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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

If you're worried about SEO and manipulation, Wikipedia is decent but Reddit is awful. It's pretty well-established by now that astroturfing and influence campaigns are rampant on Reddit, and in some particularly bad cases like /r/worldnews have taken over subreddits completely.

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I wouldn't use reddit to find credible info about world events or trending topics.

However, it's an excellent source for finding information about hobbies and niche topics. The culinary subreddits have great recipe advice and I'll often go there to find best practices for food safety or unfamiliar techniques. Appending "reddit" to the end of my search means I don't have to sift through hundreds of SEO'd blog posts with questionable advice! For the time being, people don't SEO their reddit comments.

Now that I think of it, I actually do this quite often--Google really isn't what it used to be.

It's also good anthropologically, for at least some segment of the population. I've found the zeitgeist of Reddit comments on (eg) political topics to pretty consistently predict shifts in broader political culture.

Most of the internet moves homogenously now. Fortnite streamers, reddit, hn, hollywood and Stephen Colbert all hit the same thematic marks in roughly the same time periods. Slashdot one or two days later.

I disagree. There are fairly distinct cultures; Stephen Colbert+Hollywood have quite a different overall view on many political topics than, say, /r/politics or /r/Economics does.

I have my suspicions about /r/ukpolitics as well. During the last few UK election campaigns the place has read like there's enough astroturf to supply the next dozen Olympics.

Yeah but it depends on the subreddit though. For some things I'd rather have multiple opinions than that of one blogger.

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