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Comment by irjustin | Hacker News Reader

> it's also the most reliable place to get a general crowd-sourced opinion on the internet. There are specialist forums for specialist subjects, sure, but nowhere else delivers like Reddit does on a diverse set of topics.

That's some impressive blindness. That's exactly why the OP is stating it's unreliable. It _was_ reliable. Now it's a minefield, because trust->money.

Just like Amazon 5 star reviews. They used to be good probably until about 2012-2015 (if you stretch it). Then it became weaponized because the trust was so high. Anything with strong 5 star reviews sold.

Of course, you can "figure out" if what you're reading is trustworthy, but to blanket state "the most reliable place" - days gone to yesteryear.

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I think you're both correct and I think your analogy about Reddit being a minefield is perfected if we imagine that it's a minefield in a beautiful place.

Great experience with one step and blown to bits with one small step in a different direction.

Agreed. Every now and then I search the name of my employer on Reddit, which pulls up a bunch of plausible looking comments that recommend a variety of tools. Then if you look at the comment closely, it doesn't make any sense. And if you look at the account, they only makes comments that mention an assortment of companies + one specific one that they're really shilling.

There's a variety of these marketing spambots on Reddit, and I'm sure like the toupee effect, there are more subtle ones that I'm not noticing. I think this is existential in the long run for Reddit as a platform, but maybe the owners/employees are happy to milk all the value out and walk away from the husk.

So you’re going to be able to tell me what _is_ the most reliable place to get a general crowd-sourced opinion then?

I don't think there is one. Prediction Markets are probably the closest and even those have problems. But at least incentives in a prediction market aim for the truth rather than an entertaining experience.

No, incentives aim for whatever gives a return - not an objective neutral verdict-of-the-crowd. It requires a regulator to be active.

Read about the whale trades and wash trades on Polymarket: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41999743

Yes the incentive alignment is what I was referring to when I mentioned that prediction markets have their own issues.

I'm not convinced wash trading is a huge problem as it's mostly about generating fake volume. The particular linked example is bad too because Trump did end up winning the election.

I said Polymarket doesn't give an objective neutral verdict-of-the-crowd at some moments, since their markets are still fairly small and can be moved short-term by whale trades.

An example is how volatile their markets are on Fed rate decisions; sometimes you see serious short-term disagreement or contrarianism between individual markets:

https://polymarket.com/event/how-many-fed-rate-cuts-in-2025

https://polymarket.com/event/fed-decision-in-october

https://polymarket.com/event/fed-decision-in-december

Argh, there isn't one - is the message we're trying to get you to accept.

Just because reddit is reliable vs its peers != absolutely reliable.

Like Amazon, Yelp, Google any review system will become gamified for money. So just like those platforms every review you read you need to ask "who is the reviewer? do they review other things? how 'realistic' does it read? Are they pushing anything? Is the thing i'm reading affected by money? Were they given a product? were they given a discount/kickback for a review?" etc etc.

You cannot simply look at a review and say oh yeah that's a good review of someone who just wants to help others.

The whole reason this thread exists is exactly because of above. Someone weaponized the trust, your trust, of reddit to bring down a startup - and it worked.

> is the message we're trying to get you to accept

You're replying to a comment where I said I agree with the statement "Reddit should not be considered an authoritative source"

With the phrase "the most reliable" which is a phrase to mean the subject you're describing is inherently reliable. Meaning you can read the reviews on reddit differently than amazon, yelp, and the rest. If reddit reviews can't be read differently vs others, why "most reliable"?

You're trying to walk a line that says reddit not authoritative and yet reliable. In this specific context authoritative also comes to mean reliable. So we're at reddit is not reliable yet reliable?

I'm saying it can't be. The well has been poisoned and it's not safe to pray it didn't mix. That you need to treat reddit with the same skepticism lest you be taken for your money. Perhaps you don't agree, which is fair then we agree-disagree.

> "the most reliable" which is a phrase to mean the subject you're describing is inherently reliable

That's really not how superlative/comparative adjectives work

Reddit was knowingly ruined by google. Once google pushed reddit to the top of search results, they created massive incentives to game reddit and fill it with disguised advertising and/or slop.

> Reddit was knowingly ruined by google. Once google pushed reddit to the top of search results

Ehhhhh I agree and yet also disagree (it's fun though).

Yes they were ruined by being promoted by algo changes, but do I blame google directly? For me, no.

It's exactly as we stated before, it's because it was so trustworthy. Individual people's personal experience with X or Y many times with good details. That earned a lot of strong backlinks, blogs, etc. The domain became authoritative especially on esoteric searches. Then algo changes came (remember pandas?) and pushed them even further. I mean that's the point of search systems right? Get you to trustworthy information that you're looking for.

Then the money grabbers showed up.

So it's just like Harvey Dent said - either you die a trusted niche community or live long enough to see yourself become weaponized for money. He was so smart, that Harvey Dent.

So then why haven’t the higher credibility people in each niche set up an alternative?

Why let reddit drag down the credibility of well everyone in their niche by association. Even if it’s only a tiny bit per year, that adds up over time.

Beyond my pay grade but I'll take a stab (meaning I'm talking out of my ass).

Some in fact have but the majority? Probably laziness, but laziness is just misaligned incentive-goals.

Communities have very little incentive to de-reddit. It's actually a huge amount of work and they gain almost nothing directly.

Separately, I was thinking you know HNews is pretty immune to this problem because we don't have a central theme or something, right?

But no, that just means I can't see how I'm being monetized is all. Blind leading the blind.

Stack Exchange Network has more niche networks that are higher quality than the subreddits now.

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