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The HackerNews community is more appreciative of these problems than Reddit's. But Reddit will suffer from the same problems that Facebook and Twitter suffer fr

The HackerNews community is more appreciative of these problems than Reddit's. But Reddit will suffer from the same problems that Facebook and Twitter suffer from, if not already. Reddit users are easily manipulated by engineered content and engineering content on Reddit is not hard if you know what you're doing. Evidently, there are power-users on Reddit (e.g. /u/GallowBoob) who know exactly how Reddit ticks and can get practically anything to the front page in front of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Reddit is huge -- I suspect they will be bigger than Facebook (maybe not in valuation, but usage) in the next 7 years and these problems will only be exacerbated. Facebook isn't what 12-13 year olds today are interested in. Reddit is a more apt model for online discourse and culture than Facebook ever was.

vvillena 8y ago
Reddit played a big part in the 2016 USA elections that crowned Trump. Reddit had to change its front page algorithm to avoid having Trump content near the top of the page for almost the whole time. The subreddit in question organized itself to mass-upvote certain posts at certain times, and Reddit wasn't prepared for such massive, non-organic influence. I wonder how big of a part the Russian bots and trolls played. I'd love to read an in-depth book about it.
- porpoisely 8y ago
  Most of the content on reddit's frontpage in 2016 was anti-trump just like it is today. Reddit changed its algorithm because reddit admins supported hillary. The donald subreddit is no different from politics. The only difference is that one has the support of reddit and the other does not. And even bigger difference is that reddit admins allow reddit's power users to spam anti-trump propaganda from multiple subreddits. The idea that reddit helped Trump is absurd. Pretty much every social media company was anti-trump and many, like google, actively worked against trump.
- ww520 8y ago
  Reddit by and large was actively against Trump during 2016 and thereafter.
  - TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
    You must have blocked /r/t_d. I would trust that there would be little argument that, by number of subs, and subscriber count, Reddit leans pretty-heavily left. However, by front page posts, the site APPEARED to lean heavily right in the run-up to the last presidential election. Week after week, I was blown away that the admins didn't nerf the algorithm to "fix" it.
    - moojd 8y ago
      They did eventually nerf the algorithm. /r/t_d was abusing stickied mod posts to get on the front page and that got fixed. I think it was also partly because most of the pro-trump users and posts were concentrated in one subreddit causing inflated upvote counts. /r/t_d also took advantage of the void left after the DNC primaries ended since the site was very anti-Hillary at the time.
  - vvillena 8y ago
    Reddit is not a single entity, it is a clustered social network. The small part of it that supported Trump managed to create and empower a meme machine that is still going strong. Subreddits are like thinktanks. They are the perfect breeding ground for internet content. You can gauge popularity, you can quickly refine the content based on the comments received, and if you're lucky you can even kickstart and guide whole movements.
  - hopler 8y ago
    As was a majority of the country, so that's unsurprising.
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  Reddit is still a haven for the far-right. It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth that they are tolerated there.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    While this may be true, Reddit's "free speech" ethos has been part of its DNA from day 1. Reddit has also gone a long way to getting rid of the most egregious content (I mean, jailbait???) What would you suggest the alternative is? I think the real problem is that society is coming to terms with the fact that anonymous free speech isn't all it's cracked up to be.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      > What would you suggest the alternative is? Does there need to be one? This site seems to manage to avoid it. Quite how you get into the situation reddit did is mystifying to me. I completely agree that anonymous free speech is not the ideal it sounds.
      - figgis 8y ago
        > This site seems to manage to avoid it. If we are going to be reasonable a better comparison would be comparing this site to a single heavily moderated subreddit. As an extreme you have subreddits like https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ if you look into the comments you will see a lot of "[ Removed ]" threads. https://i.imgur.com/Q7mXkPd.png https://i.imgur.com/Q7mXkPd.png Other subreddits are purposefully not moderated as heavily. It's entirely up to whoever runs it to moderate how they see fit.
    - Rebelgecko 8y ago
