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There has been a constant stream of negative top HN posts about Reddit for a few weeks now, even if they often get manually pushed down from the front page. Was

There has been a constant stream of negative top HN posts about Reddit for a few weeks now, even if they often get manually pushed down from the front page. Was there ever a comparable shitstorm on HN against a big corp? Will this go down as the fastest suicide of a social media company?

Applejinx 3y ago
I think it's justified and strangely on-brand, since Reddit is OpenAI's moat and feeds ChatGPT pretty directly. It's the nexus of a lot of interests that are dead center to what Hacker News is about.
Semaphor 3y ago
> Will this go down as the fastest suicide of a social media company? While that would be nice, I doubt it. The quality of content might suffer and smaller subreddits will finally be where large ones have been for a long time, but for the vast majority of users who doomscroll and share memes, nothing much will change and reddit will continue.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > the vast majority of users who doomscroll and share memes this might be true, but this content is not what made reddit valuable as with twitter, the fundamental question is: where do the large numbers of contributors of quality information / discussion (a small fraction of billions is still a huge number) go for a sane, long-term sustainable online platform that will not turn into the next Library of Alexandria
outime 3y ago
I don't think Reddit will die because of this nor I think this is the first time HN gets sensitive against a corporation's actions. It's happened several times in the past. The most recent I remember is the beef with Meta and WhatsApp, where a good chunk of HN was very sure everybody would move over to Signal and WhatsApp would be left to rot. Similar thing happened with Twitter and Mastodon. People get very emotional and cannot see through the fog. It's just the same cycle over and over. As time has demonstrated dozens of times, HN isn't good at forecasting nor is representative at all of most end-users. The great majority of Reddit users (and this doesn't include me) use the official app or the official website and therefore besides this very short protest which will end soon as like many other protests in the past for different reasons, Reddit will just continue to be as popular.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > As time has demonstrated dozens of times As time has demonstrated dozens of times, platforms, behaviors and manias come an go in regular (though not quite predictable) bursts. Betting that nothing ever changes is not consistent with the general arc of developments in the broader technology space. Actually the opposite is likely true. The digital landscape is very "disruptable" and relies on various dark patterns (oligopolies, user illiteracy) to lock-in some "stability". The individual events you mention are not the flood, they are the thunder indicating a thunderstorm is brewing.
  - outime 3y ago
    I mean if a group of people is constantly "predicting" that X will go down then some day indeed they'll be correct. I'm not saying things don't change because it'd be dumb to believe that given known human history. However I just despise the fact that even here in HN, any event happening in corporate that's otherwise minor outside of these doors is confidently defined as the tipping point ("fastest suicide" is maybe one of the most dramatic ways) and the company will go bust. Just wanted to clarify that, I agree with your sentiment.
- rjh29 3y ago
  We're more sensitive about Reddit becoming an unusable mess for people like us. I don't care what happens to Reddit anymore, I'm going to Lemmy because it's the experience I wanted when I joined Reddit 12 years ago.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  WhatsApp is fundamentally different from Reddit. WA matters if the people you want are on that platform or a different one. Reddit has a network-effect but you care less about specific people and more about content/discussion. If my brother in law is on WA then I might have to be on WA, Reddit is much more fluid. If somewhere pops up with enough content/participation then I'm good to move. The other major difference is content. On WA you only care about the content your direct friends/family create, on Reddit the masses are dependent on a few to submit comment (and even comment, there are a ton of lurkers who never comment, might not even up/down vote). If WA content goes to shit you can tell your BIL to stop sending you crap, if Reddit content goes to shit (due to loss of power users or moderation) it's a much harder problem to solve. The WA exodus always struck me as way too difficult, getting friends/family to switch messaging platforms is super hard. Reddit? Might be unlikely but I was in the Digg->Reddit migration and I'm 100% looking for where I want to move now that Reddit is acting this way.
llm_nerd 3y ago
Worth noting that HN has become a Reddit-refugee outpost so this will probably continue if not get worse. See the other Reddit post (one about Reddit punting mods if they act against the interests of Reddit itself, which has always been true it's worth noting) with 100s of comments, folded into pages and pages of continuations. I mean does anyone honestly seriously believe Reddit purposefully undeleted this guy's comments? Reddit suspends accounts en mass, and when they do they nuke their entire history of comments on the site [I have been corrected, though I've strangely seen accounts get removed and all of their comments disappear too, though maybe they're running a script]. Reddit just really doesn't care about this guy's comments as much as he thinks they do.
- ghglkl 3y ago
  > Reddit suspends accounts en mass, and when they do they nuke their entire history of comments on the site. That's not quite true, if an account is permanently suspended, the user page is unavailable for viewing, but the comments still remain in their respective threads. It's only if an account is shadowbanned site-wide that all the comments are automatically removed too. This is intended only for spammer accounts, but can hit genuine users who are both newly created and end up being downvoted below a certain threshold.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Also affects users who signed up for the wrong VPN provider Ask me how I know
- ncallaway 3y ago
  I can’t speak to whether it was purposeful or not, but many of the comments I have deleted on Reddit have also been restored. It seems unlikely that their comments specifically were targeted, but it seems entirely plausible that a site-wide restoration took place that included their comments. It also could be a bug.
boomboomsubban 3y ago
Musk has gotten several. The elonjet Twitter shit got days of 500+ comment posts, and that's just the most recent example I can think of. Twitter didn't die, I doubt reddit will.
- xp84 3y ago
  Hey give it time in the case of Twitter. Last I checked they have a distinct strong lack of profitability, which tanked further the second Musk started spooking advertisers. Obviously he can afford to personally bankroll it, though, but it seems like a bad ROI.
- jurassic 3y ago
  Twitter is very much dying. It just doesn't happen overnight.
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
Reddit feels more like a betrayal and more surprising than other big corps.
DropInIn 3y ago
User migration
berniedurfee 3y ago
Twitter recently and Facebook before that. I think Digg as well some time ago. Twitter and Facebook still seem to be doing okay. The cycle continues.
shirro 3y ago
I don't think it is a suicide but a pivot into a new phase of their business. A phase that is focused more on mainstream content, increased monetisation etc. The rushed API change and poor communication appeared to be incompetent but possibly they are happy to endure some negative publicity and subscriber loss to restructure the business around promoting products to granny while she looks at reposts of cat pics. I don't think I will be returning to reddit. Just deleted a decade and thousands of comments. There are clearly many other ways to build online communities and I think a lot of people are more motivated than ever to develop those alternatives now. Eventually one of those alternatives will possibly kill reddit but I don't think the current exodus and subreddit protests will.

