Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting(smitop.com)
smitop.com
Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting
https://smitop.com/post/reddit-whiteops/
561 comments
I'm going to sound maximum hipster/back-in-my-day/gate-keeper here, but Reddit circa 2015 and earlier was far better.
Nobody wants the redesign. Reddit doesn't need avatars. It used to nicely tread the line between enough people to make it active, but not so many that it didn't still feel niche. It feels very mainstream now, and I think it's lost a lot of what made it actually good. It's asymptotically approaching a social network, but to no benefit, and only the downsides that come with that.
Nobody wants the redesign. Reddit doesn't need avatars. It used to nicely tread the line between enough people to make it active, but not so many that it didn't still feel niche. It feels very mainstream now, and I think it's lost a lot of what made it actually good. It's asymptotically approaching a social network, but to no benefit, and only the downsides that come with that.
I joined HN right around the time I thought reddit had become a dump. Apparently that was 10 years ago.
Early reddit was a really fun place. Not sure how to explain it, but it kind of felt like one of those movie/cartoon mad science labs, but as a community. Basically everyone was an engineer, programmer, or scientist of some sort, or so it seemed. Most of the front page was science, tech, and programming news, and the remaining bit was people posting about tech gadgets and other stuff they made. It seemed pretty similar to HN, but more active and with a less market-oriented crowd just making stuff for the hell of it (which HN still gets a decent amount of).
Then people started posting pictures of cakes, political/religious discussions were everywhere, and it just felt weird. Digg was starting to decline and small waves of people started coming in, and once v4 launched and killed Digg, reddit's comment section completely changed, and the submitted content soon followed.
Now I go and see avatars and people buying gifts and gold (someone actually took an old 4chan joke and turned it into a business idea) and endless fake videos and random images. It looks like an absolute circus now.
People having been mentioning that finding niche subreddits is the answer, but in my experience, it's just a game of musical chairs. Virtually all of them get bad eventually.
Early reddit was a really fun place. Not sure how to explain it, but it kind of felt like one of those movie/cartoon mad science labs, but as a community. Basically everyone was an engineer, programmer, or scientist of some sort, or so it seemed. Most of the front page was science, tech, and programming news, and the remaining bit was people posting about tech gadgets and other stuff they made. It seemed pretty similar to HN, but more active and with a less market-oriented crowd just making stuff for the hell of it (which HN still gets a decent amount of).
Then people started posting pictures of cakes, political/religious discussions were everywhere, and it just felt weird. Digg was starting to decline and small waves of people started coming in, and once v4 launched and killed Digg, reddit's comment section completely changed, and the submitted content soon followed.
Now I go and see avatars and people buying gifts and gold (someone actually took an old 4chan joke and turned it into a business idea) and endless fake videos and random images. It looks like an absolute circus now.
People having been mentioning that finding niche subreddits is the answer, but in my experience, it's just a game of musical chairs. Virtually all of them get bad eventually.
> Not sure how to explain it, but it kind of felt like one of those movie/cartoon mad science labs, but as a community.
I think this is where everyone goes off the rails a bit, and I want to explain why: Reddit can't be a community. Reddit is too big to be a community. Reddit is too diverse to be a community. Where's the community between Old-School Runescape players and Lisp programmers? There might be some tiny Venn-diagram overlap, but there's no shared goal there, no spirit of common purpose. The two worlds aren't allied, they aren't opposed, they're simply sharing a common platform useful for allowing online discussions, and they don't cross paths otherwise.
After all, what's a great white shark to a wolf?
If you expect a platform-as-a-whole to be a community, you'll be driven off one platform after the other, time and time again, until you either find one so niche it's never going to grow, or you die unsatisfied. Hell, you might not even be satisfied with the niche platform, given that it'll be a stagnant backwater utterly ignored by the rest of the Internet.
Reddit's solution is Usenet's solution: Subdivisions! Allow tons of smaller sub-platforms to proliferate, and allow them to be communities. Or not. There are some fairly community-like subreddits, and there are some clubby Usenet newsgroups.
I think this is where everyone goes off the rails a bit, and I want to explain why: Reddit can't be a community. Reddit is too big to be a community. Reddit is too diverse to be a community. Where's the community between Old-School Runescape players and Lisp programmers? There might be some tiny Venn-diagram overlap, but there's no shared goal there, no spirit of common purpose. The two worlds aren't allied, they aren't opposed, they're simply sharing a common platform useful for allowing online discussions, and they don't cross paths otherwise.
After all, what's a great white shark to a wolf?
If you expect a platform-as-a-whole to be a community, you'll be driven off one platform after the other, time and time again, until you either find one so niche it's never going to grow, or you die unsatisfied. Hell, you might not even be satisfied with the niche platform, given that it'll be a stagnant backwater utterly ignored by the rest of the Internet.
Reddit's solution is Usenet's solution: Subdivisions! Allow tons of smaller sub-platforms to proliferate, and allow them to be communities. Or not. There are some fairly community-like subreddits, and there are some clubby Usenet newsgroups.
> I think this is where everyone goes off the rails a bit, and I want to explain why: Reddit can't be a community. Reddit is too big to be a community. Reddit is too diverse to be a community.
Around 2004/5, it wasn't too big or too diverse. They didn't even have comments at first, much less subreddits. Once comments showed up , I figured "oh well -- now it's no different from slashdot." Of course I was so wrong. I enjoyed coming to the comments after reading the article and seeing lots of interesting commentary.
Right you are that subreddits span quite a spectrum. I chuckle to myself when I overhear conversations about reddit pro/con. It's clear that some people judge reddit by the default front page and they have a very different experience from mine. I've had no thumbnails as the default for probably almost as long as the user preference was available. The combined difference in content and UI between "old" reddit-no-thumbnails-my-subscriptions and new reddit-popular is night and day. It's two vastly different sites.