      I don't think it's accurate to say that reddit has a free speech ethos. Maybe "free speech up until the point where it causes problems with revenue". For example, a year or so ago Reddit overhauled its rules to ban subreddits that were used to facilitate exchanging or gifting drugs (including alcohol and tobacco). However that rule has an exemption saying that advertisements for alcohol, tobacco, and narcotics are still OK. So /r/beertrade gets banned, but reddit will still happily show me ads for some winery founded by MIT grads. Reddit will also ban subreddits for hosting content that some people may think is "bad", but definitely not illegal. Not that I miss /r/shoplifting, but the discussion itself wasn't illegal. They also banned legal things like firearm schematics and r/brassswap
jules-jules 8y ago
Sorry if I misunderstand, but are you suggesting that these forces are not active on HN?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  They're more effective on a non-technical user-base where a larger fraction of users are unaware or less aware of those techniques.
  - i_cant_speel 8y ago
    HN is also a fraction of the size of Reddit, so there is less value in attempting to do so.
    - mbesto 8y ago
      And it has zero incentive to use its data other than to sell joining YC to entrepreneurs.
  - vvillena 8y ago
    Psychological techniques tend to work no matter whether we are aware of them or not. Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, fast and slow" explains why this happens, with lots of examples. It's a great read.
    - newsbinator 8y ago
      I'd argue that's hard to measure. Can you convince a subset of doctors to go anti-vaxx as easily as you can a randomly sampled subset of laymen? I suspect much of the readership of HN isn't only aware of dark patterns, but actively primed to recoil from them.
superfrank 8y ago
> I suspect they will be bigger than Facebook (maybe not in valuation, but usage) in the next 7 years and these problems will only be exacerbated. I only agree with that in the sense that I think Facebook (the facebnook.com site) usage will decline quicker that Reddit usage. As someone who's been on Reddit for almost 9 years, I feel like the redesign is kind of equivalent to the timeline change that Facebook had. While it's not going to cause massive user drop off on it's own, it's kind of the thing that opened people's eyes to the fact that they are the product on Reddit. Every new complaint about Reddit will be, "First they did the redesign and now they are doing {insert new annoying thing}" I think we'll see a gradual decline in Reddit usage for a while, but nothing major as there are no real competitors in the space that can handle anywhere near their scale. Once an actual competitor pops up though, all it's going to take is one or two missteps and people will start moving off Reddit.
- ssnistfajen 8y ago
  I'd love to be surprised with a decent competitor but all of the Reddit spin-offs I've seen are all trying to be not-Reddit, and that often includes keeping the community niche/exclusive.
  - superfrank 8y ago
    I think we'll see something eventually. There's too much money there and there isn't much of reddit that isn't copyable.
    - jedberg 8y ago
      I think 100 million users is harder to copy than you think.
      - rootusrootus 8y ago
        Exactly. I could go download the source code (or at least something like it, I'm not sure how much the github repo matches what is in production), and plenty of sites exist which have done this, but without the users it is meaningless. If you really want an alternative, convince Musk to do it (or bless yours) and tweet it out. Even then I bet it would take years to match Reddit, and it may or may not ever actually exceed it.
urda 8y ago
Blocking /u/GallowBoob did nothing but improve my reddit experience.
- therealdrag0 8y ago
  I've seen this comment more recently. I just thought he was a notorious reposter. What specifically is bad about him? (I often don't mind reposts when it's a first time for me..)
  - e1ven 8y ago
    There are allegations that he's paid to post things on behalf of companies. One such complaint is https://old.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/amg6kr/netflix_pays_ugallowboob_to_advertise_on_reddit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/amg6kr/netfl...
  - asdff 8y ago
    'He' is probably a small team of people using that account to repost paid content. There are dozens of massive accounts like this, I wish I had a comprehensive list to filter them all without going through user history one by one.
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      What is the point of aggregating so much traffic into a single account when it is not really a single person? Too easy to notice, too easy to block, why wouldn't someone paying to have content posted use many different accounts?
      - trustmath 8y ago
        The account eventually gains some level of recognition - while you have vocal haters, you also have people that upvote their content (likely based on the username) to the frontpage. Most of what gallowboob posts is garbage and I guarantee you that if it was coming from accounts with less karma or notariety it wouldn't reach the front-page. You have to consider that some of the people upvoting are people commenting on the threads.

