We built a map like this at reddit a long time ago. The methodology was pretty straightforward -- we looked at subreddits that had the same links submitted and upvoted. We used the map to power the "similar subreddits" feature. Unfortunately it suffered from a lot of spam and things like getting linked to very NSFW subreddits, and we didn't have the manpower to fix it or curate it, so the feature died.
But the link-relationship methodology is interesting (similar to something like PageRank through backlinks).
But it's not the methodology I'd have initially gravitated towards.
My first instinct would be relations based on subscription overlap. This seems like it should group commonalities based on the user interests. This may also have alleviated some of the SPAM issues.
Though it would have been interesting to see both approaches merged together.
Shame that Musk didn’t opt to buy Reddit instead. The only tech company more mismanaged than Twitter over the last decade was Reddit. Not to mention their blatant bias and abuse of power.
> I processed 176,178,986 unique comments that redditors left in years 2020 - 2021 and computed Jaccard Similarity between subreddits.
> Each dot on the map is subreddit. Two dots within the same cluster are usually close to each other if multiple users frequently leave comments on both subreddits.
The large "Asia" region contains, besides Asian topics (the right half of the region):
- Language learning communities
- Latin America (except Brazil which is in the RPG region because of r/TibiaMMO)
- Italy, Spain and Portugal (the latter is located between China and Japan for mysterious low-dimensionality representation reasons)
Other European countries with funny locations:
- Germany in the soccer region (as Gary Lineker once famously said "Football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and, in the end, the Germans always win")
>Portugal (the latter is located between China and Japan for mysterious low-dimensionality representation reasons)
could that have a real world reason given that Macau used to be a Portuguese colony as well as Brazil hosting the largest Japanese diaspora population in the world?
Cats contains the plant related reddits, and is tied to them via r/CatsAndPlants
(fair enough). It visibly looks like plants are also connected via r/michaelbaygifs, but that is only because of really odd placement for r/UnexpectedThugLife.
It would be nice if the shown links were not restricted to a single "country", as I bet r/dogsandplants (which is part of Cats) is tied to a bunch of dog reddits, but those are not shown.
There’s actually a subreddit for this map, but can’t find it in the map itself (too meta?) : https://www.reddit.com/r/MofR/
Also surprised how big overwatch is relative to other games.
Bonus - My roommate works at Amazon and works part time with Andrei in some capacity (don’t know the full details), but anyway he has mentioned multiple times how cool and out of his way helpful Andrei is.
I bring this up because when someone of any notoriety is nice I think it’s really cool. I’ve met some ‘big’ tech people who definitely weren’t!
I've had another one of their sites [1] open in a tab for several months now. Whenever I find a new to me subreddit I find interesting I look it up on this site to see what else is in the vicinity topic wise.
To elaborate, the australia-like island consists of very NSFW subreddits.
And yes, one should be careful with porn, consuming it in a bad way can lead to harmful coping mechanisms or problems with sex; seek help if you feel that you’re not in control.
Considering how terrible Windows' netsec has been historically, that's entirely unsurprising. When you want to scream for help into the void, you might hit up both those places at once.
Its surprising how often I was already visiting a clique of sub-reddits. Even more surprising how much I was missing out on similar sub-reddits. This visualization is really a discovery tool I needed.
Jojo* appears to be a country of refugees from the Anime region, who've settled in the general gaming region.
*Hopefully before anyone searches it on the map -- it appears that r/jojo was taken by some singer/actress. I was referring to the anime "Jojo's bizarre adventure," which has a capital of "r/shitpostcrusaders."
I wonder how the broader categories were selected. I thought it could be the largest/most connected node on each cluster but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I feel like these dots are so small, you have to zoom in and out constantly to go over the map... would it be possible to now take those dots and turn them into blocks that together make up 100% of the category they currently belong to? Like counties within a state
That's a nice idea. I do wonder if it could create some border problems, where there is a need to link to some non-neighbor states, but not through other states that would otherwise be linked/shared neighbors.
(I guess unless you wanted to render little overflights by airplanes or something)
There's lots that's interesting to me about this but one is how links provided by subreddits themselves might or might not reflect actual related topics. There's a couple of subs I'm familiar with that have relatively large related subreddits I wasn't aware of before, that aren't linked to or mentioned. Maybe in some cases there's political histories I'm unaware of?
