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An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

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Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#281

Post by mrlala »

trianglem wrote: post #232
eric_cc wrote: post #147

Are there any good alternatives to the reddit platform? I've been a user since 2006. When reddit blew up in popularity, many subs massively declined in quality as is to be expected. Niche subs, however, remained pretty great. But reddit as an organization is beyond repair at this point. Changes like this are now par for the course. Worse even, reddit is now engaged in censoring subs. The most obvious and possibly mos…

r/the_donald has many many posts advocating for violence against certain groups in clear violation of policy. These posts would stay up for days or weeks. In my opinion quarantining them was basically a slap on the wrist.

>In my opinion quarantining them was basically a slap on the wrist.

I mean, I agree they should have been banned from day one basically.. but to say it's a slap on the wrist is odd because absolutely no one has to read any of their trash unless you specifically go there. Most random reddit users probably don't even know of td, let alone would actually go there voluntarily.

That being said.. I think it's unconscionable that reddit allows that subreddit to exist.. it's literally a breeding ground for violence and hate thought/speech.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#282

Post by dyingkneepad »

asdfman123 wrote: post #280
jackcosgrove wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing lasts forever. Reddit is 14 years old. They've had a good run. I think there is a general trend away from user-generated content as a business model, because that content can be a bit salty. Reddit might just be cashing out because the wave they rode has already crested.

Without researching traffic stats over time, what gives you the impression that reddit is dying? I'm under the impression it's only become bigger and bigger over the years. It's one of the top sites on the internet. Also,for me, it's still a great social media site that lets me talk anonymously about almost anything. The beauty of reddit is that serious decline and toxicity only seems to happen within subs. If a sub…

I'm not parent, but the very fact that they keep degrading the UI and implementing dark patterns and doing crap like requiring login to read comments is exactly what gives the impression that reddit is dying. It is hard to assume that people on top care about their users when every single news about any kind of change looks like to a downgrade to my Reddit experience.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#283

Post by wescarpenter »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #254
Chirael wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is starting to do this as well. For example they've made it so that accounts with less than 1000 subscribers can't do live streams any more. Not coincidentally, 1000 subscribers is the threshold for monetization (i.e., when ads start getting shown on all the account's videos). A lot of smaller channels are upset about it, since live streams were one of the ways they were /getting/ to 1000 subscribers in the f…

Another YT issue I personally find annoying as someone who has recorded a LOT of programming tutorials is all the garbage that pops up on the lower part of the screen whenever the viewer presses pause. A lot of times they're hitting pause because they want to read what I'm typing in the terminal . In the past, YT allowed creators to prevent this behavior and recommended videos in general by appending a ?rel=0 to an e…

YES. Video recommendations covering the screen while I pause to try and read something. Is it really that niche of a use case that the user is pausing the video to better view something in said video?! How many more places do we need to shove recommendation systems down the users throat.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#284

Post by dandelo1953 »

Cephalopterus wrote: post #124
jackcosgrove wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing lasts forever. Reddit is 14 years old. They've had a good run. I think there is a general trend away from user-generated content as a business model, because that content can be a bit salty. Reddit might just be cashing out because the wave they rode has already crested.

> because that content can be a bit salty. AKA the fate of every site that is a collection of usergenerated content with an ad based business model. If you want to get serious about monetization then you need to actively curtail any content that is not "advertiser friendly" which in most cases means alienating your core content generators, case in point, Tumblr.

Just want to say I cannot agree with these sentiments more.

Google turned a seemingly benign industry into something people now regularly refer to as "weaponized" messaging.

The pen is mightier than the sword. The spoken word is mightier than both. We need to relearn how to talk to one another instead of relying on what used to be a useful heuristic shortcut in our day to day life.

We got drunk on the convenience of industry automating massaging before we even realized tech would lead to automation could scale at such exponential rates.

Our linear thinking in 3d space time is not able to keep up with all the degrees of separation in play anymore.

