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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

#132
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.

So there's no debate to be had on affirmative action, and everyone who supports it is racist and wrong? Plenty of people I know consider it racist.

The reality is, how people and groups define terms like racism, bigotry, and misogyny is often very politicized.

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

#133
Reddit has always been a strange place to me, even as it has grown to be a cornerstone of socialization on the internet. I didn't grow up with it, I'm still not a huge fan of the layout even after the redesign, the way comments work still annoys me, and there are still plenty of stereotypical Reddit users that I do not want to associate or be associated with. However, I can no longer deny that it serves no purpose or that it is arbitrarily bad: it has a bevy of information I simply can't get anywhere else, "everyone" uses it in some manner so it's not an unknown in conversation, and it's got plenty of niche communities that might appeal to my interests.

In the process, it's eaten up all sorts of one-off forums and communities that don't wave the Reddit flag because it's just way easier to make a Reddit board for your interest/community. Reddit also doesn't have cute features like emoticons, their markdown isn't as intuitive as BBCode tags to me, and the versatility of a given Reddit board is limited to what can be done with CSS and each board's Wiki. Files have to be hosted elsewhere (game mods, game recordings via SourceTV and similar, etc.), though this isn't anywhere near as big of a deal as I'm making it.

Am I joining the e-Dinosaur ranks?

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

#134
Newsgroups took a dive when people moved to web forums, scattered all around the web.

Now people are moving back to a centralized website, reddit, that's interestingly almost like reading newsgroup threads.

Always thought the biggest problem with forums, not feeding RSS feeds back into newsgroups to keep it alive. But then, you couldn't reply, and was only for archival purposes.

At least with Reddit, I can use ifttt to push content into reddit, and make the discussion happen on reddit, in dedicated subs.

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

#135
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…

Sure, but the specialized subreddits are a little too "baseline". For my hobbies, I still go on the actual forums when I need to speak with someone about issues beyond entry level.

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

#136
What surprises be about reddit is that they get advertisers and ads while having one of the largest porn communities.

No one talks about this, and people are quick to say "Tumblr/4chan is just porn!", but not only is there a myriad of porn subreddits, many of them have OC content (people posting themselves), who thanks to reddit's new profile followers feature have a fanbase. One only needs to look at /r/sexsells (NSFW) to see this in action.

With the shutdown of Craigslist personals, people are (using and have been using) reddit for hookups as well. Crazy that they "get away" with the #1 killer of social media platform ad revenue.

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

#137
post #111
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…

I think the flip side to this is that the communities are becoming so large now that they aren't really a community. I sometimes go on the /r/UK and the level of discussion gets lower and lower as the community dissolves. Rather than getting to know people everyone is just shouting into the void - unaware of who anyone else is.

r/unitedkingdom is a special kind of terrible because it's essentially all cynicism and politics all the time. It got to the point where a lot of people left for r/casualuk which is basically politics free.

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

#138
post #16
post #5

I've recently been thinking that Reddit holds a lot of potential that has yet to be tapped or expired. The recent pivots post CEO change (mobile app, redesign, crackdown on garbage) speak to a future where currently fractured private communities such as those on Discourse or Slack can find a more publicly accessible presence. Facebook Groups, while immensely popular, currently falls into the same opt-in, zero-discove…

Facebook also tending to restrict access to information behind a login. Compared to reddit, which most of its content is publicly visible. They are built on two very ideas though. The amount of times I have to ask someone on Facebook to get information for me is upsetting. To clarify, I'm banned from Facebook, not for being a dickhead though

I agree with this. I've gotten tons of information from Reddit over the years, but have yet to create a user.

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

#139
post #111
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…

I think the flip side to this is that the communities are becoming so large now that they aren't really a community. I sometimes go on the /r/UK and the level of discussion gets lower and lower as the community dissolves. Rather than getting to know people everyone is just shouting into the void - unaware of who anyone else is.

The advantage to Reddit is the ability for other communities to just pop up and potentially fill gaps.

Usually once a sub hits a certain level of activity... I leave and look for another one ;)

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

#140
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…

> Let's say a new TV show starts airing, and you really like it and want to discuss it more. You can probably bet there's a subreddit for it, and in that community, a ton of people interested in it.

Before someone could go to the IMDB forums and discuss it. I think they did the job a lot better - if you found a conversation about a particular episode and wanted to comment on it a few weeks after it was made, you could and the topic would come back to the top. With Reddit (and Hacker News), if you're late to the party no one is going to see your comment because the topic is already buried.

Reddit's large variety of user created communities as well as anonymous handles make the site pretty useful. But in terms of the format of the communities, I think the old style of forums were much more conducive to actual ongoing conversations.

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