More recently, they started injected tracking into outbound link clicks and introduced the terrible redesign to help with growth/monetization also. As they've grown, the quality of the content within sub-reddits and discussions within those communities, have fallen dramatically.
The Video Game sphere takes up a huge chunk of it. Then many of the other subs are basically gamer adjacent. Many of those technology subs are just about building PCs and stuff, which is largely gaming related or correlated. Even a lot of the politics is invariably linked to Gamergate type stuff. The Entertainment section is all genre fiction, anime, etc. Stuff you would expect a gaming forum to focus on.
The dedicated meme parts of the site are gone. The interesting stuff that fits in no particular category are gone. If you had told me 4 years ago that one day I would come to miss the derivative rage comics and image macros in the face of the unrelenting stream of toxicity that the site would become I wouldn't have believed you.
Just look at this joke post https://external-preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriH... from 6 years ago. It all seems so innocent compared to what it is now.
To me, Reddit's the last bastion to find good conversation for people with many niche interests without going too crazy. (4chan is a bit too eccentric for my tastes)
I frequent the soccer, manga, headphones, metal, male fashion, thrifting, cooking and fitness subreddits.
No other forum let's me feel like a part of such a wide array of topics with discussion being the core focus. To be able to maintain anonymity while nuturing a community is incredibly hard, and Reddit had somehow managed it. The communities in Reddit are second to none. From meta jokes to entire sagas, Reddit in some ways reminded me of the times when I played Mmorpgs and joined guilds.
The removal of custom subreddit themes was where to me it started going wrong. I didn't care what they did with the popular subreddits and r/all, as long as they left the niche subreddits alone. But no, they had to interfere.
Reddit's forced UI change is to me a symptom of a greater problem. The idea that a company never stops growing. Sometimes you hit gold and the best decision is to stick with it.
I don't think any website offers the product Reddit does, and allows easily migration for entire communities without compromises. Thus, if the current web landscape stays the same, Reddit isn't going anywhere. But, it took weeks for Digg to die once Reddit came alive, and the introduction of a well moderated website for discussion may be all it takes for the Reddit exodus.
It is no surprise, that I find myself on HN typing this comment. An HN clone may just be where Reddit refugees find their calling.
Anyway, the userbase is so huge that even "smaller" subreddits has a decent amount of activity. Sure, video games and SF movies/TV is all you'll get browsing /r/all, but there's, e.g., /r/truefilm, /r/flicks, lots of music subreddits.
I've notice a number of questions on how to filter out all political content, so I suspect a lot of people are just trimming out the parts of reddit they don't care about.
Discussion is simply not important. Demonizing opposing opinions is very important though. Very much an anti libertarian echo chamber.
Leaving your comment moderation duties up to majoritarian voting is inevitably going to do that.
IRL, when debating another person, most people IMO wouldn't be at least half as extremist as they're on reddit or HN
The obvious way out of that is to join bubbles that are aligned with your interests rather than political views. If your interest is politics then find a better interest :)
I have never found any sites/forums/bbs that didn't eventually devolve into a echo chamber given enough time.
People like to repeat the same opinion as others and those who don't like these opinions tend to be the first to leave for other pastures.
Edit: No, i don't talk about /pol/. No one likes the right-wing /pol/-scum. That's not 4chan.
(Shameless plug: https://beta.getaether.net)
(Unfortunately, there's not much to do about the mobile app, which is pretty bogus... although there are a few third-party apps which are less obnoxious.)
Why can't I just have a nice link aggregator with decent discussion? HN is great, but it doesn't have as much content as other platforms. I just want to discuss politics, hobbies, and lifestyles with the same level of discussion we have here, why is that too much to ask?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
which will auto-redirect you to the old-design
So it's not just me? I quit using Reddit because this happened on my phone all the time. Don't they test this sort of thing, or pay attention to abandonment stats?
Reddit's main traffic problem for advertisers is that most users don't really subscribe to subreddits or make accounts, but rather browse the front page casually. So you can target, for instance, /r/smallbusiness to target small business owners, but you'll exhaust that inventory very quickly. A Facebook acquisition would mean that a much higher percentage of Reddit's audience could be served relevant ads.
I don't believe Reddit (owned by Conde Nast, a subsidary of Advance Publications) has any intentions to sell the platform outright, as they essentially get to control the v̶o̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶ front page of the internet.
"We know all of your interests. Not just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook – we know your dark secrets, we know everything… (laughs)"
This would be bad on so many levels.
I use Reddit daily, but it's days are numbered. Having Facebook acquire them I think is it's only saving grace. I use the word "it" deliberately, because Reddit is now in the hands of its VCs.
I literally have no connections on FB to people I haven't met in person, and don't know a single friend's reddit account.
But unlike forums, most of the conversation on Facebook is 20 comments at a time and you can't just link to page X of some conversation...
Also Reddit is owned by Wired's parent, Conde Naste. I don't think it is up for sale.
That's just about the worst thing I can imagine
Your FB is probably far more diverse than reddit at this point. Maybe reddit 5 years ago, but reddit today is a propaganda platform for a political party and ideology. It's the echo chamber of echo chambers.
I've never had FB. I started weaning myself from reddit years ago. I primarily use youtube now. Though that is getting screwy too.
> Bold prediction: FB will try to acquire Reddit soon
Doubt it. Bolder prediction: FB will be around long after reddit is gone.
It's a shame that they are 'good enough' to prevent much growth in the competitors, leading the cool tech made by competitors to often become exclusively filled with content that would be banned on reddit.
The hierarchy is on GitHub: https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-Skeleton/blo...
But it's not in a structured format and tough to verify. There's no methodology for the current organization, and it doesn't look like it matches the actual graph.
