When I first saw the subreddit, I thought it was a neat idea. I like the idea of digging into a tough subject and challenging our beliefs. I couldn't put my finger on it for the longest time, but what I eventually realized was that I didn't like how inauthentic the whole thing felt. Changing a deeply held belief just isn't that easy, yet almost every thread has the OP giving a delta. How it appears to me is that peop…
> How it appears to me is that people have beliefs that they realize are either unpopular or controversial, and so they use the subreddit to learn what they "should" believe or at least a rationalization for ignoring their true beliefs. A large portion of Reddit in general (especially the front page and popular subreddits) is people making up stories/opinions/content created specifically to illicit as many replies an…
Usenet was incredible before the eternal September. There was noise, trolls, flame wars and mentally instable people and good and bad moderation decisions, but the good was really good. Party due to the higher quality of the users and from the inability to make money from it. Top people were reading and lurking in relevant newsgroups and commented sometimes or sent private comment via email.
HN has two things common with Usenet, good moderation and higher than average users. What has changed is the motives. There are many users who are self promoting or marketing with pseudo-informative submissions. They push blog posts that are just written to increase visibility and "what I experienced when doing business", many of those stories made up. With all this negative stuff, HN has still good singal/noise ratio and you can learn from comments and discussions.