The Growth of Reddit
blog.quillbot.comReddit was great, many years ago, although there are many sub-reddits that are still excellent today. Moves they've made in the recent years, like hiding vote counts, were to improve growth, but it has also enabled more astroturfing and censorship (widespread).
More recently, they started injected tracking into outbound link clicks and introduced the terrible redesign to help with growth/monetization also. As they've grown, the quality of the content within sub-reddits and discussions within those communities, have fallen dramatically.
it never occurred to me before, but seeing it in a chart like this it really seems like Reddit has basically just turned into Gamers and their side interests, politics, and a few vestiges of old Reddit, like AskReddit, which at this point might as well be their own separate site for what all they have to do with the main demographic.
The Video Game sphere takes up a huge chunk of it. Then many of the other subs are basically gamer adjacent. Many of those technology subs are just about building PCs and stuff, which is largely gaming related or correlated. Even a lot of the politics is invariably linked to Gamergate type stuff. The Entertainment section is all genre fiction, anime, etc. Stuff you would expect a gaming forum to focus on.
The dedicated meme parts of the site are gone. The interesting stuff that fits in no particular category are gone. If you had told me 4 years ago that one day I would come to miss the derivative rage comics and image macros in the face of the unrelenting stream of toxicity that the site would become I wouldn't have believed you.
Just look at this joke post https://external-preview.redd.it/dv9xRUyCUzzan5wZnVBCmmHIriH... from 6 years ago. It all seems so innocent compared to what it is now.
Interestingly enough, I almost completely ignore the gamer side of reddit.(DotA being the exception)
To me, Reddit's the last bastion to find good conversation for people with many niche interests without going too crazy. (4chan is a bit too eccentric for my tastes)
I frequent the soccer, manga, headphones, metal, male fashion, thrifting, cooking and fitness subreddits.
No other forum let's me feel like a part of such a wide array of topics with discussion being the core focus. To be able to maintain anonymity while nuturing a community is incredibly hard, and Reddit had somehow managed it. The communities in Reddit are second to none. From meta jokes to entire sagas, Reddit in some ways reminded me of the times when I played Mmorpgs and joined guilds.
The removal of custom subreddit themes was where to me it started going wrong. I didn't care what they did with the popular subreddits and r/all, as long as they left the niche subreddits alone. But no, they had to interfere.
Reddit's forced UI change is to me a symptom of a greater problem. The idea that a company never stops growing. Sometimes you hit gold and the best decision is to stick with it.
I don't think any website offers the product Reddit does, and allows easily migration for entire communities without compromises. Thus, if the current web landscape stays the same, Reddit isn't going anywhere. But, it took weeks for Digg to die once Reddit came alive, and the introduction of a well moderated website for discussion may be all it takes for the Reddit exodus.
It is no surprise, that I find myself on HN typing this comment. An HN clone may just be where Reddit refugees find their calling.
> Interestingly enough, I almost completely ignore the gamer side of reddit.
Same. I'm a frequent reddit user and have almost no exposure to the "gamer" bits. Reddit, in my experience, is exactly what you make of it. For me, it's a DIY and craft forum.
> Reddit's forced UI change
To be fair, it isn't really a "forced" UI change, as you may disable it in the settings or use "old.reddit.com" as URL.
Unfortunately it's opt-in and if you don't have an account (like me) it can be a pain to constantly look for the little itty bitty link to revert back.
The best part is that the subs I lurk have banners that only appear in the redesigned view that instruct you to use old reddit because they rely on custom CSS for filtering and other things.
It's amazing that reddit management has thrown it's creators under a bus in search for monetization.
For now.
I don't know how you draw the conclusion that Reddit is all gaming and gaming-adjacent unless you dilute the definition of "gaming-adjacent" past all meaning. There's never been greater diversity in defiance of the gamer/geek persona on Reddit than there is today, and I say that as someone who's been a regular user for more than a decade.
"site:reddit.com <niche topic>" is still useful and bypasses most garbage.
Funny you should mention AskReddit. I'd consider the sad state of that sub an example of exactly how far mainstream Reddit has fallen. It's mostly content that makes me feel like I'm actually losing intelligence by reading it. Endless September writ large.
Thing about askreddit is that I don’t think it’s gone downhill, it’s always been the same few recycled questions every day with some actual decent discussions popping up about once a week. I have been browsing the subreddit for about 7 years now and I can’t see a noticeable decline, more so that the same old questions have become even more tired after seeing them over and over.
Strange that you say the dedicated meme parts of reddit are gone. In my mind they're more active than ever, between /r/me_irl, /r/prequelmemes, /r/deepfriedmemes, and if you really want the old fashioned stuff /r/adviceanimals is still surprisingly active.
/r/dankmemes, /r/bikinibottomtwitter, /r/teenagers are also meme heavy and make it to the top of /r/all regularly, not to mention the variety of spin off meme subreddits (lotrmemes, dankchristianmemes, etc.)
While the whole 'meme' thing has definitely affected/infected my life, I do find myself getting tired of a lot of it. Notable exceptions are /r/freefolk and /r/dankchristianmemes
I'm at a point where memes in themselves have become a bit of an interest of study. Why do I enjoy the aforementioned meme-y subreddits more than others? I'd like to think it's because there's a certain creativity and unicity to them, but I can't be sure. Assuming I'm right about that, what is it that makes them work in a way that, say, /r/prequelmemes doesn't (anymore)?
