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Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent visitor of the homepage and /al

Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will know exactly what I am referring to. The product has gone downhill ever since. Comment search is nice because it enables users to find interesting content directly in the good niche subreddits.

ratg13 5y ago
This has been a theme on reddit since comments were introduced. The largest shift in the site was something 12-14 years ago when they redesigned the site to have thumbnails. This brought people to the site for images instead of content. That was absolutely the original torpedo. It made the site much more popular, but the quality tanked fast, and has continued since due to having to cater to the lowest common denominator of millions of people.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Are you saying the DNC primary is to blame for reddit's content policies?
- z3c0 5y ago
  I don't know if that's exactly the claim they are making, but I can certainly attest to their timeline. It was a day-night shift from "Bernie or Bust" to "Eww Bernie Bros are gross". Putting my own politics aside, I was more shocked by the sudden, very drastic shift in narrative. It's really hard to believe that it was organic. It wasn't even a "maybe we should support Clinton now that Bernie is out" narrative, which would have been more believable. It was a "Bernie supporters are sexist" narrative. In the months leading up to the DNC primary, reddit was a battleground between Correct the Record[1] and /r/The_Donald. After the primary, it felt like every post on left-wing subs was inline with the narratives that CTR had been pushing for months. Before the primary, there was quite a bit of resistance to CTR, even from the left-wingers. That evaporated over a single night. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record
mherdeg 5y ago
One of my favorite ways of discovering niche content has been browsing /r/all/gilded and taking a look at the variety of highlights throughout the site that never make it to the front page or other kinds of publicity. I dug in there one time and found a fascinating obituary for a user on a subreddit for people living with addiction -- full of some touchingly personal and weirdly public stories. Following the user's profile from there taught me about the wild world of the "opiate roll call" subreddit (a thinly veiled Craigslist for drugs) which was at the time flourishing. Fascinating stuff.
- chaosbutters314 5y ago
  /r/chonkers is the holy grail of reddit. I was sad it took me 10 years to find that subreddit
  - recuter 5y ago
    What is wrong with you chaosbutters.
  - _v7gu 5y ago
    How on earth is that animal abuse subreddit not banned? Those animals deserve a better life, not diabetes for the sake of memes.
- sph 5y ago
  > browsing /r/all/gilded These days that awards are free, that's just a list of popular things, not a list of cool things. The major subreddits can have a selfie posted that gets a dozen awards.
stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
The biggest change came after the migration from Digg, which would have been about 5 years prior. the_donald brought a lot of a younger users and white supremacists. I haven't seen a DNC-related reddit conspiracy before though. Certainly no noticeable shift that night.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  The digg exodus was nothing, just a bunch of group A basement dwellers moving in with group B basement dwellers. At the time the average person still had no idea what reddit or digg was. The whole thing was just internal internet geek culture drama.
  - stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
    No, it changed reddit from having interesting content and mostly useful constructive commentary to being full of memes and jokes (like Digg). Sure there were pun threads before, but you didn't have to custom tailor the front page to keep it from being complete shit.
- dogleash 5y ago
  >I haven't seen a DNC-related reddit conspiracy before though. What? You haven't noticed social media marketing on reddit?
  - stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
    I've never heard someone say "the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift." Not sure what your comment about ads is related to.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
boesboes 5y ago
As someone who has been using reddit and frequenting r/all for over 10 years orso, I dont know what you are talking about. Either make you point, or just don't make such comments. They add nothing.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  - stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
    Mine's older than yours and I don't know what you mean, the DNC targeted reddit? Dramatic shift? Reddit started far left (being focused on science and tech) even horse-shoeing to the point where it attracted a big Ron Paul fan base. There was an r/obama before users could make subreddits. It's been heading right or center-right ever since the_donald (2015), r/conservative, etc have gotten so huge, if there's been any political shift. Do you really think you'd regularly see white supremacist content on reddit in 2006 as often as you do now?
    - Izkata 5y ago
      They're referring to Correct the Record, which flooded the site with fake accounts to push narratives that supported the US Democatic party. It was really obvious when something unexpected happened, like that video of Hilary collapsing and having to be pushed into a vehicle during the presidential campaign - for several hours the sockpuppet accounts didn't know what to say so comments from regular users started making it to the top again. (Quick edit, had the wrong organization in mind before)
