5 ms·

Congratulations folks! I'll say that Reddit has become one of my favorite sites to visit occasionally and I feel they've earned their success. I honestly feel i

Congratulations folks! I'll say that Reddit has become one of my favorite sites to visit occasionally and I feel they've earned their success. I honestly feel it is a positive factor in my life, for the little I use it. There's really excellent content to be had, like well moderated educational content at subreddits like r/AskHistorians and r/COVID. I've learned a lot from hobby communities that are hard to find elsewhere (like for pizzamaking). I also like that they've kept discussions text oriented, instead of allowing for embedded tweets, images, or videos to clog up comment threads (I like this about HN, as well). They might renege on this in the future, but I like the distinctly 2000s feel to discussions.

rtkwe 5y ago
I hope they have enough to point to from other instances to show that it's a bad idea.
Rendello 5y ago
Reddit already has embedded GIF comments, ie. https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/wut/ggsmzhy/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/w...
- colordrops 5y ago
  <embedded gif of Vader screaming nooooooooooooooo>
AussieWog93 5y ago
>I've learned a lot from hobby communities that are hard to find elsewhere (like for pizzamaking). I wish that was my experience too. Generally I'll avoid the subreddits for anything I'm interested in, as they're frequented by "experts" who feel the need to ruin everyone's fun. It's great for things I'm not interested in, though, as it's a quick way to get genuine information on what is considered a good brand of bike shorts or hair curling products.
- naiwenwt 5y ago
  > Generally I'll avoid the subreddits for anything I'm interested in, as they're frequented by "experts" who feel the need to ruin everyone's fun. Mind giving an example? I'm just curious because to me the high point of reddit is learning way more about interests I already love. For example I don't think I would've gotten nearly as into mechanical keyboards without /r/mechanicalkeyboards around.
- silisili 5y ago
  Genuinely confused by this statement. You don't visit things you know about, because fake experts ruin it. Then you visit things you don't know about, because you believe the information to be genuine. Not trying to be a dick here, but this line of reasoning just isn't clicking so asking.
  - discardable_dan 5y ago
    This is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
    - silisili 5y ago
      Fascinating, thanks! This got me to thinking though...almost every news outlet flubs covering deeply technical things folks here would be familiar with, and we all have a laugh. But we get our news from them and generally believe it, so do we all suffer from it to some extent?
      - chx 5y ago
        No, this effect is, to quote itself, baloney. The underlying presumption of it is every person working at a paper is equally wrong about the topic they write. However, most newspapers are focused on politics and so those might be better. I would not expect a good analysis on the Palestinian conflict from Linus Tech Tips nor a good analysis on the latest graphics cards from Foreign Affairs.
bogota 5y ago
Reddit is now a rage generating machine outside of the small niche subreddits. The business is built on rage and some stupid investors in WSB who are enjoying a long bull market. Doesn’t mean it won’t do well but its just another flavor of facebook.
- krzyk 5y ago
  > Doesn’t mean it won’t do well but its just another flavor of facebook. No, reddit has threads/subjects. Facebook posts organization almost does not exist, it is unusable to read anything there.
  - bogota 5y ago
    … i said another flavor and im clearly commenting on the driving factor behind engagement. But yeah it has threads.
    - moffkalast 5y ago
      Frankly Reddit is more like HN if it had feeds for every thing known to man and a few million more users. It started out almost exactly the same way as HN is right now, except for somewhat better site usability. You eventually outgrow the dev community and have to start catering to normal people and the results are predictable. The senseless outrage on this site sometimes measures up completely.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  In general, this is what bothers me with a lot of modern online services. Some people might use the same platforms harmlessly to watch cooking videos or share family photos while remaining relatively free from neurosis, or they might be trapped in a rut of entirely different algorithmic content. The only unifying factor is that they both happen to be hosted on the same platform, and it is becoming harder to detach the content on the platform from the mechanisms driving viewership that come with the platform. The platforms encompass both the best and worst of us, attracting both the susceptible users and relatively ordinary persons, and that's why they have staying power. Because these services are so all-encompassing, they are bound to have some amount of well-curated content, or at the very least content that holds one's interest. By virtue of that minuscule amount of content being hosted on the massive aggregate site, that predisposes some people to affirm or at least ignore the idea of the overarching site as a whole, along with the SEO mechanisms, influencers, etc. that always get so much flak in certain circles. In other words, because the site is so massive there will always be a population of consumers in their own niches that never encounter any outrage or issues. There will also be a population exposed to the "rage generating" content. The subset of people aware of the toxicity and how it relates to the workings of the platform itself may or may not overlap with these groups. But in the end, because the site has become so massive that content creators have caused it to encompass literally everything that can be thought of as a topic of interest to general humanity, all of these groups, whether harmful or harmless, contribute to the site's continued growth and prosperity, and more and more people participate as a result.

rtkwe 5y ago

I hope they have enough to point to from other instances to show that it's a bad idea.