I can confess to being a part of the problem, though. I started the bad habit of reading the title then the comments and skipping the article. And once imgur appeared, I upvoted the onslaught of mindless memes while never taking the time to consider thoughtful articles. They are after all, the "it" that we have supposedly "redd". I'll put in a plug for /r/TrueReddit - there's often interesting content there.
Around 2004/5, it wasn't too big or too diverse. They didn't even have comments at first, much less subreddits. Once comments showed up , I figured "oh well -- now it's no different from slashdot." Of course I was so wrong. I enjoyed coming to the comments after reading the article and seeing lots of interesting commentary.
Right you are that subreddits span quite a spectrum. I chuckle to myself when I overhear conversations about reddit pro/con. It's clear that some people judge reddit by the default front page and they have a very different experience from mine. I've had no thumbnails as the default for probably almost as long as the user preference was available. The combined difference in content and UI between "old" reddit-no-thumbnails-my-subscriptions and new reddit-popular is night and day. It's two vastly different sites.
I can confess to being a part of the problem, though. I started the bad habit of reading the title then the comments and skipping the article. And once imgur appeared, I upvoted the onslaught of mindless memes while never taking the time to consider thoughtful articles. They are after all, the "it" that we have supposedly "redd". I'll put in a plug for /r/TrueReddit - there's often interesting content there.
Everyone's threshold will be different, but for me, a community is lost when it's impossible to avoid the fundamental attribution error.
For example: I might get into a mood. I rant, I take the least charitable reading of a situation, I move away from people. I know I'm not always like that, I just get like that sometimes, and I move on.
When someone else does it, if I don't know them, I might think "Wow. White t-shirt brown shorts is an asshole. Stay away from them." See what I did? I said they are an asshole, not that they're in an assholish mood.
(Side note: This is one reason E-Prime, an English without the verb "to be", exists.)
The cure for the fundamental attribution error is knowing the person in multiple moods. Some people, OK, are snippy little shits who will self-aggrandize and look for every opportunity to start a fight, but most people have ups and downs. Knowing a person means seeing beyond any given mood or action to the person beyond the moment-to-moment.
Make a group big enough and there's no effective way to do that. You can't keep track of 50,000 names. You can't keep track of 50,000 unique images attached to names. Everyone fades into the mass, unless they're Power User level celebrity scale, and then they're reduced to a few broad strokes in your head. All you have to relate to them is what they're doing at the moment. The fundamental attribution error is the entirety of your social context.
That means you can't give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Are they arguing in favor of an unpopular opinion? Downvote and move on. They're an asshole because right at this moment they're taking the asshole's part. The biggest voting block wins, and the space is a hive mind, since there's no way to make a good argument for an unpopular position and have it be heard, whereas bad arguments for popular positions are promoted.
For example: I might get into a mood. I rant, I take the least charitable reading of a situation, I move away from people. I know I'm not always like that, I just get like that sometimes, and I move on.
When someone else does it, if I don't know them, I might think "Wow. White t-shirt brown shorts is an asshole. Stay away from them." See what I did? I said they are an asshole, not that they're in an assholish mood.
(Side note: This is one reason E-Prime, an English without the verb "to be", exists.)
The cure for the fundamental attribution error is knowing the person in multiple moods. Some people, OK, are snippy little shits who will self-aggrandize and look for every opportunity to start a fight, but most people have ups and downs. Knowing a person means seeing beyond any given mood or action to the person beyond the moment-to-moment.
Make a group big enough and there's no effective way to do that. You can't keep track of 50,000 names. You can't keep track of 50,000 unique images attached to names. Everyone fades into the mass, unless they're Power User level celebrity scale, and then they're reduced to a few broad strokes in your head. All you have to relate to them is what they're doing at the moment. The fundamental attribution error is the entirety of your social context.
That means you can't give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Are they arguing in favor of an unpopular opinion? Downvote and move on. They're an asshole because right at this moment they're taking the asshole's part. The biggest voting block wins, and the space is a hive mind, since there's no way to make a good argument for an unpopular position and have it be heard, whereas bad arguments for popular positions are promoted.
> community is lost when it's impossible to avoid the fundamental attribution error.
In addition to the problem of maintaining community when the number of people increases, I also think that it’s a function of communicating in writing, rather than in person.
I vaguely recall attempts at quantifying the loss of information when communicating in writing due to the loss of tone of voice and body language. i.e. even if your words are rough, your tone of voice and body language may allow you to be better perceived.
In addition, the increased likelihood of participants writing in something other than their first language, increases the chance of misfired communication significantly.
In addition to the problem of maintaining community when the number of people increases, I also think that it’s a function of communicating in writing, rather than in person.
I vaguely recall attempts at quantifying the loss of information when communicating in writing due to the loss of tone of voice and body language. i.e. even if your words are rough, your tone of voice and body language may allow you to be better perceived.
In addition, the increased likelihood of participants writing in something other than their first language, increases the chance of misfired communication significantly.
> I vaguely recall attempts at quantifying the loss of information when communicating in writing due to the loss of tone of voice and body language. i.e. even if your words are rough, your tone of voice and body language may allow you to be better perceived.
People can make "I know" sound like anything from a death threat to an erotic tease using everything which doesn't come through in text.
> In addition, the increased likelihood of participants writing in something other than their first language, increases the chance of misfired communication significantly.
Even within a language there's plenty of room for people to misunderstand: How much swearing is necessary to avoid sounding like a stuffed shirt, and how much makes you sound like you're too ignorant to be worth reading? Which specific words are comradely and amusing, and which ones are going to derail everything the moment they appear?
If two people have a relatively slight disagreement on that, you can end up with a rather loud argument over a horrible perceived insult, on one side, and some weirdo who got extremely bothered by an adult talking like an adult, on the other.
People can make "I know" sound like anything from a death threat to an erotic tease using everything which doesn't come through in text.
> In addition, the increased likelihood of participants writing in something other than their first language, increases the chance of misfired communication significantly.
