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Books, podcasts, HN, the Fediverse. Occasionally Tildes.net. Reddit at best was marginally useful for content discovery. There are many alternatives now. Di

Books, podcasts, HN, the Fediverse. Occasionally Tildes.net. Reddit at best was marginally useful for content discovery. There are many alternatives now. Discussion quality had nearly always been abysmal, except on the very smallest subs. I've commented on this on HN many times: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20Conversation%20doesn%27t%20scale%20reddit&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>. As David Weinberger noted, "conversation doesn't scale": <https://dweinberger.medium.com/the-social-web-before-social-networking-a-report-from-2003-3e8fe109cf0c https://dweinberger.medium.com/the-social-web-before-social-...>. "Wisdom of crowds" is proving to have been hugely overly-optimistic. High-quality information tends to associate more with expertise, whether the result of long study or on-the-ground first-hand knowledge. Neither are prevalent in large-scale discussions. Reddit's own gamification, trivialisation, AI-dragon-feeding, cozying up to Google, and exclusion of other search engines (I use DDG, recent Reddit content is largely absent AFAICT), are all highly negative developments. It may well be that Reddit as conceived cannot survive without taking this route. But in that case, it should be permitted to die. This is a worse fate.

Root_Denied 2y ago
As an alternative perspective: I'm still using reddit, but it's a very curated list of subreddits and once I stop seeing new content from that small list I end up going elsewhere. The subreddits I keep in my list are a mix of niche interests (such as a specific video game or geographic region), professional groups (I still enjoy r/sysadmin even though I haven't been one for years), and a couple of news/politics/economics for larger stories. Ad blockers and RES are the only reason I still use Reddit as much as I do. If they even do away with old.reddit or make it so RES doesn't work I'll scale back my usage even more.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
> High-quality information tends to associate more with expertise, whether the result of long study or on-the-ground first-hand knowledge. Neither are prevalent in large-scale discussions. I don't necessarily need high quality information. I mostly just aim for somewhat civil discussion. That's not easily scalable, but I geel its at least viable. Scott's old forums had a great guideline for "civility": https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-victorian-sufi-buddha-lite/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-...
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  The problem currently on Reddit is that you're not getting even civil discussion. Just drive-byes, tired memes, regurgitated idiocy, trolls, spam, disinfo, and the like. Most particularly on the larger subs, but even on most of the smaller ones I'd once found at least occasionally rewarding. The sour taste from both that and the site's inevitable migration to something I wish to have nothing to do with kills whatever faint interest I might have in seeking information there. Maybe this is just another instance of trivialisation of a mass medium, as happened with print, radio, television, cable, and much of the rest of the Internet already. But then, I didn't wallow in that filth either. Good Internet discussion sites come and go. Cesspits accumulate.

Root_Denied 2y ago

As an alternative perspective: I'm still using reddit, but it's a very curated list of subreddits and once I stop seeing new content from that small list I end up going elsewhere. The subreddits I keep in my list are a mix of niche interests (such as a specific video game or geographic region), professional groups (I still enjoy r/sysadmin even though I haven't been one for years), and a couple of news/politics/economics for larger stories. Ad blockers and RES are the only reason I still use Reddit as much as I do. If they even do away with old.reddit or make it so RES doesn't work I'll scale back my usage even more.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

> High-quality information tends to associate more with expertise, whether the result of long study or on-the-ground first-hand knowledge. Neither are prevalent in large-scale discussions. I don't necessarily need high quality information. I mostly just aim for somewhat civil discussion. That's not easily scalable, but I geel its at least viable. Scott's old forums had a great guideline for "civility": https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-victorian-sufi-buddha-lite/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-...

dredmorbius 2y ago
The problem currently on Reddit is that you're not getting even civil discussion. Just drive-byes, tired memes, regurgitated idiocy, trolls, spam, disinfo, and the like. Most particularly on the larger subs, but even on most of the smaller ones I'd once found at least occasionally rewarding. The sour taste from both that and the site's inevitable migration to something I wish to have nothing to do with kills whatever faint interest I might have in seeking information there. Maybe this is just another instance of trivialisation of a mass medium, as happened with print, radio, television, cable, and much of the rest of the Internet already. But then, I didn't wallow in that filth either. Good Internet discussion sites come and go. Cesspits accumulate.