      - mathgorges 5y ago
        Thanks for citing something! I've been a casual Reddit user since ~2008 and felt very lost in this discussion. In case anyone is in the same boat as me, heres an article on the subject: https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-million-to-correct-commenters-on-reddit-and-facebook https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-mil...
Workaccount2 5y ago
r/t_d basically pulled every single trick in the book to frontpage their content constantly. However I think that no matter what they (reddit) would have had their hand forced eventually. The site has grown massively since 2015.
- Perceval 5y ago
  It was really just one trick, which was to immediately sticky select new posts. Those posts would garner large amounts of upvotes immediately by virtue of being stickied at the top of a subreddit where most users did not browse reddit overall but rather just browsed the sub. Reddit's algorithm favors posts that really take off with lots of votes right away, so as a consequence The_Donald's posts were constantly making r/all.
  - flutas 5y ago
    > It was really just one trick, which was to immediately sticky select new posts. and (imo) if they were really wanting to fix this trick they would have just made it so something that was ever stickied couldn't show up on /r/all. Instead they did what (to me) was basically a complete change of their algorithm with very slow changes to placement.
TameAntelope 5y ago
I wonder if your comment is an instance of the Eternal September effect [0]. The "quality" of a website is such an intangible and immeasurable thing, it's more or less impossible to say, in aggregate, if something has objectively gotten worse, especially considering the fact that Reddit has grown exponentially more popular. At the very least, there's a distinct lack of self awareness of how small your one opinion is, to the sea of overall opinions. "Has gotten worse" vs "I've grown to like it less" are very different statements; one externalizes the decline, eschews your role and responsibility for your own opinion, and the other owns up to the reality that something my be worse "for you" while getting better for many, many others. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago
Republicans have used Russian help to spread disinformation against Democrats.
wtf_is_up 5y ago
Melatonic 5y ago
I don't think it was related to that at all - I think it was just around that time that Reddit also started to really become more mainstream popular. Anytime a forum or sub forum grows in size you end up with a lot more crap to sift through. And with greater number of users also of course comes greater numbers of bots / fake / shill accounts as well.
TMWNN 5y ago
>Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will know exactly what I am referring to. Indeed. It's especially visible when the effect temporarily abates. After Trump's 2016 election win, for a day or two, it was possible to post something non-leftist to /r/politics without having it be mercilessly downvoted; as if the shills were awaiting orders.
drpgq 5y ago
I remember early on Reddit when Ron Paul was a big deal. Not really sure it went downhill once that got swamped.
czechdeveloper 5y ago
I use Reddit long term and /r/all was always bad and you should find your subreddits to care for.
- codingdave 5y ago
  I have been browsing /r/all for years, but I aggressively filter subreddits out that hold no interest for me. It allows /r/all to be semi-curated content for me, while I still will see something that breaks containment from the niche subreddits. I don't feel that this makes reddit a great news source or anything - but it does make it palatable entertainment.
  - site-packages1 5y ago
    I do this same thing, it has worked really well. I browse the all subreddit and aggressively block/filter subreddits that are of no interest, then smaller subreddits start bubbling up and all becomes relatively good for finding new content actually. Blocking the main default subreddits and subreddits where they just keep posting memes and all subreddits that have anything to do with gaming or new games gets you like 80% of the way there. It's nice seeing small subreddits on all after that curation.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  How do you discover subreddits if not by browsing /all? I mean I for one don't know what I'm missing.
  - justaj 5y ago
    This is one way: https://old.reddit.com/reddits/ https://old.reddit.com/reddits/ Another is subreddit search engines like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823109
  - czechdeveloper 5y ago
    Just to note, some subreddits decide not to appear on /r/all, so even there you're missing stuff.
yu-carm-kror 5y ago
I can’t speak to that timeline but I’ll add that I have a use-hate relationship with Reddit. It’s a source of great information and misinformation, caring and callousness.
Sahbak 5y ago
I can only recommend aggressively blocking popular subs, ones that are managed by the big mods, and any that have even one political thread that gets a suspicious amount of votes. All actually becomes a source of new interesting content that way.
- kevincox 5y ago
  I tried this but quickly hit a limit on the number of subs you can block. It is fairly low, maybe a couple hundred. There are a lot more big, low quality subs than that.
  - ncann 5y ago
    Do you use RES? I don't think there is a limit with RES.