Even within a language there's plenty of room for people to misunderstand: How much swearing is necessary to avoid sounding like a stuffed shirt, and how much makes you sound like you're too ignorant to be worth reading? Which specific words are comradely and amusing, and which ones are going to derail everything the moment they appear?
If two people have a relatively slight disagreement on that, you can end up with a rather loud argument over a horrible perceived insult, on one side, and some weirdo who got extremely bothered by an adult talking like an adult, on the other.
While I agree that writing has its limitations and that a lot of non-written info is lost, I don't think the written part is the problem.
For if that were the case, YouTube would be a thriving beacon of clarity, when it clearly isn't. And as an effective counter-example of a only-written-yet-successfulish-conveying-meaning you have HN.
So no, communication by writing is not the problem.
For if that were the case, YouTube would be a thriving beacon of clarity, when it clearly isn't. And as an effective counter-example of a only-written-yet-successfulish-conveying-meaning you have HN.
So no, communication by writing is not the problem.
But HN seems to be the exception, rather than the norm. Whether that's because of good moderation, or demographic, or something else, I'm not sure.
It's certainly easier to get the 'road rage' mentality when writing, than when conversing in person. As well as losing information, communicating through text makes it more difficult to relate to other people as people. It can lead to people behaving in terrible ways that they'd never do in person. Road rage does a similar thing: ordinarily nice and well-balanced people can be enraged by other road-users, but would never have such a response walking down the street. (This was captured rather brilliantly by a comic [0].)
I wasn't the only one who was surprised to see that real-names policies (such as on Facebook) fail to get people to behave themselves.
[0] https://theoatmeal.com/pl/minor_differences/cutting_off
It's certainly easier to get the 'road rage' mentality when writing, than when conversing in person. As well as losing information, communicating through text makes it more difficult to relate to other people as people. It can lead to people behaving in terrible ways that they'd never do in person. Road rage does a similar thing: ordinarily nice and well-balanced people can be enraged by other road-users, but would never have such a response walking down the street. (This was captured rather brilliantly by a comic [0].)
I wasn't the only one who was surprised to see that real-names policies (such as on Facebook) fail to get people to behave themselves.
[0] https://theoatmeal.com/pl/minor_differences/cutting_off
That's a pretty cool thread.
I guess I should find friends in real life (also known as 'meatspace')
Note: that's literally what I think, I'm not trying to sound smug , neither am saying this ironically. Stupid limits of written communication, haunting me even here!
I guess I should find friends in real life (also known as 'meatspace')
Note: that's literally what I think, I'm not trying to sound smug , neither am saying this ironically. Stupid limits of written communication, haunting me even here!
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I agree about 2004/2005. Back in the early, early days of Reddit, a lot of the content wasn’t even real. I remember those days. It was remarkably different from today. The two versions aren’t really comparable in terms of user base and content. That’s just the way it goes I guess.
I do think it has become a tire fire disgrace but that doesn’t matter much.
I remember this one user... robotrecall? Something like that. She was really intelligent and her insight and opinions on things were such a joy to read. When she left, I remember thinking that was kind of the end of it for me. It coincided with a lot of other changes as well. Whenever I go and check it out it’s kind of jarring how weird it has become in comparison. None of the content really seems real on the main subreddits (like the early days but so different); the site seems like an enormous native advertisement or subversive troll playground.
I do think it has become a tire fire disgrace but that doesn’t matter much.
I remember this one user... robotrecall? Something like that. She was really intelligent and her insight and opinions on things were such a joy to read. When she left, I remember thinking that was kind of the end of it for me. It coincided with a lot of other changes as well. Whenever I go and check it out it’s kind of jarring how weird it has become in comparison. None of the content really seems real on the main subreddits (like the early days but so different); the site seems like an enormous native advertisement or subversive troll playground.
I think of Reddit like New York City, it’s huge and there are many thousands of neighborhoods with plenty of heterogeneity. Almost anything you can think of can be found there if you know where to look.
Honestly Digg can not be mentioned enough times here, what Reddit did with the re-design almost feels like opt-in/wilful self-destruction. Is there a point somewhere in there that once a platform becomes a powerhouse, in terms of democratic user behaviour & numbers, that platform is in turn basically forced into auto-destruct since the risks of having a sudden functional democracy the size of a small nation state is basically too disruptive to current world order/system?
Maybe it's that once a platform achieves a certain size then the potential of making real money comes into view, and that starts to be the objective to optimize for. That means employing typical short-sighted stock boosting strategies such as explicitly focusing on revenue (Digg), or targeting mass appeal. Only the masses do not produce very good content, and they overwhelm the initial users in numbers by an order of magnitude. So the quality of the platform goes to shit.
Once a platform becomes big enough I'd imagine you're guaranteed a regression to the mean. Your user persona becomes "everyone" so you design for "everyone" instead of the community that made the site unique. I'd imagine this is especially true if your leadership changes out after some sort of monetary event and you start looking at your typical metrics like new users onboarded, or DAU, rather than continuing to do new things.
I'm imagining all this because I've never done it, and it must be hard to do it and certainly impossible to please this crowd anyway, but I can see how it happens.
I'm imagining all this because I've never done it, and it must be hard to do it and certainly impossible to please this crowd anyway, but I can see how it happens.
There's only so many people any interesting/unique platform can pull in, because the same features that attract some people repel others. So such platforms eventually plateau, no matter how much you push engagement.
But, given a platform that gets big enough before it plateaus, it has usually already hired on a CEO and taken on investors that now expect it to keep growing anyway. It can only do so by tossing away the things that made it unique, in order to appeal to the people it previously repelled; and hope that the people it previously attracted with that uniqueness, will stay through inertia.
But, given a platform that gets big enough before it plateaus, it has usually already hired on a CEO and taken on investors that now expect it to keep growing anyway. It can only do so by tossing away the things that made it unique, in order to appeal to the people it previously repelled; and hope that the people it previously attracted with that uniqueness, will stay through inertia.
