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Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

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Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#471
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of toxic people we are talking about on Reddit are not toxic for their politics. Racism, bigotry, and misogyny are not political topics. It isn't like tax policy or any other topic that can be debated. There is one clear side that is wrong.

Racism, bigotry and misogyny are politics. You perfectly demonstrate my point in that you hold the political aspects above all other aspects in determining the validity of an entire persons life and contribution to society because of the ideas they express. For example, Roseanne making one tweet and ruining her whole career. Reddit doesn't force that sort of political conformity on people.

Wow, what a disingenuous comment.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#472
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think Roseanne's sins were limited to a single tweet, you're woefully uninformed on the matter. It was the sum of all of her past transgressions, the tweet was merely the straw breaking the camel's back, surprisingly. I would have thought it was the Nazi cookie photoshoot.

The one she, a Jewish woman, did for a Jewish satire magazine?

... which makes it okay because ...?

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#473
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a new user account on Reddit in 30 seconds and don't even need an email (last I checked). Pretty easy to maintain a significant degree of anonymity by just deleting your account and making a new one. With that said, most users are more concerned about being anonymous to their peers in conversation than they are to Reddit's administration itself, IMO.

You do need an email to sign up, although since they allow a user to be 'logged in' as more than one user at a time, they may allow more than one account per email address. And they don't do email confirmation, though. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.

I've got about a hundred accounts and none of them were created with an email address.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#474
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An absolute ton of Reddit users browse the site via apps too. Something to keep in mind. I still agree that Facebook is larger though.

I don't know the usage stats, but I think the app/website ratio is nowhere near the one of facebook. Some probable reasons for this (unbacked) claim: 1) Long sessions are more suitable on a laptop/desktop than on a smartphone (the average session time is ~15mn). 2) There is still a nerdy userbase (mostly early users) who prefer to use the website with all the features. 3) The app is relatively recent (April 2016 vs 2…

As a moderator of a decent-sized subreddit, the number of people who complain they weren't aware of our rules because they use a mobile client (that makes it impossible to view the sidebar, where the rules are mentioned) suggests to me there's a ton of mobile users you're discounting.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#475
post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

I have always been wondering, would people choose to pay reddit instead of getting ads, like 1$ or 10$ a month?

Why would people do either of those things when ad-blockers exist?

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#476
post #235
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toxicity is detrimental by definition, so not sure what you're getting at.

Is there even a definition to "toxicity"? I've just seen it used as a buzzword for "thing I don't like".

Toxicity would be closer to a cluster of trolling and circlejerking.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#477
post #94

The biggest value gain from Reddit, to me, is the ability to centralize effectively around different hobbies and activities. In the past, if you wanted to find an online community for a movie or a game, you had to find a forum for that community. Finding forums that are well managed and capture a good segment of the community is hard -- and Reddit just becomes a default place to look now. Let's say a new TV show star…

> There are groups on Facebook, but it's so tied to you that it's hard to just be a part of a community.

It's also a lot less sreamlined. Dare I say it, reddit feels kind of like an RSS stream of popular content.

Facebook groups feel much more like "go check in and read this group" and the timeline has become increasingly useless.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pseudonymity makes this possible. Users don't post selfies on Reddit, nor their names, nor do they friend people (though you can follow users). On FB users fear for their privacy, and users fear moralizers.

But there is a lot of groupthink on Reddit, too. Some popular forms you just have to stay out of if you have a different opinion.

Sure, but so there is in FB. On Reddit you can have multiple accounts (all pseudonymous) and you can participate on whichever subreddits you like. If there's some sub that isn't too welcoming of your views, chances are there is another that is -- an echo chamber if you want it thus, sure, but no worse than FB.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's okay to some extent but I find that forums definitely are a much better resource and controversial threads or posts in forums don't get buried or hidden by a downvote. Some of the most humorous threads you'll read would have had a -inf rating and thus never seen on reddit. To me, reddit seems a great way for a community to reinforce groupthink. Instances I can think of are forums for motorcycles, cars, p…

> To me, reddit seems a great way for a community to reinforce groupthink. I think this is due to its utterly basic up/downvoting as well as its completely-unenforced TOS which state you should not downvote simply for disagreeing. When you downvote, you should have to specify a reason (such as "offtopic") and one of the reasons should not remotely be "I disagree"

Have any major forums tried a two-axis voting system -- something like Agree/Disagree and Good post/Bad post? I know some people would abuse this and hammer both downvote buttons out of mere disagreement, but I think it would improve the situation.

In most of the subreddits I've seen, it's clear that upvoting for agreement and downvoting for disagreement are both rampant, and I think this is self-perpetuating. When I read a quality post that I disagree with, I would like to stick to the supposed spirit of the voting system and upvote, but I'll think twice about doing so because I know it will be misinterpreted. Giving me a way to explicitly signal one thing and not the other would break this bind.

And even if the system was still abused by 50% of people, it would be possible to offer some interesting filter settings: for example, you could favour posts with a relatively high ratio of Good Post points to Agree points, on the theory that highly agreed-with posts will probably score more Good Post points than they deserve.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#480
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No account is required if you just want to read, It nags you SO hard to sign up. On this front it's no better than using Facebook to look at public posts.

Visiting old.reddit.com/r/all seems to work around the signup popup nag.

When that was "the" Reddit it would only show a few comments before replacing comments with a nag link. I see that behavior is gone now. Thanks
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