Needless to say it's cut heavily into my reddit usage. I genuinely believe they raised a bunch of money, hired a bunch of engineers and managers, convinced the C-levels a re-design was necessary, and then implemented a subpar re-design with a giant middle finger to users all in the name of ads. Glorious, world improving, ads.
Reddit not logged in is like watching that garbage truck full of memes crash into on-coming traffic.
Would be really neat to select a single sub or group of subs and generate a line chart of the same data.
I'd really like something like HN, but for political discussion. There are a couple okay subreddits, but it's just not worth it anymore IMO. I just want quality discussion about issues, complete with evidence. PoliticalDiscussion is okay so far, but then again, so was politics a couple of years ago.
https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-gr...
When people say Reddit is 4chan-lite, I see where they're coming from. They're not signed in, so all they see is r/all, which has about the same quality level as the front page of Youtube.
The trick to it is to install the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser extension and start blocking the subs that frequently post low-quality/hate speech/just plain irritating content. Block a sub from your home page once, it never comes back.
Wish I could say the same for Youtube. I swear, you watch ONE Bill Burr standup clip, and your recs are suddenly full of "feminist gets pwned by redpill logic" and other "viral" garbage videos, each of which has to be manually set to "Not Interested".
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/87q8pn/the...
https://imgur.com/gallery/c4Wzo
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8yma4e/oc_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8ahy05/int...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
Note that FB owns 4 out of the top 6 social media platforms on that list. That's how dominant FB really is.
- user accounts and profiles (users have their own "subreddit") - friends list (and block list) - live chat - personalizable feed - communities
So yeah, it's a social network that looks a lot like a message board, and it has been getting more and more social features.
That's the reason I'm leaving Reddit. I liked how it was a while ago, but the recent changes and the culture just aren't my cup of tea anymore. Discussion is still mostly okay, but there's just far too much noise.
When I start digging down into the lower quality comments those comments are obviously lower quality. But here's the thing-- within the lower quality comments is the OP responding to the low quality comments!
In other words, an OP (probably like many OPs) has a limited amount of time to get feedback on Reddit about a pressing problem. And mods/downvoters cannot react quickly enough in that period of time to appropriately moderate the responses.
Imagine OP's "Reddit time" (let's say an hour) as a rectangle in a video game that starts at 100% and drains to 0%. Let's say those dregs comments drained 15% of the OP's total time or energy participating on Reddit.
Now, suppose a lurker reads the thread later when the mods/downvoters have caught up with all their work. The lurker's default view is only the quality comments. This misleads the lurker by hiding the 15% time-or-energy hit the OP had from interacting with the dregs. The lurker likely assumes that participating on Reddit requires less time or energy that it does in reality.
Now the lurker tries out posting for the first time and starts to experience the 15% time-or-energy hit from the dregs comments. The more impatient OP is about reading comments, the more likely OP is to increase that wasted time-or-energy by interacting with the dregs.
Worse, that 15% time-or-energy hit includes content that would be beyond the pale for in-person social interactions-- it's mindless trolling or misanthropy which nearly no one would utter face to face. Some of it-- like accusations that the OP is an imposter-- is unique to social media.
Worst of all, that poster probably started as a lurker. So their decision to post in the first place was based on a view of Reddit that radically downplays the costs of interacting. I mean, I don't see any clear warnings on first post that let the poster know "shit will roll in" faster than the mods can flush it.
The obvious solution is to throttle all posting activity so that participating on Reddit slows to a level approaching those tree people from Lord of the Rings. (The larger time slices would actually get rid of whole class of problems, like the internet sleuthing BS that happened after the Boston bombing.) But I'm sure Reddit wants to encourage OPs to increase their # of responses for maximum buzz, so I don't really see any non-manipulative practical solution to this problem.
The upshot of my comment was something like this: lurkers likely interpret a post as the OP being on some sort of mountaintop. In this view the moderators and voters are spread out along the mountainside, helping some hikers reach the top and hindering others from getting there. Thus, it looks to the lurkers like the mountaintop is a place where "unwanted" commenters have been stopped from climbing up and only "desirable" discussion occurs. (For whatever definition of "unwanted"-- it doesn't matter and we'll come back to that.)
To the OP, however, the experience is much more like a parking lot where anyone who wants to can walk up and interact with OP. Later the mods and voters come in and "clean up" the lot so that it appears to onlookers that there were no "unwanted" interactions with OP-- only "desirable" discussion.
Now, let's assume 100% of downvoted comments are actually good faith actors who happen not to agree with what you call the "hivemind."
Because of the manipulative design of Reddit, here's what will happen:
* people who agree with the hivemind point of view and don't want dissenting opinions will overestimate how good Reddit is at facilitating "desirable" discussion. They will do this because the OP's interaction with dissidents is hidden from them.
* people who disagree with the hivemind point of view will underestimate how much interaction OP had with dissident points of view. They will do this because OP's interaction with dissenting opinions is hidden from them.
Hivemind peeps lose because they want OP to have what they consider a pleasant discussion when in reality OP is expending considerable energy having what they would consider an unpleasant discussion.
Non-hivemind peeps lose because they develop an exaggerated sense of the problem of dissidents not being heard. They were heard by the OP, but the non-hivemind peeps don't see that interaction.
OP loses because the hivemind peeps consider the discussion a success and overlook the problem of OP (and many others) expending energy on the more adversarial interactions. But OP loses again because OP's adversaries don't credit OP for interacting with dissidents!
Reddit just exists, sitting there in the background, steadily growing over time, but never seemingly even trying to raise its own profile. Yet (or perhaps because of that) I certainly spend far more time there and get far more value from it than any other social media site.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