Isn't this usually because a new VP comes in and wants to leave his mark on the product (in the same way a dog leaves his mark on a tree) and ends up ruining the platform? Google is notorious for this.
It seems inevitable that every growth-driven platform will -- like a balloon -- be grown until it bursts.
It seems inevitable that every growth-driven platform will -- like a balloon -- be grown until it bursts.
Pretty sure a community that can be disrupted by dancing avatars and a page redesign is no threat to the stability of the international community.
'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.' Especially when founders leave.
'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.' Especially when founders leave.
The problem with founder culture is companies become dependent on their founders. If Aaron was still around I think Reddit would look very different.
If Aaron was still around he would have invented something better than Reddit. Probably several times.
You're right in a sense that it does not threaten the international community, but the old design acted as a deterrent against the majority of "pictures, easy browsing and quick content" users, which have since drowned the original community. Most of the people I have been asking stayed away of reddit because of the interface, which is good because it retained only the people that were interested enough in the subject to dive into text-only pages.
> Basically everyone was an engineer, programmer, or scientist of some sort, or so it seemed.
That's how the WWW felt when it first started, then the AOL lot turned up.
Even Twitter was like that in the first 6 months or so.
That's how the WWW felt when it first started, then the AOL lot turned up.
Even Twitter was like that in the first 6 months or so.
Every new technology is inevitably "full of technologists" when it starts, since they are the only ones who know how to operate it. As things get easier, inevitably non-technologists take over, since they outnumber technologists by orders of magnitude.
I'm starting to see a pattern here... Maybe I should launch a social site where uneducated people are not allowed to participate? Too bad that it probably lacks the 10000x growth potential VCs are looking for :/
What criteria would you use? I've met a lot of stupid people with education from well-regarded institutions and a lot of sharp people with no education past K-12, if that. Formal education seems like a poor measure.
I used to play on an adult only whitelisted minecraft server. It was setup in such a way that day-to-day gameplay was as close to pure vanilla survival as possible. Of course the adult part is really hard to enforce so the owner took a very interesting approach to it. Anyone could join the server but you would be put in spectator mode i.e. be unable to interact with anything but just tour the builds. Then you'd have to make an application that would be manually approved between 24-48h later. Just that delay was enough to weed out the impatient.
See the problem was not about the age specifically but rather childish behavior. So by realizing that we targeted the most obvious one( being impatient) and had great results.
So yea, making something deliberately harder to use might be just enough.
See the problem was not about the age specifically but rather childish behavior. So by realizing that we targeted the most obvious one( being impatient) and had great results.
So yea, making something deliberately harder to use might be just enough.
Just make it deliberately inconvenient for normal schlubs to use. CLI-only BBSes for life.
I know you are making a joke, but a barrier of entry is definitely part of the equation here. Right now, a good portion of the web development seems focused on removing friction as much as possible.
USENET, with a proper client, sat on a wonderful local maxima for usability and usefulness, and technical complexity to weed out the riff-raff. I miss those days.
Now I know why the gopher / gemini project exists.
>> it probably lacks the 10000x growth potential VCs are looking for :/
Avoiding eternal september sounds like a killer feature to me :P
Avoiding eternal september sounds like a killer feature to me :P
Just need to make a niche forum and that'll do alright
I think I've heard of a place like this [0]...
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com
Although hn doesn't have an exact assigned niche (it falls towards science and technology but that's not an enforced rule), it's fairly civil because the site doesn't need to make money and it's well moderated (almost to the point of authoritarianism, albeit that's not necessarily a bad thing in a website). A similar phenomona can be found in a place like r/neutralpolitics (heavily moderated to keep everyone on track, doesn't need to make money since subreddits are free).
This isn't feasible for a site the size of reddit though (they need money for servers and stuff), so federation is the only real alternative since each sub would pay (probably a provider, honestly, but they could selfhost) a little to keep their spot going. The trick is to make the federation invisible to the end user through some kind of reddit-ish frontpage site, which would be much like current reddit's frontpage but be accessing the federated subs, each with it's own moderators/janitors. This may be unfeasible, but it's the only way anything like reddit could keep free speech up. Add an easy to setup ad-network for each sub (they can opt-in to serve ads to the people accessing their sub's page, like Google ads on blogs) and it works. If a sub becomes evil just unsubscribe.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com
Although hn doesn't have an exact assigned niche (it falls towards science and technology but that's not an enforced rule), it's fairly civil because the site doesn't need to make money and it's well moderated (almost to the point of authoritarianism, albeit that's not necessarily a bad thing in a website). A similar phenomona can be found in a place like r/neutralpolitics (heavily moderated to keep everyone on track, doesn't need to make money since subreddits are free).
This isn't feasible for a site the size of reddit though (they need money for servers and stuff), so federation is the only real alternative since each sub would pay (probably a provider, honestly, but they could selfhost) a little to keep their spot going. The trick is to make the federation invisible to the end user through some kind of reddit-ish frontpage site, which would be much like current reddit's frontpage but be accessing the federated subs, each with it's own moderators/janitors. This may be unfeasible, but it's the only way anything like reddit could keep free speech up. Add an easy to setup ad-network for each sub (they can opt-in to serve ads to the people accessing their sub's page, like Google ads on blogs) and it works. If a sub becomes evil just unsubscribe.
I vaguely recall an article years ago, can't remember where, about a newborn social media site, sort of a restricted Facebook, intended only for intelligent and gifted people, but can't find any references.
It's entirely possible others have tried or are trying, but like you I hardly believe they would find any VC money.
You don’t need VC funds to do this. You need willpower and users to pay their own server and database costs.
I’ve heard the same thing about other topics ranging from Fishing, Tech, WWW, Coffeeshops (rise of Starbucks), to Skateboarding when I was a kid. Mainstream killed my niche, it used to be so much better!
> Even Twitter was like that in the first 6 months or so
Also Google+, then Google noticed they accidentally built something right and proceeded to fix it.
