Reddit Has Become the Internet's Strip Mall | Hacker News Reader

Reddit Has Become the Internet's Strip Mall

pontozero.info

25 pointsandreyandrade35 comments

Like most of the internet, this site included, it's about how you use it and where you choose to participate.

You can get dirty by digging, of course. But there are still excellent communities on reddit that you really can't find anywhere else.

I'd argue it's more true on Reddit than anywhere. Subreddits are fairly self contained.

Other social media sites I feel like I'm fighting off a wave of whatever the site wants / momentum of all the users is.

Granted that doesn't mean they're completely isolated, a lot of smaller subs I was a part of have fallen into a mess of spam and engagement bots and so on so my total subs I'm interested in has fallen off.

It used to be the case Reddit itself would run spambots, and if you reported them you'd be banned. Also they have a habit of, if a subreddit isn't moderated how they like, finding excuses to ban the moderators and then either ban the subreddit for being unmoderated or replace the moderators. There were also times they just replaced a moderator list because they didn't like how the subreddit was moderated if there was a financial or reputation incentive to do so. Are these things not still the case?

>It used to be the case Reddit itself would run spambots, and if you reported them you'd be banned. Wow, do you have a link to where I could read more about that stuff? I tried doing a quick search, but couldn't find anything. Banning users for reporting bots is a crazy moderation decision...

Since it happened several years ago it would be hard to find now. Here's a different, related issue that I did find (with links to several more threads): https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/17bkv3f/false_b...

This is my view of Tiktok and Instagram as well. People always complain about how it's all AI or dancing videos, but if you use it properly you can very easily get thoughtful stuff. I get musicians, local restaurant recommendations, film analysis, simpsons clips etc.

It's up to you to learn not to doomscroll where it starts showing you garbage after it burns through your personal feed.

Just because you can find good things on these services doesn’t mean it isn’t worth talking about their problems.

Rule no 1 of Reddit is stay away from every popular subreddit unless you like low quality US politics 24/7. Even the one's not ostensibly about politics.

Maybe it’s just the way I use Reddit, but I still find it very informative and engaging. I subscribe to communities I can’t find elsewhere and the small niche communities there are fantastic. For instance, in r/peloton which I follow heavily, a number of pros post there and engage with their fans.

I stay far away from the front page, even my own. I use an rss reader for all the subs and when I want to comment I login into old.reddit.

Remember when an engaged worldnews moderator got sent to federal prison, because she was Ghislane Maxwell?

statistically, reddit mods are far more likely to be involved in serious crimes and felonies.

Was this actually confirmed?

For anyone else who was entirely unfamiliar, here's a low-effort search

"Incoherent Conspiracy Suggests Ghislaine Maxwell Is a Powerful Redditor"

https://www.vice.com/en/article/incoherent-conspiracy-sugges...

A little more effort comparing writing styles shows they're likely the same.. https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/1lxvajq/has_anyone...

Is this actually true?

Edit: appears the answer is no.

Look at the writing style comparison between /u/maxwellhill and Gislaine from the Epstein files..

https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/1lxvajq/has_anyone...

Is it really the moderators that make a community special? They are vital no doubt but I have never came here for the moderation.

For me the magic of a niche community like a subreddit or HN is when a 99th percentile expert in the subject shows up and gives everybody a brilliant lecture on the actual truth of things. These are not 99th percentile in Reddit use or post count or any of those things.

> I have never came here for the moderation.

The moderators (and the algorithm they support and tune) are why the conversation on HN is compelling enough to attract 99th percentile experts on just about every subject.

Moderators are the invisible hand pruning the garden weeds. You might not always see them working, but they allow the space necessary for the good conversations to grow and thrive. Their absence would be felt quickly.

Does that make hackernews the radioshack?

The entire internet is really not much more than a strip mall at this stage with every site being subscription or ad based.

This article is pure LLM generated.

Lists, X/Y comparisons, em dashes, rhetorical questions... Just has a gross feeling to it.

One of the shallowest “articles” I have read on HN. Full of unsubstantiated statements and banal platitudes. Non sequiturs everywhere. Weak conclusion built upon a list of unrelated grievances.

Oh, that’s because it’s LLM slop.

Discord isn’t an alternative as it’s not publicly searchable

RSS still works, power users are still there.

Reddit chose this, unfortunately.

When you let google read your site, let alone sign deals with them, you create commercial incentives to rank/post on reddit. Everything that follows is inevitable and obvious.

They have now positioned themselves as an ai-slop source of truth. Expect everyone interested in ranking well in google's AI Overview -- essentially every marketer -- to treat reddit as a high-priority slop/advertising target.

reddit was great when Digg existed. It was a niche community where you could find experts sharing information about all sorts of topics.

Now it's just a hivemind of low information opinions, hot takes, and brainrot.

Because they also ban everyone they disagree with

There isn’t one “they”, each subreddit does its own moderation

Reddit itself can and still do ban users at site-level.

Which would be fine if there was a good reason to do so but there often isn't

There are still networks that ban users for posting on /r/Israel and /r/Jewish. Famously the ones that run /r/interestingasfuck, /r/therewasanattempt, /r/soccer. /r/bannedforbeingjewish tracked this until it was banned.

That certainly applies to the biggest subs, but there are usually still high-quality subs for most topics.

Small subs are more diverse and accommodating IME. Worse than popular though are flaired-only subs. They are so heavily moderated that posting feels like an exercise in guess-the-unspoken rules.

I hate this metaphor before I even hear about it.

Quite frankly, this article feels like SEO bait for their website, rather than anything useful.

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