8 ms·

I completely agree. The fact that major subreddits all have Discord servers definitely speaks to Discord addressing some community need that Reddit is not.

dimmke 5y ago
Reddit ended up adding a corny chat feature that is exclusively used for spam as their answer to it. Pretty awful. But to be honest, before subreddits had Discords they had IRC channels. This has always been a thing.
- edoceo 5y ago
  Reddit Chat is my prime example of a Product Development Vice President rushing out a feature-clone of a complementary business to try and juke the stats for their OKRs. Buggy, annoying, pushy, rude. Reddit Chat is why I now visit Incognito and interact less.
  - crazy_horse 5y ago
    Does Huffman have no say? How did they go form lisp to this?
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      The Faustian bargain of venture capital. You get access to easy money early on, at the price of your (company's) soul.
  - dimmke 5y ago
    Reddit literally destroyed independent forums. That's such a huge swath of the internet and they effectively have a monopoly. Additionally, they top Google results for so many different subjects. I don't understand why they can't monetize that more. They shouldn't also need to half heartedly try to compete with Discord. They should drill down on what they excel at. Even though I am a daily Reddit user, it's mostly because there are no other alternatives. I definitely would not buy their stock.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      Have you heard of Tildes? They are trying to make a better reddit-like thing.
      - dimmke 5y ago
        I feel like every year in the past decade there has been some new Reddit clone. Reddit itself was open source for a while, so it used to be really easy. They never catch on.
        throwawaysea 5y ago
        I’m hoping some of these catch on but it seems those who are entrenched with power over social communications keep deplatforming these or character attacking them as some kind of extremist haven when most aren’t: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/...
        wswope 5y ago
        Tildes has been around a few years now I believe. I tried it in its early days, and checked it out again just now. Both times I’ve been impressed - it tends to have higher-quality comments and feel less… generally vapid that modern Reddit.
      - cyberge99 5y ago
        How does one get an invite to tildes? I'd be interest in trying it out.
      - viridian 5y ago
        I used tildes for the better part of a year, unfortunately for me the cliquish nature and the fact that there are 12-15 power users with half the posts, who also congregate on the offsite discord, really ruined the website for me. I respect deimos and his goals greatly, but his community quickly became stressful to deal with.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  - minsc__and__boo 5y ago
    And not Reddit video? At least you can avoid chat.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      A close second. The secret here is to just not engage with any video content.
OJFord 5y ago
It does sort of make me wonder what community need Reddit fulfills - discoverability/searchability? Single login? - because it's sort of a weird halfway house between forums (differing in that not searching, and duplicating an old thread is somewhat necessarily okay) and chat.
- whateveracct 5y ago
  in my experience, the people active on subreddit discord's are mostly people not as active on the sub itself and that most active & upvoted redditors on a sub mostly don't use its discord
  - OJFord 5y ago
    What I mean is, Reddit to me seems a step closer to something like Discord. And yet Discord is apparently still necessary; so why Reddit, and not traditional forum + Discord? I added 'single login' as an after thought, because it didn't occur to me at first, but I think that must be a big reason. But even then there's Discourse, with not single but much easier and OAuth (signup/)login.
    - R0b0t1 5y ago
      The default state of a Discord is hidden. You need an invite link to join a "server." It is set up in a way that your meeting point is outside of Discord, usually real life, at least per their marketing material (irl groups are probably the most value in terms of ad revenue). So, yeah, reddit is the searchability.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        But again, it has nothing to add there over a classic forum.
        dimmke 5y ago
        Reddit has a standardized layout, you don't have to learn a new interface. It has single sign on, so you don't have to create a new account to participate in a community (low friction) and it has the people. Also, it has the voting concept which helps filter content so you aren't having to do that yourself by scanning topics. A "classic forum" trying to get off the ground would be competing with all of that. You could also argue, "why Discord? Why not IRC?" for much the same reasons.

dimmke 5y ago

Reddit ended up adding a corny chat feature that is exclusively used for spam as their answer to it. Pretty awful. But to be honest, before subreddits had Discords they had IRC channels. This has always been a thing.

edoceo 5y ago
Reddit Chat is my prime example of a Product Development Vice President rushing out a feature-clone of a complementary business to try and juke the stats for their OKRs. Buggy, annoying, pushy, rude. Reddit Chat is why I now visit Incognito and interact less.
- crazy_horse 5y ago
  Does Huffman have no say? How did they go form lisp to this?
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    The Faustian bargain of venture capital. You get access to easy money early on, at the price of your (company's) soul.
- dimmke 5y ago
  Reddit literally destroyed independent forums. That's such a huge swath of the internet and they effectively have a monopoly. Additionally, they top Google results for so many different subjects. I don't understand why they can't monetize that more. They shouldn't also need to half heartedly try to compete with Discord. They should drill down on what they excel at. Even though I am a daily Reddit user, it's mostly because there are no other alternatives. I definitely would not buy their stock.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Have you heard of Tildes? They are trying to make a better reddit-like thing.
    - dimmke 5y ago
      I feel like every year in the past decade there has been some new Reddit clone. Reddit itself was open source for a while, so it used to be really easy. They never catch on.
      - throwawaysea 5y ago
        I’m hoping some of these catch on but it seems those who are entrenched with power over social communications keep deplatforming these or character attacking them as some kind of extremist haven when most aren’t: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/...
      - wswope 5y ago
        Tildes has been around a few years now I believe. I tried it in its early days, and checked it out again just now. Both times I’ve been impressed - it tends to have higher-quality comments and feel less… generally vapid that modern Reddit.
    - cyberge99 5y ago
      How does one get an invite to tildes? I'd be interest in trying it out.
    - viridian 5y ago
      I used tildes for the better part of a year, unfortunately for me the cliquish nature and the fact that there are 12-15 power users with half the posts, who also congregate on the offsite discord, really ruined the website for me. I respect deimos and his goals greatly, but his community quickly became stressful to deal with.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
- minsc__and__boo 5y ago
  And not Reddit video? At least you can avoid chat.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    A close second. The secret here is to just not engage with any video content.

OJFord 5y ago

It does sort of make me wonder what community need Reddit fulfills - discoverability/searchability? Single login? - because it's sort of a weird halfway house between forums (differing in that not searching, and duplicating an old thread is somewhat necessarily okay) and chat.

whateveracct 5y ago
in my experience, the people active on subreddit discord's are mostly people not as active on the sub itself and that most active & upvoted redditors on a sub mostly don't use its discord
- OJFord 5y ago
  What I mean is, Reddit to me seems a step closer to something like Discord. And yet Discord is apparently still necessary; so why Reddit, and not traditional forum + Discord? I added 'single login' as an after thought, because it didn't occur to me at first, but I think that must be a big reason. But even then there's Discourse, with not single but much easier and OAuth (signup/)login.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    The default state of a Discord is hidden. You need an invite link to join a "server." It is set up in a way that your meeting point is outside of Discord, usually real life, at least per their marketing material (irl groups are probably the most value in terms of ad revenue). So, yeah, reddit is the searchability.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      But again, it has nothing to add there over a classic forum.
      - dimmke 5y ago
        Reddit has a standardized layout, you don't have to learn a new interface. It has single sign on, so you don't have to create a new account to participate in a community (low friction) and it has the people. Also, it has the voting concept which helps filter content so you aren't having to do that yourself by scanning topics. A "classic forum" trying to get off the ground would be competing with all of that. You could also argue, "why Discord? Why not IRC?" for much the same reasons.