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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder why sharing of links is so unpopular, especially outside of the tech-sphere

Spam.

The target site may be spammy: lots of adverts, popup/unders, taboola "chumboxes" etc.

Or, if a site can make money from inbound link traffic, there's an incentive for its owners to spam links in subreddits to drive traffic to themselves.

> This is especially bad on apps where you need to know how to find the share option separately on each app

Definitely another problem, walled gardens that you can't link into as well as out of.

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Apart from spam, scams too. Fake login pages, to the tech-illeterate are virtually indistinguishable from the real site.

> Spam.

This excuse doesn't really stick as reddit moderates content both by their user base but also by subreddit mods and reddit admins.

I'd say that this is all to do with the goal of turning reddit into a walled garden.

It absolutely sticks. Moderators work for free, so you get what you pay for. The automod feature on r/web_design for instance blocks any post that has "Wordpress" in it. The reason given is that WP theme providers spam the subreddit. But it also kills legitimate discussion of Wordpress.

The mods don't care. Their convenience comes first.

> Moderators work for free, so you get what you pay for.

Moderating a subreddit is not a job. Moderators are regular users from the community who are picked to have a say in how the community is regulated.

> The automod feature on r/web_design for instance blocks any post that has "Wordpress" in it. The reason given is that WP theme providers spam the subreddit. But it also kills legitimate discussion of Wordpress.

Good to see that you're agreeing with me, unless you believe that mods fixing a problem without resorting to a walled garden is somehow a counterexample.

> The mods don't care. Their convenience comes first.

You're needlessly overgeneralizing. Using an automated filter that's prone to false positives is not a problem at all, or refutes the point I made. In fact, it supports the fact that forcing a walled garden is needed or desirable.

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