15 ms·

The Growth of Reddit

158 points by saternius 8y ago

empath75 8y ago
Just looking at the gaming section I wonder how much subreddit popularity leads sales or vice versa.
- saternius 8y ago
  There is another post about comparing subreddit growth https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-trends/ https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-trends/. One could compare this to historical sales data.
css 8y ago
t_d at its peak was almost as big as politics, now that was not something I expected. Before SandersForPresident was archived when he lost the nomination it was about the same size as t_d. Would be really neat to select a single sub or group of subs and generate a line chart of the same data.
- Mahn 8y ago
  A lot of what goes on in t_d is artificial, so the actual size of the community is probably a lot less than what it appears here.
  - css 8y ago
    [citation needed]
    - rcpt 8y ago
      Not proof of bots but that subreddit definitely exhibits some unusual voting patterns http://ryancompton.net/2016/08/07/upvotes-over-time-by-subreddit-or-why-the_donald-is-always-on-the-front-page-of-reddit/ http://ryancompton.net/2016/08/07/upvotes-over-time-by-subre...
      - css 8y ago
        That data is pretty interesting. I am not sure how surprising it is since in the election days the t_d discord was pretty good at vote brigading their own posts, which might explain that difference. I wonder if the sub still follows that pattern.
      - geowwy 8y ago
        Probably not bots. In those days they actively encouraged upvoting everything as a way of gaming the front page algorithm.
        Karunamon 8y ago
        A more charitable take would be they encourage upvoting everything to counter an infestation of downvote bombing.
    - FilterSweep 8y ago
      http://archive.is/qIDX7 http://archive.is/qIDX7 This deleted post outlines the catastrophic degree of astroturfing that riddles the sub. The post had to be archived because of drama around the original post when the user presented his research to administration.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  /r/politics leans left, so it kinda makes sense.
  - beatgammit 8y ago
    It more than just leans left. Most comments and posts from a conservative position get downvoted, and many libertarian ones do as well, while almost anything positive for liberals gets upvotes, even if it's not newsworthy. I'd really like something like HN, but for political discussion. There are a couple okay subreddits, but it's just not worth it anymore IMO. I just want quality discussion about issues, complete with evidence. PoliticalDiscussion is okay so far, but then again, so was politics a couple of years ago.
    - nerdponx 8y ago
      /r/media_criticism has been pretty balanced, and nowadays has mostly political content.
  - swebs 8y ago
    "leans"
- edaemon 8y ago
  It's interesting that it peaked at 1.5m comments/mo in late 2016 and it's shrunk to 820k comments/mo. That's a huge drop. It sort of makes sense, seeing as the election ended, but that activity decrease is far larger than any other subreddit, even political ones.
  - css 8y ago
    I’m not sure comparing a sub for a specific candidate to a sub about all politics makes a ton of sense.
    - edaemon 8y ago
      (I think you meant to reply to a different comment.)
      - css 8y ago
        Your comment: > that activity decrease is far larger than any other subreddit, even political ones
        edaemon 8y ago
        Sorry, I thought you mistook it for the person talking about /r/politics. I agree that a direct comparison of activity levels isn't all that sensible. I was just surprised that TD has lost nearly 50% of its activity while the rest of Reddit has grown, even growing in the subject area TD is a part of.
  - AcerbicZero 8y ago
    I also found it interesting that post-election, the tone of the content started to shift dramatically. t_d has turned into a mirror of r/politics, and in the process lost their entire original style.
  - jhpriestley 8y ago
    A lot of the activity on the_donald was intended to push propaganda to the front page. These tactics became ineffective after the reddit admins changed their algorithms around.
trillic 8y ago
Love watching the sports subreddits fluctuate throughout the year depending on which sport is in season.
lettergram 8y ago
For those interested, I've done a similar (far less pretty) analysis on Hacker News: https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-growth-community/ https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-gr...
swampthinker 8y ago
Very interesting to watch the sports subreddits fluctuate in size as their respective leagues come in and out of season.
dmode 8y ago
It is interesting that the #1 story in HN is decline in FB and the #3 is growth in Reddit. Personal anecdote, I have shifted all my FB screen time to Reddit. Not out of any agenda, but perhaps to interact with a more diverse group of people. Bold prediction: FB will try to acquire Reddit soon
- cft 8y ago
  I wonder if they have tried already
- lettergram 8y ago
  And yet you're discussing this on Hacker News...
- ProAm 8y ago
  For me I've moved from Reddit back to Digg, Reddit seems to be the worst parts of Facebook combined with the worst parts of Twitter. The redesign is horrendously busy, the comments are trite or vicious, and the v.reddit videos either autoplay or never play when you click on them.
  - mhink 8y ago
    Not much to do about v.reddit, but you can disable the redesign in your user preferences, and as for comments- unsubscribe from the default subreddits and then go subscribe to specific, smaller subs that catch your interest. /r/SubredditOfTheDay, /r/TinySubredditOfTheDay, and /r/Serendipity are great ways to find out about about new subs. (Unfortunately, there's not much to do about the mobile app, which is pretty bogus... although there are a few third-party apps which are less obnoxious.)
    - rolleiflex 8y ago
