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Even if you manage to bypass the problems you mention (by bypassing the popular subreddits), Reddit has become a terrible source of information in general. The
by ratww 4y ago
Even if you manage to bypass the problems you mention (by bypassing the popular subreddits), Reddit has become a terrible source of information in general.
The old "site:reddit.com" trick doesn't work that well anymore. Well, it returns old results, so there's that.
Smaller Subreddits have not only become echo chambers, but they now seem to cater to people trying to get into the field rather than the previous mix of professional and semi-professionals. And I have the impression that 90% of the advice being give is being done by amateurs who never earned any money from the field they're giving advice of and are rehashing echo-chamber advice. It's like a worse Quora.
When there is any sort of equipment involved, they seem to have become an Instagram feed, with only photos of the acquisitions. There's rarely any insight into the product itself, it's always people posting things right after opening the box, sometimes from their car, rather than "playing" with it and posting something more insightful afterwards.
The worse part: when there is any marketable skill related to the niche, the only discussions there will be about how to market it. RIP music production and game development subreddits.
- dqft 4y agoThis pretty much sums up my experience too. It's been downhill since all the subreddit bans a couple years ago. I miss r/consumeproduct.
- mschuster91 4y ago> It's been downhill since all the subreddit bans a couple years ago. Out of the list on Wikipedia [1], the utter majority of banned popular subreddits were far-right, terrorist, violence-oriented or dealt with questionably or outright illegal sexual material (jailbait, fappening). As for r/consumeproduct, there's a Google doc floating around detailing its links to the far-right and transphobes [2]. Doesn't sound surprising to me that they got banned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Banned_subreddits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... [2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IdBsrh8FS6k85XsrpqDjmqPe9BxmnaIRMUejFs6GSfk/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IdBsrh8FS6k85XsrpqDjmqPe...
- pessimizer 4y agoThe vast range of content being banned (largely by subject and tone) created a chilling effect throughout the entire site. Also, a lot of good posters were also bad posters, so after they left because they couldn't talk about how much they hated fat people, they also stopped posting detailed reviews about e.g. laser printers.
- einr 4y agoWhen there is any sort of equipment involved, they seem to have become an Instagram feed, with only photos of the acquisitions. There's rarely any insight into the product itself, it's always people posting things right after opening the box, sometimes from their car, rather than "playing" with it and posting something more insightful afterwards. I feel like this is a product of Reddit's built-in recency bias, where unless a thread is sticky then no one really sees or uses older threads. Classic web forums were a lot better at this; old threads with in-depth technical info and discussions would keep rising to the top, where "hey look at this keyboard I just bought" threads would get one or two replies and be quickly forgotten.