vvillena 8y ago

Reddit played a big part in the 2016 USA elections that crowned Trump. Reddit had to change its front page algorithm to avoid having Trump content near the top of the page for almost the whole time. The subreddit in question organized itself to mass-upvote certain posts at certain times, and Reddit wasn't prepared for such massive, non-organic influence. I wonder how big of a part the Russian bots and trolls played. I'd love to read an in-depth book about it.

porpoisely 8y ago
Most of the content on reddit's frontpage in 2016 was anti-trump just like it is today. Reddit changed its algorithm because reddit admins supported hillary. The donald subreddit is no different from politics. The only difference is that one has the support of reddit and the other does not. And even bigger difference is that reddit admins allow reddit's power users to spam anti-trump propaganda from multiple subreddits. The idea that reddit helped Trump is absurd. Pretty much every social media company was anti-trump and many, like google, actively worked against trump.
ww520 8y ago
Reddit by and large was actively against Trump during 2016 and thereafter.
- TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
  You must have blocked /r/t_d. I would trust that there would be little argument that, by number of subs, and subscriber count, Reddit leans pretty-heavily left. However, by front page posts, the site APPEARED to lean heavily right in the run-up to the last presidential election. Week after week, I was blown away that the admins didn't nerf the algorithm to "fix" it.
  - moojd 8y ago
    They did eventually nerf the algorithm. /r/t_d was abusing stickied mod posts to get on the front page and that got fixed. I think it was also partly because most of the pro-trump users and posts were concentrated in one subreddit causing inflated upvote counts. /r/t_d also took advantage of the void left after the DNC primaries ended since the site was very anti-Hillary at the time.
- vvillena 8y ago
  Reddit is not a single entity, it is a clustered social network. The small part of it that supported Trump managed to create and empower a meme machine that is still going strong. Subreddits are like thinktanks. They are the perfect breeding ground for internet content. You can gauge popularity, you can quickly refine the content based on the comments received, and if you're lucky you can even kickstart and guide whole movements.
- hopler 8y ago
  As was a majority of the country, so that's unsurprising.
LeoPanthera 8y ago
Reddit is still a haven for the far-right. It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth that they are tolerated there.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  While this may be true, Reddit's "free speech" ethos has been part of its DNA from day 1. Reddit has also gone a long way to getting rid of the most egregious content (I mean, jailbait???) What would you suggest the alternative is? I think the real problem is that society is coming to terms with the fact that anonymous free speech isn't all it's cracked up to be.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    > What would you suggest the alternative is? Does there need to be one? This site seems to manage to avoid it. Quite how you get into the situation reddit did is mystifying to me. I completely agree that anonymous free speech is not the ideal it sounds.
    - figgis 8y ago
      > This site seems to manage to avoid it. If we are going to be reasonable a better comparison would be comparing this site to a single heavily moderated subreddit. As an extreme you have subreddits like https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ if you look into the comments you will see a lot of "[ Removed ]" threads. https://i.imgur.com/Q7mXkPd.png https://i.imgur.com/Q7mXkPd.png Other subreddits are purposefully not moderated as heavily. It's entirely up to whoever runs it to moderate how they see fit.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    I don't think it's accurate to say that reddit has a free speech ethos. Maybe "free speech up until the point where it causes problems with revenue". For example, a year or so ago Reddit overhauled its rules to ban subreddits that were used to facilitate exchanging or gifting drugs (including alcohol and tobacco). However that rule has an exemption saying that advertisements for alcohol, tobacco, and narcotics are still OK. So /r/beertrade gets banned, but reddit will still happily show me ads for some winery founded by MIT grads. Reddit will also ban subreddits for hosting content that some people may think is "bad", but definitely not illegal. Not that I miss /r/shoplifting, but the discussion itself wasn't illegal. They also banned legal things like firearm schematics and r/brassswap

jules-jules 8y ago

Sorry if I misunderstand, but are you suggesting that these forces are not active on HN?

