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Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

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Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#251
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is quite a bit of free expression still. Anyone is empowered to make a subreddit and moderate how they please. What more do you want?

This lack of diversity of media/thought just propagates our current media landscape where people generally fall into 2 camps: Liberal sources (CNN/NBC/NYT) and then Fox viewers. With reddit there's a real opportunity to give readers a diversity of opinion, but in this upvote/downvote scheme usually the opposing opinion is buried so that it may never be seen. At least from my POV the thing reddit could improve from in…

You are looking at reddit solely through the lens of politics. I do agree that it is not a great place for political debate. However, would you allow for the fact that setting aside USA national politics, there is a lot of value? I subscribe to subreddits about kombucha making, MTG, retirement saving, minimalism, and in those areas there is quite a lot of reasonable discussion.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#252
post #246
post #59

Keep in mind: 1) Most Facebook users use the app, not the website, which Alexa doesn't track (Which is also why Facebook doesn't fear commonly used ad blockers). 2) Alexa uses a number of metrics to rank sites, including pages visited. Reddit users load many more individual pages than FB users. In reality, Reddit is nowhere near close to the traffic and engagement leviathan that is Facebook.

> Most Facebook users use the app, not the website Source?

"90% of Facebook’s daily active users access it via mobile" - https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2016/01/27/90-of-facebooks-d...

And before you suggest that those users might still be using it on desktop more than on mobile:

"Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 91% of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2018, up from approximately 85% of advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2017." - https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#253
post #59

Keep in mind: 1) Most Facebook users use the app, not the website, which Alexa doesn't track (Which is also why Facebook doesn't fear commonly used ad blockers). 2) Alexa uses a number of metrics to rank sites, including pages visited. Reddit users load many more individual pages than FB users. In reality, Reddit is nowhere near close to the traffic and engagement leviathan that is Facebook.

An absolute ton of Reddit users browse the site via apps too. Something to keep in mind.

I still agree that Facebook is larger though.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also been a few accusations of r/tesla moderators being on payroll (can be read at r/realtesla).

I know someone who is a mod for a couple major subs and he absolutely does paid placements (he has his own bot network for everything, but being a mod his shill posts don’t get deleted). Mods don’t necessarily use their mod power itself for profit, but knowing how the sub works and what users like is very powerful. So is ignoring obvious upvote botnets because they belong to you or another mod.

The inevitable conclusion I come to:

Something like reddit2 should be run by a minimalist apolitical company.

They should work on building some kind of democracy in each sub-reddit, based on some factors (where "participation quality" is one important factor). If the users are unhappy, they should be able to call for an election, etc.

The reddit2 company should focus primarily on keeping the platform alive and on fighting bots. And on tuning the scoring model.

They should be financed in some way that doesn't depend on the content. Be it individual contributments, random, anomymized advertisments etc.

The company should try to hire apolitical engineers and managers. People who just care about solving an engineering problem.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#255
Anyone know what reddit's DAU is?

They used to publish this publicly (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/about/traffic) but since trying to become a real business and monetize they have since taken that down.

edit: I see from https://web.archive.org/web/20170507102752/https://www.reddi... on 2017/5/1 they hit 1M DAU.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#256
post #94

The biggest value gain from Reddit, to me, is the ability to centralize effectively around different hobbies and activities. In the past, if you wanted to find an online community for a movie or a game, you had to find a forum for that community. Finding forums that are well managed and capture a good segment of the community is hard -- and Reddit just becomes a default place to look now. Let's say a new TV show star…

That was called 'usenet'.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#257
post #123
post #94

The biggest value gain from Reddit, to me, is the ability to centralize effectively around different hobbies and activities. In the past, if you wanted to find an online community for a movie or a game, you had to find a forum for that community. Finding forums that are well managed and capture a good segment of the community is hard -- and Reddit just becomes a default place to look now. Let's say a new TV show star…

And for the majority of the large subs for a specific interest, they are astroturfed to hell and back. Much of the content you see on /r/all is likely corporate shilling with sock puppets controlling the promotion of the item and the comments within. There should be Moore's/ Poe's law for the correlation of the size and influence of a site to the amount of corporate influence on said site. As the natural user base gr…

>they are astroturfed to hell and back. Much of the content you see on /r/all is likely corporate shilling with sock puppets controlling the promotion of the item and the comments within.

Is there any actual evidence of this as a widespread phenomenon? The /r/hailcorporate people are among the most annoying on Reddit.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#258
post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

Reddit is now adding profile info and friends and such. Unfortunately.

Friends have been a feature for years

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#260
post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

I have always been wondering, would people choose to pay reddit instead of getting ads, like 1$ or 10$ a month?
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