Facebook no longer has the same purpose as it started. Reddit on the other hand it’s still true to its purpose. Free, open, and fun.
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
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's essentially usenet for current times. Which I've always found interesting, as usenet would give reddit users back the freedoms they often crave: no ads, no censorship, no tracking, etc.
Don't forget "no banning" There was a mod once that banned everyone across all feminist/gender subreddits who was subscribed to /r/redpill once, based purely on potential toxicity. I was only subscribed to talk some sense into those guys, but instead I got banned from the very subreddits I was being a good contributor to (I was a Psych major and am interested in those things). So as a result I simply unsubbed across…
Oh yeah, this is the cutting edge of mod techniques now - predict based on association.
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#533The 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…
I feel like there's potentially a market for a general forum that provides the ability for anyone to create subforums, the same way Reddit has subreddits. Obviously you'd need something more advanced than the usual complete subforum list as the main page.
Big forums like SomethingAwful already have may subforums for different interests, and letting people create subforums seems like a logical next step from that. You could create ones for interests, or even for your business so you don't have to set up your own forum. If it seems weird to have a subforum for a business inside a larger forum, well, people already do exactly that on Facebook and Reddit.
Reddit provides something similar to the same thing, but the format doesn't work well for long term or chronological discussions.
Maybe the time for traditional forums has been and gone, but I'm not so sure.
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#534Eh. Reddit's userbase is increasingly younger (have you seen the home page while logged out lately?) and they can't really monetize them. Sure, they have contracts with pizza and soda companies in the US, but that's it.
Recently they've been trying to "Facebook-ize" their UX, they gather a lot more data, implement affiliate links and a lot more logging, but it's still not going far because the last of their adult users are leaving the site. At least this was my experience with Reddit in the past 2 years or so.
I only go back to look for very specific things and leave afterwards.
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#535Earlier 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.
There's nothing wrong with stating an opinion that is unpopular and being downvoted. It usually still contributes to the discussion.
But I agree that aggregate comment vote is not an indicator of correctness - more of whatever way the wind is blowing at a particular time in a particular community.
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#536Earlier 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…
Re: 3)
Official app on iOS used to be a third party app called Alien Blue. Reddit basically purchased it, re-branded it as official, and viola. On iOS it had tons of usage prior to that. Incidentally after the rebranding is when I stopped using it and moved to Apollo.
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also appreciate the open nature of Reddit. No account is required if you just want to read, and you don't need to be first "approved" to most subreddits to be able to contribute. No "real-name" policies that often do more harm than good either. While Facebook by default erects walls around content, Reddit by default promotes the free sharing and equal access to information, which resonates much more with the origin…
They still allow anonymous sign-up without an email address, but I've noticed a few dark UI patterns hiding that feature with recent redesigns. I delete and create accounts all the time to improve anonymity and prevent karma-lust. A few months ago I almost swore off Reddit because it seemed not providing an email was no longer an option during sign up. Now you just have to hit "Next" with an empty email field, it use…
On the email issue, I once talked to Steve (back when he was still the primary developer) about the issue, and he seemed genuinely sad about people signing up without emails mostly because people would forget their password and then couldn't log back in, and not for any nefarious purpose.
Of course, now that reddit is bigger than Jesus, there probably are nefarious privacy-destroying forces at work, but even more than a decade ago, there were totally innocent reasons for reddit to want an email address when you signed up. I think it says something good that you can still create an account without one (I require a valid non-temporary email on all of my own sites, mostly for spam reduction, even though I very much value/respect privacy and never sell any info we collect on our sites).
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#538Reddit 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…
What does "toxic user" mean in this context? How do they differ from a "non-toxic" user?
Sometimes it's just people that don't participate in the echo chamber.
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny that was a Facebook scandal, while Reddit has movements like hail corporate trying to self-police dishonesty and manipulative behavior. It seems like anonymity should be more of a driving force, but seeing both good and bad social media sites with each model, I'm no longer sure anonymity either preserves or inhibits culture... it might just be orthogonal.
> Reddit has movements like hail corporate trying to self-police dishonesty and manipulative behavior. Self-policing can also be manipulated. You cannot rely on user-intent alone, you need some structural protection against these kinds of things. Although I don't know what the best kind is.
I didn't mean to imply hail corporate completely fixed anything, at its worst it's unsubstantiated allegations.
Just pointing out that true names didn't inoculate Facebook, which doesn't even get as far as that problematic response.
That's why I said anonymity is orthogonal--that was my main point.
For example, anonymity is easier on HN, and I prefer our comments to FB. On the other hand, I'm not typing this on 4chan. There are dozens of other examples on the spectrum. Anonymity just doesn't seem like the determining factor for culture everyone makes it out to be. Maybe it has some impact, but it seems washed out by the typical culture of the group, driven by that group's interests, style, and tolerance of (or preference for) obnoxiousness.
Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US
#540Reddit 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…
> 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.
The problem with Reddit's toxic user base is that they're only concerned with blocking bad actors on one side of a subject. They've repeatedly turned a blind eye to the open doxxing and brigading from SRS, and the complete takeover of the politics subreddit by CTR.