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
They're more effective on a non-technical user-base where a larger fraction of users are unaware or less aware of those techniques.
- i_cant_speel 8y ago
  HN is also a fraction of the size of Reddit, so there is less value in attempting to do so.
  - mbesto 8y ago
    And it has zero incentive to use its data other than to sell joining YC to entrepreneurs.
- vvillena 8y ago
  Psychological techniques tend to work no matter whether we are aware of them or not. Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, fast and slow" explains why this happens, with lots of examples. It's a great read.
  - newsbinator 8y ago
    I'd argue that's hard to measure. Can you convince a subset of doctors to go anti-vaxx as easily as you can a randomly sampled subset of laymen? I suspect much of the readership of HN isn't only aware of dark patterns, but actively primed to recoil from them.

superfrank 8y ago

> I suspect they will be bigger than Facebook (maybe not in valuation, but usage) in the next 7 years and these problems will only be exacerbated. I only agree with that in the sense that I think Facebook (the facebnook.com site) usage will decline quicker that Reddit usage. As someone who's been on Reddit for almost 9 years, I feel like the redesign is kind of equivalent to the timeline change that Facebook had. While it's not going to cause massive user drop off on it's own, it's kind of the thing that opened people's eyes to the fact that they are the product on Reddit. Every new complaint about Reddit will be, "First they did the redesign and now they are doing {insert new annoying thing}" I think we'll see a gradual decline in Reddit usage for a while, but nothing major as there are no real competitors in the space that can handle anywhere near their scale. Once an actual competitor pops up though, all it's going to take is one or two missteps and people will start moving off Reddit.

ssnistfajen 8y ago
I'd love to be surprised with a decent competitor but all of the Reddit spin-offs I've seen are all trying to be not-Reddit, and that often includes keeping the community niche/exclusive.
- superfrank 8y ago
  I think we'll see something eventually. There's too much money there and there isn't much of reddit that isn't copyable.
  - jedberg 8y ago
    I think 100 million users is harder to copy than you think.
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      Exactly. I could go download the source code (or at least something like it, I'm not sure how much the github repo matches what is in production), and plenty of sites exist which have done this, but without the users it is meaningless. If you really want an alternative, convince Musk to do it (or bless yours) and tweet it out. Even then I bet it would take years to match Reddit, and it may or may not ever actually exceed it.

urda 8y ago

Blocking /u/GallowBoob did nothing but improve my reddit experience.

therealdrag0 8y ago
I've seen this comment more recently. I just thought he was a notorious reposter. What specifically is bad about him? (I often don't mind reposts when it's a first time for me..)
- e1ven 8y ago
  There are allegations that he's paid to post things on behalf of companies. One such complaint is https://old.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/amg6kr/netflix_pays_ugallowboob_to_advertise_on_reddit/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/amg6kr/netfl...
- asdff 8y ago
  'He' is probably a small team of people using that account to repost paid content. There are dozens of massive accounts like this, I wish I had a comprehensive list to filter them all without going through user history one by one.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    What is the point of aggregating so much traffic into a single account when it is not really a single person? Too easy to notice, too easy to block, why wouldn't someone paying to have content posted use many different accounts?
    - trustmath 8y ago
      The account eventually gains some level of recognition - while you have vocal haters, you also have people that upvote their content (likely based on the username) to the frontpage. Most of what gallowboob posts is garbage and I guarantee you that if it was coming from accounts with less karma or notariety it wouldn't reach the front-page. You have to consider that some of the people upvoting are people commenting on the threads.