reddit 與 4chan 在新聞網路上的獨特性

在「Study finds fringe communities on Reddit and 4chan have high influence on flow of alternative news to Twitter」這邊看到的:

After analyzing millions of posts containing mainstream and alternative news shared on Twitter, Reddit and 4chan, Jeremy Blackburn, Ph.D., and collaborators found that alt-right communities within 4chan, an image-based discussion forum where users are anonymous, and Reddit, a social news aggregator where users vote up or down on posts, have a surprisingly large influence on Twitter.

依照對 reddit4chan 的描述,這兩個媒體對 Twitter 的影響,會讓我聯想到在台灣 Ptt 對各新聞媒體的影響:Ptt 是很多新聞的起點?

"Based on our findings, these smaller, fringe communities on Reddit and 4chan serve as an incubation chamber for a lot of information," said Blackburn, assistant professor of computer science in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. "The content and talking points are refined until they finally break free and make it to larger, more mainstream communities."

真的研究應該可以看出 Ptt 的影響力?

4chan 支援 WebM...

在「WebM support on 4chan」這篇公告裡 4chan 宣佈支援 WebM 格式。

由於目標是提供 GIF 的替代方案,所以目前開放的 WebM 內容有限制:

we only accept WebM files with one video stream and no audio streams, that are shorter than 120 seconds long, no larger than 2048x2048 pixels, and less than 3 MB in size.

讓我另外注意到的是:

however 86% of 4chan’s visits come from browsers that include full or partial support for WebM

依照「Can I use the WebM/VP8 video format」,這代表大多數 4chan 的使用者都是用 FirefoxChrome

4chan 前端頁面的調校... (cookie-free domain 的重要性)

Chris Poole (4chan 的創辦人) 寫了一篇「Small things add up」,說明針對前端頁面的調整帶來的效能改善...

YSlowPageSpeed 都反應靜態內容 (像是圖片) 是從帶有 cookie 的 domain (4chan.org) 提供服務。

所以 Chris Poole 打算把靜態內容換到一個新的網域下。

首先是選擇新的 cookie-free domain 名稱,由於不需要好記 (因為是程式在用),所以在選擇時愈短愈好,這可以讓 html 內的大小會少一些 (即使是 gzip 後還是有差),所以 Chris Poole 選擇了 4cdn.org

而更大的改善其實是在 cookie 這塊。4chan 平均的 cookie 大小大約是 1KB,這表示每一個到 4chan.org 的 request 都要送出 1KB 的 cookie 資訊。對於行動用戶來說,上傳的頻寬就這樣被浪費掉了,在搬移到新的 4cdn.org 後可以省下大量的上傳頻寬:

By migrating to the new domain, end users now save roughly 100 KB upstream per page load, which at 500 million pageviews per month adds up to 46 terabytes per month in savings for our users. I find this unreal.