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That is interesting given that reddit has gone from a cultural powerhouse to something most people talk about shamefully, if at all.
by catigula 1y ago
That is interesting given that reddit has gone from a cultural powerhouse to something most people talk about shamefully, if at all.
- thunkingdeep 1y agoThe only people I’ve ever known who actually thought Reddit ever really mattered was people in the HN sphere. Anecdata, but still. In terms of value per minute spent, it’s the same tier of slop as TikTok or Instagram, and I think most ordinary people hold that same view.
- askafriend 1y agoYes, TikTok and Instagram...some of the most valuable media, entertainment and communication businesses in history.
- runjake 1y agoI can't tell. Are you countering OP's point or pointing out that slop is a lucrative business?
- askafriend 1y agoLook the reality is yes Instagram and TikTok have extremely problematic incentives built into their products. But they're also remarkably useful, entertaining, and fun products too. Both are true. Do you think multi-billion-user products can exist without "slop"? What do you think the average person wants to consume? The equivalent of salad? Have you met the average person? I think people have fundamental misconceptions of the average person's desire.
- vipshek 1y agoI find this perspective bizarre. Though I'm not happy about it all being centralized, the closest thing we have these days to the very niche phpBB forums of the 2000s is various subreddits focused on very specific topics. Scrolling through the front page is slop, sure, but whenever I'm looking for perspectives on a niche topic, searching for "<topic> reddit" is the first thing I do. And I know many people without any connection to the software industry who feel the same way.
- rambambram 1y agoI would love to have some directory with all kinds of active (PHP) web forums. That was the heyday of the open web for me.
- ryoshu 1y agoMajor advertisers are trying to figure out Reddit now, but it's a mixed bag and the costs are high compared to other platforms. It's no longer a niche.
- scottyah 1y agoI think they've found it in the form of astroturfing. A medium length post hyping up some brand is so common you've probably seen thousands
- Jaxkr 1y ago> In terms of value per minute spent, it’s the same tier of slop as TikTok or Instagram Insane take. Reddit hosts deep threaded discussions on almost any topic imaginable. In its prime it was the best forum on the internet. There’s a reason people commonly add “reddit” to the end of their search queries. Unfortunately it feels like the community has gotten much dumber after they banned third party apps and restricted API access. It’s also lost almost all of its Aaron Swartz style hacktivist culture. Reddit, in its prime, was incredible and beloved by almost everyone I know (most of which are far outside the HN sphere)
- JFingleton 1y agoIt feels like all those hacktivists moved to Discord... Which is even more "locked away" than Reddit. I miss the old skool php web forums.
- portaouflop 1y agoThere are still many around - most of them die because admins give up or users leave - if you actually miss them it should be easy to find some for your interests
- rambambram 1y agoI would love to have some directory with all kinds of active (PHP) web forums. That was the heyday of the open web for me. Do you have any tips on how to specifically search for these forums? Without just googling for topics and browsing hours to find some. When I think about it, just googling/searching might be the only way.
- breppp 1y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q="powered+by+vbulletin" https://www.google.com/search?q="powered+by+vbulletin"
- 1y ago
- thinkingtoilet 1y agoThe organizations/nation states/whatever who astroturf on reddit disagree with you. It definitely matters in shaping opinions. It's not as influential as tiktok of course, but that doesn't mean it's not influential.
- thunkingdeep 1y agoBy that measure, the benches on my local sidewalks are of cultural importance. You can spew ads and shit wherever they’ll let you, doesn’t enrich the environment by default. I get what you mean, but I’m still unconvinced of Reddit as a meaningful platform.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- portaouflop 1y agowhat happens on the street is obviously of cultural importance
- thunkingdeep 1y agoYeah? I saw a homeless guy shit into the storm drain the other day. I’ll send you the picture… since it’s so culturally important
- impossiblefork 1y agoFor mass shaping tiktok is probably more effective, but Reddit probably shapes people more deeply, since there's actual discussion. I think people are more critical in this discussion though, so that an apparent consensus may be interpreted by the user as the thread being bot-infested rather than there being a consensus. Thus it may be harder to get a result there, and the really interesting people that you may want to affect might actually be immune because they approach the medium as critically as it should be.
