and there are no paying alternatives anywhere in journalism. someone please help me. please, help me change." But they can't because journalism (and investigative journalism in particular) is on life support. The end.

What do you think of the possibilities of ad-hoc mesh networking, rather than depending on large telcos for Internet access?

Not an engineer (or not that type of engineer), but I literally dream about this. I actually think that a "own your own data" or "port your own data" social network might have to precede something like that in order to bring "decentralized networks" into the popular consciousness as a useful social tool.

After the safety of the Internet, what is, in your opinion, the biggest problem facing the world?

The increasing distance between rich and poor - a root cause of many environmental, legal, and economic problems.

Can the Internet be controlled? With the government working on bills to control the Internet, how possible is that financially, physically, and legally?

How would this compare to china's strict limiting of their Internet?

It can definitely be controlled. The question is will companies with influence over the internet comply with court orders (yes - always yes in America, unfortunately).

A brief aside: Under the guise of anti-terrorism, big telecom companies complied with government orders to put huge wiretap operations on their own customers, a surprising fact which was leaked by disaffected high-ups at various companies and then eventually admitted by administration officials under bush. Those enormous monitoring operations are still in place. Wiretapping is obviously illegal - so eventually these officials and companies were retroactively pardoned as an act of congress.

That's bonkers to me. There's already so much control over communications networks and law-making in that little part of our history. I fully believe that this bodes poorly for control of internet if we're not careful/diligent as users.

Is Congress ever going to stop trying to fuck with the Internet?

No. Way. The internet is everywhere and there is a lot of money to be made. When there's money to be made, think tanks and press organizations and lobbyists spin up into action with literally billions of dollars in funding and begin to create legitimate arguments (at various points legislation like CISPA seems attractive, based on "research"). These reports, talking points, and lobbyists are very effective at influencing lawmakers.

The good news is that to counteract this we just need to be organized, informative, and ubiquitous. Bombard these data-hungry representatives and senators from every. possible. angle. Politely (mostly). Heated televised debates and large public protests definitely a good idea.

We have not seen nearly the amount of protest against the latest internet legislation. I presume a large part of this has to do with people either tired of fighting what seems to be an impossible opponent or there just hasn't been the same magnitude of press fighting against it to rile people up. Is this an inevitable issue that will only be more difficult to overcome with time?

Why haven't I seen more discussion of trying to organize another internet blackout? Will it lose the same bite if it happens again and again? Will reddit go through another blackout, maybe for longer this time?

Is there a serious effort being put into developing a parallel version of the internet that can gain serious monetary backers? Or is this just a sort of pipe dream that can't effectively be accomplished in the near future? (I forget the name of the subreddit that was discussing building something like this).

Is regulation at the CISPA of the internet really a bad thing? I know there was a lot of hype about the loss of net neutrality, but would legislation like that really lead down such a slippery slope as it was hyped to be just a year ago, or is that just hype to rile up support (just like the other side riles up fears about piracy)?

This is a matter of sustainability. Those fighting to gain control of the internet (or anything) through lobbying and lawmaking are consistent and well-supported. If we want to have the same bite, we need to organize. The Internet Association is doing some of that work. But there also needs to be a "by the people" version. So basically, the internet has just deputized you to start organizing people more often/more effectively. Let us know if you need help.

Proof? (I keed! I keed!)

Internet freedom seems to be taking major hits lately. Politicians don't understand it well enough to legislate it, and the big players are throwing back freedom as fast as they can manage. Note that large volumes of this seem inexorably tied to copyright law.

How do you think this tide can be turned?

This is right on - and I think the others will have more detailed answers (particularly Alexis, Erik, and Holmes). For me, the key is in connecting communities online and offline and then telling digital video stories that can be easily spread. This film is nothing more than us showing up to show people what is already going on. And when we did, everyone from big companies to congresspeople came back to say "oh wow, there's some good nuggets in there" - suddenly it becomes a bit more clear and a bit more real that internet freedom and economic growth are tied together (and that the internet economy can really be a big deal even in states not typically associated with "tech"). So now that we have the reddit community (and so many others) out there as a champions for Open Internet, and tons of other organizations steeped in these stories daily, how do we make the video stories diverse in content and ubiquitous in number. I am quite confident that once we have the storytelling down, the dissemination and lobbying part is actually comparatively easy.