Rendello 5y ago

Reddit already has embedded GIF comments, ie. https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/wut/ggsmzhy/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/kip08x/w...

colordrops 5y ago
<embedded gif of Vader screaming nooooooooooooooo>

AussieWog93 5y ago

>I've learned a lot from hobby communities that are hard to find elsewhere (like for pizzamaking). I wish that was my experience too. Generally I'll avoid the subreddits for anything I'm interested in, as they're frequented by "experts" who feel the need to ruin everyone's fun. It's great for things I'm not interested in, though, as it's a quick way to get genuine information on what is considered a good brand of bike shorts or hair curling products.

naiwenwt 5y ago
> Generally I'll avoid the subreddits for anything I'm interested in, as they're frequented by "experts" who feel the need to ruin everyone's fun. Mind giving an example? I'm just curious because to me the high point of reddit is learning way more about interests I already love. For example I don't think I would've gotten nearly as into mechanical keyboards without /r/mechanicalkeyboards around.
silisili 5y ago
Genuinely confused by this statement. You don't visit things you know about, because fake experts ruin it. Then you visit things you don't know about, because you believe the information to be genuine. Not trying to be a dick here, but this line of reasoning just isn't clicking so asking.
- discardable_dan 5y ago
  This is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
  - silisili 5y ago
    Fascinating, thanks! This got me to thinking though...almost every news outlet flubs covering deeply technical things folks here would be familiar with, and we all have a laugh. But we get our news from them and generally believe it, so do we all suffer from it to some extent?
    - chx 5y ago
      No, this effect is, to quote itself, baloney. The underlying presumption of it is every person working at a paper is equally wrong about the topic they write. However, most newspapers are focused on politics and so those might be better. I would not expect a good analysis on the Palestinian conflict from Linus Tech Tips nor a good analysis on the latest graphics cards from Foreign Affairs.

bogota 5y ago

Reddit is now a rage generating machine outside of the small niche subreddits. The business is built on rage and some stupid investors in WSB who are enjoying a long bull market. Doesn’t mean it won’t do well but its just another flavor of facebook.

krzyk 5y ago
> Doesn’t mean it won’t do well but its just another flavor of facebook. No, reddit has threads/subjects. Facebook posts organization almost does not exist, it is unusable to read anything there.
- bogota 5y ago
  … i said another flavor and im clearly commenting on the driving factor behind engagement. But yeah it has threads.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    Frankly Reddit is more like HN if it had feeds for every thing known to man and a few million more users. It started out almost exactly the same way as HN is right now, except for somewhat better site usability. You eventually outgrow the dev community and have to start catering to normal people and the results are predictable. The senseless outrage on this site sometimes measures up completely.
nonbirithm 5y ago
In general, this is what bothers me with a lot of modern online services. Some people might use the same platforms harmlessly to watch cooking videos or share family photos while remaining relatively free from neurosis, or they might be trapped in a rut of entirely different algorithmic content. The only unifying factor is that they both happen to be hosted on the same platform, and it is becoming harder to detach the content on the platform from the mechanisms driving viewership that come with the platform. The platforms encompass both the best and worst of us, attracting both the susceptible users and relatively ordinary persons, and that's why they have staying power. Because these services are so all-encompassing, they are bound to have some amount of well-curated content, or at the very least content that holds one's interest. By virtue of that minuscule amount of content being hosted on the massive aggregate site, that predisposes some people to affirm or at least ignore the idea of the overarching site as a whole, along with the SEO mechanisms, influencers, etc. that always get so much flak in certain circles. In other words, because the site is so massive there will always be a population of consumers in their own niches that never encounter any outrage or issues. There will also be a population exposed to the "rage generating" content. The subset of people aware of the toxicity and how it relates to the workings of the platform itself may or may not overlap with these groups. But in the end, because the site has become so massive that content creators have caused it to encompass literally everything that can be thought of as a topic of interest to general humanity, all of these groups, whether harmful or harmless, contribute to the site's continued growth and prosperity, and more and more people participate as a result.