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Reddit now feels like newsgroups after they were infested with spam. Little good content , hidden in corners under piles of spam. Instead of spam, they have pol

Reddit now feels like newsgroups after they were infested with spam. Little good content , hidden in corners under piles of spam. Instead of spam, they have politics though. It looks like a model on the verge of collapse.

deleted 6y ago
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Kaze404 6y ago
Politics is fine. But in general Reddit has so little content actually worth anyone's time that it's crazy to me how people spend so much time on it. Not to mention YouTube channels that get millions of views where they just read AskReddit threads with the same jokes those people make literally every single thread.
- dvt 6y ago
  > Politics is fine. Politics is fine if it's discussed like it is on HN†: level-headed arguments are debated, discussed, and, if a consensus isn't reached, we can agree to disagree. Reddit is polluted by absolute political drivel, except for a very small subset of subs. Low-effort "Trump is bad" posts that get massively upvoted just gets old after a while, especially when you see it every single day. † HN has been historically center-libertarian (which is a bit of self-selection by entrepreneurial folks), but recently started leaning much more left, no doubt due to an influx of non-startup-founding users.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    I'm personally not a fan of that kind of content either, but I like that politics is mainstream enough now that it exists. Politics discussion (however shallow) shouldn't be exclusive to certain demographics in my opinion.
    - nomdep 6y ago
      Agreed. But should be contained in specific subreddits/forums, in my opinion. Yes, I'm one of those people that doesn't buy the "everything is politics!" mantra
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- zerkten 6y ago
  > Politics is fine. But in general Reddit has so little content actually worth anyone's time that it's crazy to me how people spend so much time on it. I don't go to Reddit for content, I go for the community. That doesn't seem right because the perception is that Reddit is highly toxic, but it sustains a lot of life when you look closer. There is a particular health-related sub-reddit that I discovered after a diagnosis and while it is highly imperfect it was a lifeline and something I spent a lot of time contributing back on. In about 20% of threads it spun off to PM threads and discussions continued over days. I see this pattern across the site, even though my bookmark goes to r/programming.
- fishingisfun 6y ago
  the gems are hidden in small subs
- cle 6y ago
  I don't know what content you're looking for on Reddit, but my experience is the opposite. Reddit makes it very easy for me to find focused, high-quality conversations about specific topics. As others have said, the trick is to stick to small subreddits. AskReddit, like most of the big subreddits, is a cesspool. Also, I find that searching Reddit with Google yields much more trustworthy information than just searching Google, which tends to return a bunch of sponsored results, ads, and SEO garbage. Folks on Reddit (especially focused subreddits) do a very good job of filtering all that stuff out already. It's not perfect, but it's often vastly better than Google alone.
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    Hear hear I would offer up the subreddit on liminal spaces or the video game Marathon as places for discussion that could not otherwise exist without Reddit.
  - jug 6y ago
    Agreed — don’t use the default subreddits. They’re cancer. But I’ve had a great time at the Formula1 subreddit and people are crazy at MechanicalKeyboards. I’m sure you’ll love a knitting group if you enjoy that. Go by your specific interests and really just say no to the generic or huge ones like funny, pics, askreddit etc.
    - drstewart 6y ago
      The problem is that subreddit is very prone to heterogeneous opinions and groupthink, even among niche subreddits, mostly around what's appealing to mid-20 year old white US males. The discussion is often very shallow, mostly aimed at "advanced beginners" because that's what appeals to the widest audience and anything else doesn't get traction, unlike in a traditional forum. This is very obvious if you're into a technical hobby like climbing or mountaineering. Basically, if you don't fit the demographic / skill level mold, even niche subreddits (that aren't the dumpster fire that the large ones are) quickly lose their value.
      - SkyMarshal 6y ago
- rnd0 6y ago