Marketing is a joke and everyone knows it. This is the real industry that is "too big to fail". And that they pinned it on the penultimate boogey man (aka money) is just more fuel to that fire.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#285

Post by asdfman123 »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #282
asdfman123 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without researching traffic stats over time, what gives you the impression that reddit is dying? I'm under the impression it's only become bigger and bigger over the years. It's one of the top sites on the internet. Also,for me, it's still a great social media site that lets me talk anonymously about almost anything. The beauty of reddit is that serious decline and toxicity only seems to happen within subs. If a sub…

I'm not parent, but the very fact that they keep degrading the UI and implementing dark patterns and doing crap like requiring login to read comments is exactly what gives the impression that reddit is dying. It is hard to assume that people on top care about their users when every single news about any kind of change looks like to a downgrade to my Reddit experience.

I'm still baffled about the UI "improvement." It's comically bad. It's so busy and I can't find anything I want.

I have never, ever seen a site anywhere near as big as Reddit with such a bad redesign. It seems they could have hired one UX guy and one graphic guy... I could probably pay some people on Fiverr $100 total to create a better design for the entirety of Reddit.

The old design was boring and out of date, but it was everything I needed so I was fine with it.

But I'm mainly a mobile user so I don't really care.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#286

Post by fourstar »

remote_phone wrote: post #149

Reddit is the Uber of social media. All of the hard work is done for free by the mods of each subreddit. But they have no piece of the pie when Reddit goes IPO. The entire value is predicated on an Army of free workers that get nothing when the site IPOs.

That's a pretty poignant comparison.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#287

Post by mrlala »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #113
Someone1234 wrote: post #45

This is classic shortermism. Reddit is, in the short term, driving more external users towards creating user accounts while in the long term removing one of the major value funnels for why they would (i.e. the quality of comments, particularly in certain niche communities/about niche topics). This will give them a short term "bump" at the cost of the site's long term relevance (as it falls down Google's search result…

Nothing lasts forever. Reddit is 14 years old. They've had a good run. I think there is a general trend away from user-generated content as a business model, because that content can be a bit salty. Reddit might just be cashing out because the wave they rode has already crested.

>They've had a good run.

You say that but... what is an alternative? I literally don't know where to go.

Like sports? /r/nfl /r/nba /r/insertsporthere

Like vr? /r/oculus /r/vive /r/insertothervrhere

And then just all the random stuff that is somewhat interesting...

I have such a love/hate relationship with reddit but I don't see any alternative.. especially if you like to actually discuss about topics.

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#288

Post by thebruce87m »

mFixman wrote: post #52
Havoc wrote: post #3

They've been making increasingly more user hostile choice lately. Digg lessons weren't apparently not learned

Digg failed because Reddit existed. There's no similar social media for Reddit refugees to go to.

Time to go back to the source? Something Awful?

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#289

Post by blueberry_47 »

DataGata wrote: post #215
eric_cc wrote: post #147

Are there any good alternatives to the reddit platform? I've been a user since 2006. When reddit blew up in popularity, many subs massively declined in quality as is to be expected. Niche subs, however, remained pretty great. But reddit as an organization is beyond repair at this point. Changes like this are now par for the course. Worse even, reddit is now engaged in censoring subs. The most obvious and possibly mos…

One solution might be a "federated reddit". Hacker News is essentially just a subreddit run by YC, so getting people/organizations/interest groups to run their own reddit forums is probably a good idea. It would let each community figure out its own income stream and not worry about advertisers running wild or the entire thing being bought out by the Chinese.

Please name it freddirated

Re: An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?

#290

Post by aschismatic »

harshalizee wrote: post #199
dougmwne wrote: post #69

I deleted my Reddit account recently in an effort to curb social media. I've still been checking r/all and some favorite subreddits. Thank you Reddit for further breaking the site and making it easier to ween myself off of. Thank you HN for the addiction block contols on the account screen.

Exactly what I thought! I deleted the Reddit Apollo app when I realized I was using for over 3 hours a day. Now I catch myself sometimes using the mobile version. But the fact that they keep going out of the way to make it work and worse everyday means I actually get to stay away from it.

What are your favorite alternatives to stay in tune with what's happening now? I browse r/all multiple times daily for a bit. I don't get a lot of need-to-know information from it, but some things I like to see are movie trailers, big tech announcements (Xbox Series X yesterday), and in general, things that everyone seems to be "in the know" of. It's my main pop culture news outlet, but I feel like it shouldn't be.
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