ratg13 5y ago

This has been a theme on reddit since comments were introduced. The largest shift in the site was something 12-14 years ago when they redesigned the site to have thumbnails. This brought people to the site for images instead of content. That was absolutely the original torpedo. It made the site much more popular, but the quality tanked fast, and has continued since due to having to cater to the lowest common denominator of millions of people.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

Are you saying the DNC primary is to blame for reddit's content policies?

z3c0 5y ago
I don't know if that's exactly the claim they are making, but I can certainly attest to their timeline. It was a day-night shift from "Bernie or Bust" to "Eww Bernie Bros are gross". Putting my own politics aside, I was more shocked by the sudden, very drastic shift in narrative. It's really hard to believe that it was organic. It wasn't even a "maybe we should support Clinton now that Bernie is out" narrative, which would have been more believable. It was a "Bernie supporters are sexist" narrative. In the months leading up to the DNC primary, reddit was a battleground between Correct the Record[1] and /r/The_Donald. After the primary, it felt like every post on left-wing subs was inline with the narratives that CTR had been pushing for months. Before the primary, there was quite a bit of resistance to CTR, even from the left-wingers. That evaporated over a single night. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record

mherdeg 5y ago

One of my favorite ways of discovering niche content has been browsing /r/all/gilded and taking a look at the variety of highlights throughout the site that never make it to the front page or other kinds of publicity. I dug in there one time and found a fascinating obituary for a user on a subreddit for people living with addiction -- full of some touchingly personal and weirdly public stories. Following the user's profile from there taught me about the wild world of the "opiate roll call" subreddit (a thinly veiled Craigslist for drugs) which was at the time flourishing. Fascinating stuff.

chaosbutters314 5y ago
/r/chonkers is the holy grail of reddit. I was sad it took me 10 years to find that subreddit
- recuter 5y ago
  What is wrong with you chaosbutters.
- _v7gu 5y ago
  How on earth is that animal abuse subreddit not banned? Those animals deserve a better life, not diabetes for the sake of memes.
sph 5y ago
> browsing /r/all/gilded These days that awards are free, that's just a list of popular things, not a list of cool things. The major subreddits can have a selfie posted that gets a dozen awards.

stimpson_j_cat 5y ago

The biggest change came after the migration from Digg, which would have been about 5 years prior. the_donald brought a lot of a younger users and white supremacists. I haven't seen a DNC-related reddit conspiracy before though. Certainly no noticeable shift that night.

Workaccount2 5y ago
The digg exodus was nothing, just a bunch of group A basement dwellers moving in with group B basement dwellers. At the time the average person still had no idea what reddit or digg was. The whole thing was just internal internet geek culture drama.
- stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
  No, it changed reddit from having interesting content and mostly useful constructive commentary to being full of memes and jokes (like Digg). Sure there were pun threads before, but you didn't have to custom tailor the front page to keep it from being complete shit.
dogleash 5y ago
>I haven't seen a DNC-related reddit conspiracy before though. What? You haven't noticed social media marketing on reddit?
- stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
  I've never heard someone say "the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift." Not sure what your comment about ads is related to.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

boesboes 5y ago

As someone who has been using reddit and frequenting r/all for over 10 years orso, I dont know what you are talking about. Either make you point, or just don't make such comments. They add nothing.

Gareth321 5y ago
- stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
  Mine's older than yours and I don't know what you mean, the DNC targeted reddit? Dramatic shift? Reddit started far left (being focused on science and tech) even horse-shoeing to the point where it attracted a big Ron Paul fan base. There was an r/obama before users could make subreddits. It's been heading right or center-right ever since the_donald (2015), r/conservative, etc have gotten so huge, if there's been any political shift. Do you really think you'd regularly see white supremacist content on reddit in 2006 as often as you do now?
  - Izkata 5y ago
    They're referring to Correct the Record, which flooded the site with fake accounts to push narratives that supported the US Democatic party. It was really obvious when something unexpected happened, like that video of Hilary collapsing and having to be pushed into a vehicle during the presidential campaign - for several hours the sockpuppet accounts didn't know what to say so comments from regular users started making it to the top again. (Quick edit, had the wrong organization in mind before)
    - mathgorges 5y ago
      Thanks for citing something! I've been a casual Reddit user since ~2008 and felt very lost in this discussion. In case anyone is in the same boat as me, heres an article on the subject: https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-million-to-correct-commenters-on-reddit-and-facebook https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-mil...

