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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?

#171

Post by miki123211 »

I have already said this multiple times in different threads, but I think the protestors took entirely the wrong approach here.

The only thing that genuinely scares companies whose primary business model is ads is content that is not considered "brand safe". Posting such content, particularly on subreddits where it doesn't belong, would have been a far more effective strategy IMO. Filling the frontpage with porn, slurs, racist memes, made up slanderous stories about the most common Reddit advertisers and other such junk would have forced Reddit's hand.

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

#172

Post by x86x87 »

dymk wrote: post #164
x86x87 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has the eyeballs. I don't think it's relevant anymore

What's the criteria for relevancy, if not "do people still use it"?

Are you innovating? Are you top of mind for people? Is your tech transforming people's lives?

I use electricity every day. Is electricity relevant in most contexts for me? Nope. I drive a car every day. Is the type of car I drive relevant in any way? Nope.

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

#173

Post by bshacklett »

dv35z wrote: post #156
sixothree wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it is YouTube 100%. I really just used Reddit as a way to kill time. Now I just watch makers doing their thing.

Care to share strong recommendations? Interested in maker spaces, agile, entrepreneurship & prototyping.

Not the parent, but ClickSpring is one of my favorites, though they don’t post much anymore. Also, ThisOldTony. BenEater, TechnologyConnections, Jeff Geerling, GreatScott!, Wintergatan, bigclivedotcom, JK Brickworks, The 8-Bit Guy, and Usagi Electric are more on the tech side of my subscriptions.

It would be great if there was an easier way to share subscriptions.

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

#175

Post by kmeisthax »

valianteffort wrote: post #148
swores wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While this is absurdly conspiratorial, there is a grain of truth to it: early on in Reddit's history, the admins created fake accounts and posted on them to boost engagement[0]. More recently, after the blackout and user exodus, /r/de noticed a bunch of new German-language copies of popular English-language subs being created with a bunch of autotranslated comments[1]. So Reddit's administration is not above creating fake accounts and content to juice numbers.

How much of Reddit's engagement is faked is up for debate - I suspect it's less than we think. However, it'd be really funny if, say, when Reddit IPOs, someone at /r/WSB catches onto this and triggers a bunch of people shorting the stock.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME via https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/13p889x/red...

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

#176

Post by jimhefferon »

okdood64 wrote: post #20
7373737373 wrote: post #12

Reddit feels pretty dead nowadays in comparison. Or at least it is mostly dead to me.

What subreddits did you frequent that now feel dead?

I often check out the LaTeX subreddit and I perceive the number of posts are down, even with a pretty recent new mod, who was doing a good job.

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

#177

Post by [deleted] »

kmlevitt wrote: post #154
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…

I still have mod status on a large-ish (70k+) subreddit so I can view reddit's internal traffic statistics for it, and these estimates are definitely wrong. These stats claim the sub has had 10-20 comments per day in just the past month, so maybe 300-600 tops. In reality it's had 1200+ comments just in the past week alone and probably closer to 5000 for the month. And you can see the activity with your own eyes in ev…

[deleted]

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

#179

Post by callalex »

miki123211 wrote: post #171

I have already said this multiple times in different threads, but I think the protestors took entirely the wrong approach here. The only thing that genuinely scares companies whose primary business model is ads is content that is not considered "brand safe". Posting such content, particularly on subreddits where it doesn't belong, would have been a far more effective strategy IMO. Filling the frontpage with porn, slu…

It’s just a website. Doing all this plotting and scheming takes a lot of effort. Not going to a website because it sucks takes no effort.

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

#180

Post by sdflhasjd »

rabbits_2002 wrote: post #43

A massive decline in post quality. I don’t know what happened but ever since the blackout only garbage gets posted. Even the quality of niche subreddits has fallen. I think the blackout meant that all the well moderated “good” subreddits closed while the bad ones stayed open. Now the bad subreddits are more popular and have eclipsed the good subreddits. As for other websites, Lemmy and other federated aggregators hav…

I internally laughed by ass off when I found out my mostly technology inept mother now uses lemmy instead of reddit.

I entirely quit it myself, and when I do end up driving bythe more niche subreddits from typical search results, I find that it feels way more dead.

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