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What Reddit Got Wrong

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Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#181

Post by JohnFen »

SoftTalker wrote: post #137
soperj wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napster worked because it was free and easy and that didn't exist before (FTP servers were not easy). If it were because it was centralized then bit-torrent would have never taken off.

Hm. FTP servers are pretty easy. "ls" to see files. "get" to get them. What wasn't easy was finding them, and then preventing them falling over when too many people tried to access them at the same time. Napster solved that with distributed file serving and consolidated listings of what was available.

Even easier if you used a nice client to access ftp. The notion that Napster was easier than FTP doesn't ring true to me, either.

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#182

Post by seszett »

tmaly wrote: post #102
nullindividual wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put those together and it's plausible that Reddit wants to go from a discussion site with cats to a cats feed site with meaningless discussion, and a bunch of ads mixed in. Based off of my personal experience with many subreddits that have a four digit plus subscriber count, I think reddit has largely already achieved the above goal. The amount of mindless "me too!" and "here's how that works /confidentlyincorrect"…

People are going to go somewhere. I just can't see Lemmy, Kbin, or Mastadon gaining much traction. For those old enough to remember Napster, it worked because it was centralized.

Napster was actually made up of a large number of servers that didn't really communicate much, especially for chat.

You couldn't choose your server on the official application, but others allowed you to do you could always meet the same persons. I was on the Orange server.

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#183

Post by jameson71 »

JohnFen wrote: post #173
MostlyStable wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Compared to what? It's really important to compare those reddit results to elsewhere and not the hypothetical "best" answer. Yeah, reddit answers are often not great, but in my experience, the rest of google search has, over the past 10 years, gone to complete and utter shit. If I don't already know where to look (and just want google to get me there faster), 99% of my results are going to be useless blogspam. 2)…

> reddit answers are often not great, but in my experience, the rest of google search has, over the past 10 years, gone to complete and utter shit. Fascinating. I've read so many comments here about how people search reddit specifically in order to get better results, but I've never understood this. I don't find reddit to be better enough for that sort of thing to be worth going to reddit as a first choice. Perhaps t…

It's really good for home type technical questions too. Like a stack overflow for plex or handyman type things for people who want to scan text and not watch a half hour youtube.

What are you using instead of google search?

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#184

Post by tootie »

cwkoss wrote: post #41

Posted this a while back, but maybe someone will want to pick this up and run with it now: I specced out a decentralized spam-resistant reddit alternative a while ago, and posted it here a few months ago. Please build this, happy to sign away non-exclusive IP rights if you have an idea of how to monetize. --- I've specced out a decentralized reddit alternative a little bit, but have too many side projects. Someone pl…

I said the same about Mastodon v Twitter, but decentralized solves nothing. It just makes it impossible to complain to anyone. We absolutely need centralized and uniform moderation rules and guidelines. And it needs sustainable funding to operate. There are not really any major tech challenges to achieve this. You could build a 140-character microblog in a weekend. The problem is attracting enough users to generate the requisite network effects and building trust amongst those users. Both of which are human problems and very, very hard to do.

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#185

Post by ugjka »

raverbashing wrote: post #176
ravenstine wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you have to do is look at what every other social media platform has done, which is devolve into an infinite scroll of the following: - Kitty/puppy videos - Exotic street food - girls with shorts/leggings showing buttcrack or cameltoe acting oblivious or holding a product (i.e. using ambiguous sexuality to sell something) - Someone doing some kind of weird elaborate craft as a form of spectacle - Twerking or faux…

You're right about people eating this shit up of course But the question is if people will willingly remain on a Reddit which is just like Tiktok or YT shorts or Instagram, etc and has no differentiator Especially with their lousy mobile experience

If there was a clear successor existing with a team that could scale fast, there wouldn't be a Reddit strike but a Reddit exodus. Lemmy and other garbage is not it...

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#186

Post by flomo »

transcriptase wrote: post #35
greenpresident wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is already a large population of bots reposting formerly popular content, including the comments from the original thread. It’s eerie once you notice it.