Also Google+, then Google noticed they accidentally built something right and proceeded to fix it.
As a recent newcomer into reddit, I feel the same way. The only thing I do differently is that I only subscribe to subs I like and live happily inside my filter bubble. I only browse through my own feed.
Most of my subs are now constantly full of American politics, even the ones that are not about politics. As a non American that get really boring fast. As someone who avoids mainstream news like as much as possible, reddit became just another news outlet to avoid.
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Indeed. There's no escape from any of it. Even The Register is starting to do it.
>The only thing I do differently is that I only subscribe to subs I like and live happily inside my filter bubble
I'm pretty sure that's how Reddit is supposed to work.
I'm pretty sure that's how Reddit is supposed to work.
This confuses me.
People keep saying Reddit is blah blah.
I usually only go to Reddit to find an answer / solution / review / commentary on something specific, and via internet search always land in some subreddit or another which seems like a fairly reasonable community.
People keep saying Reddit is blah blah.
I usually only go to Reddit to find an answer / solution / review / commentary on something specific, and via internet search always land in some subreddit or another which seems like a fairly reasonable community.
This, and if you keep the auto joined subs if you make a new account, you’re gonna have a bad time. Subreddits are very useful, I like r/opensource , r/datahoarders etc.
Gonna second this for emphasis. You gotta ditch the default subs.
If you want to see whats percolating in the high-traffic subreddits, use r/all. I find it's worthwhile to check it no more than once a week, but it's useful for checking the pulse.
If you want to see whats percolating in the high-traffic subreddits, use r/all. I find it's worthwhile to check it no more than once a week, but it's useful for checking the pulse.
I've been using Reddit for 8 years and it seems mostly the same. Mind you, I have kept the old design in place this whole time and I have subreddit CSS turned off.
I think people are committing the age old error of romanticizing the past
I think people are committing the age old error of romanticizing the past
>I usually only go to Reddit to find an answer / solution / review / commentary on something specific,
How do you feel about the quality of advice Reddit gives on subjects that you are an expert in?
Because I know how I feel and that makes Reddit the absolute last place I would go for advice on something I'm unfamiliar in. I can google something and skim the top results myself.
How do you feel about the quality of advice Reddit gives on subjects that you are an expert in?
Because I know how I feel and that makes Reddit the absolute last place I would go for advice on something I'm unfamiliar in. I can google something and skim the top results myself.
My most recent use was to get a feel for whether the Windows 10 Pro license Kinguin.com are selling (actual vendor is NextKeys.io).
Reddit gave me the impression they are surplus genuine OEM keys. I paid AU$45 rather than AU$339. Mind you, if I change harddrive or motherboard I have to get another license, but I'd have to do that 7.5 times before I've spent $339.
Went ahead with the purchase, activated by phone no problems. All good. Thanks Reddit.
My other recent use was to get a feel for whether the diesel heaters for motorhomes being sold on eBay for ~AU$300 are any good, versus the name brand units at ~$AU2000. Yep, all good, went ahead with the purchase, no problems, all spare parts available. Thanks Reddit.
Seems to work as intended, for my use case anyway :D
To answer your question though, I actually don't know! I'm an expert in about four fields-- anatomy & pathophysiology, nutrition, metal fabrication and laser cutting / CAM of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, 2D CAD, but haven't really thought about looking at Reddit on those topics. Maybe I should, I might have something to contribute.
Reddit gave me the impression they are surplus genuine OEM keys. I paid AU$45 rather than AU$339. Mind you, if I change harddrive or motherboard I have to get another license, but I'd have to do that 7.5 times before I've spent $339.
Went ahead with the purchase, activated by phone no problems. All good. Thanks Reddit.
My other recent use was to get a feel for whether the diesel heaters for motorhomes being sold on eBay for ~AU$300 are any good, versus the name brand units at ~$AU2000. Yep, all good, went ahead with the purchase, no problems, all spare parts available. Thanks Reddit.
Seems to work as intended, for my use case anyway :D
To answer your question though, I actually don't know! I'm an expert in about four fields-- anatomy & pathophysiology, nutrition, metal fabrication and laser cutting / CAM of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, 2D CAD, but haven't really thought about looking at Reddit on those topics. Maybe I should, I might have something to contribute.
Yeah. It’s among the worst in getting correct, canonical answers on the myriad of topics I’ve asked about. People shit on Stackoverflow here, but it’s a billion times better generally.
Sounds about right to me. I started using reddit about nine years ago, and I remember thinking that I had missed out on "good reddit" at the time.
Of course, it's gotten much worse still, since then.
Of course, it's gotten much worse still, since then.
> Virtually all of them get bad eventually.
Like pretty much everything on the internet.
Like pretty much everything on the internet.
Eternal September: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
Given enough people or money, everything goes to shit. On and offline.
> Then people started posting pictures of cakes, political/religious discussions were everywhere, and it just felt weird.
It wasn’t just random, I noticed a major shift leading up to the 2008 election. Reddit’s decision to lock some vocally awful subreddits (/r/politics /r/atheism /uspolitics etc) made the homepage a gaggle of Obama & anti-religious rhetoric rather than anything compelling.
It wasn’t just random, I noticed a major shift leading up to the 2008 election. Reddit’s decision to lock some vocally awful subreddits (/r/politics /r/atheism /uspolitics etc) made the homepage a gaggle of Obama & anti-religious rhetoric rather than anything compelling.
> Reddit’s decision to lock some vocally awful subreddits (/r/politics /r/atheism /uspolitics etc) made the homepage a gaggle of Obama & anti-religious rhetoric rather than anything compelling.