      Disabling the new design still requires you to be signed in, though. I don’t sign in most of the time I’m using Reddit. (Which makes for poor monetisation, and even being able to disable the new redesign only when signed in is a win for them over the current situation.)
trynewideas 8y ago
Some pretty poor categorization of some subreddits in there. gamesofthrones, mylittlepony, thewalkingdead, and BigBrother are in sports (asoiaf is in entertainment). sysadmin and techsupport are in hobbies/occupations while buildapc is in tech section. tumblrinaction, kotakuinaction, and blackpeopletwitter are in entertainment. DebateReligion is in news/politics, not discussion (with other debate subreddits) or lifestyle (with other religion subreddits). The hierarchy is on GitHub: https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-Skeleton/blob/master/subreddits.txt https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-Skeleton/blo... But it's not in a structured format and tough to verify. There's no methodology for the current organization, and it doesn't look like it matches the actual graph.
- saternius 8y ago
  The base classification structure was borrowed from r/listofsubreddits sub directory: https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/listofsubreddits https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/listofsubredd.... However it was modified a bit in order to even out the clusters, size wise. Keeping it unchanged would make more than half of the subs entertainment. That being said, some hiccups were made during the formatting, and the purpose of the repo is to fix/enhance any mistakes people spot.
  - crazypyro 8y ago
    It would be interesting to see them classified by subreddits where the a significant amount of comments are driven from live events (thinking of the big sporting subreddits and some of the e-sport/gaming ones) vs subreddits that are almost completely based off non-live events (i.e. AskReddit, Sex).
Hypx 8y ago
I wonder if Reddit has surpassed Twitter, Snapchat, etc, for the title of most popular non-Facebook social network. You rarely see anyone do any kind of comparison of them.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  Is Reddit really considered a social network and not just a discussion forum?
  - drenvuk 8y ago
    What would you consider digg, myspace, slashdot, 4chan, etc? Online watering holes seem like social networks, they just have different forms with similar concepts.
  - beatgammit 8y ago
    It has: - user accounts and profiles (users have their own "subreddit") - friends list (and block list) - live chat - personalizable feed - communities So yeah, it's a social network that looks a lot like a message board, and it has been getting more and more social features. That's the reason I'm leaving Reddit. I liked how it was a while ago, but the recent changes and the culture just aren't my cup of tea anymore. Discussion is still mostly okay, but there's just far too much noise.
- saternius 8y ago
  There were a handful of visualizations posted on r/dataisbeautiful a while back that compared the social media giants. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/87q8pn/the_life_and_death_of_social_networks_google/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/87q8pn/the... https://imgur.com/gallery/c4Wzo https://imgur.com/gallery/c4Wzo https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8yma4e/oc_social_media_usage_historical_trends/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8yma4e/oc_... https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8ahy05/internet_communities_popularity_on_google_trends/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8ahy05/int...
  - 8y ago
chrisco255 8y ago
In many ways, Reddit reminds me more of the "old internet" than Facebook or Twitter. There seems to be better discussions, more variety, and even quite a bit of experimentation going on within certain subreddits. It feels like a freer place and that much I like. I still don't like that people get into their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and ideological differences, but it certainly feels more exploratory than the other two.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  Agree The obvious way out of that is to join bubbles that are aligned with your interests rather than political views. If your interest is politics then find a better interest :)
  - michaelleslie 8y ago
    That's a remarkably privileged and blasé take, denying the importance of civic engagement.
    - rhizome 8y ago
      Posting in political subreddits is not "civic engagement."
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      Civic engagement happens in the real world, not by commenting on reddit, fb or Twitter.
      - Karunamon 8y ago
        Civic engagement happens wherever people discuss politics
        ThomPete 8y ago
        That would be quite an exaggeration. You can already see in this thread how fast the conversation deteriorate into completely meningless quibbles.
wufufufu 8y ago
I get a lot of auto completes for "site:reddit.com" when I search for anything in the Chrome search bar or just in Google Search. I find reddit answers to be less likely to be advertisements or affiliate marketing. Honestly not sure where I would find information otherwise.
propogandist 8y ago
Reddit was great, many years ago, although there are many sub-reddits that are still excellent today. Moves they've made in the recent years, like hiding vote counts, were to improve growth, but it has also enabled more astroturfing and censorship (widespread). More recently, they started injected tracking into outbound link clicks and introduced the terrible redesign to help with growth/monetization also. As they've grown, the quality of the content within sub-reddits and discussions within those communities, have fallen dramatically.
- Zarath 8y ago