Workaccount2 5y ago

r/t_d basically pulled every single trick in the book to frontpage their content constantly. However I think that no matter what they (reddit) would have had their hand forced eventually. The site has grown massively since 2015.

Perceval 5y ago
It was really just one trick, which was to immediately sticky select new posts. Those posts would garner large amounts of upvotes immediately by virtue of being stickied at the top of a subreddit where most users did not browse reddit overall but rather just browsed the sub. Reddit's algorithm favors posts that really take off with lots of votes right away, so as a consequence The_Donald's posts were constantly making r/all.
- flutas 5y ago
  > It was really just one trick, which was to immediately sticky select new posts. and (imo) if they were really wanting to fix this trick they would have just made it so something that was ever stickied couldn't show up on /r/all. Instead they did what (to me) was basically a complete change of their algorithm with very slow changes to placement.

TameAntelope 5y ago

I wonder if your comment is an instance of the Eternal September effect [0]. The "quality" of a website is such an intangible and immeasurable thing, it's more or less impossible to say, in aggregate, if something has objectively gotten worse, especially considering the fact that Reddit has grown exponentially more popular. At the very least, there's a distinct lack of self awareness of how small your one opinion is, to the sea of overall opinions. "Has gotten worse" vs "I've grown to like it less" are very different statements; one externalizes the decline, eschews your role and responsibility for your own opinion, and the other owns up to the reality that something my be worse "for you" while getting better for many, many others. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago

Republicans have used Russian help to spread disinformation against Democrats.

wtf_is_up 5y ago

Melatonic 5y ago

I don't think it was related to that at all - I think it was just around that time that Reddit also started to really become more mainstream popular. Anytime a forum or sub forum grows in size you end up with a lot more crap to sift through. And with greater number of users also of course comes greater numbers of bots / fake / shill accounts as well.

TMWNN 5y ago

>Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will know exactly what I am referring to. Indeed. It's especially visible when the effect temporarily abates. After Trump's 2016 election win, for a day or two, it was possible to post something non-leftist to /r/politics without having it be mercilessly downvoted; as if the shills were awaiting orders.

drpgq 5y ago

I remember early on Reddit when Ron Paul was a big deal. Not really sure it went downhill once that got swamped.

czechdeveloper 5y ago

I use Reddit long term and /r/all was always bad and you should find your subreddits to care for.

codingdave 5y ago
I have been browsing /r/all for years, but I aggressively filter subreddits out that hold no interest for me. It allows /r/all to be semi-curated content for me, while I still will see something that breaks containment from the niche subreddits. I don't feel that this makes reddit a great news source or anything - but it does make it palatable entertainment.
- site-packages1 5y ago
  I do this same thing, it has worked really well. I browse the all subreddit and aggressively block/filter subreddits that are of no interest, then smaller subreddits start bubbling up and all becomes relatively good for finding new content actually. Blocking the main default subreddits and subreddits where they just keep posting memes and all subreddits that have anything to do with gaming or new games gets you like 80% of the way there. It's nice seeing small subreddits on all after that curation.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
How do you discover subreddits if not by browsing /all? I mean I for one don't know what I'm missing.
- justaj 5y ago
  This is one way: https://old.reddit.com/reddits/ https://old.reddit.com/reddits/ Another is subreddit search engines like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823109
- czechdeveloper 5y ago
  Just to note, some subreddits decide not to appear on /r/all, so even there you're missing stuff.

yu-carm-kror 5y ago

I can’t speak to that timeline but I’ll add that I have a use-hate relationship with Reddit. It’s a source of great information and misinformation, caring and callousness.

Sahbak 5y ago

I can only recommend aggressively blocking popular subs, ones that are managed by the big mods, and any that have even one political thread that gets a suspicious amount of votes. All actually becomes a source of new interesting content that way.

kevincox 5y ago
I tried this but quickly hit a limit on the number of subs you can block. It is fairly low, maybe a couple hundred. There are a lot more big, low quality subs than that.
- ncann 5y ago
  Do you use RES? I don't think there is a limit with RES.