And I guess more importantly, how did I get to the point where I'm asking questions that are multiple layers of 'meta', and how might this affect my general wellbeing?
(I suppose the pragmatic answer is that regardless of how meta it gets, reddit is probably best in moderation, like most things. And an interesting in the whole process is not inherently tied to how much time I spend actively consuming/participating)
Since the recent redesign, I get a custom front page full of wholesome goodness and I never see r/all. Perhaps the GP has a similar experience?
I feel charts like this completely miss the point or the magic of Reddit. I have dozens of subreddits in my metasubreddits. There's a subreddit for everything and so many of them are so filled with helpful people and useful information. It's the best resource I have for all kinds of topics, far better than a Google search could ever provide. Even if these subreddits are nowhere as big as r/games, they're still a core part of what makes Reddit special (and something Apple has traditionally understood as a critical part of their success with the App Store - the long tail).
This really surprises me. Reddit to me feels like the easiest social network to customize your feed towards what you want( the redesign sucks though). Only recently after years of using it I found out that there are default subs and I was only subbed to r/funny and r/askreddit Every time I want information on whatever subject, be it a game or technology etc I first look if there's a subreddit for it and most often there is. I'm also building a multireddit for photography related stuff. You don't have to follow outrage or game-culture related subs whatsoever. Just sub to what you want to read about.
I feel like your comment would be more accurate a few years back. Browsing /r/all is a lot more tolerable since it's gotten a lot less Gamergate-y. Mocking Gamergate is a lot more common nowadays. I really don't know what you mean by "the dedicated meme parts of the site are gone", because goofy meme subreddits are very popular right now. One of the most popular ones mocks Gamergate and related views: /r/gamesriseup.
Anyway, the userbase is so huge that even "smaller" subreddits has a decent amount of activity. Sure, video games and SF movies/TV is all you'll get browsing /r/all, but there's, e.g., /r/truefilm, /r/flicks, lots of music subreddits.
this is a very weird take. I've been on Reddit for 6+ years and if anything it's gotten way way more diverse than just "gaming".
I’m taking about volume of users in the aggregate based on that chart. Not any individual’s curated feed.
Yes, but charts like this are proof of how misleading data can be. While the volume of users interested in gaming is large, the vast selection of different subreddits in every possible topic is what makes Reddit special.
But the fact that a big chunk of the user base is there for particular kinds of content inevitably colors all the other communities. This is why the best parts of Reddit are the parts that either restrict themselves from /r/all (or moderate so aggressively that people who show up from /r/all functionally don't post), or are too small/niche to ever show up on it.
They can actually foster an internal community without getting Eternal Septembered once they break a certain size.
I'd be curious what the overlap is. I suspect a lot of those users have edited their subscriptions to see only gaming stuff.
I've notice a number of questions on how to filter out all political content, so I suspect a lot of people are just trimming out the parts of reddit they don't care about.
Not to mention their dark patterns to get you to install the mobile app while browsing on mobile.
They've recently added javascript that mimics system UI asking you if you want to open the content in the app or in the browser. I'm also almost certain that the loading bars on mobile web are artificial sleeps.
If you hit the hamburger icon you can turn off the constant asking you to open the app pop ups.
It's still a dark pattern.
Thanks for this, I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or what but it never occurred to me to think to check for a setting... I can't keep up with all these ui trends.
I've used reddit quite a bit the last two years and have felt the content quality has decreased. That, or I'm just used to it or bored of it. Feel like I may be getting a little old for it. There are still some subs that are useful, like fantasyfootball
It seems like after Reddit exploded trying to catch the Boston Bomber, the insane velocity of content was nerfed to prevent hivemind comment. I don't know if any data is available on how things have changed though.
The thing about recent moves is that, unlike Facebook, they still support older ways to have the non-painful experience from the user side at least. i.reddit.com is still alive and I use it regularly. Lightweight, decent UX with some flaws, but pretty much no ads. The user tracking is harder to get around, but a combination of pi-hole, ublock origin, and privacy badger helps there. So it’s not terrible yet. I think when they finally kill i.reddit.com is when I leave the platform.
And old.reddit.com.
They started tracking outbound links before the redesign, so it's on old reddit too. You can disable it in user prefs.
I deleted my account out of frustration early this year.
Discussion is simply not important. Demonizing opposing opinions is very important though. Very much an anti libertarian echo chamber.
Basic group dynamics in absence of sufficient moderation. Usenet went through the same process.
No offence but apart from HN I wonder what community takes libertarians seriously? In fact from my experience they are mostly non-existent outside of the US, so much that libertarians are a staple of the American culture for me.
> No offence but apart from HN I wonder what community takes libertarians seriously?
Allow me to rephrase. Are you immediately fearful or deeply (emotionally) offended by original opinions or opinions challenge assertions you care deeply about but are not fully informed of? Libertarianism is simply the idea of individual independence (each individual is equal) which is the opposite of democracy (majority rules). John Stuart Mills spells this out in his On Liberty book.
The most clear example of absurdity is challenging the belief that WASM is replacing JavaScript. The position on this issue is stated by Mozilla, the WASM working group, and individual contributors to the WASM spec. Regardless of what the technology, or what's the authors mention, people form an independent reality and demonize anything contrary in an aggressive manner. Contrary opinions are taken as a personal threat necessarily demanding punishment.