  Politics isn't fine. I'd go so far as to say that politics is inherently destructive to online communities. It inevitably leads to people fighting over which team that they're on.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  > Politics is fine it really isn't. it's bottom-quality content, everyone can have an opinion about politics, it's too easy. Every subreddit > 100000 has a politics problem because people have now been conditioned to see politics everywhere. It takes effort to keep things topical. And then, even the politics subreddits themselves are completely confused, e.g. r/libertarian is a mostly socialist sub now.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    I've been banned from a subreddit because I said Trump did some good things basically. Mod called me a nazi and silenced me after my appeal for 30 days.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - iratewizard 6y ago
    >r/libertarian is a mostly socialist sub now Not surprising when the libertarian candidates run on own borders and government enforced equality for the identity politic cultists.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    /r/libertarian becoming socialist is not confused at all. It's been made to welcome libertarian socialists for a long while now, explicitly, and libertarian socialism itself has a very long tradition.
- kshacker 6y ago
  Here's what I do: multiple accounts. Switching accounts is easy. One for politics (news, politics, geopolitics, plus other variations), One for finance (options, investing, thetagang, no WSB for those who know), One for Relationships (Relationships, TIFU, AITA) because it is fun, One for bay area (and the only one where I am somewhat willing to disclose my identity), One for health, One for entertainment (all the TV shows that I am watching at the moment), and 2 for my country of origin (one with leftist leans and one with rightist leans since I got banned for somewhat innocuous comments in one of them so I said why not two). I could look up specific subreddits, but I find it easy for one account to focus on a single topic and subscribe to 5-10 related subs on that topic. Based on the need, the feed works perfectly. You can say it is addiction but I would say it is focused addiction. When I am reading about options trading, I am reading about options, investments, dividends and what not - usually there is a purpose and maybe a perceived benefit, and when I am reading about entertainment, it is to track reviews and user comments - same perceived benefit - I could go to IMDB but it is not the same.
  - hamolton 6y ago
    If you'd rather have your comments be on the same username, multireddits (old Reddit UI) or custom feeds (new Reddit UI) are an option for managing groups of subscriptions too.
- urda 6y ago
  It's really not. The main political subreddit /r/politics has just become an echo chamber even though they claim to be unbiased. The way reddit is designed and built only results in these echo chambers. Politics on reddit, especially over the past 4 years, ends up seeping into even non-political subreddits. reddit makes money off rage.
dvt 6y ago
I agree that it seems like it's ripe for disruption. Time for another Digg (which was what reddit was supposed to be) -- maybe with a mobile-first user experience (reddit is trash on a phone).
- jack2222 6y ago
  rather than digg, I'd like to see another stumbleupon
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    tiktok is sort of similar. Although much inferior, in my opinion.
- robswc 6y ago
  Its actually incredible how bad it is on mobile. Its like, unusable... I'm amazed that the video player still only seems to work half the time.
  - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
    Never works for me at all, and most animated GIFs don’t animate either. It takes a special type of effort to make video NOT work on modern web browsers.
    - fizx 6y ago
      Which platform?
      - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
        Safari on iOS. Reddit is basically unusable without an account via web.
  - fizx 6y ago
    Which platform?
Barrin92 6y ago
it's the downside of reddit still being a relatively federated, open platform. You have to dig yourself to find good content and niche subreddits, but I vastly prefer it to the centralised, 'overlord AI', algorithmic stuff on every other service. You can't have it both, if you have decentralisation and pretty free expression you get a lot of garbage and responsibility is on you to find what's worth looking at. I also don't see politics as bad. Sure the level of discourse is abysmal, kind of the norm for politics anyway, but I'll take people at least talking about politics than cat videos and bikini pictures and 'pranking homeless people' videos.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  I'd agree with this if Reddit didn't ban literally every single subreddit their vocal minority didn't like. Reddit used to be a fun hybrid of Fark and Slashdot. It was far better than both of those and had a niche audience just a little larger than the HN community. It was great. Now it just feels like a perpetual tumblr ready to silence the reason why their users are even on their platform.