Now that's an interesting phenomenon I hadn't thought about before. There's been a lot of discussion recently about tech companies removing/blocking content they do not agree with. In most cases (racism, hate-speach, etc) this seems pretty well justified as it helps keep these people from rallying together, but I never thought about those boards being a sort of trap crop [1] for the internet, keeping the pests distracted and away from the areas the rest of us enjoy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_crop
Now that's an interesting phenomenon I hadn't thought about before. There's been a lot of discussion recently about tech companies removing/blocking content they do not agree with. In most cases (racism, hate-speach, etc) this seems pretty well justified as it helps keep these people from rallying together, but I never thought about those boards being a sort of trap crop [1] for the internet, keeping the pests distracted and away from the areas the rest of us enjoy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_crop
The concept of a containment board dates back at least to the early days of 4chan, probably before that.
It wasn't about agreement or disagreement. The pendulum swung HARD the other way in 2016, and /r/the_donald dominated the front page for the year leading up to the election. This is why is should be clear that Reddit makes a lot of money by manipulating the front page feed. Trump just simply outspent Clinton on Reddit.
They just binned /r/t_d entirely, and, in my opinion, that IS an agree/disagree decision. The same folks will be back with the same content under a different sub, but I doubt they spend enough to punch through again this time. I think, given their success last time around, that the price will be much higher.
Then again, what do I know? I was a pretty avid user at one time. Now I block the whole site and everything related. At this point, there's very little useful content left. It's basically just a giant portal for porn, and with 2 young boys in the house, and no way to filter it, I don't want it on my network. If they'd offer a DNS-based "safe" mode, like search engines, I'd open it back up.
They just binned /r/t_d entirely, and, in my opinion, that IS an agree/disagree decision. The same folks will be back with the same content under a different sub, but I doubt they spend enough to punch through again this time. I think, given their success last time around, that the price will be much higher.
Then again, what do I know? I was a pretty avid user at one time. Now I block the whole site and everything related. At this point, there's very little useful content left. It's basically just a giant portal for porn, and with 2 young boys in the house, and no way to filter it, I don't want it on my network. If they'd offer a DNS-based "safe" mode, like search engines, I'd open it back up.
I created an account to remove /r/politics and /r/atheism from my front page. And I'm interested in both politics and skepticism.
Around 2011, every start of the semester saw a huge user increase. I guess it was a combination of reddit being popularized and everyone getting smartphones. Rapid decline from there.
I find it really interesting how a social network can shape your thoughts.
Back in the day, I was an avid SlashDot reader, I even participated in the Sony Rootkit fiasco (I got my 10 minutes of Internet fame for compiling a list https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/398332-neowins-official-s... ) .
At the end of that time, I remember briefly looking into Digg and been nauseated about it, looking into Reddit and just finding it weird (no story summaries?) and looking at HackerNews comments and thinking what a bunch of capitalists wannabe they were (I think with time the discourse in HackerNews has become more "leftist" leaning towards Open Source, freedom, and similar thoughts).
I ended up coming more and more to HackerNews as the quality of the discourse in Slashdot went down, and because the quality of the discourse here in HackerNews became better. I also got into the "startup culture" around that time, so I am sure my perceptions changed.
For some reason I also got more and more into reddit at that time, specific subreddits (mainly about my country while I was an expat, but also about US Politics which I find pretty entertaining to follow).
One thing I have been seeing in HackerNews in the last years is that the "comment effort" has decreased. You see more people writing single line comments like "or so he said" that do not really contribute anything. Although the moderation team make their best to maintain a good amount to SNR in the site, I think something like a reminder each time you are commenting with the main guidelines (be civil, strongest plausible interpretation, good-fate, etc) would help as more an more new people join.
Back in the day, I was an avid SlashDot reader, I even participated in the Sony Rootkit fiasco (I got my 10 minutes of Internet fame for compiling a list https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/398332-neowins-official-s... ) .
At the end of that time, I remember briefly looking into Digg and been nauseated about it, looking into Reddit and just finding it weird (no story summaries?) and looking at HackerNews comments and thinking what a bunch of capitalists wannabe they were (I think with time the discourse in HackerNews has become more "leftist" leaning towards Open Source, freedom, and similar thoughts).
I ended up coming more and more to HackerNews as the quality of the discourse in Slashdot went down, and because the quality of the discourse here in HackerNews became better. I also got into the "startup culture" around that time, so I am sure my perceptions changed.
For some reason I also got more and more into reddit at that time, specific subreddits (mainly about my country while I was an expat, but also about US Politics which I find pretty entertaining to follow).
One thing I have been seeing in HackerNews in the last years is that the "comment effort" has decreased. You see more people writing single line comments like "or so he said" that do not really contribute anything. Although the moderation team make their best to maintain a good amount to SNR in the site, I think something like a reminder each time you are commenting with the main guidelines (be civil, strongest plausible interpretation, good-fate, etc) would help as more an more new people join.
Every social platform will decay once it has reached a critical mass.
I think this is the inevitable result of letting anyone post anything.
I think this is the inevitable result of letting anyone post anything.
> Early reddit was a really fun place.
Yup. I've had a reddit account since r/politics was relatively balanced! It was fun and awesome.
And now I am seriously thinking of deleting my account altogether. It is just not worth it any longer.
Yup. I've had a reddit account since r/politics was relatively balanced! It was fun and awesome.
And now I am seriously thinking of deleting my account altogether. It is just not worth it any longer.
I'm really hoping https://www.saidit.net/ takes off, the recent subreddit ban wave was an attack on free speech and people are recommending this alternative.
Looking at the content, it's mostly complaints about Reddit, conspiracy theories, and right wing politics. Doesn't look like a return to the Reddit that GP was reminiscing about.
See also: Neutral vs Conservative: The Eternal Struggle https://web.archive.org/web/20200205183339/http://slatestarc...
"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."
"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."
I'm hopeful for https://dev.lemmy.ml/
It's very young right now, I don't think it's been live much more than a month (?), so is a bit of a ghost town. Unlike the other Reddit clones that have popped up recently (ruqqus, saidit, voat) it is not overrun with right-wing trolls (yet).
I think it's going for a distributed model, like Mastodon, where anyone can run their own instance with their own rules and whatnot.