  I've used reddit quite a bit the last two years and have felt the content quality has decreased. That, or I'm just used to it or bored of it. Feel like I may be getting a little old for it. There are still some subs that are useful, like fantasyfootball
  - drankula3 8y ago
    It seems like after Reddit exploded trying to catch the Boston Bomber, the insane velocity of content was nerfed to prevent hivemind comment. I don't know if any data is available on how things have changed though.
- naravara 8y ago
  it never occurred to me before, but seeing it in a chart like this it really seems like Reddit has basically just turned into Gamers and their side interests, politics, and a few vestiges of old Reddit, like AskReddit, which at this point might as well be their own separate site for what all they have to do with the main demographic. The Video Game sphere takes up a huge chunk of it. Then many of the other subs are basically gamer adjacent. Many of those technology subs are just about building PCs and stuff, which is largely gaming related or correlated. Even a lot of the politics is invariably linked to Gamergate type stuff. The Entertainment section is all genre fiction, anime, etc. Stuff you would expect a gaming forum to focus on. The dedicated meme parts of the site are gone. The interesting stuff that fits in no particular category are gone. If you had told me 4 years ago that one day I would come to miss the derivative rage comics and image macros in the face of the unrelenting stream of toxicity that the site would become I wouldn't have believed you. Just look at this joke post https://external-preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriHsSYajwIJ6fAu-Vh8.png?auto=webp&s=c4d42004c487dd362c7b54e60a933e0bafcb66d3 https://external-preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriH... from 6 years ago. It all seems so innocent compared to what it is now.
ben_jones 8y ago
I use reddit on my mobile browser without logging into to an account. Recently when clicking links or images in the mobile view a pop-under will appear freezing the site until I select the prominent first option (to download the Reddit mobile app) or the second option to continue using my mobile browser. Because I am unauthenticated this preference does not carry over to page reloads for things like jumping to a different subreddit, leading me to experience this pop-under over and over again. Needless to say it's cut heavily into my reddit usage. I genuinely believe they raised a bunch of money, hired a bunch of engineers and managers, convinced the C-levels a re-design was necessary, and then implemented a subpar re-design with a giant middle finger to users all in the name of ads. Glorious, world improving, ads.
- bhandziuk 8y ago
  login in solves a lot of problems. I know It's no longer anonymous but you can at least use a fake name. If you log in you can disable that infuriating popup. Also, you don't have to look at only the default list of garbage subreddits. Reddit not logged in is like watching that garbage truck full of memes crash into on-coming traffic.
- minieggs 8y ago
  It's incredibly annoying. I've built out my own mobile website for interfacing with Reddit because of it. Update after update the mobile.reddit.com keeps becoming harder to use.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  Best way to avoid this is to use an app. No need to login, and some like Apollo even provide ways to "subscribe" to subreddits without logging in.
avar 8y ago
Number of comments seems like a bad metric. A lot of these are informal subreddits where the most common comments are going to be "lol" or users collaborating to complete a sentence one letter at a time as part of some meme.
- saternius 8y ago
  Totally agree. This skewed metric is why r/AskOuija is massively overrepresented.
nurino 8y ago
Personally I wonder if Reddit can do something about the low quality of their comments in the big subs. All comment sections are full of idiots making bad puns. It's terrible, much much worse than youtube ever was or that twitter currently is.
iblaine 8y ago
Over the past few years, both Twitter and Reddit have seen a huge growth of bot accounts. I'd put an asterisk next to any growth* figure by either company.
jancsika 8y ago
Sometimes when I lurk on Reddit it appears that "the internet" is giving helpful and respectful comments to someone who, say, alleges that her husband had been sexually assaulting her. When I start digging down into the lower quality comments those comments are obviously lower quality. But here's the thing-- within the lower quality comments is the OP responding to the low quality comments! In other words, an OP (probably like many OPs) has a limited amount of time to get feedback on Reddit about a pressing problem. And mods/downvoters cannot react quickly enough in that period of time to appropriately moderate the responses. Imagine OP's "Reddit time" (let's say an hour) as a rectangle in a video game that starts at 100% and drains to 0%. Let's say those dregs comments drained 15% of the OP's total time or energy participating on Reddit. Now, suppose a lurker reads the thread later when the mods/downvoters have caught up with all their work. The lurker's default view is only the quality comments. This misleads the lurker by hiding the 15% time-or-energy hit the OP had from interacting with the dregs. The lurker likely assumes that participating on Reddit requires less time or energy that it does in reality. Now the lurker tries out posting for the first time and starts to experience the 15% time-or-energy hit from the dregs comments. The more impatient OP is about reading comments, the more likely OP is to increase that wasted time-or-energy by interacting with the dregs. Worse, that 15% time-or-energy hit includes content that would be beyond the pale for in-person social interactions-- it's mindless trolling or misanthropy which nearly no one would utter face to face. Some of it-- like accusations that the OP is an imposter-- is unique to social media. Worst of all, that poster probably started as a lurker. So their decision to post in the first place was based on a view of Reddit that radically downplays the costs of interacting. I mean, I don't see any clear warnings on first post that let the poster know "shit will roll in" faster than the mods can flush it. The obvious solution is to throttle all posting activity so that participating on Reddit slows to a level approaching those tree people from Lord of the Rings. (The larger time slices would actually get rid of whole class of problems, like the internet sleuthing BS that happened after the Boston bombing.) But I'm sure Reddit wants to encourage OPs to increase their # of responses for maximum buzz, so I don't really see any non-manipulative practical solution to this problem.
