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Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

reuters.com

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Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#351

Post by honkdaddy »

khawkins wrote: post #318
rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

>But the main, core "Reddit experience" as algorithmically produced by r/Popular is a complete dumpster fire. It's the noise of the entire internet, jam packed into a webpage. So many low quality posts and comments that encapsulate all the negatives about "internet culture". There's no room for thoughtful discussion and discourse on the majority of the site, just shitposting and low rung commentary. Just jumped onto…

/r/science is particularly insane these days. The majority of the front page is often dominated by posts from one user, /u/mvea. Mvea is a mod and a power user with 28m karma amassed over the years.

Mvea has some pretty strong political opinions. A good chunk of the "republican=bad"-finding studies on /r/science are posted by him, as are a good chunk of the "cannabis/psychadelics=good"-finding studies. Checking out his user page today, 6 of his last 10 posts are related to Trump, conservatives, or psychoactive drugs.

If you point this out, you get banned. If you link to /u/mvea's page, you get banned. If you comment anything that's not another peer reviewed journal, including any kind of anecdote or hypothetical, your comment is deleted and you're given a "warning". I do think the rules were originally put in place with good intentions, but like many subreddits with strict rules, draconian mods end up taking it a bit too seriously and it entirely drives away the laymen.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#352

Post by TomSwirly »

57875786 wrote: post #86
57875786 wrote: post #79

Reddit at this point is a native advertising platform (not just the "promoted" stuff; much of the content on popular subs is astroterfing/native advertising too) with some "niche" communities that are always inferior (worse information, less informed members) than the equivalent StackExchange or dedicated website and message board that's been around for decades. It's a garbage website.

Reddit badges, btw, are a great example of native advertising. In addition to advertisers badging their native ads, I would guess that most badges on reddit are fake, either automatically awarded by the software to popular posts or given out arbitrarily by reddit staff, with the intent of giving users the impression that it's common for redditors to spend real money to "gild" or otherwise flair posts that they like,…

I don't believe the badges are fake. I've gotten quite a few of them, and each time, it's been from someone whose posting history makes it clear that they share a lot of ideas in common with me.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#354

Post by Dirlewanger »

1996 wrote: post #98
markdown wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digg users had an attractive alternative to run to. Reddit users don't.

yet

Nah, I think we're fucked now. The Internet is a completely different place than what it was in 2011. Any reddit alternative that springs up now is immediately populated with spammers, conspiracy nuts, identity politic types...you know the types; all the ones that reddit banned. They instantly bring the quality down which makes it unattractive to most people who want to switch. And then it gets shut down e.g. voat. Rinse and repeat.

With each passing day, the Internet looks more and more dire.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#355

Post by encom »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #342
rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

Social media platforms were never built for constructive debates, Social currencies incentivizes majoritarian opinions. If you hold a minority view and want it to be acknowledged then moving on to a platform where your view is the majoritarian opinion is the only option, Reddit facilitates it with its Subreddits. Love Elon Musk? go to r/elonmusk Hate Elon Musk? go to r/EnoughMuskSpam Other social media have groups, f…

>Reddit facilitates it with its Subreddits

That's only partially true. Your views and opinions must still be vetted by the admins, or you and/or your subreddit will be banned.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#356

Post by pickledish »

CyanDeparture wrote: post #224
sprite wrote: post #178

They are purposefully making Reddit absolutely terrible on mobile web browsers. They constantly try to force you to download the app, don't let you read full threads without it, etc. It seems it just constantly gets worse and worse.

The mobile web site is particularly awful. The app Apollo - https://apolloapp.io/ - is fantastic for browsing reddit if you're on an iDevice. (I have nothing to do with the apps development, just a fan), it is such an excellent experience I upgraded it to the paid version. Give it a go for a day if you can install it on your device.

Yes indeed, although the fact that third party Reddit apps are able to filter out any ads makes me wonder how long they are for this world

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#357

Post by honkdaddy »

somedude895 wrote: post #160
rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

Don't forget r/askhistorians One of the most well-moderated communities out there with clear and stringently enforced rules that cares about one topic only and allows no soap boxing, low quality comments or toxicity.

The issue with /r/askhistorians is that someone can make a well-sourced, high-quality answer, but if letters next to their name (for which you must submit verification for) don't match up well enough with the content of what you're answering, your comment is just deleted. I understand the appeal of getting answers "real" historians, but the reality is that the vast, vast majority of questions go unanswered.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#358

Post by Vespasian »

somedude895 wrote: post #160
rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

Don't forget r/askhistorians One of the most well-moderated communities out there with clear and stringently enforced rules that cares about one topic only and allows no soap boxing, low quality comments or toxicity.

Wholeheartedly yes.

Most answers are insightful and well written and contain actual arguments (including when we simply don't know something).

Even those which are disputed contentwise are still respectful and allow real discussions to occur.

I can't imagine the effort it takes to stem the flood of memes, bullshit, toxicity and one liners. Kudos to the mods

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#359

Post by encom »

tomcam wrote: post #322
Lutger wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really impossible to compare. There are very good subreddits, even better than HN, and then there's stuff like r/The_Donald. HN is just a single community, reddit has tons. It also just depends on your subject of interest and what tone of voice, humor, etc your are appreciative of.

r/The_Donald isn’t a thing

They built their own Reddit: https://patriots.win/

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#360

Post by selykg »

rkho wrote: post #63

Reddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and phy…

r/AskHistorians - Just what it says, but it is probably one of the best subs on the entire platform in my opinion. And I'm not even a history buff of any kind. It's just super well moderated and has clear rules that get to the heart of the purpose of the sub.

r/fantasy - I read a lot of fantasy novels. This is probably my most visited sub on all of reddit. It's great. They get a lot of fantasy authors to participate and just generally have good discussions. That said, I feel they may be having some growing pains lately as I've found a whole lot of combative discussion lately on some of the more popular authors (like Brandon Sanderson), where someone says they love that author in one post, then almost within the same day a hate post comes up that tries to counter the positive post. It's.... annoying and I sure hope the mods can figure out a good method for stopping this shit as it's super obnoxious. (People, you're free to your opinions, you don't have to tell the world if your opinion is different than someone else's. It's not a zero sum game.)

There's a lot of really good subs out there, some more useful than others, some run by idiots, some have far more effort put into them than there should be.

Edit; formatting, spelling

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