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Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

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Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#121
post #102
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you use Reddit the way I do when posting anonymously: I post on throwaway accounts and delete the accounts every few weeks. The account names aren’t saved in the posts, and the posts aren’t linked in any visible way. I’m sure Reddit has code in the back end to track people, but afaik thanks to Reddit’s general lack of ads, there just aren’t a ton of DMPs, so there aren’t a lot of data points to correlate with…

IP, browser signature, topic browsing patterns, linguistic mannerisms. Not too hard.

Right but I think their picture will be disjointed and incomplete. Something like 99% of all users are lurkers who never post a single comment.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#122
post #58

As a long, long time user of Reddit, it has been quite saddening to see its descent into the shallow, ultra-toxic husk of a corporate entity that it is today. I'm not surprised by its popularity; it's a headline-surfers paradise, one in which you get feel good points for displays of virtue or shitposting easily digested content in an era of unparalleled narcissism and shortened attention spans. All is not lost though…

I'd like a reddit-like site that is more exclusive, it filters out the non-serious users with a yearly subscription fee of say $100.

Subscription filters might also filter out un-employed content producers who have free time to produce the quality content in the first place.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#123
post #94

The biggest value gain from Reddit, to me, is the ability to centralize effectively around different hobbies and activities. In the past, if you wanted to find an online community for a movie or a game, you had to find a forum for that community. Finding forums that are well managed and capture a good segment of the community is hard -- and Reddit just becomes a default place to look now. Let's say a new TV show star…

And for the majority of the large subs for a specific interest, they are astroturfed to hell and back. Much of the content you see on /r/all is likely corporate shilling with sock puppets controlling the promotion of the item and the comments within.

There should be Moore's/ Poe's law for the correlation of the size and influence of a site to the amount of corporate influence on said site. As the natural user base grows to a certain point, it becomes impossible to tell what is organic and what is advertisements or narrative pushing propaganda.

Same issue exists on Youtube and IG with product review shilling.

Sheds a whole new light on the situation when you realize the youtube vid you're watching for tool reviews is actually a disguised advertisement punctuated by auto playing obvious ads.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#124
post #51
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be same for Reddit, and their app ecosystem.

I can't say I'm enthused by reddit-on-mobile. I stick to the desktop version. No idea if I'm alone in that...

https://i.reddit.com is a good balance between app and the desktop website. A lot faster than m.reddit.com and supports the basic features of reading comments, commenting, and submitting. It also doesn't crash all the time and saves data.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#125
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the focus on the toxic user base is an artifact of the idea of one-dimensionally categorizing people based on their political ideology. That is such a hot button right now that it completely overshadows all other contributions to society in most forums. Reddit, by allowing some bad behavior and anonymity diffuses that ever present political aspect of modern life.

The kind of toxic people we are talking about on Reddit are not toxic for their politics. Racism, bigotry, and misogyny are not political topics. It isn't like tax policy or any other topic that can be debated. There is one clear side that is wrong.

Racism, bigotry and misogyny are politics. You perfectly demonstrate my point in that you hold the political aspects above all other aspects in determining the validity of an entire persons life and contribution to society because of the ideas they express. For example, Roseanne making one tweet and ruining her whole career. Reddit doesn't force that sort of political conformity on people.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#127
post #51
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be same for Reddit, and their app ecosystem.

I can't say I'm enthused by reddit-on-mobile. I stick to the desktop version. No idea if I'm alone in that...

There are some quality third-party clients on mobile. I like Apollo on iOS right now.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#128
post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

Reddit is now adding profile info and friends and such. Unfortunately.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#129
post #51
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be same for Reddit, and their app ecosystem.

I can't say I'm enthused by reddit-on-mobile. I stick to the desktop version. No idea if I'm alone in that...

Narwhal on iOS is pretty great. First-party reddit app is quite bad. Ironically reddit heavily pushes their official mobile app if you visit on mobile Safari.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#130
post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

Small reddit communities are drama free and non toxic and also anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. I think at 100K+ subreddits start breaking apart and toxic voices and groupthink take over.
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