The future of the web looks a lot like Reddit, Denton said.
“Facebook makes me despise many of my friends and Twitter makes me hate the rest of the world,” Gawker founder Nick Denton said.
The publishing pioneer, who connected with fellow bloggers at South by Southwest in the early days of web publishing, returned to the festival Sunday to reflect on the demise of his company and what lies ahead for the internet in the years after Donald Trump’s presidential election. The future isn’t Facebook or Twitter, where fake news and trolls abound. Instead, it’s rooted in Reddit —or at least something like Reddit, Denton said.
Denton, whose Gawker Media Group portfolio included sites like Gizmodo, Jezebel, and Kotaku in addition to the namesake, was a champion of commenting platforms. Many people read Gawker and its sibling sites for the comments alone. Gawker Media Group was sold to Univision and rebranded as Gizmodo Media Group after Denton and the company were sued into bankruptcy by Hulk Hogan.
“[Reddit] involves the community and involves the readers,” Denton said in a Sunday conversation on-stage at SXSW with advertising executive Jeff Goodby. “You may not like many subbreddits, but there’s a vitality to it and there’s a model for what [media] could be.”
Denton spoke calmly about the demise of his flagship site and the involvement of billionare tech investor Peter Thiel, who helped fund the lawsuit against him.
