Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

renewiltord wrote: post #3

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/neknjg/evolving_... Just in case you are also asked to install the app as a content gate.

Or replaced reddit.com by teddit.net, in this case https://teddit.net/r/RedditEng/comments/neknjg/evolving_beyo...

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#5

Post by mdoms » Mon, May 17, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

Reddit is literally the last organisation on Earth I would take engineering advice from.

I appreciate they are operating at a very large scale and that has its own challenges, but it is by far and away the worst engineered product I use. I really do mean from soup to nuts, Reddit is just garbage software. The modern front end is obviously and plainly terrible. The backend is slow and suffers very frequent downtime, often for hours at a time. I could go on for hours about the terrible engineering of Reddit.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#6

Post by danudey » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

mdoms wrote: post #5

Reddit is literally the last organisation on Earth I would take engineering advice from. I appreciate they are operating at a very large scale and that has its own challenges, but it is by far and away the worst engineered product I use. I really do mean from soup to nuts, Reddit is just garbage software. The modern front end is obviously and plainly terrible. The backend is slow and suffers very frequent downtime, o…

I'll add to this: of every website I use which recommends me things based on other things, Reddit does it the absolute worst. It's so bad that they have literally never recommended me a subreddit which was actually relevant to my interests.

My favourite instance was when they assumed I liked "programming", based on having (accidentally, once) visited the /r/f5networks subreddit, so they suggested the Europa Universalis 4 modding subreddit.

Lately, they've given up and are just recommending me "gaming" related subreddits, by which I mean literally any random subreddit that it thinks is related to "gaming", including subreddits for people who main a specific fighter in Super Smash Brothers or subreddits for random indie iOS TCG games.

The only "recommendations" that seem remotely reasonable are basically trending posts, and that's just because them trending indicates a broad appeal for that specific post.

Meanwhile, their mobile app is wildly unreliable; if I'm having any sort of network issues while I start it, it will fail to load any of my feeds, and then just refuse to try to load them until I kill the app again. Refreshing my feed will typically result in a new feed with new posts, about half of which have no text in them and just a giant blank space where the title and description should be.

Reddit is a colossal nightmare, engineering-wise, and I wouldn't listen to a word they said about implementing technology.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#7

Post by 1024core » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

I used to browse /r/india . Then one day Reddit recommended I check out /r/chodi (a sub full of memes and random talk). So I said sure, visited it, commented a couple of times.

Next thing I know, I'm banned from /r/india. For participating in a sub that was recommended by Reddit itself!

And there's no appealing these bans.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#8

Post by bhaak » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #7

I used to browse /r/india . Then one day Reddit recommended I check out /r/chodi (a sub full of memes and random talk). So I said sure, visited it, commented a couple of times. Next thing I know, I'm banned from /r/india. For participating in a sub that was recommended by Reddit itself ! And there's no appealing these bans.

Mods can ban everyone for almost any or even no reason. Unless some racist or otherwise illegal reason would be given, the Reddit admins keep their hands off bans.

But the recommendation level came from Reddit, not from the mods of /r/india.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#9

Post by fastball » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #7

I used to browse /r/india . Then one day Reddit recommended I check out /r/chodi (a sub full of memes and random talk). So I said sure, visited it, commented a couple of times. Next thing I know, I'm banned from /r/india. For participating in a sub that was recommended by Reddit itself ! And there's no appealing these bans.

I'm not a big fan of Reddit as a company but that's not really their fault – that's a moderation problem (from the mods of /r/india). You liked the sub enough to comment in it so clearly it was a good rec!

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#10

Post by manigandham » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

1024core wrote: post #7

I used to browse /r/india . Then one day Reddit recommended I check out /r/chodi (a sub full of memes and random talk). So I said sure, visited it, commented a couple of times. Next thing I know, I'm banned from /r/india. For participating in a sub that was recommended by Reddit itself ! And there's no appealing these bans.

Reddit has disclosed that even your upvotes on other posts and comments that they deem unsavory can be used to automatically ban you.