- debacle 8y ago
  These days it feels more and more like <50% of the downvoted comments are trolls/jerks, and the majority are just people who might disagree with the hivemind.
epa 8y ago
One of the major reasons reddit became popular initially is because of Digg. Digg had content that was 2-3 days older than reddit (many posts from Reddit got reposted to Digg). Once people started figuring that out, combined with the Digg censorshop scandal(1), reddit took off. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
- sys_64738 8y ago
  This. Was thinking that all the Reddit regulars of yester-decade were originally from Digg myself.
cwkoss 8y ago
Reddit has a number of systemic issues (poor tools for moderators, hard to get rid of bad moderators, huge amounts of astroturfing) It's a shame that they are 'good enough' to prevent much growth in the competitors, leading the cool tech made by competitors to often become exclusively filled with content that would be banned on reddit.
buboard 8y ago
I'd like to say 'good job' on reddit, but they grew despite making a horrible job, like the redesign. I 'm glad it's doing well anyway.
b1r6 8y ago
The day they force the new design (remove old.reddit.com preference) is the last day I use Reddit.
- randycupertino 8y ago
  I had a pretty strong reddit addiction and the redesign was fantastic for me- it completely cured my addiction! The redesign is just so awful and I hate using it so much that all I had to do was opt-in to using it and viola... 3 hours a day back in my life which I now use for the gym and to clean the house. It was an awesome change for me personally. No more reddit timesink!
toephu2 8y ago
What's reddit's DAU? They used to disclose that publicly but they took it down years ago.
zmmmmm 8y ago
I feel like reddit is one of the most underestimated internet properties in existence. It gets almost no attention except when specific incidents that explicitly involve it occur. But by and large it is completely ignored by the mainstream media, celebrities, politicians, just about everybody. I think it's role has been drastically underestimated in the 2016 election interference, for example. Facebook and even Google have taken flak over that, but hardly anybody really seriously interrogated how powerful TheDonald was both directly and indirectly (through how it created a nexus and community to energize real Trump supporters). Reddit just exists, sitting there in the background, steadily growing over time, but never seemingly even trying to raise its own profile. Yet (or perhaps because of that) I certainly spend far more time there and get far more value from it than any other social media site.
11eleven 8y ago
One of the hallmarks of recent Reddit growth has been its mobile redesign. It aggressively nudges you to download their mobile app and it takes a few seconds longer to open any page (used to be instant with the old design). I presume they're doing this because their app has better user tracking (hard to disable tracking inside an app) and far less people are using ad blockers that work for apps too.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  Thankfully, there are third party apps that are great.
wpdev_63 8y ago
The problem I have with reddit is that they are manipulating public opinions through bolstering topics that further their agenda.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  In what way do "they" do that?
Rainymood 8y ago
Reddit is becoming more and more polarized. As a European I am quite progressive but I do notice that literally only left-wing comments get upvoted in big subreddits (/r/politics) silencing any "real" discussion with posters from /r/The_Donald. They then move to /r/The_Donald as their safe space and create a bubble for themselves to express themselves with all their views, some wrong, some right, some downright propaganda. Please note that the left also does this in their own subreddits, but it seems like right-wing views are really quickly silenced on Reddit. I once made a post asking why a poster liked Donald Trump so much, and I got downvoted to -40 while it was an honest question. There is no true discussion about politics on Reddit. Only mindless circlejerking and echo chambering.
rchaud 8y ago
Reddit for me is an acceptable middle point between the community-specific vBulletin forums of the 2000s (largely deserted now), and modern social media. You can explore a wide variety of topics (like on social media sites) while keeping anonymity and a sense of community (in dedicated subreddits). When people say Reddit is 4chan-lite, I see where they're coming from. They're not signed in, so all they see is r/all, which has about the same quality level as the front page of Youtube. The trick to it is to install the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser extension and start blocking the subs that frequently post low-quality/hate speech/just plain irritating content. Block a sub from your home page once, it never comes back. Wish I could say the same for Youtube. I swear, you watch ONE Bill Burr standup clip, and your recs are suddenly full of "feminist gets pwned by redpill logic" and other "viral" garbage videos, each of which has to be manually set to "Not Interested".

