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I'd note that Reddit has a number of glaring structural flaws that would be simple to improve upon. - "Local" board admins/moderators run fiefdoms and act in c

I'd note that Reddit has a number of glaring structural flaws that would be simple to improve upon. - "Local" board admins/moderators run fiefdoms and act in capricious ways. - The downvote is too powerful, too easy to abuse, and its overuse leads to echo chambers. Unpopular opinions don't need to be talked about or even seen, just hit that button, lol. - Accounts are weirdly pseudonymous but retain a running post history and gain strength over time. Throwaway accounts are apparently encouraged but are usually penalized in a way that isn't obvious or transparent to the user. There's therefore a thriving market in "high karma" and old Reddit accounts, which are bought and sold in large numbers for small dollar amounts. This is widely abused by the marketing and astroturfing crowd. - You can also buy upvotes and, crucially, downvotes. This, too, is widely abused. ...And I could go on all day. It's not only a bad site, it's a poorly-conceived site and a future competitor should not copy its mistakes.

bloomingkales 2y ago
What do you think about putting something like Twitter or Reddit on the blockchain, no one can own it then. These ideas need to be floated because it’s for everyone. No getting rich off this kinda stuff.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  A complete implementation would quickly get huge, bloated, and slow. Any "forumchain" that requires it retain its entire activity history forever will fail. That said, Mastodon is sort of like that... It's a sort of partial implementation of a fundamentally similar idea.
- slau 2y ago
  No offense, but this sounds a lot like a comment made by someone who a/ doesn’t understand blockchain, b/ doesn’t understand high traffic websites. I don’t understand the former but have a fair understanding of the latter, but even then not at the scale of Reddit. Blockchain is “great” for distributed data. How many people do you know would want to run a node that hosts a few TB of data and requires equally copious amounts of bandwidth? If you meant that you think we should have federated services that interact with each other using an open protocol, I’ve got great news for you! Mastodon uses ActivityPub to federate and is a Twitter replacement. Lemmy and KBin both implement ActivityPub as well and are more geared towards forum-style use like Reddit. Regardless of the underlying technology that’s chosen, I think the real issue is that everything ends up being centralised. That gives individuals/companies too much power. If every community has its own subreddit, then each reddit policy change is going to offend/infuriate some part of the user base. If a community forum decides they want to ban $content, it only affects that community and nobody else cares. Every forum doesn’t need to be connected with everything else. There’s very little benefit from a scuba diving forum to see posts about tennis or sneakers. The only reason Reddit is popular is because instead of having aggregating clients that show a bunch of different topics from different interest groups, we let the servers be the aggregators. I guess what I’m describing is usenet, where your usenet client just shows you the things you were subscribed to. Gah I’m old.
  - bloomingkales 2y ago
    No offense taken, this is informative.
  - iforgot22 2y ago
    I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but a blockchain doesn't require that every user runs a node. And any "blockchain" application usually involves some off-chain brokers for performance reasons, which yes users would have to trust to some extent, but they'd also be able to cross-check and switch brokers (or run their own) if they ever lose trust. So a blockchain forum is doable in a similar way as NFTs. Would require caching on the read side, and unless your users are posting important enough stuff to warrant high xact fees, off-chain write batching. The real obstacle is that like NFTs, it'd be solving a mostly theoretical problem. Barely anyone cares that a forum is owned by someone, and you need a ton of users to gain traction.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      What you're describing is, essentially, a git repository.
gymbeaux 2y ago
I think the worst part of Reddit is the moderation/censorship. I think anything allowed by the First Amendment should be allowed on Reddit. I think disenfranchising bigots, racists, et al. does more harm by driving them to a true echo chamber like Truth Social. Other than that, there have been MANY times over the years I wrote out a useful comment (eg tech support type stuff) only for it to hit me with “this thread has been locked” or one of those automod things where I don’t have enough history in that particular subreddit or I didn’t flair or whatever else.
DemPartyPooper 2y ago
> The downvote is too powerful, too easy to abuse, and its overuse leads to echo chambers. Unpopular opinions don't need to be talked about or even seen, just hit that button, lol. And you haven't noticed this is EXACTLY how HN operates too? Oh the ignorance is strong in this one.
- iforgot22 2y ago
  HN has more restrictions on downvotes. For instance, I don't even have that button.
  - elpocko 2y ago
    Reddit has restrictions on votes as well. The restrictions are not necessarily visible to you. You can click the vote button but that doesn't mean your vote is actually counted. There's "vote fuzzing" and lots of other deceptions at work.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  Dude, you can't even downvote. You need 500 points, which, unless you're very smart or very lucky, doesn't come all that quickly. There are, as a rule, far fewer downvotes than upvotes here, in comparison with Reddit, which means that there's less homogeneity of opinion: It's easier to voice contrarian or unpopular views -- and they're more frequently engaged with, rather than just hidden in a facile way. Also the rules here are basically transparent. On Reddit the downvote is far more powerful and frequently employed, and a lot of the rules are opaque/arbitrary. It's a terrible system for free discussion.

