An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads? • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by olyjohn » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

aschismatic wrote: post #290

harshalizee wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you'll find that if you just quit worrying about "what's happening now," you'll find that you aren't actually missing anything.

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

#332

Post by trianglem » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

Starkus wrote: post #312

mrlala wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 unconscionabl…

That is totally false to assert. So basically you're saying to 'ban them from day one' because...you don't like their politics? and no, they are not a 'breeding ground for violence and hate thought/speech' Reminds me of 'wrongthink' and you're advocating for its censor? Censorship is evil, censoring that sub was evil to supress information

There is a lot of difference between “wrongthink” in the 1984 sense and only prohibiting particularly evil ideologies that advocate for violence. These are not subjective view points, violence is universally bad for everyone.

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

#333

Post by MrRadar » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

lghh wrote: post #98

AJ007 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you using now? I’ve been an active member of various communities and forums over the years (excluding reddit), and I never actively left one. It was always just a realization I hadn’t been to the site (or really aging myself, BBS) in a year. Most of them where daily habits at one point.

I wonder if there is a market for a Reddit alternative that is somehow treads the line between being a cesspool like that one site that tried to replace Reddit when they banned a lot of fascist stuff was and that other site that infantilized everyone. Is there a middle ground? I feel like treading it would be useful.

Any "Reddit alternative" will have a hard time gathering users as long as Reddit exists (and doesn't alienate a critical mass of their users ala Digg). Dan Olson of the YouTube channel Folding Ideas made a very insightful video about the problem of setting up "alternatives" to popular social media platforms (having lived through several painful platform transitions himself): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3snVCRo_bI

The tl;dw is that if your "alternative" platform doesn't launch with unique and valuable features of its own to attract users away from the original platform then you will only attract toxic people who get kicked off the original platform as the first users of your "alternative" platform (because they are the only ones really in need of an "alternative"). This creates a self-reinforcing pattern where non-toxic users are repulsed from your alternative platform by the toxic users so growth only comes from more toxic users. You can clearly see this in the dynamic between Reddit and Voat.

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

#334

Post by icebraining » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

arkades wrote: post #168

coldpie wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look to Patreon God, this one baffles me. I feel like you could write that website and app with 5-10 skilled employees and a handful more for support and administrative overhead, skim your 10% of a good chunk of all Internet microtransactions, and retire early. Then they go and nuke all their goodwill trying to milk every cent they can out of the process[1]. What the fuck? Just make a product people want to use and…

There are an awful lot of Patreon users waiting for an alternative. If it’s so easy...

There's https://en.liberapay.com/, https://ko-fi.com/ and https://www.buymeacoffee.com/, just from the top of my head. And https://en.tipeee.com/, which I just found.

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

#335

Post by icebraining » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #318

q3k wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this suffers from the 'Effective Target Audience: Assholes' effect. It's basically impossible to start a YT or Patreon or Twitter alternative without either accidentally or actively pandering to people who have been kicked out of the main competitor, which mostly happen to be neonazis and/or fascists. As such, most alternatives will immediately have their main pages full of hate speech and nazi propagan…

I wonder if the same company could silo content to address this effect. Essentially have the same staff support multiple sites with identical backends. One which is child friendly, one racists, one for porn, ect. If creators get flagged too much, they just get bumped to a different silo, but you still take their money.

People who despise the assholes will still not want to be associated with companies that take their money.

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

#336

Post by kissickas » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

Deimorz wrote: post #304

kissickas wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one you're referencing is voat.co. I can't remember the name of the second, but I do remember cute-looking dinosaurs all over the place and I think that's the one you're talking about. Side note - I thought Victoria Taylor (/u/chooter) left for that competitor, but it appears that she was at WeWork and now at LinkedIn (as of August - just in time!)

The cute dinosaur one you're talking about was Imzy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imzy Victoria never worked at Imzy though (and didn't leave for anything - she was fired). She was at Cake ( https://cake.co/ ) for a while, I think that was between WeWork and LinkedIn.

Thanks! Wow, Cake looks terrible. I wish someone would just fork reddit and stop trying to make it look cute. Dense text may not be beautiful from afar but it looks so much better from a user's perspective than acres of whitespace and endless scrolling.

edit: just checking out your project. Looks more like what I'm talking about!

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

#337

Post by Lammy » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #115

mietek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 year club; charter member; already gone.

And I remember what brought me there. Was people spamming about it on slashdot and digg. I have the decss controversy to thank for bringing me to a place that didnt censor a number just cuz it might be illegal in some states. I had heard of it before and checked it when it was linked to, but that was the first time I gave it a chance as my go to page when first logging onto the internet. Reddit has long been replaced…

Please forgive my pedantry, but I just wanted to note that you’re referring to the AACS (used for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) decryption key censored on Digg. The DeCSS stuff with Jon Lech Johansen was five years earlier than that. Cheers :)

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

#338

Post by wool_gather » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

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…

Stack Overflow is currently engaged in the same kind of transformation. It's sad to see these giants of user participation turning away from what (I believe) made them so wonderful, and towards raw-numbers-growth at all cost. I suppose the folks with the money will be happy, but it diminishes our culture. The pursuit of quality content certainly supports sustainable growth, but it seems that it's just not big and fast enough [to pay the VC piper][0].

[0]:https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/340250

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

#339

Post by mrlala » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

Starkus wrote: post #329

mrlala wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok td shit poster.

Classic, well thought out response. lol...

What's the point in actually debating with you? You condone how r/the_donald behaves, so you are beyond help from an internet stranger.

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

#340

Post by basch » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #337

basch wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I remember what brought me there. Was people spamming about it on slashdot and digg. I have the decss controversy to thank for bringing me to a place that didnt censor a number just cuz it might be illegal in some states. I had heard of it before and checked it when it was linked to, but that was the first time I gave it a chance as my go to page when first logging onto the internet. Reddit has long been replaced…

Please forgive my pedantry, but I just wanted to note that you’re referring to the AACS (used for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) decryption key censored on Digg. The DeCSS stuff with Jon Lech Johansen was five years earlier than that. Cheers :)

i appreciate it, youre right it was hddvd not dvd.