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I blocked the reddit.com domain from all of my devices a few weeks ago, because until recently I didn't feel like I could keep my finger on the pulse of "The In
by Zetice 3y ago
I blocked the reddit.com domain from all of my devices a few weeks ago, because until recently I didn't feel like I could keep my finger on the pulse of "The Internet" without Reddit.
That's no longer the case. Google's "For You" gets me my niche subject-specific content, Google News/Memeorandum (and its sibling sites)/Apple News gives me the mainstream media perspectives, HN (and maybe Bluesky occasionally) my urge to discuss and engage with others, and YouTube Shorts (I refuse to install TikTok) helps me understand Internet culture.
I don't think any one company came for Reddit on their own, but what they've left Reddit with as a differentiator are the communities. Unfortunately, those end up existing as little fiefdoms for the moderators who run them, and if that's all you're going to offer, you're not going to be able to justify that $10-$15bn (probably lower now) valuation to investors.
- doix 3y ago> but what they've left Reddit with as a differentiator are the communities. Yeah, I pretty much only use reddit for a few game communities, unfortunately with this change I suspect more and more people will move to discord. It's pretty annoying, but I suspect I'll have to eventually cave and join them when they finally kill old.reddit.com.
- idiotsecant 3y agough, discord is basically IRC. There's a reason we don't use IRC for everything. I hate that it's replacing everything.
- 411111111111111 3y agoNo? It's more like a BB with inbuild live voicechat, streaming etc. IRC itself doesn't provide a shared history, threading etc. You could get there with alternative clients and bots (at least if all participants use the same), but calling that IRC is a stretch
- idiotsecant 3y agothreading isn't particularly impactful if 90% of discussions don't use it.
- xg15 3y agoDiscord reuses the IRC "aesthetic" with "servers", channels and slash commands, but the actual structure of the conversations is much more like a forum.
- adastra22 3y agoIn what way? It’s still time based instead of topic based.
- xg15 3y agoI think it depends how the server is structured. You can also have "threads" which are topic-based inside a specific channel.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoYou can turn any top-level message in a room into a Thread. I don't ever really see that used though, and I don't believe it bumps the thread when there's a new message (then again neither does Reddit).
- dabluecaboose 3y ago>Yeah, I pretty much only use reddit for a few game communities, unfortunately with this change I suspect more and more people will move to discord Oh boy, I can't wait to have to join a specific game discord for every game I want to play or else be locked out of any community information! Discords are easily killing a lot of hobbies by sequestering away information. And even when you're told "Oh that answer is on XYZ discord" you have to go in and find the conversation using Discords ever-shittier search function
- victor106 3y agoWhat is Google's "For You" ?
- tech234a 3y agoCould be referring to the suggested news on the mobile home page and also in Google News
- Zetice 3y agoCorrect; I'm not sure what to call the mobile home page, but it's different from just the News "For you" offering (which I also use), though I'm not sure how.
- browningstreet 3y agoI find a lot of the google customization features to be hard to find,or trust/count on, because they no longer reside at a URI. Things like travel details pulled from emails… I still use tripit just because Google doesn’t seem to want to commit. So perplexing. I wish the “my” portals would come back.
- humblepie 3y agoIt's https://news.google.com/foryou https://news.google.com/foryou.
- HansHamster 3y ago> but what they've left Reddit with as a differentiator are the communities And I'm honestly not very fond of how the communities on reddit work. Sure, there is some overlap between the peoples on different subreddits, but there is little 'community' across subreddits and it feels very different to the 'good old' discussion boards that cover a very general topic and then have many more specific subsections. I'm especially missing the more off-topic aspects, which just doesn't fit well with the separation in subreddits.
- xg15 3y agoThe "hive mind" effect is also much more pronounced than on traditional forums, sometimes bordering on being creepy. Not sure if it's caused by power-hungry mods, the upvote/downvote dynamics or political polarisation, but you can often quickly make out specific "opinions" that are somehow magically shared by everyone posting in a particular subreddit. The UX also actively supports this by de-emphasizing individual users and emphasizing subreddits as the primary "personalities" of the platform. This goes so far that on r/all, the names of the individual users who posted the threads aren't even shown anymore. All you see is subreddits. That together with some "supermods" moderating large fractions of the popular subreddits and a recent post on HN of another redditor who experienced shadowbanning makes me seriously wonder how authentic the discussions you see on r/all really are.
- jdwithit 3y agoI check the fantasy football sub from time to time and the hive mind is definitely a factor there. If you post an opinion that goes against the grain, you're likely to get aggressively dogpiled with downvotes and called a moron in the replies. Reddit really isn't an enjoyable place to post.
- rightbyte 3y agoYe the same-thinking is creepy. Many subs are like sects. I believe there is a huge manipulation ongoing on the popular subs. In a natural forum posters don't agree to the extent they do on Reddit.
- idiotsecant 3y agoWhat do you do isntead of appending 'reddit' to google search? I could imagine dropping everything else but search is terrible for a lot of things without it.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoFor what it's worth, you should append "site:reddit.com" instead of just "reddit", to avoid being tricked by sites which simply include the word reddit.
- InitialLastName 3y agoI know I can do this, but FWIW my searches with just "reddit" nearly always get dozens of responses from reddit before they get anything from anywhere else.
- idiotsecant 3y agoyeah the lazy reddit add nearly always works. Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
- witchesindublin 3y agoReddit is rarely the best source for anything except maybe a discussion on a news event around 2015. Quora was always a little better but has gone down the drain as well. But never I have added "reddit" to my searches.
- jdwithit 3y agoI just checked "For You" for the first time and the top story was about one celebrity commenting on another's ass. And then a bunch of clickbait headlines designed to make people share them on social media and get mad. Think I'll pass.
- dopamean 3y agoIf you've never used it before might you need to for it to show you more relevant things?
- Zetice 3y agoYup, I've found the worst offenders are typically a small subset of sites, and you can ban sites from your For You, which cleans it up pretty quickly. I've got articles about the debt limit, AI, immigration, the new Titleist irons, etc.
- SlimyHog 3y agoI can't even find this feature. I googled "for you" and got LMGTFY and related sites. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- telotortium 3y agoI mostly use Reddit for city subreddits. Despite the overall political bias of Reddit these days, they have a habit of uncovering and bringing to widespread attention a lot of stories that I wouldn't hear about otherwise. Nextdoor and Facebook generally don't cover a wide enough range of topics and are almost impossible to use to read a lot of stories. For everything else, I feel that Discord, Twitter, and forums can replace Reddit pretty handily now.