We’re nearly to the finish line, and this week seems like it’s going faster and faster. Historically, day four is when everyone starts getting tired, and I definitely felt myself hit a wall.

I did, however, have the proposition of seeing Reddit’s CEO and cofounder Steve Huffman to power me through. That was a popular session, so I had to get in line early. That meant missing Eddy Cue, but you can’t see everything.

Reddit: Life After (Near) Death

This was one of the first sessions I had on my radar after being selected for this program. Huffman was interviewed by Inc’s Christine Lagorio-Chafkin who has a book on Reddit to be published soon.

The session started with intense questioning about the policies being developed at Reddit to combat the fake profiles and bot accounts that spammed the site, particularly around the 2016 presidential election. Huffman joked that he expected to start with the softball questions.

The discussion centered around First Amendment issues and how hate speech is handled at Reddit. Huffman said it takes a great deal of effort for the company to not deal with potentially disruptive or offensive content from an angle with personal value.

“There’s a difference between [content] conflicting with our values and conflicting with our content policy.” — Steve Huffman

When pressed to comment on whose responsibility it is to fix America’s “fake news problem,” Huffman said it’s everyone’s: the press, the politicians, the people. We all have to come together and bear the burden of fake news.

He continued by saying the First Amendment is strong, and America is going through a tough time with regard to news and trust. He likened America to an immune system, which right now is building antibodies to fight off the fake news virus.

The discussion also ventured into comedic ground, when Lagorio-Chafkin inquired about a time when he fought back against a notoriously troll-filled community on Reddit, r/The_Donald.

One Thanksgiving, the trolling of Huffman, or u/spez on Reddit, was reaching it’s most vicious level yet. He had some free time over the holiday, so he got to programming. What he built was a program that changed his name in all the troll comments to the names of r/The_Donald’s moderators’ names.

There was some blowback toward the move, as he didn’t exactly tell the rest of his employees that he was behind the move, and for a while some suspected the site to be hacked. When asked if he regretted what he did, he apologized to his team for not giving them a heads up, but had no remorse over what happened to r/The_Donald.

Future design changes to the site were also discussed. The native apps for Reddit have the same content as the website but with five times more engagement. The redesign will pull from those elements, while leaving legacy Reddit intact for those who hate change. There’s even a design option for those who solely want content on the site with no bells and whistles.

Speaking of content, Huffman seemed less enthusiastic about building complex algorithms and programs to tailor content to users. He said that humans should do the hard part of recommending and organizing content, as that’s a characteristic that has naturally been strong in humans throughout time.

In all, it was a great panel to see the man behind the fourth most popular website in the U.S., one that’s increasingly in the news thanks to it’s wild mix of communities that often get themselves in hot water. But above all, I got the sense that Huffman is dedicated to preserving the First Amendment and the rights for the users of Reddit regardless of their political stance. Only when things get out of hand must Reddit resort to banning, time-outs or other means of punishing bad behavior.

Trade Show Day 2

We hopped around the Trade Show again today and visited a few more booths. We stumbled upon Texas A&M University with a booth showcasing some VR tech. We also — literally — sniffed our way to a stroopwafel popup coming to Austin soon.

We visited the somewhat over sexualized manufacturing robot again, and despite it’s cringy social implications, the tech behind it is pretty impressive.

Several cities are present at the Trade Show to show what innovations they’re doing. San Marcos was present, with Mochas and Javas coffee no less. It was nice our local town also present at this international conference.

Tomorrow’s the last day…it’s flown by, but some of my favorite sessions I’ve planned for are scheduled for tomorrow. Iron Chef Cat Cora is speaking, and a lot of cool VR and AR exhibits start tomorrow.