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Comment by fnord77 | Hacker News Reader

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fnord77

yet reddit feels like it is dying.

non-political subs with very obvious political agendas.

The illusion of popularity-based ranking of articles when in reality it is mostly curated

Zero transparency on the moderators the big news and political subs

Control freak moderators on special interest subs.

Some big investors don't seem to be able to accurately gauge what an internet property is worth. Look at Verizon buying tumblr for $1 billion

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The gems on Reddit are almost all small subreddits with a community feel. I'd be virtually certain that its high user engagement is primarily driven by users who've matched into smaller subreddits that closely align with their interests. The big, default subreddits are largely wastelands.

But Reddit the platform seems to entirely ignore this dynamic. New users are dropped into the default subreddits, and there's very little tooling or onramps to help them find small interest-matching subs.

I hear this a lot but I've never found a good small subreddit either. Perhaps there's a discoverability problem but I'll be damned if I can find one of these mythical small subreddits with a great community I keep hearing about.

For example I love Formula 1. But the /r/formula1 subreddit (1.6 million subscribers) is absolute unmitigated trash. There are decent articles posted there, but the comments are a total wasteland of low-effort memes, regurgitated jokes and total morons with zero understanding of the sport. So where do I go for F1 content? How do I find one of these supposed small subs with good communities?

Discord lol. If you want quality discussion you're not going to find it on reddit. Mostly the same regurgitated ideas said a thousand times on every post.

reddit should just be killed off at this point. The only good thing about it are the smaller subreddits. The self-proclaimed "front page of the internet" has become the "cesspool of the internet" catering to the lowest common denominator of people out there. Tiktoks, tweets, fabricated AITA posts and more of the low brow variety abound.

reddit (in general) has a clear and obvious political/social agenda apparent to anybody with a functioning brain.

As a reddit user for more than a decade: Reddit has always been dying (for me personally, it was the digg exodus). Everything you describe has been around for at least 5 years.

Reddit will die when there is something better (for the user experience) available. Right now, I do not see a better general-purpose forum alternative.

> Reddit has always been dying

I feel the choice of Ellen Pao as interim CEO revealed what direction reddit was headed. Moves towards a more sanitised, advertiser friendly Reddit - but with slap-dash choice of how to apply the new era of censorship.

2014 Nov - Pao became interim CEO

2015 July 2nd - large sections of Reddit were set to private to protest the dismissal of Victoria Taylor, Reddit's director of talent, known for co-ordinating the Ask Me Anything interviews

2015 Jun/July - Pao was the subject of criticism and harassment by Reddit users after five Reddit communities (subreddits) were banned for harassment and Reddit's director of talent was fired

2015 Aug 13th - "Watch reddit Die" was Created

I can't help feel that there is a trend of selling of online communities as "assets" to commercial buyers that have opposite incentive to the members of that community - just look at StackOverflow. The problem is that websites come to own the "commons" they inspire, and then sell it off as if the community are happy to work for free. We need stronger community data-rights; like a GPL for website content.

Every website or internet community that I've used for over a year feels to me like it's dying, including HN.

It's a natural reaction to change.

I've been on Reddit for 11 years, and all your comments could apply to 2010 Reddit as well as they apply to 2021 Reddit. At least edgy memes on /r/atheism aren't a core part of the site anymore.

reddit has always been dying to people who have been using reddit for a long time, but don't see how that's even remotely true

as someone who has used reddit for 7+ years now, the culture is definitely very different (not necessarily good) - but it has only continued to grow in terms of users

But it does feel like it's dying.

For example r/linux has "679169 readers", but if you go to the /new page you'll see it has only had 16 submissions in the past day.

New users are automoderated and shadowbanned to hell. There are subreddits where the experienced users with new accounts go and users upvote each other until they have enough karma to post where they want.

> it has only continued to grow in terms of users

accounts, yes - but how many of those are users? versus bots and marketeers?

> but it has only continued to grow in terms of users

That's because I make a new account everytime I'm doxxed, banned, or censored.

Now that you mention it, I realize that the reddit blocking, censoring and quarantining system basically is a free way to drive up their 'new user' count.

What a joke of a website and a company. Cannot wait til it dies.

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