I'm going to donate after watching the film. I respect that effort you put in putting this project together but also feel that the internet economy needs to be a pay for quality environment where people should be rewarded for intellect not just effort

If you do pay (or if you have feedback), would you mind leaving it publicly, right here? I respect exactly what you're saying - and I sure hope we deliver.

Whats the best way to educate those that are uninformed on this issue (the elderly, the younger, the uninvolved, etc.)?

See some of my thoughts in other comments on the importance of ubiquitous digital video storytelling/storytelling training. If we're all bringing forward polished, articulate, diverse approaches and disseminate this messaging together, we can really do a lot. It only takes a few of us working in tandem to really get something like this going!

Steve Huffman will be speaking at my college on Friday about entrepreneurship, and founding Reddit and Hipmunk. What questions would you ask him?

Would you rather fight 1 alexis sized horse or 100 duck sized alexis'?

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I find myself reading fastco design, cinema5d.com (before the acquisition/redesign :/), and amazon (gotta get me some overnight widgets!). I've also, no joke, converted all of my payment (incoming and outgoing) to dwolla. With very few exceptions. So now I'm on there every day too. Not ashamed to plug dwolla - it is the future. dooo it.

Hello All! Thanks for taking the time! I'd like to get your opinion concerning the following:

Daniel Castro, co-author of “Cybersecurity: Public Sector Threats and Responses,” is another opponent of legislation like H.R. 3523. Castro believes “Federal efforts to address cybersecurity are a study in contradiction.” He explains that “Policy makers demand secure systems that are able to withstand assault by well-funded foreign adversaries and are impenetrable to attack, while at the same time insisting on digital tools capable of penetrating enemy networks and allowing the United States to engage in cyber warfare.”

Also, I was wondering if you could share your thoughts concerning Danny Hillis' TED talk which was just recently added to the TED collection.

If you haven't seen it; Hillis argues that that the internet has become so integrated into our daily routine that we often times don't even realize we are using it (buying gasoline with a credit card, for instance). He warns that too much dependency could lead to disaster in the future if the internet were to suddenly crash and there was no proper backup, or plan b, in place. Thoughts?

Ok I will favor the second point here. I think you are right to bring up the first point and agree: there is a huge amount of "primacy" talk and internal contradiction in legislation. Even good legislation. There is certainly no "kantian ontological imperative" talk at play in America's foreign policy, for whatever that is worth.

Haven't seen Hillis' talk, thank you for the synopsis. Sounds fascinating - and true. In retrospect, things like slash and burn farming, or single-crop farming are so obviously stupid - because often times people knew what they were doing wasn't sustainable. Is that what we are doing here? Likely. Our use of rare earth metals is not sustainable. Our use of network infrastructure is not efficient. I saw a google shirt recently that was a turtle on roller skates...that's what the internet infrastructure is to me: a flaming pile or kluges going at light speed. So...yes, it would be nice to have some social, hardware, or mesh backups of some kind.

I'm interested in what you would advise - any concrete thoughts or alternatives?

ALEXIS

I had the pleasure of meeting you in Dallas recently after you spoke at a tech conference. I just wanted to say it was a pleasure to meet you and I appreciate your kindness. You were getting mobbed from every which way but still spoke to everyone like they were the only one in the room. Your vibrant personality was infectious, you could tell by the smiles on everyone's face. You were nice enough to start a tab for us which was unnecessary but after speaking with you, I could see that's what kind of a guy you are.

Sorry about your Redskins last year.

Cheers mate,

Logan

http://i.imgur.com/kMJmx9T.jpg

p.s. convince your friend to name his son Logan. Halloweens are a blast

upvote for Alexis and Erik being unbelievably down to earth and human even when put in celebrity circumstances. They're that way with press, elected officials, and real humans as well. A joy to watch.

I was always curious how these are ask me anything, when they blatantly want to talk about a few choice subjects.

What are we ignoring - I'm doing my best to keep up with everything here and the others are trying to balance running large companies while answering at as much length as possible! Many will also chime back in during the 6-9pm window with another blast to pick up questions they missed during work hours.

Nadeem, this is Jesse... How are you? Awesome that you're doing this AMA.

My man! Funny that we have to use the internet to connect. Come by soon :D

Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's a legitimate question. I've put a lot of thought into this one. It's got to be 1 horse-sized duck. I've seen a group of children attacking a tourist in Russia and it's scary as all get out. Basically, tons of small pissed off things will always kill you. Cue any horror movie that has ants consuming flesh, or tons of spiders, or whatever.

I'm going for 1 horse-sized duck and I'm going right for the throat. With my teeth.