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I have come to the conclusion that reddit is 2 apps/websites. The first is a tiktok-esque waste of time, instant gratification meme machine. Everyone on this a

by screye 6y ago

I have come to the conclusion that reddit is 2 apps/websites. The first is a tiktok-esque waste of time, instant gratification meme machine. Everyone on this app uses the reddit native app and doesn't care about dark patterns. They would never know that reddit's app is shit, because they literally don't care enough. The 2nd is a Hackernews-esque collection of hobbyist sub-forums. These people are invested in their hobbies and sub-reddits. They use reddit to interact and discuss, but also a source of niche-news for their hobby. Every one here has a 3rd party reddit app or uses RES. (if you don't, please do). Unlike twitter, reddit lets 3rd parties offer feature complete wrappers for reddit. This group has ad-block, but will occasionally give someone gold. This group hates reddit, but also has no where to go. If a person tries to make reddit both, then it is an annoying experience. I use reddit entirely as the latter. The front-page and r/all are garbage to me. Every super popular (barring sports) subreddit is trash. But, my niche subreddits are literally the best places on the internet to gain niche information. Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities, fantasy fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that's just for me. PSA : Use a 3rd party reddit app (SYNC is my preferred. Pay up the 2$ dollars. It is worth it). Use RES, and enforce filters strongly. Use RedditProTools to detect trolls, bias and top contributors. Use Imagus (hoverzoom has malware) for pop-image/video viewer. These will greatly enhance your reddit experience.