158 points by saternius 8y ago

empath75 8y ago

Just looking at the gaming section I wonder how much subreddit popularity leads sales or vice versa.

saternius 8y ago
There is another post about comparing subreddit growth https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-trends/ https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-trends/. One could compare this to historical sales data.

css 8y ago

t_d at its peak was almost as big as politics, now that was not something I expected. Before SandersForPresident was archived when he lost the nomination it was about the same size as t_d. Would be really neat to select a single sub or group of subs and generate a line chart of the same data.

Mahn 8y ago
A lot of what goes on in t_d is artificial, so the actual size of the community is probably a lot less than what it appears here.
- css 8y ago
  [citation needed]
  - rcpt 8y ago
    Not proof of bots but that subreddit definitely exhibits some unusual voting patterns http://ryancompton.net/2016/08/07/upvotes-over-time-by-subreddit-or-why-the_donald-is-always-on-the-front-page-of-reddit/ http://ryancompton.net/2016/08/07/upvotes-over-time-by-subre...
    - css 8y ago
      That data is pretty interesting. I am not sure how surprising it is since in the election days the t_d discord was pretty good at vote brigading their own posts, which might explain that difference. I wonder if the sub still follows that pattern.
    - geowwy 8y ago
      Probably not bots. In those days they actively encouraged upvoting everything as a way of gaming the front page algorithm.
      - Karunamon 8y ago
        A more charitable take would be they encourage upvoting everything to counter an infestation of downvote bombing.
  - FilterSweep 8y ago
    http://archive.is/qIDX7 http://archive.is/qIDX7 This deleted post outlines the catastrophic degree of astroturfing that riddles the sub. The post had to be archived because of drama around the original post when the user presented his research to administration.
nerdponx 8y ago
/r/politics leans left, so it kinda makes sense.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  It more than just leans left. Most comments and posts from a conservative position get downvoted, and many libertarian ones do as well, while almost anything positive for liberals gets upvotes, even if it's not newsworthy. I'd really like something like HN, but for political discussion. There are a couple okay subreddits, but it's just not worth it anymore IMO. I just want quality discussion about issues, complete with evidence. PoliticalDiscussion is okay so far, but then again, so was politics a couple of years ago.
  - nerdponx 8y ago
    /r/media_criticism has been pretty balanced, and nowadays has mostly political content.
- swebs 8y ago
  "leans"
edaemon 8y ago
It's interesting that it peaked at 1.5m comments/mo in late 2016 and it's shrunk to 820k comments/mo. That's a huge drop. It sort of makes sense, seeing as the election ended, but that activity decrease is far larger than any other subreddit, even political ones.
- css 8y ago
  I’m not sure comparing a sub for a specific candidate to a sub about all politics makes a ton of sense.
  - edaemon 8y ago
    (I think you meant to reply to a different comment.)
    - css 8y ago
      Your comment: > that activity decrease is far larger than any other subreddit, even political ones
      - edaemon 8y ago
        Sorry, I thought you mistook it for the person talking about /r/politics. I agree that a direct comparison of activity levels isn't all that sensible. I was just surprised that TD has lost nearly 50% of its activity while the rest of Reddit has grown, even growing in the subject area TD is a part of.
- AcerbicZero 8y ago
  I also found it interesting that post-election, the tone of the content started to shift dramatically. t_d has turned into a mirror of r/politics, and in the process lost their entire original style.
- jhpriestley 8y ago
  A lot of the activity on the_donald was intended to push propaganda to the front page. These tactics became ineffective after the reddit admins changed their algorithms around.

trillic 8y ago

Love watching the sports subreddits fluctuate throughout the year depending on which sport is in season.

lettergram 8y ago

For those interested, I've done a similar (far less pretty) analysis on Hacker News: https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-growth-community/ https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-gr...

swampthinker 8y ago

Very interesting to watch the sports subreddits fluctuate in size as their respective leagues come in and out of season.

dmode 8y ago

It is interesting that the #1 story in HN is decline in FB and the #3 is growth in Reddit. Personal anecdote, I have shifted all my FB screen time to Reddit. Not out of any agenda, but perhaps to interact with a more diverse group of people. Bold prediction: FB will try to acquire Reddit soon

cft 8y ago
I wonder if they have tried already
lettergram 8y ago
And yet you're discussing this on Hacker News...
ProAm 8y ago
For me I've moved from Reddit back to Digg, Reddit seems to be the worst parts of Facebook combined with the worst parts of Twitter. The redesign is horrendously busy, the comments are trite or vicious, and the v.reddit videos either autoplay or never play when you click on them.
- mhink 8y ago
  Not much to do about v.reddit, but you can disable the redesign in your user preferences, and as for comments- unsubscribe from the default subreddits and then go subscribe to specific, smaller subs that catch your interest. /r/SubredditOfTheDay, /r/TinySubredditOfTheDay, and /r/Serendipity are great ways to find out about about new subs. (Unfortunately, there's not much to do about the mobile app, which is pretty bogus... although there are a few third-party apps which are less obnoxious.)
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    Disabling the new design still requires you to be signed in, though. I don’t sign in most of the time I’m using Reddit. (Which makes for poor monetisation, and even being able to disable the new redesign only when signed in is a win for them over the current situation.)