  - Trill-I-Am 6y ago
    What subreddits have they banned that weren't vile?
    - uyt 6y ago
      /r/watchpeopledie was a very educational sub. Sometimes you just want to see real life events that they will never show on TV. Reddit used to be a place where you could find content like that.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
      Pornography can vile yet ISP's don't take them down even though they could. Why can't reddit do the same thing? 4chan exists as well yet they haven't been taken down. This is why I disagree with the argument that reddit hasn't taken down any subreddits that "werent vile." If someone is on the internet, they're going to find something they're interested in. ISP's can't stop it for web traffic, why should reddit be treated any differently?
SkyMarshal 6y ago
Niche subreddits are informative and useful. You just have to unsubscribe from all the default reddits and find the niche stuff that interests you. Then your reddit front page becomes one of the most useful media pages on the internet.
- 8bitben 6y ago
  I agree - if you take some time to really customize your subscriptions and interface options (read: ditch the new interface immediately for the classic one), reddit can be a very powerful 'dashboard for your interests' unlike most other sites. I guess the questions is if they can keep it that way and also monetize.
  - geogra4 6y ago
    Yeah. The niche communities are really what keep me coming back. For example, r/fermentation is a fantastic community of people who make all different kinds of fermented foods and is a great place to go for advice or recipes. But the main subreddits? Useless
    - Florin_Andrei 6y ago
      The niche subs are on the right-hand side of the bell curve's tail. The main subs are in the thick middle of the curve. Same problem as with literally everything else in life.
- jordache 6y ago
  haha r/pics r/earthporn utterly useless
- encom 6y ago
  Yea, but those niche subreddits are getting rarer and rarer. There's some kind of goldilocks zone where subs are popular enough to be active with interesting content, but not popular enough to devolve into no-effort meme spam. Or possibly terrible moderation ruins the sub completely. Or the official Reddit fun-police shuts you down. I left that cess pool behind about a year ago, and I don't miss it.
robswc 6y ago
I've mostly stopped using reddit because the quality has taken a nosedive. I love it when you could go there and see interesting things around the internet. It reminds me a bit like how HN is now, just more broad. Recently though its like every other damn post is about politics, its so tiring. I've mostly stopped using it after seeing back to back threads about how you're basically immoral and evil for pursuing a career in tech or if you want to create a startup or receive a six figure salary... just a bunch of nonsense like that. I don't think that these "discussions" should be shut down but I'm just not interested in seeing what seems like propaganda mixed in with "funny stuff"
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  Or saying anything remotely positive about a republican. Instant downvotes. Doesn't matter who, where, or what it's about. Republican did something to better his constituency? NO HE WAS JUST DOING IT FOR KICKBACKS! Reddit effectively has trained their users to only reinforce liberal ideals, otherwise face the downvote machine.
  - robswc 6y ago
    Yep. It is incredibly polarized. I would say at this point the democrats only get a pass because they are "marginally better than republicans" according to reddit. Should have seen some of the stuff they were saying about Biden before he won the primaries. Lot of racism, lot of hatred behind it. I was shocked.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
      And Kamala too. It's like reddit is the democratic platform of "no integrity." Why reddit democrats didn't actively vote against the democratic platform this election goes to show they kowtow to everything the party says because of what you said, "they're marginally better than republicans."
austincheney 6y ago
My karma on Reddit was about 5500 before I deleted my account and walked away. The thing I remember most about it is echo chambers. The insecurity was very real, kind of like programming in the corporate world, but heavily magnified.
timClicks 6y ago
Which subreddits do you visit? I've found the smaller ones to be excellent.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Kaze404 6y ago