maest 6y ago
> Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities, fantasy fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that's just for me. With the risk of sounding elitist, for some of those topics the main subreddit is overran with pointless and repetitive memes. You'd have to go to the r/true* subreddit to get the serious, in depth discussions.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  There are so many examples where a niche subreddit got filled with drama, and then a significant chunk split off and created another subreddit that now fights with the original occasionally. Gaming subreddits appear to be particularly bad at this.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Unfortunately many of the true subreddits are now alt right havens.
  - chappi42 6y ago
    And? If you don't like those subreddits, don't visit. I'm not interested in alt right (or left;) but your 'unfortunately' seems misplaced to me.
  - goostavos 6y ago
    Actual alt-right havens, or just... not left? The subs I often frequent are exhausting in their claims of being overrun by alt-right types. While I'm in no way saying that there aren't politically obnoxious people (even specific users whose damn job seems to be shitposting political content), in subs like /r/seattle, just being not 100% aligned with the popular hot takes gets you labeled as alt-right. Hell even disagreeing with part of something gets you in trouble. Are you for police reform but against the rioting? You probably didn't know this about you, but you're an alt-right troll.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      It's funny how I've been labelled an alt-right troll and was banned from the UK subreddit for a while, because I stated that Gandhi's statue should not have been toppled, that he wasn't a racist, that Sadiq Khan and the London mayoralty is partly responsible for high rents, etc etc. Incidentally, at the time, I was a Labour member, with a whole ton of MPs in my phone book, including the current leader, and some of whom I was so close that we invited each other to our homes. It was laughable. But that experience and the constant name-calling against people not expressing a far-left opinion kind of soured the whole reddit experience for me. I barely look at country subs or any of the major subs now, and focus instead on niche subs, only because reddit is also a good way to get some questions answered. Especially when stackoverflow comes up short and I get downvoted to oblivion for asking supposedly noob questions, I get much more help from the respective reddit sub.
ma2rten 6y ago
There is also a large NSFW scene on reddit.
- wjsetzer 6y ago
  It's pretty wild that the largest discussion site on the internet with untold numbers of young kids on it regularly has NSFW posts hit the top or second page. It makes me wonder if Reddit will try to push down or altogether ban NSFW content a la Tumblr because of the site's popularity.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Don't you have to log in to get that content to show up by default?
    - cvhashim 6y ago
      Yeah and? 12-year olds have reddit accounts for things like gaming or other discussions. I think if you go to r/All it features nsfw content
      - nacs 6y ago
        It's still off by default, especially on mobile. And if you have a kid with unmonitored access to the internet, they're going to access nsfw content regardless of what a site operator does.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        I think you may still have to flip a switch in settings saying you're OK with seeing that–but really you don't have to go very far to find content like that anyways, just click on the comments for any post and you'll find something questionable quite quickly.
verylittlemeat 6y ago
I get your general breakdown but my issue is somewhere in between. I never use the tiktok meme machine part of reddit anymore. As you mentioned I do have a bunch of smaller hobby subreddits that I only visit on my locked down oldreddit RES configured personal devices. My problem comes when I'm not on my own machine/device and I'm trying to troubleshoot with "xyz question site:reddit.com" through google and get bogged down in new reddit or app reddit. It's really infuriating the way new reddit compresses threads to only a handful of magically prepicked comments out of possibly hundreds. You have to remember everytime to click to load the entire comment section just to browse the UX abomination they created.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Sync is a pretty good client for mobile, if you're willing to pay a few bucks.
wjsetzer 6y ago
I unironically miss forums. It was a completely different experience from post/comment based sites because everything was one thread, but the biggest thing I miss is that forums were usually pretty well moderated, smaller, and devoted to one topic. Reddit is the de facto site for making a community on, but there's something to be said for the focused insular forums of just a few years ago.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I hate time-ordered subs. They are so inefficient. You end up being forced to read hundreds of "me too" comments with zero substance. Voting, for all its problems of bias and agenda driven voting, eliminates 99% of the chaff that makes chrono-forums unreadable.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    It's a trade-off. The Reddit/HN format makes everything time sensitive. If the post falls off the front-page, nobody will even see your comment, the discussion immediately dies. It's completely unfit for longer form discussion over time. Sometimes you want a forum for discussion, not just a comments section of highlight reel one-liners.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Is there an algorithm that would facilitate discussion though? Regardless of time sensitivity?
  - cogman10 6y ago
    The issue with voting based forums is they tend to cater to low quality mass appeal comments. More often than not an informative comment, while maybe not being downvoted, won't be the top comment. Instead, you'll see really low effort "zingers" which make it to the top. Those are further piled on with a flood of comments trying to one up each other. So, you end up often needing really strict moderation to curtail this problem. Chrono ordering suffers the same issue, somewhat, though it doesn't have the pile on problem (not to the same extent).
_fat_santa 6y ago
And I think this is why Reddit won't try to cater their main app to "our crowd" (Powerusers, HN readers, etc). In a way they already have an app just for us: their API. Reddit knows it's going to be impossible to design a single app to cater to all types of users. They know there is always going to be a group of people that complain about one feature or another so they in-turn expose the API that we can build out own. Now if a group of users has a specific workflow they like, they can build an app that will specifically cater to them.
- short_sells_poo 6y ago
  This would be fine if they just plain and simple catered to a group. What Reddit does though is they are actively hostile to one group. I'm somewhat in the boat the parent is. I see the incredible value in something like Reddit - or maybe the Reddit of old. Where niche communities can self police and create a space for information and content that isn't found anywhere else. Unfortunately everything has to be monetized. The people who own Reddit want to make money and therefore they try to toe the line of using just enough dark patterns to force the tiktok group to use the Reddit app and not to terminally piss off the nice groups.
  - genghizkhan 6y ago
    The best answer to this is probably the fediverse. I don't know how well it works today, but I think that's going to be the way to go now.
  - mattgreenrocks 6y ago
    Eating the core users that got you started is pretty much the playbook for almost every Internet site that tries to win the mainstream.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      And I believe Digg doing that was the start of Reddit?
abledon 6y ago
there are three 'main' tabs on the app --- News, Home, Popular.. When I'm done reading News,and Home... i say to myself, "time to stupid!" and click "Popular" lol
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I use it as both. Not everyone fits in whatever category you've designated there is a lot of middle ground on reddit. It's far better as a platform than facebook that force your identity. If reddit ever isn't mostly anonymous I'll head out.
irrational 6y ago
For me I use it for boardgames, boardgamedeals, BoardGameNews, 18xx, digitaltabletop, some other even more niche board gaming subreddits, woodworking, artisanbread, breadit, bodyweightfitness, stormlight_archive, gardening, etc. For me, Reddit is a single place to go for all of my niche hobbies.
bscphil 6y ago
> Every one here has a 3rd party reddit app or uses RES. (if you don't, please do). I sometimes go long stretches without using Reddit, but I'm 100% in the second column when I use it. I've never used a 3rd party reddit app and I don't use RES. The reason is that I only ever browse Reddit on the computer (logged in, in "old" Reddit mode). If you don't browse Reddit on your phone, these aren't really necessary. (This isn't just a Reddit thing, I also don't browse Twitter, Facebook, or any other social platform on my phone. Mainly, this is because I want to avoid the dark patterns and unblockable ads of mobile apps.)
JVIDEL 6y ago
"no where to go" Indeed, subs and groups in social media have decimated web forums, web2.0 has consolidated most communities within a handful of sites.

