Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts • Hacker News Board

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#41

Post by schmookeeg » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

brink wrote: post #7

Years ago I participated in this. Someone sent me a beautiful programming book, but I failed to purchase and send a gift for my recipient because I was a stupid, selfish kid. I still feel horrible about it to this day.

Heh. Funny -- I participated in reddit secretsanta years ago, and never got anything in return. First and last secret santa from me.

It's like I got scammed by one of those indian grandma-targeting call centers, but only out of like 50 bucks instead of a few grand in iTunes cards.

I haven't thought about that in a long time.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#42

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #23

xanaxagoras wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me reddit lost sight of why I used the site about 3 years ago, or maybe that's just when it got bad enough that I no longer felt unsubscribing from all defaults was a suitable solution. There's really nowhere left to hide from the rigorous enforcement of orthodox leftist thought. It's mostly a mutual admiration society where the boundaries of allowed disagreement and interesting discussion may touch here and ther…

they were giving up when in 2015 they allowed bots to push the_donald to the front page consistenly leading to a steady diet of propaganda subs and hate fueled subs. they were and still sre just as myopic is their tainting public discourse in pursuit of social media

And the leftists on Reddit have adopted the same playbook but the admins don’t care to stop it. Whereas the_donald was just one offender, dozens of subreddits manage to spam the same kind of content to the front page. It’s not uncommon to see the exact same submission appear twice on r/all from subreddits like r/AOC and r/ourpresident.

Or, they co-opt subreddits like r/murderedbywords, r/facepalm, r/insanepeoplefacebook to constantly submit political messaging, usually screenshots of tweets.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#43

Post by bmarquez » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #42

cyanydeez wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they were giving up when in 2015 they allowed bots to push the_donald to the front page consistenly leading to a steady diet of propaganda subs and hate fueled subs. they were and still sre just as myopic is their tainting public discourse in pursuit of social media

And the leftists on Reddit have adopted the same playbook but the admins don’t care to stop it. Whereas the_donald was just one offender, dozens of subreddits manage to spam the same kind of content to the front page. It’s not uncommon to see the exact same submission appear twice on r/all from subreddits like r/AOC and r/ourpresident. Or, they co-opt subreddits like r/murderedbywords, r/facepalm, r/insanepeoplefaceb…

I've noticed this in some non-political subreddits, having seen submissions with a political flavor (always left-leaning) get massively upvoted higher than the average usercount of that subreddit and the average upvotes for other submissions on that subreddit.

Sometimes I worry when niche subreddits get too popular, since they start getting political submissions.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#44

Post by KitDuncan » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #31

erezyehuda wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but notice that your link to New Secret Santa is under the "old" subdomain.

Any real redditor still uses old.reddit.com, the day they get rid of that, I'm guessing the same thing that happened to digg will happen.

Give libreddit a shot. I recently switched from old.reddit.com and much prefer it.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#45

Post by sneak » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:24 AM UTC

erezyehuda wrote: post #28

julietteeb wrote: post #11

Looks like its being recreated by the first three employees at r/newsecretsanta ( https://old.reddit.com/r/newsecretsanta/ )

I can't help but notice that your link to New Secret Santa is under the "old" subdomain.

The new Reddit web UI is literally unusable: many links simply pop a modal where the options are "go back" or "install the app".

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#46

Post by libraryatnight » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:35 AM UTC

xanaxagoras wrote: post #35

lwansbrough wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's really nowhere left to hide from the rigorous enforcement of orthodox liberal thought. Leftism (which is what reddit is for the most part) is definitely not orthodox liberalism, for what it’s worth. But reddit’s political discussions have rarely ever progressed past what you might hear in a 9th grade social studies class anyway. Definitely not worth engaging in. And that’s coming from someone who considers…

Good point! I’m squarely on the right in today’s climate and I think I’m more classically liberal than reddit’s authoritarian left that I had in mind when I wrote that. I suppose I meant to say “orthodox leftist thought”. It’s hard not to get turned around here in opposite world.

What does authoritarian left mean?

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#47

Post by gundmc » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

esyir wrote: post #38

cyanydeez wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they were giving up when in 2015 they allowed bots to push the_donald to the front page consistenly leading to a steady diet of propaganda subs and hate fueled subs. they were and still sre just as myopic is their tainting public discourse in pursuit of social media

This sounds like "other side politics bad", more than anything else. Reddit's top subs are basically a firehose of propaganda whenever politics are concerned. They've been polluting public discourse for some time, it's just that you only noticed when you didn't agree with said propaganda. For an example, take a look at the murderedbyAOC subreddit. It's literally posts from one guy and used to regularly top /all.

It boggles my mind that reddit escapes the scrutiny from the media that Facebook and Twitter get when it's nearly as influential and just as full of blatant propaganda.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#48

Post by gspr » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #14

brink wrote: post #7

Years ago I participated in this. Someone sent me a beautiful programming book, but I failed to purchase and send a gift for my recipient because I was a stupid, selfish kid. I still feel horrible about it to this day.

A succinct explanation of why I've never participated in any online secret Santa type of thing.

You do the secret Grinch thing instead?

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#49

Post by rStar » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:00 AM UTC

libraryatnight wrote: post #46

xanaxagoras wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point! I’m squarely on the right in today’s climate and I think I’m more classically liberal than reddit’s authoritarian left that I had in mind when I wrote that. I suppose I meant to say “orthodox leftist thought”. It’s hard not to get turned around here in opposite world.

What does authoritarian left mean?

it means lefties, like myself, who, unlike myself, endorse authoritarianism in service to their goals. for instance many of this type today believe that if they disagree with the views of others enough, those people don’t deserve to speak.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#50

Post by drawfloat » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

I appreciate it’s a very different time, so not saying they’re comparable 1 to 1, but back in the waning days of Digg you saw Reddit suddenly growing and growing as this new and actually interesting competitor.

Is there an equivalent today?

I enjoyed using Reddit for years, then used it without (tbh) enjoying it much for probably a couple of years, and finally have almost fully disconnected. There’s no denying it has many more years worth of genuinely useful information on it, so I’ll still use it as a resource for community recommendations when searching.

However, the actual _news_/curated feed mechanic I’ve long sworn off. Is there anything new coming up atm that isn’t just a Reddit knock off?

Edit: side note, thinking about how long ago the Digg —> Reddit shift was has actually filled me with a bit of existential dread. When you stop and think, Reddit has had an incredible run as a popular platform so far.