It's very young right now, I don't think it's been live much more than a month (?), so is a bit of a ghost town. Unlike the other Reddit clones that have popped up recently (ruqqus, saidit, voat) it is not overrun with right-wing trolls (yet).
I think it's going for a distributed model, like Mastodon, where anyone can run their own instance with their own rules and whatnot.
Seems the right way to go. Decentralize. It separates the "communities" even more, just allows people to host their virtual place.
Voat by any other name
It really fell off the rails when it became an imageboard moreso than a forum and link aggregator. It was all about the text, and so attracted those most willing to tolerate a wall of text.
Use Archive.org to compare 2008 to 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and onwards. The addition of thumbnails and gradual shift of the frontpage away from textual content and towards images is almost as remarkable as the increase in high-anxiety, anger and tribalism.
At some point sub-reddits were added, as well, which probably didn't help with the tribalism.
Use Archive.org to compare 2008 to 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and onwards. The addition of thumbnails and gradual shift of the frontpage away from textual content and towards images is almost as remarkable as the increase in high-anxiety, anger and tribalism.
At some point sub-reddits were added, as well, which probably didn't help with the tribalism.
Ironically in my opinion subreddits are the only thing keeping the site useful at all. It’s all about curating a set of smaller subreddits targeted at your interests or frequented by people whose content you like. Beyond that it’s just terrible.
The line between a small subreddit struggling to get enough posts and then getting big enough to have drama is so fine these days.
The amount of work the ask historians mods have to put in to make reddit function like people think it does/want it to is staggering. That team is basically doing a second full time job. I don’t know how they do it.
> At some point sub-reddits were added, as well
Hah that was in 2006.
The real change for subreddits was when they became user-creatable, but even that was already in 2008.
Point is it's not like they're a recent addition.
Hah that was in 2006.
The real change for subreddits was when they became user-creatable, but even that was already in 2008.
Point is it's not like they're a recent addition.
Reddit had thumbnails in 2007.
I'm sure it did not or maybe it was not enabled by default. I distinctly remember having to turn 'condensed view' back on because the thumbnails were taking so much vertical space.
edit: Just noticed who I replied to. I guess you would know better.
edit: Just noticed who I replied to. I guess you would know better.
Back in my day, Reddit was just one thing, they hadn’t developed subreddits yet.
Reddit was a better Digg, just as Digg was a better Slashdot. Like Digg before it, there was an “Eternal September,” and one of the consequences was that Paul Graham launched Hacker News to preserve the culture that was being diluted.
This is one of the reasons HN has a strongly opinionated culture and the appetite for firm moderation to maintain that culture: It’s not just a tool for YCombinator, it’s a deliberate attempt to maintain something that was repeatedly lost when previous “hacker” social media sites hit the mainstream.
Even if we look away from its more controversial aspects, at the root of the issue is a simple truth that all successful social media sites become their own worst enemy.
You and I can exchange arguments about whether Reddit 2008 was or wasn’t better than Reddit 2014, but fundamentally, I suspect we agree that “dilution” has a certain effect on culture.
The flip side of that, of course, is “Who are we to scoff at the newcomers?” I am not a more valuable user than someone who joined yesterday, and there is nothing wrong with a social media site evolving to serve newcomers with new tastes and interests.
My son loves exchanging Star Wars and other memes on Reddit. I love that HN doesn’t do memes. C’est la vie.
Reddit was a better Digg, just as Digg was a better Slashdot. Like Digg before it, there was an “Eternal September,” and one of the consequences was that Paul Graham launched Hacker News to preserve the culture that was being diluted.
This is one of the reasons HN has a strongly opinionated culture and the appetite for firm moderation to maintain that culture: It’s not just a tool for YCombinator, it’s a deliberate attempt to maintain something that was repeatedly lost when previous “hacker” social media sites hit the mainstream.
Even if we look away from its more controversial aspects, at the root of the issue is a simple truth that all successful social media sites become their own worst enemy.
You and I can exchange arguments about whether Reddit 2008 was or wasn’t better than Reddit 2014, but fundamentally, I suspect we agree that “dilution” has a certain effect on culture.
The flip side of that, of course, is “Who are we to scoff at the newcomers?” I am not a more valuable user than someone who joined yesterday, and there is nothing wrong with a social media site evolving to serve newcomers with new tastes and interests.
My son loves exchanging Star Wars and other memes on Reddit. I love that HN doesn’t do memes. C’est la vie.
HN has jumped the shark, these days you want to be on Lobsters.
I love the “jumped the shark” metaphor, but in the interests of derailing the thread with pedantry, I think that’s the wrong metaphor.
To me, jumping the shark is typified by the creators/stewards of a thing making more and more desperate attempts to cling to relevancy, with no coherence between their attention-grabbing efforts, and with nearly all of them corrupting the thing that made the original show/site popular to begin with.
HN may not be the place it was, but I don’t see the site doing wild things like allowing people to post videos that play on the site.
I really think “Eternal September” describes it: There is a new generation of users that now dominates the culture. Thus, it is no longer what it was, but nevertheless the stewards aren’t trying to recover its lost “glory” with stunts.
To me, it feels like a pub that used to be a cloth-cap and sandwiches place, but as the neighbourhood around it gentrified, it evolved to serve a wider menu. But it’s still a pub, it’s not like they pulled out the darts boards and replaced them with a DJ and dance floor.
Reddit, on the other hand... Reddit is throwing stuff at the wall incoherently.
To me, jumping the shark is typified by the creators/stewards of a thing making more and more desperate attempts to cling to relevancy, with no coherence between their attention-grabbing efforts, and with nearly all of them corrupting the thing that made the original show/site popular to begin with.
HN may not be the place it was, but I don’t see the site doing wild things like allowing people to post videos that play on the site.
I really think “Eternal September” describes it: There is a new generation of users that now dominates the culture. Thus, it is no longer what it was, but nevertheless the stewards aren’t trying to recover its lost “glory” with stunts.