Politics is fine. But in general Reddit has so little content actually worth anyone's time that it's crazy to me how people spend so much time on it. Not to mention YouTube channels that get millions of views where they just read AskReddit threads with the same jokes those people make literally every single thread.

dvt 6y ago
> Politics is fine. Politics is fine if it's discussed like it is on HN†: level-headed arguments are debated, discussed, and, if a consensus isn't reached, we can agree to disagree. Reddit is polluted by absolute political drivel, except for a very small subset of subs. Low-effort "Trump is bad" posts that get massively upvoted just gets old after a while, especially when you see it every single day. † HN has been historically center-libertarian (which is a bit of self-selection by entrepreneurial folks), but recently started leaning much more left, no doubt due to an influx of non-startup-founding users.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I'm personally not a fan of that kind of content either, but I like that politics is mainstream enough now that it exists. Politics discussion (however shallow) shouldn't be exclusive to certain demographics in my opinion.
  - nomdep 6y ago
    Agreed. But should be contained in specific subreddits/forums, in my opinion. Yes, I'm one of those people that doesn't buy the "everything is politics!" mantra
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
zerkten 6y ago
> Politics is fine. But in general Reddit has so little content actually worth anyone's time that it's crazy to me how people spend so much time on it. I don't go to Reddit for content, I go for the community. That doesn't seem right because the perception is that Reddit is highly toxic, but it sustains a lot of life when you look closer. There is a particular health-related sub-reddit that I discovered after a diagnosis and while it is highly imperfect it was a lifeline and something I spent a lot of time contributing back on. In about 20% of threads it spun off to PM threads and discussions continued over days. I see this pattern across the site, even though my bookmark goes to r/programming.
fishingisfun 6y ago
the gems are hidden in small subs
cle 6y ago
I don't know what content you're looking for on Reddit, but my experience is the opposite. Reddit makes it very easy for me to find focused, high-quality conversations about specific topics. As others have said, the trick is to stick to small subreddits. AskReddit, like most of the big subreddits, is a cesspool. Also, I find that searching Reddit with Google yields much more trustworthy information than just searching Google, which tends to return a bunch of sponsored results, ads, and SEO garbage. Folks on Reddit (especially focused subreddits) do a very good job of filtering all that stuff out already. It's not perfect, but it's often vastly better than Google alone.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Hear hear I would offer up the subreddit on liminal spaces or the video game Marathon as places for discussion that could not otherwise exist without Reddit.
- jug 6y ago
  Agreed — don’t use the default subreddits. They’re cancer. But I’ve had a great time at the Formula1 subreddit and people are crazy at MechanicalKeyboards. I’m sure you’ll love a knitting group if you enjoy that. Go by your specific interests and really just say no to the generic or huge ones like funny, pics, askreddit etc.
  - drstewart 6y ago
    The problem is that subreddit is very prone to heterogeneous opinions and groupthink, even among niche subreddits, mostly around what's appealing to mid-20 year old white US males. The discussion is often very shallow, mostly aimed at "advanced beginners" because that's what appeals to the widest audience and anything else doesn't get traction, unlike in a traditional forum. This is very obvious if you're into a technical hobby like climbing or mountaineering. Basically, if you don't fit the demographic / skill level mold, even niche subreddits (that aren't the dumpster fire that the large ones are) quickly lose their value.
    - SkyMarshal 6y ago
rnd0 6y ago
Politics isn't fine. I'd go so far as to say that politics is inherently destructive to online communities. It inevitably leads to people fighting over which team that they're on.
cblconfederate 6y ago
> Politics is fine it really isn't. it's bottom-quality content, everyone can have an opinion about politics, it's too easy. Every subreddit > 100000 has a politics problem because people have now been conditioned to see politics everywhere. It takes effort to keep things topical. And then, even the politics subreddits themselves are completely confused, e.g. r/libertarian is a mostly socialist sub now.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  I've been banned from a subreddit because I said Trump did some good things basically. Mod called me a nazi and silenced me after my appeal for 30 days.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- iratewizard 6y ago
  >r/libertarian is a mostly socialist sub now Not surprising when the libertarian candidates run on own borders and government enforced equality for the identity politic cultists.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  /r/libertarian becoming socialist is not confused at all. It's been made to welcome libertarian socialists for a long while now, explicitly, and libertarian socialism itself has a very long tradition.
kshacker 6y ago
Here's what I do: multiple accounts. Switching accounts is easy. One for politics (news, politics, geopolitics, plus other variations), One for finance (options, investing, thetagang, no WSB for those who know), One for Relationships (Relationships, TIFU, AITA) because it is fun, One for bay area (and the only one where I am somewhat willing to disclose my identity), One for health, One for entertainment (all the TV shows that I am watching at the moment), and 2 for my country of origin (one with leftist leans and one with rightist leans since I got banned for somewhat innocuous comments in one of them so I said why not two). I could look up specific subreddits, but I find it easy for one account to focus on a single topic and subscribe to 5-10 related subs on that topic. Based on the need, the feed works perfectly. You can say it is addiction but I would say it is focused addiction. When I am reading about options trading, I am reading about options, investments, dividends and what not - usually there is a purpose and maybe a perceived benefit, and when I am reading about entertainment, it is to track reviews and user comments - same perceived benefit - I could go to IMDB but it is not the same.
- hamolton 6y ago
  If you'd rather have your comments be on the same username, multireddits (old Reddit UI) or custom feeds (new Reddit UI) are an option for managing groups of subscriptions too.
urda 6y ago
It's really not. The main political subreddit /r/politics has just become an echo chamber even though they claim to be unbiased. The way reddit is designed and built only results in these echo chambers. Politics on reddit, especially over the past 4 years, ends up seeping into even non-political subreddits. reddit makes money off rage.

dvt 6y ago

I agree that it seems like it's ripe for disruption. Time for another Digg (which was what reddit was supposed to be) -- maybe with a mobile-first user experience (reddit is trash on a phone).

jack2222 6y ago
rather than digg, I'd like to see another stumbleupon
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  tiktok is sort of similar. Although much inferior, in my opinion.
robswc 6y ago
Its actually incredible how bad it is on mobile. Its like, unusable... I'm amazed that the video player still only seems to work half the time.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
  Never works for me at all, and most animated GIFs don’t animate either. It takes a special type of effort to make video NOT work on modern web browsers.
  - fizx 6y ago
    Which platform?
    - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
      Safari on iOS. Reddit is basically unusable without an account via web.
- fizx 6y ago
  Which platform?

