Ask HN: Do you still use reddit.com? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you still use reddit.com?

31 pointsasmbaty58 comments

What are some good subreddits you visit on Reddit.com?

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Like others have said reddit is most useful the smaller the subreddit is. I use:

/r/hardwareswap, /r/buildapcsales, and /r/homelabsales as an alternative to ebay

/r/selfhosted, /r/homelab, and /r/datahoarder for new project ideas

/r/sffpc, /r/mechinicalkeyboards, /r/watches for fun

/r/unixporn, /r/firefoxcss, and /r/pop_os for wasting time

/r/deepintoyoutube and /r/youtubehaiku are pretty fun too

Yes, small niche subreddits are really good. Sometimes they are the only place where you will find a particular community on the internet.

No, I don't know but like Facebook I just stopped using it alltogether one day and I don't miss using it at all.

The only thing I use reddit for nowadays is when I'm looking for suggestions like best vpn, best headphones, etc.

Instead of just googling these keywords I often use e.g. "reddit usenet providers", etc and I find that the quality of results is much higher than google's blogspam.

I use discord for that now.

Reddit's quality in recommendation is not great when it comes to tech. I was looking for a laptop and suggestions made were better than your average consumer guy but still sucked.

Also for headphones too. Almost anything tbh.

They all end up with American brands whereas there are many nice brands outside of USA or Canada.

There is lot of astroturfing going on. Discord is less prone because usually it's private and split into small groups. Hard work for dem marketers.

Absolutely. It has some really nice communities on a number of niches, you can find some amazing in-depth answers from specialists in many corners of the society and the curation of some channels is excellent. When Digg f-cked up, a generous amount of users onboarded Reddit.

I couldn't find another online platform around topics that interest me that's simple enough to join and participate as Reddit (Stack Overflow comes close, but is also one of the most abrupt social networks out there). I rarely engage in commenting, but I do submit & read quite a bit of content in the channels I follow.

old.reddit.com is still the best format, in my opinion. Like HN, keeping it simple and focused on the content instead of the users will ensure to some degree that the right type of public will be interested to spend time around there. This, I suspect, is where almost every other social platform fails and becomes perishable. And probably desperate monetisation efforts, like Quora.

As with every social platform, the more popular it becomes, the more often you find low quality content and users trying to take advantage of the traffic or business generation potential offered by the platform.

LE: typos & suggested channels.

Channels I can recommend (though some are quite niched)

- r/AbandonedPorn/ (images)

- r/AcademicPhilosophy/

- r/Archivists/

- r/bestof/ (arguably best user comments)

- r/indepthstories/ (long form articles)

- r/longform/ (long form articles)

- r/Longreads/ (long form articles)

- r/TrueReddit/ (long form articles)

- r/privacytoolsIO/

- r/selfhosted/

- r/stopworking/

r/privacytoolsio is really good. I find it more accessible and friendlier than r/privacy

I found that reddit has grown some very nice communities around topics I care about. As long as I try just a little bit to avoid the distractions that other subreddits bring, it gives great value. Some subreddits I joined are r/compsci r/linux r/programminglanguages

Is it just me or is Reddit.com (non-old) intentionally bad? It feels like they've deliberately slowed down the website in order to force you to use the app.

It's worse in practically every way. I genuinely wonder if any of the PMs or developers who worked on it have ever worked on high-traffic websites before.

You can prefer the old ways in your profile settings (afortunately).

IIRC It was done to make the site more accessible to a wider audience, specifically on mobile devices.

I use it every day. My favourite subreddits are

/r/london

/r/rust

/r/golang

/r/UKPersonalFinance

/r/Games

/r/linux

EDIT: and I always use old.reddit.com. The new site is a disaster.

Why r/london?

Asking for a friend. Also, I am very curious.

Perhaps he enjoys artistic photography of London architecture and commenting on his commute ;)

I used to live in London and still read the subreddit regularly - it's nice to keep in the loop with London redditors. (Also now use r/Brighton).

it's where I live and the reddit community is nice.

Have they released any statistics about the redesign? Reddit is only usable to me with the old interface. I can only imagine new users will run away screaming, if they only see the new Reddit.

I honestly could not care less about statistics of the redesign, although user numbers would be interesting

The new design is an absolute train wreck, it loads in slowly, feels like you're constantly running through treacle to do anything, let alone it gives my CPU fan a workout just to scroll through a page.

The old design runs butter smooth, almost instantaneous. Navigating feels light and quick and it feels functional. I'm really hoping they don't turn off the old design because that will be a real sad day.

Beside the heavy-ness, I've found the site unusable with mobile browsers because it constantly nags you in various different ways to "try out" their app.

You mean statistics on the old interface? You do realize everyone is using the redesign by default, and the site continues to grow.

Considering that they've recently backported a redesign feature to the old interface, I assume the latter is fairly popular still.

For a anecdotal data point, I hate the redesign but have friends who love it. They would've immediately left upon seeing the old design (high bounce rate), but stayed and started browsing often with the new design.

I've chatted with a few people about this. I personally hate the new design, but I am interested in UX design. I think its really interesting that it's so divisive.