I’ve seen entire (dozen reply long) comment chains on a repost (or similar content) that were re-created verbatim from an older post. Each one garnered the same hundreds of upvotes as the original, and each bot seemed to be part of a network that was farming karma through this process. Eerie was an understatement.

> I’ve seen entire comment chains on a repost that were re-created verbatim from an older post.

I have seen this happen on one of those (former) small niche cozy subs, where it is small enough that people notice their content being recycled. No idea what the goal might be, so I wonder if it is a platform feature to pump-up engagement by automatically reposting content.

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#187

Post by dannersy »

spencerhakim wrote: post #121
jarcoal wrote: post #73

What went wrong is that after being divested from Condé Nast, reddit went and raised a huge round that ensured they would have to go down the route of synthetic growth tactics. This whole operation could be wildly profitable with a team of 50-100 people and no major investors to appease. Instead they read the room wrong, or just didn't care, and now we're here.

Reddit should have stuck to the Craigslist model of simply just existing as-is, selling a reasonable amount of ads and premium subscriptions, and only having the minimum number of employees required to keep the site up. It never needed to be and shouldn't have been anything more than that.

Yet another brand gone to shit in the name of "exponential growth" or some other term investors want to hear. No one considers whether their business should fit a model that prioritizes sustainability.

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#188

Post by ggregoire »

ravenstine wrote: post #136
dale_glass wrote: post #3

I think the idea put out by some people here that Reddit might be in the process of radically changing tracks is plausible. Reddit was always very hands-off. They had lots of very unpleasant and controversial content until their hand was forced. Overall they seem to want a site that runs itself as much as possible and over time content that required interaction and management (eg, AMAs, Secret Santa) got de-prioritiz…

All you have to do is look at what every other social media platform has done, which is devolve into an infinite scroll of the following: - Kitty/puppy videos - Exotic street food - girls with shorts/leggings showing buttcrack or cameltoe acting oblivious or holding a product (i.e. using ambiguous sexuality to sell something) - Someone doing some kind of weird elaborate craft as a form of spectacle - Twerking or faux…

You forgot:

- million dollars mansions tours

- asking strangers in the street how much is their rent or what's their salary

- asking strangers in the street to do X for money (e.g. do 10 pull ups for $100)

- tourism videos in "dangerous" places such as South America, Africa, Middle Orient, East Europe, Asia (i.e. everywhere not in NA and West Europe)

- silent walking/driving 4K videos in Japan/China/South Korea

- "one day in the life of a programmer/student/[whatever] at [prestigious company/college name]" videos, showing a person waking up, taking a shower, eating breakfast, etc.

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#189

Post by JohnFen »

jameson71 wrote: post #183
JohnFen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reddit answers are often not great, but in my experience, the rest of google search has, over the past 10 years, gone to complete and utter shit. Fascinating. I've read so many comments here about how people search reddit specifically in order to get better results, but I've never understood this. I don't find reddit to be better enough for that sort of thing to be worth going to reddit as a first choice. Perhaps t…

It's really good for home type technical questions too. Like a stack overflow for plex or handyman type things for people who want to scan text and not watch a half hour youtube. What are you using instead of google search?

DDG, although I think I'll be switching to Kagi in the future.

> for people who want to scan text and not watch a half hour youtube.

I never use YouTube videos for that sort of thing because I don't really learn well from videos. I'm a text kind of guy. But even for those sorts of things, I never have a problem finding good resources on the web, so I have no reason to have to go to reddit for them.

That's just me, though. It's not a criticism of reddit, just a preference. Reddit is just not my kind of place, so I like to avoid it when I can.

Re: What Reddit Got Wrong

#190

Post by nitwit005 »

The takeaway for me, is that the moderation tools were neglected, despite the site being essentially dependent on them. Note the accessibility complaints from blind subreddits. They couldn't be bothered to make it work with a screen reader.

Important to remember some of the people moderating this stuff have had to deal with spam/bot activity severe enough to make the news (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wallstreetbets-reddit-bot-activ...). It's unsurprising some ended up dependent on external apps.

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