by screye 6y ago

maest 6y ago

> Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities, fantasy fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that's just for me. With the risk of sounding elitist, for some of those topics the main subreddit is overran with pointless and repetitive memes. You'd have to go to the r/true* subreddit to get the serious, in depth discussions.

ashtonkem 6y ago
There are so many examples where a niche subreddit got filled with drama, and then a significant chunk split off and created another subreddit that now fights with the original occasionally. Gaming subreddits appear to be particularly bad at this.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Unfortunately many of the true subreddits are now alt right havens.
- chappi42 6y ago
  And? If you don't like those subreddits, don't visit. I'm not interested in alt right (or left;) but your 'unfortunately' seems misplaced to me.
- goostavos 6y ago
  Actual alt-right havens, or just... not left? The subs I often frequent are exhausting in their claims of being overrun by alt-right types. While I'm in no way saying that there aren't politically obnoxious people (even specific users whose damn job seems to be shitposting political content), in subs like /r/seattle, just being not 100% aligned with the popular hot takes gets you labeled as alt-right. Hell even disagreeing with part of something gets you in trouble. Are you for police reform but against the rioting? You probably didn't know this about you, but you're an alt-right troll.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    It's funny how I've been labelled an alt-right troll and was banned from the UK subreddit for a while, because I stated that Gandhi's statue should not have been toppled, that he wasn't a racist, that Sadiq Khan and the London mayoralty is partly responsible for high rents, etc etc. Incidentally, at the time, I was a Labour member, with a whole ton of MPs in my phone book, including the current leader, and some of whom I was so close that we invited each other to our homes. It was laughable. But that experience and the constant name-calling against people not expressing a far-left opinion kind of soured the whole reddit experience for me. I barely look at country subs or any of the major subs now, and focus instead on niche subs, only because reddit is also a good way to get some questions answered. Especially when stackoverflow comes up short and I get downvoted to oblivion for asking supposedly noob questions, I get much more help from the respective reddit sub.

ma2rten 6y ago

There is also a large NSFW scene on reddit.

wjsetzer 6y ago
It's pretty wild that the largest discussion site on the internet with untold numbers of young kids on it regularly has NSFW posts hit the top or second page. It makes me wonder if Reddit will try to push down or altogether ban NSFW content a la Tumblr because of the site's popularity.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Don't you have to log in to get that content to show up by default?
  - cvhashim 6y ago
    Yeah and? 12-year olds have reddit accounts for things like gaming or other discussions. I think if you go to r/All it features nsfw content
    - nacs 6y ago
      It's still off by default, especially on mobile. And if you have a kid with unmonitored access to the internet, they're going to access nsfw content regardless of what a site operator does.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      I think you may still have to flip a switch in settings saying you're OK with seeing that–but really you don't have to go very far to find content like that anyways, just click on the comments for any post and you'll find something questionable quite quickly.

verylittlemeat 6y ago

I get your general breakdown but my issue is somewhere in between. I never use the tiktok meme machine part of reddit anymore. As you mentioned I do have a bunch of smaller hobby subreddits that I only visit on my locked down oldreddit RES configured personal devices. My problem comes when I'm not on my own machine/device and I'm trying to troubleshoot with "xyz question site:reddit.com" through google and get bogged down in new reddit or app reddit. It's really infuriating the way new reddit compresses threads to only a handful of magically prepicked comments out of possibly hundreds. You have to remember everytime to click to load the entire comment section just to browse the UX abomination they created.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
Sync is a pretty good client for mobile, if you're willing to pay a few bucks.

