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Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

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Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#71

Post by erikbye »

prawn wrote: post #22

People incentivised by karma systems seem to create better information sources than when they’re incentivised by money. Think about how often you turn to Stack Overflow, Reddit, forums (Whirlpool in Australia) over AdSense/affiliate blogs. The latter are almost always biased and essentially misleading.

In the case of Stack Overflow, I would argue its gamification creates a lot of low-quality answers. Many reeks of someone who knew nothing about the question but did some hasty googling to score points. Now they propagate misinformed/wrong, and outdated information.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#72

Post by nhumrich »

lawlorino wrote: post #41
xelhark wrote: post #23

I think a much bigger point can be summarized with this sentence from the article: > Seven of the top ten results are trying to sell you something, which really makes you question the objectivity of the advice. This is true when searching for pretty much everything in Google nowadays, that's why if you're looking for any info, searching on reddit usually yields much more objective and generally better results.

> that's why if you're looking for any info, searching on reddit usually yields much more objective and generally better results. Agreed, I often default to Reddit or HN for a lot of stuff although there are an increasing number of obvious adverts disguised as genuine posts (see r/hailcorporate for some examples). More difficult to spot are marketing firms who curate a bunch of fake accounts, make them seem like "rea…

Almost all of marketing statistics/metrics are correlation, not causation. They are mostly just looking at stats over time, trying only one new thing per quarter. No way to know for sure if the new channel was actually the reason for success, but you can be fairly confident

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#73

Post by tiew9Vii »

Must admit, reddit got me caring more about my finances.

It seems not many people are taught about money properly. I certainly wasn’t and non of my friends where.

I’ve always been good in that I never spent what I didn’t have and lived within my means. What savings I did have where in a zero interest current account though!

Following the finance Reddit’s at least put me in the right path. 6-12 months cash savings now in a high interest account, now have a pension plan, putting money in to ETF’s until I have enough in the ETF’s I’m willing to by some individual stocks which may not be as stable as the ETFs I have.

As someone who’s been a senior dev for 10+ years doing well but stuck in a rut I’m also finding the various cscareers Reddit’s useful about the job market. Seeing people’s salaries, negotiations, what jobs to look for, what companies to look for etc etc.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#74

Post by rgg_32 »

semicolonandson wrote: post #52
xelhark wrote: post #23

I think a much bigger point can be summarized with this sentence from the article: > Seven of the top ten results are trying to sell you something, which really makes you question the objectivity of the advice. This is true when searching for pretty much everything in Google nowadays, that's why if you're looking for any info, searching on reddit usually yields much more objective and generally better results.

I just finished listening to an engaging series of podcasts by Michael Lewis (author of Flash Boys, The Big Short etc.) about the loss of referees in our society. It's called Against the Rules: https://atrpodcast.com/ Much of reddit still has functioning referees in the form of its moderators, but I'm seeing signs of it cracking — e.g. when I researched the backgrounds of certain moderators I found out that they prod…

I’m wondering how long it will take for large companies to realize that people are gradually adapting and starting to look for information on sites other than Google search bar.

Today, Google results are a big problem in the sense discussed in the article, there are no more sources of information that can be trusted like in the old days. Some days I reflect with myself trying to figure out how it can be solved…I hope someone ends up finding a solution.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#75

Post by willart4food »

If you want to see the future of Social Networks, look no further than Reddit. Reddit is the Future of Social Networks.

The Next Social network, the one what will eat Facebook's lunch, just like Facebook ate MySpace's lunch, will not be people-to-people based, but it will be People-to-topic and topic-to-topic based; media-rich and mobile-friendly.

And no, it won't be Reddit, too much Legacy crap with Reddit and not enough novelty.

Clayton Christensen would agree.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#76

Post by mlrtime »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #73

Must admit, reddit got me caring more about my finances. It seems not many people are taught about money properly. I certainly wasn’t and non of my friends where. I’ve always been good in that I never spent what I didn’t have and lived within my means. What savings I did have where in a zero interest current account though! Following the finance Reddit’s at least put me in the right path. 6-12 months cash savings now…

Do you mind sharing the subreddits?

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#77

Post by Recursing »

djhworld wrote: post #16

UK folk should head to https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/ I've always been interested in personal finance, but this community has helped me learn new things and everyone is very supportive.

For Italy: https://www.reddit.com/r/ItaliaPersonalFinance/ (No idea how good it is, a friend says https://www.finanzaonline.com/forum/index.php is better)

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#78

Post by blackandblue »

xelhark wrote: post #23

I think a much bigger point can be summarized with this sentence from the article: > Seven of the top ten results are trying to sell you something, which really makes you question the objectivity of the advice. This is true when searching for pretty much everything in Google nowadays, that's why if you're looking for any info, searching on reddit usually yields much more objective and generally better results.

this is so true! but we have ourselves to blame for it. these days i don't get mad at google search results anymore. i knew someone gamed the result in order to try to sell me something...

here's one the has started to puzzle me: TED talks have become the ground for people trying to sell you something. but it's different when what they are selling is hope, optimism, and encouraging words, right?

wrong!

at least to me. this feels wrong.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#80

Post by Double_a_92 »

erikbye wrote: post #71
prawn wrote: post #22

People incentivised by karma systems seem to create better information sources than when they’re incentivised by money. Think about how often you turn to Stack Overflow, Reddit, forums (Whirlpool in Australia) over AdSense/affiliate blogs. The latter are almost always biased and essentially misleading.

In the case of Stack Overflow, I would argue its gamification creates a lot of low-quality answers. Many reeks of someone who knew nothing about the question but did some hasty googling to score points. Now they propagate misinformed/wrong, and outdated information.

You get quickly muted on SO if most of your answers aren't upvoted.

Make it actually kinda frustrating to start helping over there. You basically can't answer a beginner question, because they probably have a new account and can't vote yet, so your (possibly good) answer gets 0 likes... Do that a few times and you get banned from answering.

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