trynewideas 8y ago

Some pretty poor categorization of some subreddits in there. gamesofthrones, mylittlepony, thewalkingdead, and BigBrother are in sports (asoiaf is in entertainment). sysadmin and techsupport are in hobbies/occupations while buildapc is in tech section. tumblrinaction, kotakuinaction, and blackpeopletwitter are in entertainment. DebateReligion is in news/politics, not discussion (with other debate subreddits) or lifestyle (with other religion subreddits). The hierarchy is on GitHub: https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-Skeleton/blob/master/subreddits.txt https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-Skeleton/blo... But it's not in a structured format and tough to verify. There's no methodology for the current organization, and it doesn't look like it matches the actual graph.

saternius 8y ago
The base classification structure was borrowed from r/listofsubreddits sub directory: https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/listofsubreddits https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/listofsubredd.... However it was modified a bit in order to even out the clusters, size wise. Keeping it unchanged would make more than half of the subs entertainment. That being said, some hiccups were made during the formatting, and the purpose of the repo is to fix/enhance any mistakes people spot.
- crazypyro 8y ago
  It would be interesting to see them classified by subreddits where the a significant amount of comments are driven from live events (thinking of the big sporting subreddits and some of the e-sport/gaming ones) vs subreddits that are almost completely based off non-live events (i.e. AskReddit, Sex).

Hypx 8y ago

I wonder if Reddit has surpassed Twitter, Snapchat, etc, for the title of most popular non-Facebook social network. You rarely see anyone do any kind of comparison of them.

chrisco255 8y ago
Is Reddit really considered a social network and not just a discussion forum?
- drenvuk 8y ago
  What would you consider digg, myspace, slashdot, 4chan, etc? Online watering holes seem like social networks, they just have different forms with similar concepts.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  It has: - user accounts and profiles (users have their own "subreddit") - friends list (and block list) - live chat - personalizable feed - communities So yeah, it's a social network that looks a lot like a message board, and it has been getting more and more social features. That's the reason I'm leaving Reddit. I liked how it was a while ago, but the recent changes and the culture just aren't my cup of tea anymore. Discussion is still mostly okay, but there's just far too much noise.
saternius 8y ago
There were a handful of visualizations posted on r/dataisbeautiful a while back that compared the social media giants. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/87q8pn/the_life_and_death_of_social_networks_google/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/87q8pn/the... https://imgur.com/gallery/c4Wzo https://imgur.com/gallery/c4Wzo https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8yma4e/oc_social_media_usage_historical_trends/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8yma4e/oc_... https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8ahy05/internet_communities_popularity_on_google_trends/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8ahy05/int...
- 8y ago

chrisco255 8y ago

In many ways, Reddit reminds me more of the "old internet" than Facebook or Twitter. There seems to be better discussions, more variety, and even quite a bit of experimentation going on within certain subreddits. It feels like a freer place and that much I like. I still don't like that people get into their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and ideological differences, but it certainly feels more exploratory than the other two.

ThomPete 8y ago
Agree The obvious way out of that is to join bubbles that are aligned with your interests rather than political views. If your interest is politics then find a better interest :)
- michaelleslie 8y ago
  That's a remarkably privileged and blasé take, denying the importance of civic engagement.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    Posting in political subreddits is not "civic engagement."
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    Civic engagement happens in the real world, not by commenting on reddit, fb or Twitter.
    - Karunamon 8y ago
      Civic engagement happens wherever people discuss politics
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        That would be quite an exaggeration. You can already see in this thread how fast the conversation deteriorate into completely meningless quibbles.

wufufufu 8y ago

I get a lot of auto completes for "site:reddit.com" when I search for anything in the Chrome search bar or just in Google Search. I find reddit answers to be less likely to be advertisements or affiliate marketing. Honestly not sure where I would find information otherwise.

propogandist 8y ago

Reddit was great, many years ago, although there are many sub-reddits that are still excellent today. Moves they've made in the recent years, like hiding vote counts, were to improve growth, but it has also enabled more astroturfing and censorship (widespread). More recently, they started injected tracking into outbound link clicks and introduced the terrible redesign to help with growth/monetization also. As they've grown, the quality of the content within sub-reddits and discussions within those communities, have fallen dramatically.