wjsetzer 6y ago

I unironically miss forums. It was a completely different experience from post/comment based sites because everything was one thread, but the biggest thing I miss is that forums were usually pretty well moderated, smaller, and devoted to one topic. Reddit is the de facto site for making a community on, but there's something to be said for the focused insular forums of just a few years ago.

koheripbal 6y ago
I hate time-ordered subs. They are so inefficient. You end up being forced to read hundreds of "me too" comments with zero substance. Voting, for all its problems of bias and agenda driven voting, eliminates 99% of the chaff that makes chrono-forums unreadable.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  It's a trade-off. The Reddit/HN format makes everything time sensitive. If the post falls off the front-page, nobody will even see your comment, the discussion immediately dies. It's completely unfit for longer form discussion over time. Sometimes you want a forum for discussion, not just a comments section of highlight reel one-liners.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Is there an algorithm that would facilitate discussion though? Regardless of time sensitivity?
- cogman10 6y ago
  The issue with voting based forums is they tend to cater to low quality mass appeal comments. More often than not an informative comment, while maybe not being downvoted, won't be the top comment. Instead, you'll see really low effort "zingers" which make it to the top. Those are further piled on with a flood of comments trying to one up each other. So, you end up often needing really strict moderation to curtail this problem. Chrono ordering suffers the same issue, somewhat, though it doesn't have the pile on problem (not to the same extent).

_fat_santa 6y ago

And I think this is why Reddit won't try to cater their main app to "our crowd" (Powerusers, HN readers, etc). In a way they already have an app just for us: their API. Reddit knows it's going to be impossible to design a single app to cater to all types of users. They know there is always going to be a group of people that complain about one feature or another so they in-turn expose the API that we can build out own. Now if a group of users has a specific workflow they like, they can build an app that will specifically cater to them.

short_sells_poo 6y ago
This would be fine if they just plain and simple catered to a group. What Reddit does though is they are actively hostile to one group. I'm somewhat in the boat the parent is. I see the incredible value in something like Reddit - or maybe the Reddit of old. Where niche communities can self police and create a space for information and content that isn't found anywhere else. Unfortunately everything has to be monetized. The people who own Reddit want to make money and therefore they try to toe the line of using just enough dark patterns to force the tiktok group to use the Reddit app and not to terminally piss off the nice groups.
- genghizkhan 6y ago
  The best answer to this is probably the fediverse. I don't know how well it works today, but I think that's going to be the way to go now.
- mattgreenrocks 6y ago
  Eating the core users that got you started is pretty much the playbook for almost every Internet site that tries to win the mainstream.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    And I believe Digg doing that was the start of Reddit?

abledon 6y ago

there are three 'main' tabs on the app --- News, Home, Popular.. When I'm done reading News,and Home... i say to myself, "time to stupid!" and click "Popular" lol

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

stjohnswarts 6y ago

I use it as both. Not everyone fits in whatever category you've designated there is a lot of middle ground on reddit. It's far better as a platform than facebook that force your identity. If reddit ever isn't mostly anonymous I'll head out.

irrational 6y ago

For me I use it for boardgames, boardgamedeals, BoardGameNews, 18xx, digitaltabletop, some other even more niche board gaming subreddits, woodworking, artisanbread, breadit, bodyweightfitness, stormlight_archive, gardening, etc. For me, Reddit is a single place to go for all of my niche hobbies.

bscphil 6y ago

> Every one here has a 3rd party reddit app or uses RES. (if you don't, please do). I sometimes go long stretches without using Reddit, but I'm 100% in the second column when I use it. I've never used a 3rd party reddit app and I don't use RES. The reason is that I only ever browse Reddit on the computer (logged in, in "old" Reddit mode). If you don't browse Reddit on your phone, these aren't really necessary. (This isn't just a Reddit thing, I also don't browse Twitter, Facebook, or any other social platform on my phone. Mainly, this is because I want to avoid the dark patterns and unblockable ads of mobile apps.)

JVIDEL 6y ago

"no where to go" Indeed, subs and groups in social media have decimated web forums, web2.0 has consolidated most communities within a handful of sites.