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Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

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Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#51

Post by superkuh »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #21

Good for Reddit, but I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with the entire site and how it's managed. The astroturfing isn't even subtle and the same few dozens of accounts dominate the front page day in and day out. The content on the frontpage, r/popular, r/all is starting to congeal into screenshots of tweets. The mods of the biggest subreddits don't seem to care if the content that gets posted actually lives up…

Most of reddit's original userbase from the mid-2000s is gone, pushed out by changes in policy from corporate trying to make things palatable for advertisers. It's become another identity-centered (ie, posting on your own profile now) Facebook refugee settlement. I'm sure reddit corporate loves this state of affairs but it's pushed me to abandon content aggregators entirely and subsist on my own local RSS reader and email lists.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#52

Post by raverbashing »

obilgic wrote: post #14
Trasmatta wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the new Reddit design is such a step back in terms of both performance and user experience. It was probably optimized in some way to increase engagement, but it's just really bad. On mobile I use Relay, which is really good.

Probably unpopular opinion on HN: but I really prefer the new design. finally something that doesn't scream "we have a sub-culture" but rather welcomes new users.

> but rather welcomes new users

Yes, from 9gag. And to be fair I think the 9gag interface is better than the newer Reddit one.

Sure, if you want to sell generic ads (even if "personalized" with all the cookies you have) with low conversion that's the way to go.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#53

Post by jamil7 »

nend wrote: post #44
obilgic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably unpopular opinion on HN: but I really prefer the new design. finally something that doesn't scream "we have a sub-culture" but rather welcomes new users.

I find the new design horrendous if you're not signed in to an account. There's so many dark-patterns, it makes the site completely unusable. I suppose there's some metrics they optimize for that drove those decisions. When logged in, the new design is fine I think. There's a couple minor annoyances, but nothing that makes we want to go and use old.

> I suppose there's some metrics they optimize for that drove those decisions

It's just the work of bean counters optimising metrics that are visible to them. We're lucky an API exists and quality third-party clients can still be built but I assume they'll shut this off one day too.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#54

Post by doc_gunthrop »

reddit may have been a good site a decade or so ago, but in its current state it's mostly a propaganda machine to manipulate clueless rubes. One look at the front page makes this glaringly obvious.

The only remotely productive way to use reddit is by being selective with what subs you check out. Avoid the larger subreddits at all cost.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#55

Post by vmception »

obilgic wrote: post #14
Trasmatta wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the new Reddit design is such a step back in terms of both performance and user experience. It was probably optimized in some way to increase engagement, but it's just really bad. On mobile I use Relay, which is really good.

Probably unpopular opinion on HN: but I really prefer the new design. finally something that doesn't scream "we have a sub-culture" but rather welcomes new users.

yeah but it doesn't work though.

if you have replied multiple times in one thread, you can't reliably load the paginated history of the thread.

3rd party apps work better

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#57

Post by obilgic »

criddell wrote: post #46
obilgic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sticking to a very old design, and refusing to update and adapt to current design patterns and styles while everything about technology/devices and how we use them changes daily: feels like a sub-culture

Do you get that vibe from Craigslist?

somewhat, but cragslist is way too simple and very well-known to keep new users away.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#58

Post by dageshi »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #21

Good for Reddit, but I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with the entire site and how it's managed. The astroturfing isn't even subtle and the same few dozens of accounts dominate the front page day in and day out. The content on the frontpage, r/popular, r/all is starting to congeal into screenshots of tweets. The mods of the biggest subreddits don't seem to care if the content that gets posted actually lives up…

It's not really propaganda, it's a demographic shift of who uses the site and especially the major subs. Reddit always had a monoculture of sorts in the major subs, it's just new users who have a new monoculture have started using the site while those with the old attitudes (and who are frankly older) have moved to smaller subs or given up entirely.

Not a particularly surprising turn of events to be honest, nothing stays the same forever.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#59

Post by kmnc »

obilgic wrote: post #14
Trasmatta wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the new Reddit design is such a step back in terms of both performance and user experience. It was probably optimized in some way to increase engagement, but it's just really bad. On mobile I use Relay, which is really good.

Probably unpopular opinion on HN: but I really prefer the new design. finally something that doesn't scream "we have a sub-culture" but rather welcomes new users.

Yeah kill off the only good part of reddit and turn it into a TikTok clone. Of course I have no doubt most reddit leadership has this as goal #1.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#60

Post by vorpalhex »

Loughla wrote: post #9
abhiminator wrote: post #3

On a side note, really hope reddit's engineering team doesn't kill off their 'old.reddit.com' domain though. That's probably the only thing keeping me from dumping reddit altogether (aside from their API-powered custom reddit apps made by indie devs for Android).

Redditisfun is the only thing that has kept me on there (and I'm still pissed somebody stole my username). I haven't accessed the desktop site in years, because it defaults to the new reddit. It smacks of when /. changed their layout; there was a huge to-do and users lost their mind. I haven't been back there in, what, 9 years? I guess, the moral of this story is, what is the reddit replacement? Because so far I have…

> what is the reddit replacement?

I keep looking and monitoring promising replacements but haven't found one yet. I do think the ultimate way forward is going to be some kind of federated system where each "subreddit" is hosted individually and there are aggregators which glue them together, either as a hosted portal or as individual apps.

One of the things that has been killing me is that small interesting subreddits keep getting either killed for not being actively moderated enough or invaded by people who have their own goals. It's very frustrating and it really hurts the longterm knowledge that gets generated in these subreddits.

If anyone is working in this space, please drop me a line.

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