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Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#141

Post by delecti »

candiddevmike wrote: post #82
Pathogen-David wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the protest as an opportunity to quit my 12 year Reddit addiction cold turkey and never came back, seems like I'm not the only one. Sometimes I miss /r/houseplants but I'm better off overall.

What did you switch to?

For me, mindlessly heading to reddit have been replaced by equally mindlessly heading to either here, discord, twitter, or bluesky. Overall I think the variety is probably a net positive, even if I haven't addressed the root issue of spending time mindlessly.

Mindfully heading to reddit (relying on various subreddits as a resource for product reviews or technical support) is even more varied: gaming sites instead of r/games, googling for product reviews instead of heading to a niche subreddit, etc. I'll also visit reddit if it's a promising google result, but resist the old habit to add "site:reddit".

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#142

Post by more_corn »

dubeye wrote: post #55
thaumaturgy wrote: post #48

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

The attempt to change policy completely failed. Wasn't a stalemate in any sense of the word

The last moderator uprising killed the ceo (metaphorically speaking) so the latest one doesn’t seem to have done much in comparison. If they’ve stopped growing and started shrinking that’s bad, but ultimately there’s no replacement yet so don’t sign their death certificate.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#143

Post by AmVess »

hamandcheese wrote: post #45

I never was a huge Reddit user before, but I have noticed an increase in lower-quality reddit-style comments here on HN in the last year or so. Thankfully they usually get downvoted or are already dead. I might have to turn off showdead though.

People have gotten completely lax about downvoting shit, 0 effort comments and childish humor.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#144

Post by munificent »

latexr wrote: post #99
candiddevmike wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you switch to?

Hopefully nothing, since they described it as an addiction and mentioned they’re now better overall. But your question isn’t atypical, which is weird when you think about it in comparison to any other addiction. If an alcoholic said they stopped drinking, asking what drug they replaced booze with would be a weird and possibly insensitive question.

This reminds me a lot of discussions I've had with people over the years about why I'm an atheist.

For many, it seems like religion fills an important void in their life. When they imagine me without a religion, they see me having that hole. But I never felt an absence in the first place. I didn't adopt a religion the same way most people don't, say, adopt a giraffe. I never woke up with "the pain of giraffe-less-ness", so never decided to get a giraffe.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#145

Post by [deleted] »

INTPenis wrote: post #47

Nothing, some of us already knew nothing would come of it. People are just so dramatic and they don't understand the services they're using. Most people have no idea what's behind reddit, facebook, youtube. They just see a free shiny thing and start using it. Then one day the free shiny thing has a gross ad on it, and one day it has another one, and before they know it, it's unusable.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#146

Post by akkartik »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #48

The end result was a stalemate. Reddit did not change any of its policies. Enough of the people responsible for posting and managing content left the platform to cause a noticeable impact on it. Here's a fun thing to look at, https://subredditstats.com/ for any major subreddit, e.g.: https://subredditstats.com/r/worldnews https://subredditstats.com/r/explainlikeimfive https://subredditstats.com/r/videos All of the mo…

I'm still off Reddit and Twitter, and plan to keep it that way no matter what. Gotta be the change you want to see in the world.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#147

Post by derbOac »

Wanted to plug this alternative that was developed as a result. I have no association with this, just a fan of the design (the whole thing, not just the visual design):

https://limereader.com/

I haven't posted much there (at all) in awhile so I'm guilty as anyone but am not sure why. I think a chicken-and-egg thing?

My sense is the quality of posts on smaller subreddits I frequent declined perceptibly but not dramatically after the blackout. In a lot of the subreddits it seems like the diversity of topics went down and the posts got a little more superficial or something.

I personally started frequenting old-fashioned forums more often again for certain topics.

Some things are hard to beat the subreddits though, and I've noticed they have slowly started returning to their prior quality (in a qualitative, not value sense). It seems like a lot of them that attempted to migrate to other places (lemmy, kbin, etc) never quite reproduced the subreddits, although I've been surprised at the staying power of some.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#148

Post by valianteffort »

swores wrote: post #126
arp242 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That data seems wrong. I don't use Reddit much, but I checked the data aginast some smaller subs I sometimes check, and according to those charts they have just a few comments per day, but I know for a fact that's wrong. It's wrong for all subs I checked. For example: https://subredditstats.com/r/thethickofit Just 3 comments for Nov 22, 8 for Nov 23. But how does that square with the existence of this thread from Nob…

Maybe 81 of the 84 comments were either third party bot comments, or a Reddit-run LLM designed to make the sub look more active than it really is (the 2023, fewer people hours, version of what they did to launch the site), and subredditstats.com has detected that? I doubt that's the case, but just as there are sites that analyse an Amazon product's reviews to judge real vs. fake, it's not impossible that a Reddit com…

One of my favorite conspiracies is that reddit is mostly just LLM's and paid agents talking to eachother. Employed by various intel agencies, governments, and reddit themselves trying to astroturf and sway conversation in one direction or another.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#149

Post by simonblack »

I'm generally still logged-in. But I don't have any subscribed subreddits. What I have instead is about half a dozen bookmarks in my browser. So I don't have a personal front page showing my subscribed subreddits. Only if I activate a browser bookmark will I see any reddit posts, and even then I only see the particular subreddit that the browser bookmark supplies.

Those daily hours I used to spend on Reddit are now practically non-existent.

Re: Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

#150

Post by giraffe_lady »

pugworthy wrote: post #96
nathanaldensr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the same. Usually it takes the form of dumb phrase-like jokes, retorts, puns, etc, with the entire chain being downvoted and flagged. This is necessary to keep HN from devolving into thoughtless meme-style posts that just clutter the space.

I get the notion of not allowing it to devolve, however I do think it should be OK and acceptable to upvote someone for truly making a humorous or clever comment. I work with a lot of clever people in my job, and humor (even bad humor) is part of our daily camaraderie and social interaction, so in some ways it's second nature for me to want to post humorous comments. Not to over complicate the comment system here but…

The distinctive thing about the type of reddit humor I think they're talking about is how referential it is. You don't so much make a clever joke as invoke the standard joke on its trigger phrase or subject.

I see plenty of jokes on HN but they are usually part of a comment that would be made anyway. Joke-only comments also aren't that rare and when they're clever and specific to the context are usually pretty well received.

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