Zarath 8y ago
I've used reddit quite a bit the last two years and have felt the content quality has decreased. That, or I'm just used to it or bored of it. Feel like I may be getting a little old for it. There are still some subs that are useful, like fantasyfootball
- drankula3 8y ago
  It seems like after Reddit exploded trying to catch the Boston Bomber, the insane velocity of content was nerfed to prevent hivemind comment. I don't know if any data is available on how things have changed though.
naravara 8y ago
it never occurred to me before, but seeing it in a chart like this it really seems like Reddit has basically just turned into Gamers and their side interests, politics, and a few vestiges of old Reddit, like AskReddit, which at this point might as well be their own separate site for what all they have to do with the main demographic. The Video Game sphere takes up a huge chunk of it. Then many of the other subs are basically gamer adjacent. Many of those technology subs are just about building PCs and stuff, which is largely gaming related or correlated. Even a lot of the politics is invariably linked to Gamergate type stuff. The Entertainment section is all genre fiction, anime, etc. Stuff you would expect a gaming forum to focus on. The dedicated meme parts of the site are gone. The interesting stuff that fits in no particular category are gone. If you had told me 4 years ago that one day I would come to miss the derivative rage comics and image macros in the face of the unrelenting stream of toxicity that the site would become I wouldn't have believed you. Just look at this joke post https://external-preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriHsSYajwIJ6fAu-Vh8.png?auto=webp&s=c4d42004c487dd362c7b54e60a933e0bafcb66d3 https://external-preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriH... from 6 years ago. It all seems so innocent compared to what it is now.

ben_jones 8y ago

I use reddit on my mobile browser without logging into to an account. Recently when clicking links or images in the mobile view a pop-under will appear freezing the site until I select the prominent first option (to download the Reddit mobile app) or the second option to continue using my mobile browser. Because I am unauthenticated this preference does not carry over to page reloads for things like jumping to a different subreddit, leading me to experience this pop-under over and over again. Needless to say it's cut heavily into my reddit usage. I genuinely believe they raised a bunch of money, hired a bunch of engineers and managers, convinced the C-levels a re-design was necessary, and then implemented a subpar re-design with a giant middle finger to users all in the name of ads. Glorious, world improving, ads.

bhandziuk 8y ago
login in solves a lot of problems. I know It's no longer anonymous but you can at least use a fake name. If you log in you can disable that infuriating popup. Also, you don't have to look at only the default list of garbage subreddits. Reddit not logged in is like watching that garbage truck full of memes crash into on-coming traffic.
minieggs 8y ago
It's incredibly annoying. I've built out my own mobile website for interfacing with Reddit because of it. Update after update the mobile.reddit.com keeps becoming harder to use.
jplayer01 8y ago
Best way to avoid this is to use an app. No need to login, and some like Apollo even provide ways to "subscribe" to subreddits without logging in.

avar 8y ago

Number of comments seems like a bad metric. A lot of these are informal subreddits where the most common comments are going to be "lol" or users collaborating to complete a sentence one letter at a time as part of some meme.

saternius 8y ago
Totally agree. This skewed metric is why r/AskOuija is massively overrepresented.

nurino 8y ago

Personally I wonder if Reddit can do something about the low quality of their comments in the big subs. All comment sections are full of idiots making bad puns. It's terrible, much much worse than youtube ever was or that twitter currently is.

iblaine 8y ago

Over the past few years, both Twitter and Reddit have seen a huge growth of bot accounts. I'd put an asterisk next to any growth* figure by either company.

jancsika 8y ago

Sometimes when I lurk on Reddit it appears that "the internet" is giving helpful and respectful comments to someone who, say, alleges that her husband had been sexually assaulting her. When I start digging down into the lower quality comments those comments are obviously lower quality. But here's the thing-- within the lower quality comments is the OP responding to the low quality comments! In other words, an OP (probably like many OPs) has a limited amount of time to get feedback on Reddit about a pressing problem. And mods/downvoters cannot react quickly enough in that period of time to appropriately moderate the responses. Imagine OP's "Reddit time" (let's say an hour) as a rectangle in a video game that starts at 100% and drains to 0%. Let's say those dregs comments drained 15% of the OP's total time or energy participating on Reddit. Now, suppose a lurker reads the thread later when the mods/downvoters have caught up with all their work. The lurker's default view is only the quality comments. This misleads the lurker by hiding the 15% time-or-energy hit the OP had from interacting with the dregs. The lurker likely assumes that participating on Reddit requires less time or energy that it does in reality. Now the lurker tries out posting for the first time and starts to experience the 15% time-or-energy hit from the dregs comments. The more impatient OP is about reading comments, the more likely OP is to increase that wasted time-or-energy by interacting with the dregs. Worse, that 15% time-or-energy hit includes content that would be beyond the pale for in-person social interactions-- it's mindless trolling or misanthropy which nearly no one would utter face to face. Some of it-- like accusations that the OP is an imposter-- is unique to social media. Worst of all, that poster probably started as a lurker. So their decision to post in the first place was based on a view of Reddit that radically downplays the costs of interacting. I mean, I don't see any clear warnings on first post that let the poster know "shit will roll in" faster than the mods can flush it. The obvious solution is to throttle all posting activity so that participating on Reddit slows to a level approaching those tree people from Lord of the Rings. (The larger time slices would actually get rid of whole class of problems, like the internet sleuthing BS that happened after the Boston bombing.) But I'm sure Reddit wants to encourage OPs to increase their # of responses for maximum buzz, so I don't really see any non-manipulative practical solution to this problem.