In many ways, Reddit reminds me more of the "old internet" than Facebook or Twitter. There seems to be better discussions, more variety, and even quite a bit of experimentation going on within certain subreddits. It feels like a freer place and that much I like. I still don't like that people get into their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and ideological differences, but it certainly feels more exploratory than the other two.
>I still don't like that people get into their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and ideological differences
Leaving your comment moderation duties up to majoritarian voting is inevitably going to do that.
Also internet anonymity brings extremism out of people.
IRL, when debating another person, most people IMO wouldn't be at least half as extremist as they're on reddit or HN
The Facebook-based comment sections on some news sites make me question that.
Anonymity is part of it, but I think an understated part is just lack of community. The people are just names on a screen and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that they’re people.
The interface of reddit and HN kind of encourage this. Old PHP BBs used to have avatar pics and signature blocks and stuff that distinguished your post as yours. It sort of anchored your “content” to an identity, so over time a community develops and people start to develop reputations and stuff. That doesn’t happen as much when everything is visually indistinct from everything else.
Agree
The obvious way out of that is to join bubbles that are aligned with your interests rather than political views. If your interest is politics then find a better interest :)
Every now and then when I access Reddit not logged in from somewhere I get reminded of this. If you curate what you are subscribed to it will be much better. About a year ago I wrote a little Python script in about an hour or so that subscribed me to every single state-level or above location-based subreddit (there is a webpage that you can go to that lists them all, I simply scraped that). I have learned so much about different cultures just by reading posts from people around the world posting things about their area.
can you share the script ? I'd be very interested in trying it out.
Sadly it was wiped when I reformatted awhile back. But it’s rather trivial to implement if you know a little python. The website I scraped is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocationReddits/wiki/index
It took a bit of finagling to exclude the US college and city subreddits but otherwise I subscribed as-is to everything on that page. I think I only have unsubbed to a couple of them manually after, mostly because of excessive political posts by people who clearly don’t live in the area (Israel and Palestine subreddits come to mind)
You get some great content from doing it. Specifically Denmark and Sweden have amazing content in Danish and Swedish respectively that you wouldn’t ever see otherwise. Plus the former Yugoslavia countries and Eastern Europe and basically a lot of Europe generically has some sweet content you would not normally see if you weren’t subbed to their subreddits. Right click to google translate helps a lot. There are some truly dank European memes out there.
One of the other things I noticed that was really cool is that I now am tuned in to state politics outside of my home state in US. You really start to see the major issues other states have when you are subbed to their home subreddit.
100%. Having a "passion" for politics was abrasive to my relationships with friends throughout high-school and returned very little value to me (save the short-lived energy I got from stupid internet debates).
Some people don't have the ability to not be concerned with politics.
If you mean like a bad habbit i agree.
Pretty sure doublepg23 was referring to those of us who aren't straight, cis-gendered males. Politics directly affects us, sure the rich among us can run to lavender marriages and try to cover up their innate desires, but the rest of us will end up being fed to the wolves.
For us, going to a rural town or even many suburbs elicits the observation "It smells like dead gay people" as you've entered an area where you may get lynched for being yourself. Even here in Seattle, non-straight couples are getting violently assaulted for being out in public with their significant other. The state of affairs is rapidly getting worse for us!
That's a remarkably privileged and blasé take, denying the importance of civic engagement.
Civic engagement happens in the real world, not by commenting on reddit, fb or Twitter.
Civic engagement happens wherever people discuss politics
That would be quite an exaggeration. You can already see in this thread how fast the conversation deteriorate into completely meningless quibbles.
Posting in political subreddits is not "civic engagement."
Reddit is basically one giant forum. Old fashioned discussion boards and message fora will still be around.
>I still don't like that people get into their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and ideological differences
I have never found any sites/forums/bbs that didn't eventually devolve into a echo chamber given enough time.
People like to repeat the same opinion as others and those who don't like these opinions tend to be the first to leave for other pastures.
The biggest problem with reddit is that subreddits tend to get turned into little personal domains, ruled by a supreme dictator for life, turning the community experience sour for anyone who doesn't toe the party line.
When it's gone, the "old internet" will be gone
Well, it might not be "normie compatible", but there still is 4chan, which is a lot "old internet". I can understand that people do not like it and why it is that way though. But the point is: There are still sites out there which are like the old internet. They are obviously just not mainstream. They never were really (except reddit maybe). You just gotta find your little niche place and maybe look around every now and then, but they still exist.
Edit: No, i don't talk about /pol/. No one likes the right-wing /pol/-scum. That's not 4chan.
And Usenet still exists.
/pol/ may be the most salient and influential political forum on the internet (a recent study showed /pol/ produces the most reposted content seen elsewhere online). To describe it as “right wing” is like saying YouTube comments are right wing. It’s unmoderated, not right wing, there’s a big difference (see /r/the_donald if you want right wing). That said, these days it’s full of shills shilling shills. I prefer to hang out on the other, more apolitical and better moderated 4chan forums like g, tv, and o.
Addendum: to say /pol/ isn’t 4chan is both true and false but it’s kind of weird and unfortunate you felt obligated to apologize for using 4chan because /pol/ exists. Just because /pol/ tolerates witches doesn’t mean 4chan’s a witch site for witches populated entirely by witches.
the_donald is mostly shitposting. If you want an example of right wing you'd be better off with https://www.reddit.com/r/conservative.
There are still some of us that are trying to keep the old internet alive.