The new reddit design is so problematic in so many ways. So many of the "related subreddits" sidebars (all?) are just eliminated in the redesigned site.
Great map. I suggest to paint active subreddits as bright circles and stale ones as dim circles, so the map would look like Europe viewed from satellite at night.
My methodology for discovery/linking subreddits when I did a big crawl was to look at the subreddit description and find links to other subreddits. I think that was less prone to the issues that other commenters are reporting.
[+] [-] jedberg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrayjustin|3 years ago|reply
But the link-relationship methodology is interesting (similar to something like PageRank through backlinks).
But it's not the methodology I'd have initially gravitated towards.
My first instinct would be relations based on subscription overlap. This seems like it should group commonalities based on the user interests. This may also have alleviated some of the SPAM issues.
Though it would have been interesting to see both approaches merged together.
[+] [-] samstave|3 years ago|reply
I've been a reddit user for 15 years.
I have a fairly good memory. So many reposts from even years ago.
Fine, if nobody had seen such post prior, but an indicator of just how frequently a reposted URL is useful, though antithetical to $model.
[+] [-] jimbob45|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themanmaran|3 years ago|reply
> Each dot on the map is subreddit. Two dots within the same cluster are usually close to each other if multiple users frequently leave comments on both subreddits.
More detail from the repo: https://github.com/anvaka/map-of-reddit
[+] [-] pedrosorio|3 years ago|reply
- Language learning communities
- Latin America (except Brazil which is in the RPG region because of r/TibiaMMO)
- Italy, Spain and Portugal (the latter is located between China and Japan for mysterious low-dimensionality representation reasons)
Other European countries with funny locations:
- Germany in the soccer region (as Gary Lineker once famously said "Football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and, in the end, the Germans always win")
- France in the Canada region (Quebec strong)
- The Netherlands in the EDM region
[+] [-] ZeWaka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Barrin92|3 years ago|reply
could that have a real world reason given that Macau used to be a Portuguese colony as well as Brazil hosting the largest Japanese diaspora population in the world?
[+] [-] jsmith45|3 years ago|reply
It would be nice if the shown links were not restricted to a single "country", as I bet r/dogsandplants (which is part of Cats) is tied to a bunch of dog reddits, but those are not shown.
[+] [-] torbTurret|3 years ago|reply
Bonus - My roommate works at Amazon and works part time with Andrei in some capacity (don’t know the full details), but anyway he has mentioned multiple times how cool and out of his way helpful Andrei is.
I bring this up because when someone of any notoriety is nice I think it’s really cool. I’ve met some ‘big’ tech people who definitely weren’t!
[+] [-] efreak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkeeter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willis936|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jghn|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://anvaka.github.io/sayit
[+] [-] sitkack|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psyc|3 years ago|reply
https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/
It’s a searchable and visual graph of subreddits, mindmap style.
[+] [-] penneyd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] penneyd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgmatt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thih9|3 years ago|reply
And yes, one should be careful with porn, consuming it in a bad way can lead to harmful coping mechanisms or problems with sex; seek help if you feel that you’re not in control.
[+] [-] henriquecm8|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Falell|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] akomtu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|3 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26624879
[+] [-] Aperocky|3 years ago|reply
Maybe that's where they should be.
[+] [-] KSPAtlas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arsome|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _z2co|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fartcannon|3 years ago|reply
Microsoft and Windows 10 in netsec(!?) along with Facebook.
Google and Apple occupying a sea of banal self referential subs and consumption. Amazon is there, too just super small.
Very interesting.
[+] [-] shakna|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xolve|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bee_rider|3 years ago|reply
*Hopefully before anyone searches it on the map -- it appears that r/jojo was taken by some singer/actress. I was referring to the anime "Jojo's bizarre adventure," which has a capital of "r/shitpostcrusaders."
[+] [-] Phrodo_00|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airstrike|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themodelplumber|3 years ago|reply
(I guess unless you wanted to render little overflights by airplanes or something)
[+] [-] minimaxir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derbOac|3 years ago|reply
The new reddit design is so problematic in so many ways. So many of the "related subreddits" sidebars (all?) are just eliminated in the redesigned site.
[+] [-] gbh444g|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InfoSecErik|3 years ago|reply