Barrin92 6y ago

it's the downside of reddit still being a relatively federated, open platform. You have to dig yourself to find good content and niche subreddits, but I vastly prefer it to the centralised, 'overlord AI', algorithmic stuff on every other service. You can't have it both, if you have decentralisation and pretty free expression you get a lot of garbage and responsibility is on you to find what's worth looking at. I also don't see politics as bad. Sure the level of discourse is abysmal, kind of the norm for politics anyway, but I'll take people at least talking about politics than cat videos and bikini pictures and 'pranking homeless people' videos.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
I'd agree with this if Reddit didn't ban literally every single subreddit their vocal minority didn't like. Reddit used to be a fun hybrid of Fark and Slashdot. It was far better than both of those and had a niche audience just a little larger than the HN community. It was great. Now it just feels like a perpetual tumblr ready to silence the reason why their users are even on their platform.
- Trill-I-Am 6y ago
  What subreddits have they banned that weren't vile?
  - uyt 6y ago
    /r/watchpeopledie was a very educational sub. Sometimes you just want to see real life events that they will never show on TV. Reddit used to be a place where you could find content like that.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    Pornography can vile yet ISP's don't take them down even though they could. Why can't reddit do the same thing? 4chan exists as well yet they haven't been taken down. This is why I disagree with the argument that reddit hasn't taken down any subreddits that "werent vile." If someone is on the internet, they're going to find something they're interested in. ISP's can't stop it for web traffic, why should reddit be treated any differently?

SkyMarshal 6y ago

Niche subreddits are informative and useful. You just have to unsubscribe from all the default reddits and find the niche stuff that interests you. Then your reddit front page becomes one of the most useful media pages on the internet.

8bitben 6y ago
I agree - if you take some time to really customize your subscriptions and interface options (read: ditch the new interface immediately for the classic one), reddit can be a very powerful 'dashboard for your interests' unlike most other sites. I guess the questions is if they can keep it that way and also monetize.
- geogra4 6y ago
  Yeah. The niche communities are really what keep me coming back. For example, r/fermentation is a fantastic community of people who make all different kinds of fermented foods and is a great place to go for advice or recipes. But the main subreddits? Useless
  - Florin_Andrei 6y ago
    The niche subs are on the right-hand side of the bell curve's tail. The main subs are in the thick middle of the curve. Same problem as with literally everything else in life.
jordache 6y ago
haha r/pics r/earthporn utterly useless
encom 6y ago
Yea, but those niche subreddits are getting rarer and rarer. There's some kind of goldilocks zone where subs are popular enough to be active with interesting content, but not popular enough to devolve into no-effort meme spam. Or possibly terrible moderation ruins the sub completely. Or the official Reddit fun-police shuts you down. I left that cess pool behind about a year ago, and I don't miss it.

robswc 6y ago

I've mostly stopped using reddit because the quality has taken a nosedive. I love it when you could go there and see interesting things around the internet. It reminds me a bit like how HN is now, just more broad. Recently though its like every other damn post is about politics, its so tiring. I've mostly stopped using it after seeing back to back threads about how you're basically immoral and evil for pursuing a career in tech or if you want to create a startup or receive a six figure salary... just a bunch of nonsense like that. I don't think that these "discussions" should be shut down but I'm just not interested in seeing what seems like propaganda mixed in with "funny stuff"

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
Or saying anything remotely positive about a republican. Instant downvotes. Doesn't matter who, where, or what it's about. Republican did something to better his constituency? NO HE WAS JUST DOING IT FOR KICKBACKS! Reddit effectively has trained their users to only reinforce liberal ideals, otherwise face the downvote machine.
- robswc 6y ago
  Yep. It is incredibly polarized. I would say at this point the democrats only get a pass because they are "marginally better than republicans" according to reddit. Should have seen some of the stuff they were saying about Biden before he won the primaries. Lot of racism, lot of hatred behind it. I was shocked.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    And Kamala too. It's like reddit is the democratic platform of "no integrity." Why reddit democrats didn't actively vote against the democratic platform this election goes to show they kowtow to everything the party says because of what you said, "they're marginally better than republicans."

austincheney 6y ago

My karma on Reddit was about 5500 before I deleted my account and walked away. The thing I remember most about it is echo chambers. The insecurity was very real, kind of like programming in the corporate world, but heavily magnified.

timClicks 6y ago

Which subreddits do you visit? I've found the smaller ones to be excellent.