(Shameless plug: https://beta.getaether.net)
One of the cool thing, basically THE cool thing about the old internet was the exposure to a giant wide world with all different kinds of people and interests from all walks of life. It skewed technical, because you had to be technical to figure out how to work it. But once people got over an initial barrier it was cool, and it's not like there was anywhere else they could go if they wanted to reach whatever community they were into.
One of the problems with attempts to keep the "old internet" alive is that they still skew technical (because most of the people who are nostalgic for it are comfortable enough with those technical things), but now regular Joes have other options. They're not going to bother learning the technical stuff if everything else is set up to make it brainless and easy.
Moreover, since you HAVE to be technically inclined to build such a thing, the initial word of mouth and distribution winds up being constrained to the technical crowds. This makes the communities one-note and boring, so people just don't feel very compelled to stay.
Why would the technical bubble of the old internet be so interesting and diverse, but the technical bubble if today is so "one-note"?
The suggestion is that the old internet wasn't a pure technical bubble: although the barrier to entry made it more technical than average, it was still fairly diverse because the alternative to passing that barrier was staying off the internet entirely. Now, getting online is easy, and there are millions of alternatives to the techy corners of the internet. So nobody who isn't specifically interested in that stuff has any motivation to join in.
OTOH, today's "technical bubble" isn't really pure technical either - technology went from being nerds-only to full mainstream popularity, and there's plenty of both technologists with other side interests, and people from other walks of life with technology as their side interest.
I feel like you can have good UX and still preserve aspects of the freedom of expression, interest-based discussion, two-way dialogue, and the feeling of community and openness that the 90s internet had. But I agree that you do have to have these platforms compete with the giants and that's harder to do these days.
All I see is big "Download" links everywhere, that just go to a JS alert popup saying it's not out yet.
It looks interesting but with no way to preview the current communities or content before downloading, I'm hesitant to go through downloading, installing, and signing up to a new service, only to find out it's another Voat.
I’m trying to build something I like, beyond anything - so I’d rather have it not be Voat.
Hey rolleiflex, I would like to sign up for the newsletter, per the popup, but I cannot see how to.
Could you direct me to that page?
I feel like that happened to some extent when the SomethingAwful forums lost their dominance.
Every platform has its Eternal September.
Some of the first comments on Reddit were complaints about the site going downhill in almost exactly the same terms people use today: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/17913/reddit_no...
Nostalgia is powerful! The key has always been to unsubscribe all the “front page” (once “default”) subreddits.
That's true. But also every platform eventually gets bad and dies... probably?
It is interesting that the #1 story in HN is decline in FB and the #3 is growth in Reddit. Personal anecdote, I have shifted all my FB screen time to Reddit. Not out of any agenda, but perhaps to interact with a more diverse group of people. Bold prediction: FB will try to acquire Reddit soon
For me I've moved from Reddit back to Digg, Reddit seems to be the worst parts of Facebook combined with the worst parts of Twitter. The redesign is horrendously busy, the comments are trite or vicious, and the v.reddit videos either autoplay or never play when you click on them.
Not much to do about v.reddit, but you can disable the redesign in your user preferences, and as for comments- unsubscribe from the default subreddits and then go subscribe to specific, smaller subs that catch your interest. /r/SubredditOfTheDay, /r/TinySubredditOfTheDay, and /r/Serendipity are great ways to find out about about new subs.
(Unfortunately, there's not much to do about the mobile app, which is pretty bogus... although there are a few third-party apps which are less obnoxious.)
Disabling the new design still requires you to be signed in, though. I don’t sign in most of the time I’m using Reddit. (Which makes for poor monetisation, and even being able to disable the new redesign only when signed in is a win for them over the current situation.)
Not signing in to reddit is the surest way to experience the online equivalent of a table next to the bathroom.
"table next to the bathroom"
This is a phrase I'm not familiar with. What do you mean?
You have been waiting all week for this occasion. You made a reservation at this great restaurant with someone you are really excited to make a closer connection with. Finally, the moment comes, and you are led to your table.
Unfortunately your table is within 2 meters of the bathroom. Every time the door opens, the bathroom light casts shadows on your silverware and lights the back of your head highlighting the thinness of your hair. This is followed, a few seconds later, as the smell of urinal mints wafts over and mixes with the delicate anise and dark plum notes of your $26 glass of wine.
I guess you have to have been there :|
I'm guessing it's like getting the table next to the bathroom at a restaurant; A second class experience.
Was trying to understand this myself. I guess the table next to the bathroom is the most undesirable location for a table since there are smells/foot traffic/noise? Whether parent meant reddit is the bathroom, or the restaurant, I'm not sure.
Reddit is a restaurant. If you winnow your subscriptions you’ll have the best seat in the house. If you leave the default subscriptions in place but log on your jammed three deep at the bar wanting a classic cocktail but having to settle for a miller lite. If you dont log on you are seated at the table next to the bathroom where a stream of drunk sorority girls and fraternity boys stand in line waiting to piss and yelling woo hoo! Everytime the door opens you get a waft of stench that puts you off your food.
Not always. I don’t go to Reddit.com, I always go to Reddit.com/r/motorcycling, or r/leathercraft, for example. You don’t have to be signed in for that.
Signing in puts you at risk of getting sucked into pointless internet comment arguments though.
Not signing in and curating your subreddit subscriptions all but guarantees you will only be exposed to the most populist content on the site and will never see any of the deep, niche, and interesting stuff on it.
> Signing in puts you at risk of getting sucked into pointless internet comment arguments though.