Applejinx 3y ago

I think it's justified and strangely on-brand, since Reddit is OpenAI's moat and feeds ChatGPT pretty directly. It's the nexus of a lot of interests that are dead center to what Hacker News is about.

Semaphor 3y ago

> Will this go down as the fastest suicide of a social media company? While that would be nice, I doubt it. The quality of content might suffer and smaller subreddits will finally be where large ones have been for a long time, but for the vast majority of users who doomscroll and share memes, nothing much will change and reddit will continue.

nologic01 3y ago
> the vast majority of users who doomscroll and share memes this might be true, but this content is not what made reddit valuable as with twitter, the fundamental question is: where do the large numbers of contributors of quality information / discussion (a small fraction of billions is still a huge number) go for a sane, long-term sustainable online platform that will not turn into the next Library of Alexandria

outime 3y ago

I don't think Reddit will die because of this nor I think this is the first time HN gets sensitive against a corporation's actions. It's happened several times in the past. The most recent I remember is the beef with Meta and WhatsApp, where a good chunk of HN was very sure everybody would move over to Signal and WhatsApp would be left to rot. Similar thing happened with Twitter and Mastodon. People get very emotional and cannot see through the fog. It's just the same cycle over and over. As time has demonstrated dozens of times, HN isn't good at forecasting nor is representative at all of most end-users. The great majority of Reddit users (and this doesn't include me) use the official app or the official website and therefore besides this very short protest which will end soon as like many other protests in the past for different reasons, Reddit will just continue to be as popular.