debacle 8y ago
These days it feels more and more like <50% of the downvoted comments are trolls/jerks, and the majority are just people who might disagree with the hivemind.

epa 8y ago

One of the major reasons reddit became popular initially is because of Digg. Digg had content that was 2-3 days older than reddit (many posts from Reddit got reposted to Digg). Once people started figuring that out, combined with the Digg censorshop scandal(1), reddit took off. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...

sys_64738 8y ago
This. Was thinking that all the Reddit regulars of yester-decade were originally from Digg myself.

cwkoss 8y ago

Reddit has a number of systemic issues (poor tools for moderators, hard to get rid of bad moderators, huge amounts of astroturfing) It's a shame that they are 'good enough' to prevent much growth in the competitors, leading the cool tech made by competitors to often become exclusively filled with content that would be banned on reddit.

buboard 8y ago

I'd like to say 'good job' on reddit, but they grew despite making a horrible job, like the redesign. I 'm glad it's doing well anyway.

b1r6 8y ago

The day they force the new design (remove old.reddit.com preference) is the last day I use Reddit.

randycupertino 8y ago
I had a pretty strong reddit addiction and the redesign was fantastic for me- it completely cured my addiction! The redesign is just so awful and I hate using it so much that all I had to do was opt-in to using it and viola... 3 hours a day back in my life which I now use for the gym and to clean the house. It was an awesome change for me personally. No more reddit timesink!

toephu2 8y ago

What's reddit's DAU? They used to disclose that publicly but they took it down years ago.

zmmmmm 8y ago

I feel like reddit is one of the most underestimated internet properties in existence. It gets almost no attention except when specific incidents that explicitly involve it occur. But by and large it is completely ignored by the mainstream media, celebrities, politicians, just about everybody. I think it's role has been drastically underestimated in the 2016 election interference, for example. Facebook and even Google have taken flak over that, but hardly anybody really seriously interrogated how powerful TheDonald was both directly and indirectly (through how it created a nexus and community to energize real Trump supporters). Reddit just exists, sitting there in the background, steadily growing over time, but never seemingly even trying to raise its own profile. Yet (or perhaps because of that) I certainly spend far more time there and get far more value from it than any other social media site.

11eleven 8y ago

One of the hallmarks of recent Reddit growth has been its mobile redesign. It aggressively nudges you to download their mobile app and it takes a few seconds longer to open any page (used to be instant with the old design). I presume they're doing this because their app has better user tracking (hard to disable tracking inside an app) and far less people are using ad blockers that work for apps too.

jplayer01 8y ago
Thankfully, there are third party apps that are great.

wpdev_63 8y ago

The problem I have with reddit is that they are manipulating public opinions through bolstering topics that further their agenda.

brokenmachine 8y ago
In what way do "they" do that?

Rainymood 8y ago

Reddit is becoming more and more polarized. As a European I am quite progressive but I do notice that literally only left-wing comments get upvoted in big subreddits (/r/politics) silencing any "real" discussion with posters from /r/The_Donald. They then move to /r/The_Donald as their safe space and create a bubble for themselves to express themselves with all their views, some wrong, some right, some downright propaganda. Please note that the left also does this in their own subreddits, but it seems like right-wing views are really quickly silenced on Reddit. I once made a post asking why a poster liked Donald Trump so much, and I got downvoted to -40 while it was an honest question. There is no true discussion about politics on Reddit. Only mindless circlejerking and echo chambering.

rchaud 8y ago

Reddit for me is an acceptable middle point between the community-specific vBulletin forums of the 2000s (largely deserted now), and modern social media. You can explore a wide variety of topics (like on social media sites) while keeping anonymity and a sense of community (in dedicated subreddits). When people say Reddit is 4chan-lite, I see where they're coming from. They're not signed in, so all they see is r/all, which has about the same quality level as the front page of Youtube. The trick to it is to install the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser extension and start blocking the subs that frequently post low-quality/hate speech/just plain irritating content. Block a sub from your home page once, it never comes back. Wish I could say the same for Youtube. I swear, you watch ONE Bill Burr standup clip, and your recs are suddenly full of "feminist gets pwned by redpill logic" and other "viral" garbage videos, each of which has to be manually set to "Not Interested".