3 ms·

What are better alternatives to Reddit? Yeah, a lot of subs are echo chambers, circlejerks and struggle with quality in general but if I counted how many times

What are better alternatives to Reddit? Yeah, a lot of subs are echo chambers, circlejerks and struggle with quality in general but if I counted how many times I found it useful compared to the rest of Internet on average, I'd be pretty rich. I often default my searches to site:old.reddit.com <query>, the new UI and app are garbage though.

asdff 3y ago
What worries me is that this isn't a sustainable position. Already the googling for reddit posts sometimes backfires, says hey here's a recent comment from two weeks ago but then you open it and its the same 5 year old post you've already read somehow. Then you have a general decline of the quality of the community, more people posting in a biased manner than an unbiased one, among other issues. Not to mention, advertisers know about reddit too, and are probably shilling the crap out of their products to respective subreddits who link their offerings in the sidebar or the subreddit faq or wiki page. Eventually it's going to be no different than any other enshittified corner of the internet, which is scary because where do you go then? I'd be hunting for actual books again for information. Pretty sad that the world wide web is reaching a point where the old brick and mortar library is the better source of information again, given all the promise it had at the start as being a step forward from that.
- pawelduda 3y ago
  similar thoughts here but I think there will always be a successor to a good community, and if you experienced it before, you'll be able to find the next one
  - asdff 3y ago
    I feel like that's not even a sure thing going forward. Consider the present generation of adults. They might have grown up on early reddit, or forums, or even usenet. They have an expectation of how these things operate. Meanwhile, take the new generation. Some of them might go on old.reddit.com, some of them might only get exposed to the new version of reddit, some of them might not go there at all. As a whole, I'd say a higher percent of online discussion users in newer generations are on a platform like a walled garden, than a self hosted forum or niche subreddit today. This affects their expections and what they understand the internet to be going forward. It affects what sorts of websites or services are able to exist going forward as well. Our concept of the internet will likely die out along with our generation.
ok_dad 3y ago
There is nothing better in terms of information and all-in-one knowledge, probably, but I have been using forums and some Discords (not much better than Reddit though) for my hobby recently and though it's annoying to check several places rather than one "front page", I still find I can engage with my hobby community perfectly fine. I lost a lot of top knowledge that's locked away on Reddit, but I honestly just spend a bit more time to research things now rather than having an answer at my fingertips with the search "{insert search topic} reddit". It's harder, but as I get older I find I have a lot more free time than I thought I had if I just ignore social media for most of my day. Hacker News and my hobby communities are my social outlet, because they aren't as bad for my mental health, though I have to avoid the more-political topics on HN.

asdff 3y ago

What worries me is that this isn't a sustainable position. Already the googling for reddit posts sometimes backfires, says hey here's a recent comment from two weeks ago but then you open it and its the same 5 year old post you've already read somehow. Then you have a general decline of the quality of the community, more people posting in a biased manner than an unbiased one, among other issues. Not to mention, advertisers know about reddit too, and are probably shilling the crap out of their products to respective subreddits who link their offerings in the sidebar or the subreddit faq or wiki page. Eventually it's going to be no different than any other enshittified corner of the internet, which is scary because where do you go then? I'd be hunting for actual books again for information. Pretty sad that the world wide web is reaching a point where the old brick and mortar library is the better source of information again, given all the promise it had at the start as being a step forward from that.

pawelduda 3y ago
similar thoughts here but I think there will always be a successor to a good community, and if you experienced it before, you'll be able to find the next one
- asdff 3y ago
  I feel like that's not even a sure thing going forward. Consider the present generation of adults. They might have grown up on early reddit, or forums, or even usenet. They have an expectation of how these things operate. Meanwhile, take the new generation. Some of them might go on old.reddit.com, some of them might only get exposed to the new version of reddit, some of them might not go there at all. As a whole, I'd say a higher percent of online discussion users in newer generations are on a platform like a walled garden, than a self hosted forum or niche subreddit today. This affects their expections and what they understand the internet to be going forward. It affects what sorts of websites or services are able to exist going forward as well. Our concept of the internet will likely die out along with our generation.

ok_dad 3y ago

There is nothing better in terms of information and all-in-one knowledge, probably, but I have been using forums and some Discords (not much better than Reddit though) for my hobby recently and though it's annoying to check several places rather than one "front page", I still find I can engage with my hobby community perfectly fine. I lost a lot of top knowledge that's locked away on Reddit, but I honestly just spend a bit more time to research things now rather than having an answer at my fingertips with the search "{insert search topic} reddit". It's harder, but as I get older I find I have a lot more free time than I thought I had if I just ignore social media for most of my day. Hacker News and my hobby communities are my social outlet, because they aren't as bad for my mental health, though I have to avoid the more-political topics on HN.