nologic01 3y ago
> As time has demonstrated dozens of times As time has demonstrated dozens of times, platforms, behaviors and manias come an go in regular (though not quite predictable) bursts. Betting that nothing ever changes is not consistent with the general arc of developments in the broader technology space. Actually the opposite is likely true. The digital landscape is very "disruptable" and relies on various dark patterns (oligopolies, user illiteracy) to lock-in some "stability". The individual events you mention are not the flood, they are the thunder indicating a thunderstorm is brewing.
- outime 3y ago
  I mean if a group of people is constantly "predicting" that X will go down then some day indeed they'll be correct. I'm not saying things don't change because it'd be dumb to believe that given known human history. However I just despise the fact that even here in HN, any event happening in corporate that's otherwise minor outside of these doors is confidently defined as the tipping point ("fastest suicide" is maybe one of the most dramatic ways) and the company will go bust. Just wanted to clarify that, I agree with your sentiment.
rjh29 3y ago
We're more sensitive about Reddit becoming an unusable mess for people like us. I don't care what happens to Reddit anymore, I'm going to Lemmy because it's the experience I wanted when I joined Reddit 12 years ago.
joshstrange 3y ago
WhatsApp is fundamentally different from Reddit. WA matters if the people you want are on that platform or a different one. Reddit has a network-effect but you care less about specific people and more about content/discussion. If my brother in law is on WA then I might have to be on WA, Reddit is much more fluid. If somewhere pops up with enough content/participation then I'm good to move. The other major difference is content. On WA you only care about the content your direct friends/family create, on Reddit the masses are dependent on a few to submit comment (and even comment, there are a ton of lurkers who never comment, might not even up/down vote). If WA content goes to shit you can tell your BIL to stop sending you crap, if Reddit content goes to shit (due to loss of power users or moderation) it's a much harder problem to solve. The WA exodus always struck me as way too difficult, getting friends/family to switch messaging platforms is super hard. Reddit? Might be unlikely but I was in the Digg->Reddit migration and I'm 100% looking for where I want to move now that Reddit is acting this way.

llm_nerd 3y ago

Worth noting that HN has become a Reddit-refugee outpost so this will probably continue if not get worse. See the other Reddit post (one about Reddit punting mods if they act against the interests of Reddit itself, which has always been true it's worth noting) with 100s of comments, folded into pages and pages of continuations. I mean does anyone honestly seriously believe Reddit purposefully undeleted this guy's comments? Reddit suspends accounts en mass, and when they do they nuke their entire history of comments on the site [I have been corrected, though I've strangely seen accounts get removed and all of their comments disappear too, though maybe they're running a script]. Reddit just really doesn't care about this guy's comments as much as he thinks they do.

ghglkl 3y ago
> Reddit suspends accounts en mass, and when they do they nuke their entire history of comments on the site. That's not quite true, if an account is permanently suspended, the user page is unavailable for viewing, but the comments still remain in their respective threads. It's only if an account is shadowbanned site-wide that all the comments are automatically removed too. This is intended only for spammer accounts, but can hit genuine users who are both newly created and end up being downvoted below a certain threshold.
- DropInIn 3y ago
  Also affects users who signed up for the wrong VPN provider Ask me how I know
ncallaway 3y ago
I can’t speak to whether it was purposeful or not, but many of the comments I have deleted on Reddit have also been restored. It seems unlikely that their comments specifically were targeted, but it seems entirely plausible that a site-wide restoration took place that included their comments. It also could be a bug.

boomboomsubban 3y ago

Musk has gotten several. The elonjet Twitter shit got days of 500+ comment posts, and that's just the most recent example I can think of. Twitter didn't die, I doubt reddit will.

xp84 3y ago
Hey give it time in the case of Twitter. Last I checked they have a distinct strong lack of profitability, which tanked further the second Musk started spooking advertisers. Obviously he can afford to personally bankroll it, though, but it seems like a bad ROI.
jurassic 3y ago
Twitter is very much dying. It just doesn't happen overnight.

ParetoOptimal 3y ago

Reddit feels more like a betrayal and more surprising than other big corps.

DropInIn 3y ago

User migration

berniedurfee 3y ago

Twitter recently and Facebook before that. I think Digg as well some time ago. Twitter and Facebook still seem to be doing okay. The cycle continues.

shirro 3y ago

I don't think it is a suicide but a pivot into a new phase of their business. A phase that is focused more on mainstream content, increased monetisation etc. The rushed API change and poor communication appeared to be incompetent but possibly they are happy to endure some negative publicity and subscriber loss to restructure the business around promoting products to granny while she looks at reposts of cat pics. I don't think I will be returning to reddit. Just deleted a decade and thousands of comments. There are clearly many other ways to build online communities and I think a lot of people are more motivated than ever to develop those alternatives now. Eventually one of those alternatives will possibly kill reddit but I don't think the current exodus and subreddit protests will.