[cheeseface]

Agree on how the platform’s have changed.

However, I don’t think Reddit is an exception. Popular is often filled with content that is driven by the feelings of fear and hate. Not something I’d like to continually expose kids or teens to.

[oliwarner]

I use old.reddit.com but I feel like I have complete control over what I see. It's new posts, I check them and then I leave.

That's what I've lost on Facebook. It forces me to see things its algorithm thinks I like, but more often than not, it's things that make me want to argue. I don't have that on Reddit. Long may it last.

[Semaphor]

> That's what I've lost on Facebook

As I found out a while ago on HN when I complained an extension I used stopped working, ?sk=h_chr still works to get a sane FB view. No sponsored shit, no algorithmic suggestions, no posts people have reacted to, just chronological posts of people & pages you follow.

I also use old reddit.

[shevy-java]

Funny that you use old.reddit.com. I used this too. I could not handle the new reddit - it was useless for me.

[arational]

Lately the algorithm for the front page sorted by hot or best has been changed. You'd see mostly threads from subreddit you recently visited. So you no longer have control over what you don't get to see.

[direwolf20]

That feeling of controlling your feed. It's just a feeling. Carefully calibrated so you feel like you can do something without doing it.

[whyenot]

What I find particularly bad about Reddit is the platform is specifically designed to amplify group think and silence competing opinions. All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility. It can turn subreddits into little bubbles where like-minded people upvote each other and almost never have to see dissenting opinions. That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit, but it can be a big problem or even dangerous elsewhere.

[Aurornis]

> That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit,

I had to abandon my last few hobby subreddits because there were a few chronically online people who had to control the conversation in every single post with their opinions. If anyone didn't agree, their comments would mysteriously go to -3 or below within 30 minutes of posting.

It's all little fiefdoms for chronically online people now.

[FeteCommuniste]

Hot take: a voting system (and generally any move toward ranking content rather than displaying it chronologically) will inevitably rot any social media platform. Just a question of time.

[baq]

Reddit mod cabal is destroying the site, has been for years. Not sure what the deal is, especially after IPO.

The worst part is the conspiracy theories are increasingly being confirmed in the Epstein releases which is mind blowing, eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/mlt7v/a_big_congrat... into https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29884486 and https://thepostmillennial.com/former-reddit-ceo-says-she-kne...

[HK-NC]

Yeah I used to enjoy forum discussions. Reddit is agree or stfu. It got worse a few years ago (probably longer than that) with a new rule change and something about chibese ownership?

[bityard]

It depends on lot on the sub and how their moderators police the community, but yeah, I've seen lots of that.

I've been aggressively downvoted before for pointing out facts that people don't want to be true. (And these were not even political discussions!) I don't even bother with putting my opinions online at any rate, both because they don't actually matter to anyone but me, and because I don't get any joy out of defending them against internet randos.

Edit: It depends on the size of the sub as well. I'm a member of a few subs that I can stand because the moderators are good at moderating, and there are enough regular users coming through to counter a small number of very active cranks.

[SilverElfin]

> All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility.

That is true here too. And Twitter is the least transparent, with people regularly reporting that posts critical of musk or trump have reduced reach compared to their other posts.

[direwolf20]

HN does this too

[UltraSane]

I've been on reddit long enough to get sick of the constant reposts. They really should have a filter for that.

[AlexeyBelov]

But this is antithetical to what Reddit is. It's not like StackExchange websites, where the whole point is to create a database of canonical questions and answers. Reddit doesn't have some basic forum functionality by design.

I've once talked to a person connected to someone at Reddit Inc, and they indirectly confirmed this (in retrospect it was very obvious).

[Aurornis]

I agree completely about Reddit. It's a clickbait factory with a misinformation density that makes my Facebook feed look downright informative.

I was an early Reddit user. It felt like there was a distinct shift when the site went from programming and news topics to being meme-heavy. Then again recently when they started recommending niche subreddits into everyone's feeds so that even the small subreddits couldn't count on being islands of quality.

Now it's just a doomerism factory. The young Redditors I've known feel like they've had their hope about the future hollowed out and crushed. They open the site and consuming a stream of content telling them that everything is awful and will continue to be awful, and anyone who disagrees is shouted down and downvoted. It's a real crabs-in-a-bucket website now.

[shevy-java]

> It felt like there was a distinct shift

Yeah there definitely was a change in reddit, probably more than once. It changed indeed. To the worse, too.

[api]

Smaller subs can still be decent but I agree about popular and larger subs. They’re just brain rot and engagement bait now.

[Aurornis]

I don't know any more. Even the small subs I previously visited for good content have turned into their own little echo chambers, along with a lot of drive-by posts because small subs get recommended in other people's feeds now.

In some of the hobby subreddits where I had good discussions in the past it's now just one big echo chamber of people parroting the same information around, whether it's true or not. If you want to participate you either need to toe the line of the accepted brands/methods/techniques or keep your mouth shut. Most of us just get tired and give up

[rhines]

Yeah that's really the issue with all social media. If you restrict yourself to just checking what friends post on Facebook, or what people you subscribe to post on YouTube, those platforms are pretty healthy too. It's when you go to the infinite content feed that sites become an issue.