bloomingkales 2y ago

What do you think about putting something like Twitter or Reddit on the blockchain, no one can own it then. These ideas need to be floated because it’s for everyone. No getting rich off this kinda stuff.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
A complete implementation would quickly get huge, bloated, and slow. Any "forumchain" that requires it retain its entire activity history forever will fail. That said, Mastodon is sort of like that... It's a sort of partial implementation of a fundamentally similar idea.
slau 2y ago
No offense, but this sounds a lot like a comment made by someone who a/ doesn’t understand blockchain, b/ doesn’t understand high traffic websites. I don’t understand the former but have a fair understanding of the latter, but even then not at the scale of Reddit. Blockchain is “great” for distributed data. How many people do you know would want to run a node that hosts a few TB of data and requires equally copious amounts of bandwidth? If you meant that you think we should have federated services that interact with each other using an open protocol, I’ve got great news for you! Mastodon uses ActivityPub to federate and is a Twitter replacement. Lemmy and KBin both implement ActivityPub as well and are more geared towards forum-style use like Reddit. Regardless of the underlying technology that’s chosen, I think the real issue is that everything ends up being centralised. That gives individuals/companies too much power. If every community has its own subreddit, then each reddit policy change is going to offend/infuriate some part of the user base. If a community forum decides they want to ban $content, it only affects that community and nobody else cares. Every forum doesn’t need to be connected with everything else. There’s very little benefit from a scuba diving forum to see posts about tennis or sneakers. The only reason Reddit is popular is because instead of having aggregating clients that show a bunch of different topics from different interest groups, we let the servers be the aggregators. I guess what I’m describing is usenet, where your usenet client just shows you the things you were subscribed to. Gah I’m old.
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  No offense taken, this is informative.
- iforgot22 2y ago
  I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but a blockchain doesn't require that every user runs a node. And any "blockchain" application usually involves some off-chain brokers for performance reasons, which yes users would have to trust to some extent, but they'd also be able to cross-check and switch brokers (or run their own) if they ever lose trust. So a blockchain forum is doable in a similar way as NFTs. Would require caching on the read side, and unless your users are posting important enough stuff to warrant high xact fees, off-chain write batching. The real obstacle is that like NFTs, it'd be solving a mostly theoretical problem. Barely anyone cares that a forum is owned by someone, and you need a ton of users to gain traction.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    What you're describing is, essentially, a git repository.

gymbeaux 2y ago

I think the worst part of Reddit is the moderation/censorship. I think anything allowed by the First Amendment should be allowed on Reddit. I think disenfranchising bigots, racists, et al. does more harm by driving them to a true echo chamber like Truth Social. Other than that, there have been MANY times over the years I wrote out a useful comment (eg tech support type stuff) only for it to hit me with “this thread has been locked” or one of those automod things where I don’t have enough history in that particular subreddit or I didn’t flair or whatever else.

DemPartyPooper 2y ago

> The downvote is too powerful, too easy to abuse, and its overuse leads to echo chambers. Unpopular opinions don't need to be talked about or even seen, just hit that button, lol. And you haven't noticed this is EXACTLY how HN operates too? Oh the ignorance is strong in this one.

iforgot22 2y ago
HN has more restrictions on downvotes. For instance, I don't even have that button.
- elpocko 2y ago
  Reddit has restrictions on votes as well. The restrictions are not necessarily visible to you. You can click the vote button but that doesn't mean your vote is actually counted. There's "vote fuzzing" and lots of other deceptions at work.
A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Dude, you can't even downvote. You need 500 points, which, unless you're very smart or very lucky, doesn't come all that quickly. There are, as a rule, far fewer downvotes than upvotes here, in comparison with Reddit, which means that there's less homogeneity of opinion: It's easier to voice contrarian or unpopular views -- and they're more frequently engaged with, rather than just hidden in a facile way. Also the rules here are basically transparent. On Reddit the downvote is far more powerful and frequently employed, and a lot of the rules are opaque/arbitrary. It's a terrible system for free discussion.