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Comment by rchaud | Hacker News Reader

No different from any other social media site that needs to track logged-in users to show them ads.

Reddit is great, the business model around it is trash.

> Reddit is great

By what standard? Every non-technology subreddit (and a few tech ones) have turned into absolute echo-chamber dumpster fires. There is absolutely no conversation occurring in those echo-chambers. The level of control and removal of dissenting opinions is ridiculous. Just look at any thread and note all the [REMOVED] posts.

For many searches I use site:reddit.com, because Google's results have declined massively since the easy-days of 2015; Reddit has a large userbase and I can find what I'm looking for most of the time much quicker by appending site:reddit.com than wasting my time with the sponsored-blogs on Google.

If anybody knows of any better forum/site for this, I'd like to know. (Currently I use Google/DuckDuckGO, Wikipedia, Reddit & hackernews, libgen/z-lib, some torrent sites, and some niche wikis & forums to find what I'm looking for).

For torrents and streams in general, Yandex works really well. Google censors everything about this subjects, it's one of the easiest way to open the eyes of your friends that still believe in impartial search engines.

'Every' is a bit of an overstatement. I subscribe to about 100 subs and they are all non-political and not echo chambers at all. I mostly stick to subs with <300k users and many of them only allow text-based posts and promote balanced discussions. It all depends on who is moderating.

If I feel like a sub is starting to turn bad I just leave. There are hundreds of new interesting subs being created every week. THERE is where the value is.

99% of everything is crap - that truth holds everywhere - you just have to find the 1% that's worth it. For that 1%, there really isn't any other site with that level of discussion and community. For sure some Discords offer it, but I much prefer the forum format.

Here are some examples that I like personally. You should of course find your own.

https://www.reddit.com/r/howdidtheycodeit/ - people ask how stuff in games was coded

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/ - photos of horrible modern buildings being replaced with beautiful older-style ones

https://www.reddit.com/r/etymologymaps/ - maps showing how languages evolve

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/ - people asking what random items are

https://www.reddit.com/r/ATBGE/ - things that are ugly but show incredible technical or artistic skill

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/ - people asking about memes/happenings that you might have missed, and providing excellent summaries

+ your niche subs for your local area / favourite TV show / musical instrument / sport etc, although some can be a bit too 'echo chambery' if too large.

Thank you for these, I just subscribed to most of them

I would have said (amateur) porn, but fetish-specific subreddits are now rampant with girls promoting their OnlyFans with the same post repeating over and over again. Nothing like the wild days of /r/gonewild.

this sort of reminds me of back when random web tools and games used to be free because it was fun, but now everyone thinks it should be a side hustle

As if HN isn't a gigantic echo chamber filled with a very similar demographic of people to Reddit? Just like any social media site, there is a lot of good and a lot of bad.

The quality of discussions on hacker news is much better. I feel people here at least try to make an effort and BS typically gets called out. It’s not perfect but there’s a reason I much prefer HN.

The big difference is that HN has a competent, paid moderator that moderates almost entirely according to a set straightforward, transparent rules. Reddit is "moderated" by a collection of volunteers who moderate according to vague, arbitrary "standards" that largely hinge on the cultural and political beliefs of the moderator and on astroturfers trying to control narratives.

What you’re saying is not unique to Reddit. It’s very prevalent here in this site as well.

I also disagree. There are a lot of subs I go to which I enjoy a lot.

By the standard of entertainment value.

Reddit is a big site with a diverse age distribution and an Eternal September cycle of user churn.

I have no interest in YouTuber drama, or discussing the finer points of communism v fascism because I've already gone through that phase of my life (freshman year). Maybe that's why I don't see all the [removed] comments; I'm just not on those boards.

I'm not sure what you mean by "those boards", but the mass redaction and removal of comments is a site-wide thing at this point. It isn't unique to a certain type of community, demographic, or interest.

It absolutely is not. Maybe on a thread about The Little Mermaid and whatever other culture war nonsense topic grown adults bicker about, but I don't see anything like that on r/webdev, r/android, r/buttcoin or other popular subs.

I'm not purposely trying to be adversarial with you, but you listed 3 technology subreddits as examples, when my original comment was referencing non-technology subreddits.

To the point of bickering - that's human nature. I expect humans to argue over the shade of blue, sneakers of the month, or whatever. What I don't expect humans to do is regress mentally to some child-like viewpoint of erasing and censoring any opposing viewpoints.

Reddit is radically different than it was 10 years, and not in a healthy, engaging way. Browse some non-technology subreddits and you will quickly spot the echo-chamber effect and group think in action.

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