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Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

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Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

r/covid19 is a great source of information, but the mods police it very heavily to keep it that way.

What have you read there that was such an insightful piece of information?

A lot of papers and clinical trial results are posted there. And given the technical nature of the content a lot of people in the medical field hang out there and comment. Much of it is a bit over my head, but it's a good for learning.

For a sample, here are a couple of posts there today: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00835-2 Therapeutically administered ribonucleoside analogue MK-4482/EIDD-2801 blocks SARS-CoV-2 transmission in ferrets

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/ge... Get Ready for False Side Effects

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is also reliant on third party apps to get content and interaction since their own frontend and backend are terrible for everything but link and comment aggregation.

Holy fuck the new reddit is shitty.... If i just want to see the link, I click the link. If i scroll down on a post, i want to read the comments.... plural, as in many... not just one or two, and then a new, unrelated post, and having to click a button to show the rest of the comments... the only "thing" you have (commenting/discussions), you're destroying now.

I mean it goes deeper. i.reddit.com and v.reddit.com are terrible places to put content if you want someone else to see it on reddit, there are serious performance issues there... and I'm on a wired connection to gigabit fiber in the Bay Area, not on 3G up in the mountains.

It speaks volumes that the best way to browse their social media platform is through third party tools or the deprecated interface. Not only is it a superior way to create and engage with communities (the only good subs are the comment/text driven ones these days anyways, if I want stupid videos I'll go to TikTok and Instagram where all that content comes from anyway), it's more performant.

I don't know what's going on at Reddit HQ but I guess there's a reason I've never heard anyone brag about working there.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#403
post #76

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> But at the end of the day they have to do what's best for the business, and I'm afraid those of us who like the old interface aren't large in number. Do people actually prefer the new interface [on its merits], or do they just use it because it's the default?

From the article: >Reddit Inc. said it averaged 52 million daily active users in October, up 44% from the same month a year earlier The redesign launched in 2018, so I'd say yes, the general public greatly prefers the redesign if they had almost 50% growth last year. Could there be other factors? Sure. But Occam's razor is a solid argument in this context imo.

October was also an election month, so I would assume that more people were checking in to read the screaming matches.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#404
post #254

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> Politics is fine. Politics is fine if it's discussed like it is on HN†: level-headed arguments are debated, discussed, and, if a consensus isn't reached, we can agree to disagree. Reddit is polluted by absolute political drivel, except for a very small subset of subs. Low-effort "Trump is bad" posts that get massively upvoted just gets old after a while, especially when you see it every single day . † HN has been h…

I'm personally not a fan of that kind of content either, but I like that politics is mainstream enough now that it exists. Politics discussion (however shallow) shouldn't be exclusive to certain demographics in my opinion.

Agreed. But should be contained in specific subreddits/forums, in my opinion.

Yes, I'm one of those people that doesn't buy the "everything is politics!" mantra

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#405

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The problem is that subreddit is very prone to heterogeneous opinions and groupthink, even among niche subreddits, mostly around what's appealing to mid-20 year old white US males. The discussion is often very shallow, mostly aimed at "advanced beginners" because that's what appeals to the widest audience and anything else doesn't get traction, unlike in a traditional forum. This is very obvious if you're into a tech…

I'm personally in the camp that the group think occurs more in mid 20 year old white women groups than it does in white males. edit: I don't really get how my comment is any more sexist than saying it's only white men...

I inferred from the comment that Reddit posters are mostly young men, not that groups predominately composed of young women don't exhibit group think.

I'm not a Reddit user but a quick Google search confirms the ratio of males to females on Reddit is at least 2:1 and possibly 3:1.

There are also various other phenomena that suggest Reddit users of any gender or interest might see a disproportionate number of male posters, but we needn't go near those treacherous waters given the above numbers.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#406
post #364

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Niche subreddits are informative and useful. You just have to unsubscribe from all the default reddits and find the niche stuff that interests you. Then your reddit front page becomes one of the most useful media pages on the internet.

Yea, but those niche subreddits are getting rarer and rarer. There's some kind of goldilocks zone where subs are popular enough to be active with interesting content, but not popular enough to devolve into no-effort meme spam. Or possibly terrible moderation ruins the sub completely. Or the official Reddit fun-police shuts you down. I left that cess pool behind about a year ago, and I don't miss it.

New ones pop up to replace the ruined ones. I love Reddit and still find it very useful.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#407
post #302

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Agreed — don’t use the default subreddits. They’re cancer. But I’ve had a great time at the Formula1 subreddit and people are crazy at MechanicalKeyboards. I’m sure you’ll love a knitting group if you enjoy that. Go by your specific interests and really just say no to the generic or huge ones like funny, pics, askreddit etc.

The problem is that subreddit is very prone to heterogeneous opinions and groupthink, even among niche subreddits, mostly around what's appealing to mid-20 year old white US males. The discussion is often very shallow, mostly aimed at "advanced beginners" because that's what appeals to the widest audience and anything else doesn't get traction, unlike in a traditional forum. This is very obvious if you're into a tech…

One thing that's very noticeable compared to traditional forums, and I think plays into this: Traditional forums for deep topics have year-long threads where people are figuring something out together or share project logs. As long as they are active, they get pushed to the top. Reddit does not have that, and suffers for it. (HN too in some ways). Linking back to old reddit threads when continuing a topic is tedious and excludes the discussion even more, so it happens in way more limited contexts.

In contrast, "I just bought X" typically is one megathread in a forum and not half the submissions.

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#408
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been an everyday compulsive reddit user for 12 years. The day they kill old.reddit.com is the day I stop using reddit forever.

I highly doubt that.

Exact same thing happened with digg.com

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that subreddit is very prone to heterogeneous opinions and groupthink, even among niche subreddits, mostly around what's appealing to mid-20 year old white US males. The discussion is often very shallow, mostly aimed at "advanced beginners" because that's what appeals to the widest audience and anything else doesn't get traction, unlike in a traditional forum. This is very obvious if you're into a tech…

Which subreddit?

r/climbing for sure. Most of the programming subreddits. r/woodworking. r/skiing and r/backcountry.

Each of these have non-Reddit counterparts where more serious discussion takes place

Re: Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms

#410
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but those niche subreddits are getting rarer and rarer. There's some kind of goldilocks zone where subs are popular enough to be active with interesting content, but not popular enough to devolve into no-effort meme spam. Or possibly terrible moderation ruins the sub completely. Or the official Reddit fun-police shuts you down. I left that cess pool behind about a year ago, and I don't miss it.

Same here. Reddit wouldn't be so bad if they literally didn't shut down every subreddit just because the psychotically loud minority said so. Plus it boggles my mind why they would do that. You are actively telling your users to go elsewhere. That's literally money and engagement walking out the door. And a lot of it. Now it's just memes, "The republicans are evil again...!", and "My mother who sold me to an african…

Can you point out some subreddits they've shut down that are "money and engagement walking out the door"? The only subreddits I've heard of being shut down are as objectively racist and derogatory as you can get (or NSFL gore). Advertisers and mainstream users generally don't want to be associated with sites promoting those types of content.
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