....says a person signed into HN engaged in pointless internet comment arguments....
I don’t have a problem. I can quit anytime I want
You do not need to sign in the disable the new design, you can just use old.reddit.com.
You go to old.reddit.com There is also a firefox addon that redirects all links to old reddit.
Or with old.reddit.com in the URL. There is probably a browser addon or JS for that.
> Disabling the new design still requires you to be signed in, though.
old.reddit.com works fine when logged out, for me.
I'm in the same boat, but I didn't go to digging, but came back here. The new redesign, coupled with the realization that I spent far too much time with the same arguments showed me that Reddit is broken now.
Why can't I just have a nice link aggregator with decent discussion? HN is great, but it doesn't have as much content as other platforms. I just want to discuss politics, hobbies, and lifestyles with the same level of discussion we have here, why is that too much to ask?
> "...why is that too much to ask? "
because it's bloody hard to create civil, thoughtful communities. HN is interesting since the general user base seems to have learned to self-moderate, buuuut, it has made HN a pretty dry place (boring maybe?).
I have found some absolute hilarious gems on Reddit. The wit and humor of some users really catches me off guard sometimes, but the issue with Reddit is that there is just so much low effort garbage to sift through to find anything interesting/funny. Reddit seems to have converged on to a low effort meme-fest for the most part. I've gone to the effort to customise my sub-reddits to match my interests, but each community seems to very quickly become a repetitive echo chamber, so there are not many new/unique POV to explore. For example I sub to /r/Australia and it's basically the same content re hashed over and over (NBN sucks, Libs suck, House prices suck, magpies are annoying, here's a picture of a Kookaburra etc.)
So Reddit isn't really for me any more and I spend little time there. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find that I get more out of just sitting in the sun and letting my mind wander.
You can go to https://old.reddit.com to get the old design back.. for now.
I suppose the quality of the comments very much depends on the subreddit(s) you read. I mean, something like r/haskell is bound to have a different commenting culture from r/funny.
reddit is only usable if you have a plugin like this
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
which will auto-redirect you to the old-design
Can't you just use old.reddit.com ?
I end up landing on reddit from search engines and this automatically loads the old.reddit.com as it will revert to the new UI by default. I do not log in and have not been active on reddit for a long while.
You can also just change that in your account settings to use the old design.
"and the v.reddit videos either autoplay or never play when you click on them"
So it's not just me? I quit using Reddit because this happened on my phone all the time. Don't they test this sort of thing, or pay attention to abandonment stats?
Imagine FB's data attached (by email or cookie) to Reddit's screentime - would easily quadruple Reddit's ad revenue with the same ad inventory. If they got away with it without driving away Redditors, would be salivation worthy as a marketer.
Reddit's main traffic problem for advertisers is that most users don't really subscribe to subreddits or make accounts, but rather browse the front page casually. So you can target, for instance, /r/smallbusiness to target small business owners, but you'll exhaust that inventory very quickly. A Facebook acquisition would mean that a much higher percentage of Reddit's audience could be served relevant ads.
they started tracking outbound links for all users sometime ago and offer the ability to advertise to users based on their browsing behavior, keywords, community affiliation when I'd investigated last year. They were expecting an overhaul of their platform this year, so I imagine targeting has only improved for un-registered users.
I don't believe Reddit (owned by Conde Nast, a subsidary of Advance Publications) has any intentions to sell the platform outright, as they essentially get to control the v̶o̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶ front page of the internet.
Wow, I really can't imagine an acquisition that I would less rather learn about than FB hypothetically buying reddit. Considering how FB has all the money in the world it is probably wise to start editing/deleting all my reddit comments now because once FB slurp the whole DB it's already over - the fact that I would never visit reddit again wouldn't save me.
The reddit data is not as valuable as being able to use FB's data to serve ads on Reddit. But it's probably valuable nonetheless.
You haven’t done that already? Most I leave any comment is 1 week.
Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/uSVqoW1rz6w?t=850
"We know all of your interests. Not just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook – we know your dark secrets, we know everything… (laughs)"
> Bold prediction: FB will try to acquire Reddit soon
This would be bad on so many levels.
Not for their investors who put in $200m and want a return.
I use Reddit daily, but it's days are numbered. Having Facebook acquire them I think is it's only saving grace. I use the word "it" deliberately, because Reddit is now in the hands of its VCs.
> and want a return
Then it would be bad for them, too.
WhatsApp was an incredible success for its investors. Not so much for its acquirer. Look hard enough and you'll find M&A doesn't always pan out as expected, even at the $1B value range.
They would get their return as the exodus begins.
> Having Facebook acquire them I think would be it's coup de grace
Fixed that.
Facebook and Reddit serve far too different purposes in my life to make sense of a comparison. I might just have grown too old, but the talk of Reddit (or instagram etc.) replacing FB don't seem to make very much sense, as long as FB is the go-to platform for connecting with real-world acquaintances.
I literally have no connections on FB to people I haven't met in person, and don't know a single friend's reddit account.
FB also has pages that post memes/pics/news/Russian propaganda, and thousands and thousands of people commenting underneath them (tragically mostly to make their friends aware of the content by mentioning their names), so that's their reddit/forums competition.
But unlike forums, most of the conversation on Facebook is 20 comments at a time and you can't just link to page X of some conversation...
And yet you're discussing this on Hacker News...
What could Reddit offer FB for acquisition? Does it really fit into FB's vision?
