Which is sad - I've been using Lemmy exclusively for 5ish years now and the smaller communities haven't really taken root. Reddit still controls the long tail of internet discourse
The app is not impartial in the content it chooses to push. I got identified as a target for very specific content and in the context of this discussion, it's the polar opposite of what reddit used to be.
I don't know if reddit is better than ever, but the continued existence and popularity of old.reddit.com seems to be a sign that it is not well-run. (in the sense of they wrecked their UX years ago and never fixed it).
No, Reddit is still shameful. The central issue ruins everything, moderation is placed on a pedestal beyond reproach even when it's trying to sabotage it's own community! The only point Reddit staff will ever step in is when these subreddits try to protest and threaten their bottom-line. They would rather run a pyramid scheme that's profitable, than address the central governance crisis.
You can't "no true scotsreddit" your way out of this issue because it's an overarching issue with the platform itself. Even 4chan has more better protection against influence campaigns, it's pathetic how Reddit's own administration lets itself be defined by it's lowest-common-denominator.
until 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.
Usually, 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.
Small subs are worse than ever IMO. Either totally dead or they hit a critical mass where product shills have come in and established the dogma of the subreddit.
The 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.
The 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.
For 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.
Also r/sverige r/sweden r/italy are very one sided. The right wing governments of those countries are finally now having some useless words about israel, but it will take a long time before the mods adapt.
/r/Sverige is absolutely astroturfed, but if you ignore the obvious astroturfers you can have real discussion there, because you won't be banned.
/r/Sweden bans people, but is less astroturfed and you can still have real discussion there, except when the drug-liberals (for Americans speakers, think drug-libertarians) and other goons come out of their hiding holes.
I don't think either subreddit cares about Israel stuff at all, and they certainly don't care about what any Swedish government thinks. In both, everyone gets to have their say, whether he's Israeli public diplomacy or Qatari public diplomacy, although bots will of course downvote, and Reddit itself will sometimes remove comments.
Look 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.
> 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.)
I 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.
Major 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.
> 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)
There 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
I 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.
I 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.
Really? 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.
yeah 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.
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.
Truth be told, according to stats, 90+% of the people barely post anything, if at all. To experience the horrific moderation, you need to get actively involved. Otherwise, the site looks like organic consensus, when you don't see the deleted posts and people who got disappeared or driven away.
My dangerous question.... how much of those 'visits' are AI bot crawlers?
Based on their other behavior, it wouldn't surprise me if Reddit both used crawler hits to pump up numbers while decrying AI bots and doing things that broke long-standing community tooling and apps....
Everyone 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...
