Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 208 posts

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#151

Post by NonNefarious »

Sunspark wrote: post #45
rckclmbr wrote: post #23

I can think of a couple major points that have caused massive culture shifts on reddit (some might say for the worse). There have been other temporary shifts/events, but I think these ones were longer lasting * The "Digg invasion", when Digg 4.0 came out in 2013. This is when reddit turned into mostly memes. Before that, the frontpage was closer to slashdot, but much more open conversation around it. (of course there…

The downvoting thing is interesting.. I fairly often upvote comments with 0 if they haven't said anything bad or objectionable just to make things more fair. The mods on subreddits are a problem too. There is no recourse. If they decide to ban you for any reason, that's the end of it, even if no rule has been broken. If you message modmail to ask for more information, they can just mute you from messaging modmail.

"The mods on subreddits are a problem"

An absolutely site-killing problem. If you actually try to pursue specific topics on subreddits, you find they're administered by a bunch of babies wallowing in their little sandboxes and throwing tantrums for no apparent reason.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#152

Post by xhrpost »

ajmurmann wrote: post #110
xhrpost wrote: post #81

I find searching reddit for niche things to be at least useful enough to point me in the right direction on some topics. But wow, discussion, even the small subs can be pretty toxic. It's sad as I'd love to have better discussion around various topics but every post feels like I'm walking on egg shells. My theory is just that if anyone can join, and everything is anonymous and there is no barrier to entry [1], qualit…

I am curious on what type of smaller subreddits you've seen toxicity. I find that smaller, hobby-related communities are really great and I rarely to never see toxicity. Looking at anything that has potential to be even remotely be related to politics immediately turns hostile. For example r/f1 usually is quite friendly, but when the topic shifts to how races should take place in different countries, it gets a lot mo…

I was heavily watching some of the stock/options trading communities and felt like even well worded questions were sometimes blown away and downvoted while others could ask completely noob questions covered immediately in pinned posts and get 100 replies.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#153

Post by singhrac »

vehemenz wrote: post #5

It's hard to generalize about Reddit because each subreddit is kind of its own world. If you want good discussion, go to where the good discussion is. What is terrible about the UX? Are you not using old.reddit.com? If you're judging by /r/all, sure, it's not much better than YouTube comments. As much as I hate this word, it's mostly "normies" with "normie" views. The cream rarely rises to the top, except on humor th…

This is one of the best things about Reddit, which is that the individual subreddits still have relatively strong control over moderation over their own content. You can find incredibly niche subreddits that align with your interests or sense of humor. Personally I find it full of interesting content and discussions (maybe too much).

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#154

Post by Sunspark »

NonNefarious wrote: post #151
Sunspark wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downvoting thing is interesting.. I fairly often upvote comments with 0 if they haven't said anything bad or objectionable just to make things more fair. The mods on subreddits are a problem too. There is no recourse. If they decide to ban you for any reason, that's the end of it, even if no rule has been broken. If you message modmail to ask for more information, they can just mute you from messaging modmail.

"The mods on subreddits are a problem" An absolutely site-killing problem. If you actually try to pursue specific topics on subreddits, you find they're administered by a bunch of babies wallowing in their little sandboxes and throwing tantrums for no apparent reason.

No election campaigns either, they are all dictators-for-life unless reddit head office decides they need to be involved.

This is the same issue IRC has. In the old days, if you were lucky, sometimes you could unseat a tyrant, but modern IRC channel ownership is enforced by the server itself.

This is part of why I like Twitter, even though I haven't been active on it in some time. People have to opt-in to you on Twitter. It's impossible to be a tyrant on Twitter, you cannot compel people to pay attention to you there. The disadvantage of Twitter of course is that it's full of bots so you have to put together your own curated lists of people that seem reasonable. I don't even look at the home feed.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#155

Post by marssaxman »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #78
kelseyfrog wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UX redesign is also clearly part of a mobile-first strategy. The mobile site funnels users into the mobile app, and the desktop site clearly echos the mobile design principles. Mobile users fundamentally engage with the platform in different ways. For one, they form a different demographic segment than older users, and secondly the mobile app frames and filters content in uniquely mobile ways. High-signal content…

> The mobile site funnels users into the mobile app, and the desktop site clearly echos the mobile design principles. More like hoards them into the app with a cattle prod. You can't use the mobile site without constantly confirming that no, I really really really don't want to use the app like I said 20 seconds ago. This is beyond dark patterns. It's pure user hostility.

Better to ignore their current mobile site and use the old layout, which is inexplicably still available at https://i.reddit.com/ with a much better experience.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#156

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

pixl97 wrote: post #76
kelseyfrog wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? I guess I'm speaking from personal experience here when I say writing in-depth sourced and edited comments[higher quality] is more difficult for me on a mobile device. But perhaps, my experience not the norm. Is it different for others?

Quantity of engagement > quality of engagement Or "more ads better"

and app means more user info for ads

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#158

Post by kcexn »

I've started using Reddit less and less. It used to be a great place to interact with other people who were deeply engaged and knowledgeable about hobbies, interests, and even professions. But over time the average response to my questions and comments on Reddit has dramatically lowered in quality. I think the demographic has skewed much younger, with more teenagers and kids than before. Which means that when I ask questions, particularly ones that might be even slightly technical, it's met with dozens of answers that come straight from the first page of Google...

I feel it's probably just a reversion to the mean effect. As more people adopt the Reddit platform, the platform becomes more and more like facebook.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#159

Post by purerandomness »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #143
colinmhayes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit could go on indefinitely as is with no advertising. I don't think the goal of tech companies is to just "go on indefinitely." Their investors need them to make billions of dollars.

Well of course, I was only responding to the point about whether the website made any money without advertising. Given that the technology is solved, and the financing is solved, I wish there were a way to build such a website with such a community without the cycle always ending in its destruction for the sake of profit.

They did, once, and called it IRC. It's still good.
Post reply on HN