Reddit is such a cesspool of low-quality commentary and rage-baiting. The front page/popular category is particularly egregious.
Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
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Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#42[flagged]
Aaron didn't really have anything to do with Reddit. He was foisted on the founders by Paul Graham.
Aaron helped rewrite Reddit's codebase. He had a lot to do with Reddit until he didn't.
"One of the points of the merger was that we would all call ourselves co-founders, so that's what I've been doing. I'd be happy to stop if that's what Steve and Alexis wanted, though." - Aaron Swartz
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#43Listened to this episode on a road trip yesterday and really enjoyed it. If you do a "part 2", I'm curious to hear more details about how they pulled off the growth of Reddit, broadening from an initial niche community into a wider collection of communities. Thanks jl and clevy!
They got multiple migration waves from digg, added subreddits, then network effects started.
Early Reddit was pretty boring unless you were interested in programming or technology. The first big bump in users from digg was during the HD-DVD key fracas. The ham-handed response by digg to even talking about the key leak pissed off a lot of users. They were already simmering due to astroturfing/Payola by "power users" (we'd call them influencers today).
Then a huge influx came after the digg v4 rollout that basically turned the site into a giant advertising channel, more so than it had been.
I'm no Reddit insider but I got turned onto it in 2005 or so and watched the digg user influxes over the years.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#44This is a nice time to remind everyone that Aaron Swartz died while fighting for a freer internet and a freer world. He is, by Paul Graham, considered a founder of reddit but is rarely mentioned in these stories. Instead of trying to go for broke and grind till he could cash out, Aaron put his skin in the game for what the internet should become. Which gets more relevant everyday that the internet megacorps consolida…
It'd be nice if they'd stop trying erase Aaron's work on Reddit but that's been underway for some time, and I'm not even really sure why. I can't fathom an end-goal where marginalizing Aaron's contributions is a benefit to them.
Yeah it was long before the government went after Aaron. You could hear it straight from spez but the comment linked here is deleted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#45I ask myself on a weekly basis when old.reddit.com will disappear. And there is nothing more cruel than the new Reddit, UI-wise. Even Twitter's "threading" of conversations appears to make more sense, even though I have still not figured out how it works.
I know some people at Reddit and sadly it's definitely going to happen.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#46I tried Reddit for a while but overall the site is not that different from any incarnation of Twitter. The main difference is individuals vs. subreddits, and if you're careful selecting interesting individuals on Twitter / interesting subreddits on Reddit, you can often find a fair amount of useful content, but the effort is barely worth the bother, it feels like looking for needles in a haystack.
If you're just passively absorbing content on either platform both are equally poor quality, not all that different from watching MSNBC, CNN or FOX - i.e. heavily gamed by advertisers and propagandists.
What Twitter and Reddit also have in common is a low-quality in-house search engine and a restricted API for search, which I assume is an attempt to control exposure of content by administrators, subreddit moderators, etc.
Twitter: "Please note that Twitter's search service and, by extension, the Search API is not meant to be an exhaustive source of Tweets. Not all Tweets will be indexed or made available via the search interface."
Reddit: "You can search subreddits and posts, but comments aren’t available to search via the public API."
They appear to want to feed users content algorithmically based on some profile/agenda, and not just let users go wandering around finding content based on their own criteria.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#47Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#48I ask myself on a weekly basis when old.reddit.com will disappear. And there is nothing more cruel than the new Reddit, UI-wise. Even Twitter's "threading" of conversations appears to make more sense, even though I have still not figured out how it works.
Well, i.reddit.com just recently disappeared, so it might be sooner than later.
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#49Reddit is such a cesspool of low-quality commentary and rage-baiting. The front page/popular category is particularly egregious.
Front page is horrible, and I always skip it by bookmarking a subreddit that I'm already subscribed to.
Front page feels like clickbait and "get angry for engagement metrics"
Re: Listen to Steve Huffman tell the story of how Reddit got started
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that?
Reddit recently announced changes to their APIs pricing and features that will probably lead to the abandonment of most third-party Reddit clients. Users of those clients are upset. https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12ram0f/had_a_fe...
Gotcha, thanks