Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#61

Post by throwaway3699 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #37

throwaway3699 wrote: post #21

> Gazette: Feature Stores and Model Prediction Engine When did developers stop naming things properly and go straight to weird codenames? What is wrong with 'recommendation service'?

I do not think I would necessarily have more of a practical idea what to expect out of a "recommendation service" than "Gazette". Sure, it's related to recommendations in some way, but that might as well be next to useless technically. A 10 minute introduction on the various services and one could get their head around them even with silly names. Are you bothered your webserver is called nginx or by curl or grep or g…

curl, grep and cat all have specific names that make sense.

curl: cURL (library)

grep: g/re/p "globally search for a regular expression and print matching lines"

cat: as in, concatenate

Gazette is just meaningless.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#62

Post by LeoPanthera » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

drost wrote: post #29

tchalla wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I check out /r/chodi (a sub full of memes and random talk) That sub seems to be regularly featured on r/AgainstHateSubReddits Misogyny https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/na9y... Racism https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/ly6n... https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/jh3j... Islamophobia : https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/ndor... https…

I'm not saying those linked comments are not authentic, but r/AgainstHateSubreddits does post hateful content on subreddits they want to get banned.

You're going to need to provide a citation for such a big claim.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#63

Post by andrewzah » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

antibuddy wrote: post #16

fastball wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I would shift the blame back to Reddit here, because they exposed data to mods that are completely unrelated to the subreddit. Another problem is the non-existing appeal process.

Anyone can build a bot that automatically watches any submissions to any subreddit, and bans those users from their subreddit. Like it or hate it, reddit is very hands-off with how subreddits are moderated beyond maintaining overall site rules.

Most larger subreddits are managed pretty poorly.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#64

Post by dqv » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

kevinh wrote: post #49

drost wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying those linked comments are not authentic, but r/AgainstHateSubreddits does post hateful content on subreddits they want to get banned.

Is there any evidence for that assertion?

I used to be an active mod on a somewhat active subreddit, not going to say which one. I can say that it was rather suspicious to get pinged to an AHS thread made about a post that was less than 7 minutes old. There's a report button under every post, so the idea that this person couldn't have just used that instead of posting a big dramatic post makes me highly suspicious of AHS.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#65

Post by mateo1 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

MattRix wrote: post #23

Judgmentality wrote: post #14

I love how every comment so far is about how much people dislike reddit.

It’s a bit silly considering that this site is pretty much the same as any Reddit subreddit.

Well it wasn't, but it's rapidly becoming more like Reddit, in a bad way. Most of Reddit's 50M active daily users are under the age of 18 as it's apparent by the front page, and the last few remaining older users are driven away day by day.

I've been using Reddit for 10 years now. I still mechanically go the comment section when I come across something interesting to find the link to the source. It's never there anymore. No intelligent discussions. No pointing out the obvious fakes and advertisements/astroturfing. People write long, idiotically fake posts just to get upvoted, to either farm karma or because they're children.

Unfortunately with HN getting slowly flooded as well, I don't know where else to turn for an online news aggregator/discussion platform that fits my demographic.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#66

Post by renewiltord » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #21

> Gazette: Feature Stores and Model Prediction Engine When did developers stop naming things properly and go straight to weird codenames? What is wrong with 'recommendation service'?

It is only one part of the recommendation service.

Anyway, the reason you don’t “name things properly” is because it’s one of those truly hard problems (in a class beyond EXPTIME in input program functionality).

By bypassing it you no longer have to worry about the connotations and you can do things like split the tool without having to worry if the name will stay the same or if which piece will retain the name.

I would strongly recommend it.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#67

Post by Denvercoder9 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #21

> Gazette: Feature Stores and Model Prediction Engine When did developers stop naming things properly and go straight to weird codenames? What is wrong with 'recommendation service'?

IT has always been full of non-descriptive names. Unix was a pun, Linux is named after its creator, Macintosh after an apple and programming languages are probably the worst offender with their single-letter names.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#68

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

dqv wrote: post #64

kevinh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence for that assertion?

I used to be an active mod on a somewhat active subreddit, not going to say which one. I can say that it was rather suspicious to get pinged to an AHS thread made about a post that was less than 7 minutes old. There's a report button under every post, so the idea that this person couldn't have just used that instead of posting a big dramatic post makes me highly suspicious of AHS.

There's no feedback loop on reports. They disappear into the ether, possibly never to be acted upon. It shouldn't be surprising users have zero faith they'll accomplish anything on their own.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#69

Post by munk-a » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

dqv wrote: post #64

kevinh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence for that assertion?

I used to be an active mod on a somewhat active subreddit, not going to say which one. I can say that it was rather suspicious to get pinged to an AHS thread made about a post that was less than 7 minutes old. There's a report button under every post, so the idea that this person couldn't have just used that instead of posting a big dramatic post makes me highly suspicious of AHS.

AHS could have the best intentions but karma addicted folks jumping on such a post to get a blitz of upvotes is always going to happen.

I'm amazed that the reddit mobile app pushes notifications about upvote thresholds by default - it is incredibly trashy.

Re: Evolving beyond 100B recommendations a day at Reddit

#70

Post by munk-a » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

mynameisash wrote: post #32

MattRix wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit silly considering that this site is pretty much the same as any Reddit subreddit.

At a technical level, I'd more or less agree with you. But from a content and community perspective, I disagree that it's pretty much the same. IMHO, the signal-to-noise here is amazing; not perfect, but _so_ much better. If I really want memes or jokes, I'll go back to reddit (and I occasionally do if I want some mindless downtime). I get a lot more insightful information and community interaction here than there.

There is one feature I've identified on HN that I think Reddit could really benefit from. Disallowing downvotes on direct replies prevents users from training themselves to downvote in the least productive manner possible - the spiteful "How dare you disagree with me" downvote.

The karma loss limit of six per comment is also helpful - on reddit you may be hesitant to break with generally expressed opinions over how drastically it can drain your comment - here the two options are -6 or banned (if you're really spewing hate speech).

Also, a shout out to dang for remaining very good at not interfering except when it's really warranted and then shutting things down quick.