- LtWorf 1y ago
- rexer 1y agoOdd. Your take is the one I see most common on HN. My experience has been that Reddit has gone mainstream and most people find it quite valuable
- leptons 1y ago>The only people I’ve ever known who actually thought Reddit ever really mattered was people in the HN sphere. Most of reddit doesn't read HN, and there 100s of millions of people on reddit, so your perspective seems a bit narrow.
- some_random 1y agoI have no idea how anyone could have seriously tried to use reddit and be on HN and come to that conclusion. Yes some of the reddit defaults are slop but many clearly have significantly more value than short form video, and that's before you start discussing the niche communities that live there.
- pessimizer 1y ago> The only people I’ve ever known who actually thought Reddit ever really mattered was people in the HN sphere. They said the same thing about Quora and 3d TV. That being said, TikTok and Instagram matter. Reddit probably matters more because it's so easy for motivated people and corporations to manipulate discussions on it; it's even weaker than Wikipedia. 50x as many people read Reddit than post on Reddit, and 10x as many people as read Reddit have gotten their opinions indirectly from people passing on stuff they (can't remember that they) saw on Reddit (but think they learned somewhere legitimate.)
- rafram 1y agoReally? My perception (and their metrics seem to back this up) is that “normal people” are really on Reddit now. It’s the #7 most visited site in the world. It exploded during the pandemic - not just a site for internet nerds anymore.
- noir_lord 1y agoNot even a site for internet nerds anymore. Reddit isn’t for me any longer, when they break old.reddit.com I’m done with it, I go weeks without commenting as it is.
- yamazakiwi 1y agoyeah I thought it was going to break during the API scandal and ended up quitting then. I noticed an immediate improvement in my day to day mood when I wasn't consuming rage/cringe/sorrow bait.
- mrguyorama 1y agoIt DID break. A significant amount of the current content is literally bots posting old threads! Whether those bots are run by reddit itself or unaffiliated parties I don't know, but they are there, on most threads, including some threads that are ONLY bots reposting a 3 year old thread that did well, verbatim. My tinfoil hat theory is that all the "Explain this (very obvious) joke to me" subreddits are trying to create training data for some AI and that a significant amount of the content that makes it to the front page is designed to elicit "Good Training Data" for whatever AI company they sold the rights to.
- gibbitz 1y agoEveryone ads reddit to their searches to get human generated information these days. Not sure if that's still a guarantee, but it's a funny irony IRT what this thread is about...
- BeFlatXIII 1y agoWhich is why it's garbage these days.
- dyauspitr 1y agoIt has gone from a cultural powerhouse for a niche audience to something most people talk about.
- haunter 1y ago>something most people talk about shamefully, if at all Only if you go there for rage bait content. Small subs are better than ever. And no Lemmy is not an alternative.
- karn97 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't fulminate. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- whalesalad 1y agountil you get shadowbanned. my 15+ year account is dead because I logged-out of the iOS app and logged-in to the web app on my phone, it triggered the suspicious/spam filter and boom I am dead. tried many times to get it restored, no dice. the funny thing is the only indication that this happened was keybase alerting me that my proof was gone. I can login and use reddit as usual, but nothing I do has any effect. It's like I am in a sandbox. Try to view my profile publicly and it does not exist.
- sigmaisaletter 1y agoI am a serial account-hopper, so this couldn't happen to me, so perhaps I don't understand the point at all. But what is keeping you from making a new account and rejoining the same subreddits, except perhaps losing a hundred million magic internet points?
- 7speter 1y agoUsually, if you have an account that old, you built up enough karma, especially in subs you’re a regular on, to speak your mind and absorb being downvoted heavily multiple times over. Its not worth it spending time to be able to do that again on a site that is increasingly astroturfed.
- bongodongobob 1y agoCulture powerhouse? Lol, for nerds maybe. I'm pretty sure most of my non tech friends have never visited the site.