Also Reddit is owned by Wired's parent, Conde Naste. I don't think it is up for sale.
I wonder if they have tried already
>> FB will try to acquire Reddit soon
That's just about the worst thing I can imagine
> but perhaps to interact with a more diverse group of people.
Your FB is probably far more diverse than reddit at this point. Maybe reddit 5 years ago, but reddit today is a propaganda platform for a political party and ideology. It's the echo chamber of echo chambers.
I've never had FB. I started weaning myself from reddit years ago. I primarily use youtube now. Though that is getting screwy too.
> Bold prediction: FB will try to acquire Reddit soon
Doubt it. Bolder prediction: FB will be around long after reddit is gone.
Reddit has a number of systemic issues (poor tools for moderators, hard to get rid of bad moderators, huge amounts of astroturfing)
It's a shame that they are 'good enough' to prevent much growth in the competitors, leading the cool tech made by competitors to often become exclusively filled with content that would be banned on reddit.
Some pretty poor categorization of some subreddits in there. gamesofthrones, mylittlepony, thewalkingdead, and BigBrother are in sports (asoiaf is in entertainment). sysadmin and techsupport are in hobbies/occupations while buildapc is in tech section. tumblrinaction, kotakuinaction, and blackpeopletwitter are in entertainment. DebateReligion is in news/politics, not discussion (with other debate subreddits) or lifestyle (with other religion subreddits).
The hierarchy is on GitHub: https://github.com/MetASnoo/Subreddit-Directory-Skeleton/blo...
But it's not in a structured format and tough to verify. There's no methodology for the current organization, and it doesn't look like it matches the actual graph.
The base classification structure was borrowed from r/listofsubreddits sub directory: https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/listofsubredd.... However it was modified a bit in order to even out the clusters, size wise. Keeping it unchanged would make more than half of the subs entertainment. That being said, some hiccups were made during the formatting, and the purpose of the repo is to fix/enhance any mistakes people spot.
It would be interesting to see them classified by subreddits where the a significant amount of comments are driven from live events (thinking of the big sporting subreddits and some of the e-sport/gaming ones) vs subreddits that are almost completely based off non-live events (i.e. AskReddit, Sex).
I get a lot of auto completes for "site:reddit.com" when I search for anything in the Chrome search bar or just in Google Search. I find reddit answers to be less likely to be advertisements or affiliate marketing. Honestly not sure where I would find information otherwise.
I use reddit on my mobile browser without logging into to an account. Recently when clicking links or images in the mobile view a pop-under will appear freezing the site until I select the prominent first option (to download the Reddit mobile app) or the second option to continue using my mobile browser. Because I am unauthenticated this preference does not carry over to page reloads for things like jumping to a different subreddit, leading me to experience this pop-under over and over again.
Needless to say it's cut heavily into my reddit usage. I genuinely believe they raised a bunch of money, hired a bunch of engineers and managers, convinced the C-levels a re-design was necessary, and then implemented a subpar re-design with a giant middle finger to users all in the name of ads. Glorious, world improving, ads.
It's incredibly annoying. I've built out my own mobile website for interfacing with Reddit because of it. Update after update the mobile.reddit.com keeps becoming harder to use.
login in solves a lot of problems. I know It's no longer anonymous but you can at least use a fake name. If you log in you can disable that infuriating popup. Also, you don't have to look at only the default list of garbage subreddits.
Reddit not logged in is like watching that garbage truck full of memes crash into on-coming traffic.
Best way to avoid this is to use an app. No need to login, and some like Apollo even provide ways to "subscribe" to subreddits without logging in.
Over the past few years, both Twitter and Reddit have seen a huge growth of bot accounts. I'd put an asterisk next to any growth* figure by either company.
t_d at its peak was almost as big as politics, now that was not something I expected. Before SandersForPresident was archived when he lost the nomination it was about the same size as t_d.
Would be really neat to select a single sub or group of subs and generate a line chart of the same data.
A lot of what goes on in t_d is artificial, so the actual size of the community is probably a lot less than what it appears here.
[citation needed]
This deleted post outlines the catastrophic degree of astroturfing that riddles the sub.
The post had to be archived because of drama around the original post when the user presented his research to administration.
Not proof of bots but that subreddit definitely exhibits some unusual voting patterns
http://ryancompton.net/2016/08/07/upvotes-over-time-by-subre...
Probably not bots. In those days they actively encouraged upvoting everything as a way of gaming the front page algorithm.
A more charitable take would be they encourage upvoting everything to counter an infestation of downvote bombing.
That data is pretty interesting. I am not sure how surprising it is since in the election days the t_d discord was pretty good at vote brigading their own posts, which might explain that difference. I wonder if the sub still follows that pattern.
It's interesting that it peaked at 1.5m comments/mo in late 2016 and it's shrunk to 820k comments/mo. That's a huge drop. It sort of makes sense, seeing as the election ended, but that activity decrease is far larger than any other subreddit, even political ones.
r/the_Donald was "quarantined" by the admins, so it cannot be discovered by users in the same way as other subreddits. That cut off a lot of the organic growth that you would normally see, and it cut off users who might normally see r/the_Donald on the r/all or r/popular wander in to comment/argue. People who are not already subscribers just no longer even see anything at all from r/the_Donald.
I don't think r/the_donald is quarantined.
There was some issue with sticky threads not rising as much to the r/all that impacted r/the_donald, but otherwise, I can still see posts from that sub on the front page though I do have to scroll quite a bit.