Yes

There are lots of cons and a few pros

It's best to think of Reddit as a giant grouping of millions of subreddits

Some very good some good Many terrible some absolutely terrible

1) Use old.reddit.com

the new site is terrible

2) The more niche you go, the better the experience

3) Be prepared for the worst kind of idiots you can imagine. If you end up in a subreddit like that, get out ASAP

4) There are lots of very smart and helpful people. If you are interested in any topic, you will find something devoted to it

5) Be very careful time wise, it's a great time waster and you should avoid things that are negative and/or useless

On desktop I don't mind the new interface too much, on mobile (Android) I use Sync for Reddit. I bought the "Pro" version in 2012 and I'm still using it today.

It did evolve quite a bit since.

Some subreddits I enjoy are * /r/selfhosted * /r/sysadmin * /r/HighQualityGifs * /r/talesfromtechsupport * /r/IDontWorkHereLady * /r/GifRecipes * /r/bapcsalescanada * /r/sffpc * /r/GamePhysics

No. It’s astroturfed to an insane degree, controlled by power-mods with an obvious agenda and I don’t find it a particularly friendly or healthy place anymore.

The power-mods are so obviously controlled by multiple people or agencies that it's insane they haven't been banned.

Some of them literally post 24/7, all content violating their own subs' rules, and usually partisan political junk.

I still do - I'm sure if I look around more, I'd find a few more gems on there, buy my favourite four right now are:

/r/unixporn

/r/linux

/r/retrobattlestations

/r/vintagecomputing

I lived on ukpolitics for most of the last decade. I can safely say that was the stupidest decision of the 2010s.

R/Unitedkingdom and ukpolitics are both dreadful. The dominant views are completely detached from the country as a whole. And as a bonus it’s depressing as hell to read.

It’s due to serious amounts of astroturfing

No, old.reddit.com

Some I haven't seen mentioned

r/sfwpornnetwork/wiki/network links to all the sfw porn network some great pictures depending on your interests and to waste some time

for graphics r/vfx r/simulated r/gamedev/ r/generative/ r/blender

for idle time r/DIY r/ArtisanVideos r/BeAmazed/ r/bizarrebuildings/ r/EngineeringPorn/ r/ScientificArt/ r/Lost_Architecture/ r/specializedtools/

for food ideas r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ r/chinesefood

for book recommendations r/books r/scifi

Also love r/diWhyNot

looks fun, r/redneckengineering/ is another I forgot to mention

10 minutes of r/aww before bedtime is a nice way to unwind.

Less and less. I don't care about the larger subs - but even niche subs are getting silenced without breaking site rules. While activist subs that openly and actively brigade are left alone. There are less and less places to have conversations outside the Overton window. thedonald.win is good for a laugh, but voat and gab are just cesspools.

Yes, my favs:

r/askscience/

r/coolguides/

/r/DidntKnowIWantedThat/

r/EngineeringPorn/

r/Infographics/

r/interestingasfuck/

r/LifeProTips/

r/BeAmazed/

r/todayilearned/

r/Showerthoughts/

r/oddlysatisfying/

hydrohomies

hotsauce

mtb

common_lisp

Some subreddits I like: Books: r/books, r/fantasy, r/printsf

Games: r/lowendgaming, r/patientgamers, r/roguelikes, r/interactivefiction, r/shouldibuythisgame

Music: r/listentothis

Misc: r/arduino, r/thinkpad, r/cyberdeck, r/raspberry_pi

Fun(ny) stuff: r/disneyvacation, r/boottoobig, r/sbubby

Edit: formatting

I do. I know it has a reputation, but I have found Reddit has some great communities, interesting and helpful people, and a lot to explore and experience. Sure hanging out in /r/thedonald or whatever is going to be a toxic experience. /r/unixporn? Not so much. :D

You can get an RSS feed of any sub, you can enjoy a small and specific topic without ever visiting the site itself.

Can I recommend r/abstractgames/ it's a very small community designing and playing games.

I am partial to user research and startups, so some of my favorites are:

/r/Entrepreneur

/r/GrowthHacking

/r/prodmgmt

/r/product_design

/r/ProductManagement

/r/startups

/r/usability

/r/userexperience

/r/UserExperienceDesign

/r/UXResearch

The only functional subreddit I've found so far is /r/spacex, that's the only one I visit regularly.

I use the reddit enhancement suite, which only seems to work with the old site. Without res, I'm never on it.

Yes, just unsubscribe to all default subs and sub to the communities that are relevant to your interests.

r/ProgrammerHumor is pretty good

yeah 13 year old me would have loved that sub

Only niche or non mainstream subreddits. Anything popular is absolutely cursed those days.

/r/idiotsincars /r/batman /r/scala /r/me_irl

I use it for reading about

Clash Royale Australian personal finance Pen-and-paper RPGs, mostly D&D

I use it but more and more I see how big an echo chamber most popular reddits are.

I use it only for NSFW content (mostly OC from real users).

Hacker News is a subreddit of sorts

less than I used to but mostly because I changed and want to do more and read less

r/LockdownScepticism and r/conspiracy

less and less...

Do you still use news.ycombinator.com ?

of course I do

The joke is that people normally just call it reddit

reddit content is mostly editorialized now, so it's not the same website that is used to be. Now it's one more media in the end of the mainstream. Useless and not interesting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com