Where did you see that it was quarantined? As far as I know their sticky posts can't appear in /r/all anymore and it was excluded from /r/popular.
I think he’s using “quarantine” in the practical sense rather than the Reddit-specific terminology sense.
The only distinction at this point is that the subreddit doesn’t have the yellow banner or verified email on account requirement. It is quarantined in the ways that count, such as inability to hit the front page regardless of popularity.
> r/the_Donald was "quarantined" by the admins
I wish. That subreddit is an absolute cancer that infests the entire site.
A lot of the activity on the_donald was intended to push propaganda to the front page. These tactics became ineffective after the reddit admins changed their algorithms around.
I also found it interesting that post-election, the tone of the content started to shift dramatically. t_d has turned into a mirror of r/politics, and in the process lost their entire original style.
I’m not sure comparing a sub for a specific candidate to a sub about all politics makes a ton of sense.
(I think you meant to reply to a different comment.)
Your comment:
> that activity decrease is far larger than any other subreddit, even political ones
Sorry, I thought you mistook it for the person talking about /r/politics.
I agree that a direct comparison of activity levels isn't all that sensible. I was just surprised that TD has lost nearly 50% of its activity while the rest of Reddit has grown, even growing in the subject area TD is a part of.
/r/politics leans left, so it kinda makes sense.
It more than just leans left. Most comments and posts from a conservative position get downvoted, and many libertarian ones do as well, while almost anything positive for liberals gets upvotes, even if it's not newsworthy.
I'd really like something like HN, but for political discussion. There are a couple okay subreddits, but it's just not worth it anymore IMO. I just want quality discussion about issues, complete with evidence. PoliticalDiscussion is okay so far, but then again, so was politics a couple of years ago.
/r/media_criticism has been pretty balanced, and nowadays has mostly political content.
"leans"
Number of comments seems like a bad metric. A lot of these are informal subreddits where the most common comments are going to be "lol" or users collaborating to complete a sentence one letter at a time as part of some meme.
Totally agree. This skewed metric is why r/AskOuija is massively overrepresented.
For those interested, I've done a similar (far less pretty) analysis on Hacker News:
https://austingwalters.com/trends-on-hacker-news-activity-gr...
Reddit for me is an acceptable middle point between the community-specific vBulletin forums of the 2000s (largely deserted now), and modern social media. You can explore a wide variety of topics (like on social media sites) while keeping anonymity and a sense of community (in dedicated subreddits).
When people say Reddit is 4chan-lite, I see where they're coming from. They're not signed in, so all they see is r/all, which has about the same quality level as the front page of Youtube.
The trick to it is to install the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser extension and start blocking the subs that frequently post low-quality/hate speech/just plain irritating content. Block a sub from your home page once, it never comes back.
Wish I could say the same for Youtube. I swear, you watch ONE Bill Burr standup clip, and your recs are suddenly full of "feminist gets pwned by redpill logic" and other "viral" garbage videos, each of which has to be manually set to "Not Interested".
The day they force the new design (remove old.reddit.com preference) is the last day I use Reddit.
I had a pretty strong reddit addiction and the redesign was fantastic for me- it completely cured my addiction! The redesign is just so awful and I hate using it so much that all I had to do was opt-in to using it and viola... 3 hours a day back in my life which I now use for the gym and to clean the house. It was an awesome change for me personally. No more reddit timesink!
I wonder if Reddit has surpassed Twitter, Snapchat, etc, for the title of most popular non-Facebook social network. You rarely see anyone do any kind of comparison of them.
There were a handful of visualizations posted on r/dataisbeautiful a while back that compared the social media giants.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/87q8pn/the...
https://imgur.com/gallery/c4Wzo
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8yma4e/oc_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8ahy05/int...
Looks like Reddit is still growing where the others are shrinking.
Here you go. Reddit was always bigger than snapchat. They are about the same size as twitter.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
Note that FB owns 4 out of the top 6 social media platforms on that list. That's how dominant FB really is.
Depending on the definition of "active user." In particular, Facebook can be filled with your once-a-month users, who are basically non-active users.
Is Reddit really considered a social network and not just a discussion forum?
It has:
- user accounts and profiles (users have their own "subreddit") - friends list (and block list) - live chat - personalizable feed - communities
So yeah, it's a social network that looks a lot like a message board, and it has been getting more and more social features.
That's the reason I'm leaving Reddit. I liked how it was a while ago, but the recent changes and the culture just aren't my cup of tea anymore. Discussion is still mostly okay, but there's just far too much noise.
What would you consider digg, myspace, slashdot, 4chan, etc? Online watering holes seem like social networks, they just have different forms with similar concepts.
Sometimes when I lurk on Reddit it appears that "the internet" is giving helpful and respectful comments to someone who, say, alleges that her husband had been sexually assaulting her.
When I start digging down into the lower quality comments those comments are obviously lower quality. But here's the thing-- within the lower quality comments is the OP responding to the low quality comments!
In other words, an OP (probably like many OPs) has a limited amount of time to get feedback on Reddit about a pressing problem. And mods/downvoters cannot react quickly enough in that period of time to appropriately moderate the responses.
Imagine OP's "Reddit time" (let's say an hour) as a rectangle in a video game that starts at 100% and drains to 0%. Let's say those dregs comments drained 15% of the OP's total time or energy participating on Reddit.
Now, suppose a lurker reads the thread later when the mods/downvoters have caught up with all their work. The lurker's default view is only the quality comments. This misleads the lurker by hiding the 15% time-or-energy hit the OP had from interacting with the dregs. The lurker likely assumes that participating on Reddit requires less time or energy that it does in reality.
Now the lurker tries out posting for the first time and starts to experience the 15% time-or-energy hit from the dregs comments. The more impatient OP is about reading comments, the more likely OP is to increase that wasted time-or-energy by interacting with the dregs.
Worse, that 15% time-or-energy hit includes content that would be beyond the pale for in-person social interactions-- it's mindless trolling or misanthropy which nearly no one would utter face to face. Some of it-- like accusations that the OP is an imposter-- is unique to social media.
Worst of all, that poster probably started as a lurker. So their decision to post in the first place was based on a view of Reddit that radically downplays the costs of interacting. I mean, I don't see any clear warnings on first post that let the poster know "shit will roll in" faster than the mods can flush it.
The obvious solution is to throttle all posting activity so that participating on Reddit slows to a level approaching those tree people from Lord of the Rings. (The larger time slices would actually get rid of whole class of problems, like the internet sleuthing BS that happened after the Boston bombing.) But I'm sure Reddit wants to encourage OPs to increase their # of responses for maximum buzz, so I don't really see any non-manipulative practical solution to this problem.
These days it feels more and more like <50% of the downvoted comments are trolls/jerks, and the majority are just people who might disagree with the hivemind.
That could be, and the same logic applies.
The upshot of my comment was something like this: lurkers likely interpret a post as the OP being on some sort of mountaintop. In this view the moderators and voters are spread out along the mountainside, helping some hikers reach the top and hindering others from getting there. Thus, it looks to the lurkers like the mountaintop is a place where "unwanted" commenters have been stopped from climbing up and only "desirable" discussion occurs. (For whatever definition of "unwanted"-- it doesn't matter and we'll come back to that.)
To the OP, however, the experience is much more like a parking lot where anyone who wants to can walk up and interact with OP. Later the mods and voters come in and "clean up" the lot so that it appears to onlookers that there were no "unwanted" interactions with OP-- only "desirable" discussion.
Now, let's assume 100% of downvoted comments are actually good faith actors who happen not to agree with what you call the "hivemind."
Because of the manipulative design of Reddit, here's what will happen:
* people who agree with the hivemind point of view and don't want dissenting opinions will overestimate how good Reddit is at facilitating "desirable" discussion. They will do this because the OP's interaction with dissidents is hidden from them.
* people who disagree with the hivemind point of view will underestimate how much interaction OP had with dissident points of view. They will do this because OP's interaction with dissenting opinions is hidden from them.
Hivemind peeps lose because they want OP to have what they consider a pleasant discussion when in reality OP is expending considerable energy having what they would consider an unpleasant discussion.
Non-hivemind peeps lose because they develop an exaggerated sense of the problem of dissidents not being heard. They were heard by the OP, but the non-hivemind peeps don't see that interaction.
OP loses because the hivemind peeps consider the discussion a success and overlook the problem of OP (and many others) expending energy on the more adversarial interactions. But OP loses again because OP's adversaries don't credit OP for interacting with dissidents!
I feel like reddit is one of the most underestimated internet properties in existence. It gets almost no attention except when specific incidents that explicitly involve it occur. But by and large it is completely ignored by the mainstream media, celebrities, politicians, just about everybody. I think it's role has been drastically underestimated in the 2016 election interference, for example. Facebook and even Google have taken flak over that, but hardly anybody really seriously interrogated how powerful TheDonald was both directly and indirectly (through how it created a nexus and community to energize real Trump supporters).
Reddit just exists, sitting there in the background, steadily growing over time, but never seemingly even trying to raise its own profile. Yet (or perhaps because of that) I certainly spend far more time there and get far more value from it than any other social media site.
One of the major reasons reddit became popular initially is because of Digg. Digg had content that was 2-3 days older than reddit (many posts from Reddit got reposted to Digg). Once people started figuring that out, combined with the Digg censorshop scandal(1), reddit took off.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
This. Was thinking that all the Reddit regulars of yester-decade were originally from Digg myself.
One of the hallmarks of recent Reddit growth has been its mobile redesign. It aggressively nudges you to download their mobile app and it takes a few seconds longer to open any page (used to be instant with the old design). I presume they're doing this because their app has better user tracking (hard to disable tracking inside an app) and far less people are using ad blockers that work for apps too.
Thankfully, there are third party apps that are great.
Love watching the sports subreddits fluctuate throughout the year depending on which sport is in season.
I'd like to say 'good job' on reddit, but they grew despite making a horrible job, like the redesign. I 'm glad it's doing well anyway.
The problem I have with reddit is that they are manipulating public opinions through bolstering topics that further their agenda.
In what way do "they" do that?
Very interesting to watch the sports subreddits fluctuate in size as their respective leagues come in and out of season.
What's reddit's DAU? They used to disclose that publicly but they took it down years ago.
Just looking at the gaming section I wonder how much subreddit popularity leads sales or vice versa.
There is another post about comparing subreddit growth https://blog.quillbot.com/subreddit-trends/. One could compare this to historical sales data.
Personally I wonder if Reddit can do something about the low quality of their comments in the big subs. All comment sections are full of idiots making bad puns. It's terrible, much much worse than youtube ever was or that twitter currently is.