To me, it feels like a pub that used to be a cloth-cap and sandwiches place, but as the neighbourhood around it gentrified, it evolved to serve a wider menu. But it’s still a pub, it’s not like they pulled out the darts boards and replaced them with a DJ and dance floor.
Reddit, on the other hand... Reddit is throwing stuff at the wall incoherently.
I've seen lobste.rs over the years but never saw it as much outside of "niche HN". But honestly, taking an objective look at the topics on the front page of HN that I care about compared to the front page of lobste.rs that I care about, HN has more noise. Any lobste.rs users want to send me an invite? Email is in my profile.
I joined Reddit back during "The Great Digg V4 Exodus" of 2010 (honestly it shocked me to realize that was a decade ago).
I remember the thing that really struck me about the Reddit community back then, even on some of the larger subreddits, was that people generally thought of themselves as a community of people helping each other. Lots of "I live in town Foo, I can donate Bar to you" type of stuff. I distinctly remember how that felt like a novel thing for a (relatively at the time) large community. Sure, there was some trolling, but absolutely nowhere near the level of toxicity that is just much more common now.
In some ways that mirrors online discourse at large, but in other ways you're right, just feels like whenever I community reaches a certain size it just starts to suck by definition.
I remember the thing that really struck me about the Reddit community back then, even on some of the larger subreddits, was that people generally thought of themselves as a community of people helping each other. Lots of "I live in town Foo, I can donate Bar to you" type of stuff. I distinctly remember how that felt like a novel thing for a (relatively at the time) large community. Sure, there was some trolling, but absolutely nowhere near the level of toxicity that is just much more common now.
In some ways that mirrors online discourse at large, but in other ways you're right, just feels like whenever I community reaches a certain size it just starts to suck by definition.
I moved from dig to reddit in 2007, when Digg was banning accounts for posting the AACS key.
I remember having a deep sense of fear in choosing to give up my digg account, knowing I was going to get banned for posting the AACS key. It was like I was losing a vital part of my identity online.
After a while with my reddit account I felt the same way (it being a vital part of my identity online), but, in recent years I care less and less about the platform. My account is now dead. I just checked and it's almost 2 years since I posted anything.
I have created a few alt accounts which I use for discussing some specific niche things on some niche subreddits which I enjoy, but, the site as a whole has no appeal to me anymore. If I couldn't unsubscribe from the default subs, I would leave the site and never return.
There are some cool communities I enjoy. I spent time (on an alt) in /r/thelastofus discussing the game after I finished playing TLOU2. I spent time on /r/seattle and /r/seattlewa reading about CHAZ/CHOP and events there.
I enjoy HN a lot, but, it's very focused which has an effect of myopia.
When the redesign becomes mandatory and old reddit goes away (and don't kid yourself, it will), I will probably leave and never return, but, unlike digg in 2007 I'm not going to feel like I'm losing anything when I do.
I remember having a deep sense of fear in choosing to give up my digg account, knowing I was going to get banned for posting the AACS key. It was like I was losing a vital part of my identity online.
After a while with my reddit account I felt the same way (it being a vital part of my identity online), but, in recent years I care less and less about the platform. My account is now dead. I just checked and it's almost 2 years since I posted anything.
I have created a few alt accounts which I use for discussing some specific niche things on some niche subreddits which I enjoy, but, the site as a whole has no appeal to me anymore. If I couldn't unsubscribe from the default subs, I would leave the site and never return.
There are some cool communities I enjoy. I spent time (on an alt) in /r/thelastofus discussing the game after I finished playing TLOU2. I spent time on /r/seattle and /r/seattlewa reading about CHAZ/CHOP and events there.
I enjoy HN a lot, but, it's very focused which has an effect of myopia.
When the redesign becomes mandatory and old reddit goes away (and don't kid yourself, it will), I will probably leave and never return, but, unlike digg in 2007 I'm not going to feel like I'm losing anything when I do.
I’m curious about this, I regularly use and rotate burners on almost all social media, I’m not looking for approval from my peers and generally don’t believe my opinion matters (in the sense that the SNR is so bad that even if I had a valid point it wouldn’t change anything in the big scheme of things).
What about your online identity do you value so much?
What about your online identity do you value so much?
I can’t speak for them but for me it’s hard to avoid this feeling like you invested a part of yourself. All the comments and thoughts you poured out, the interactions and revelations you had, the little funny moments. A part of me likes knowing I can go back and see any of it again even if basically never look at my history.
It just feels like some sort of weird emotional and mental investment I suppose?
It just feels like some sort of weird emotional and mental investment I suppose?
I now do that. I didn't then. 13 years is a long time and I'm a vastly different person.
> When the redesign becomes mandatory and old reddit goes away (and don't kid yourself, it will)
Will it? The old phone design has been running for many years now, no?
Will it? The old phone design has been running for many years now, no?
I didn't realise that users have avatars now as I am still using https://old.reddit.com/ since the horrid redesign.
And https://i.reddit.com/ for mobile (I have an iPhone SE, so the new website version just doesn't do it for me). And when they'll take both old.* and i.* out I guess I'll be leaving that website for good.
On Android I use RiF (Reddit is Fun), which is pretty close to classic design.
Not sure how you feel about apps, but I can definitely vouch for how good Apollo for Reddit is.
Apollo is too image-oriented for my taste, I use Narwhal.
There’s quite a lot flexibility in Apollo. You turn turn on condensed lists, adjust text size, adjust thumbnail size (or hide them entirely), etc
I use old.reddit.com on mobile too, I cannot stand infinite scroll. It’s such an addictive behavior. Just like youtube or netflix’s auto-play. I absolutely detest things like that!
Yep, once they shut those down im out. I hope by then https://dev.lemmy.ml/ has federation working.
Honestly I’d say it’s closer to 2013 or so. The rise of rage comics/f7u12, /r/DAE, etc. was a major red flag. Subs that basically demanded “this sounds like niche but literally everyone thinks it” posts that often meandered into bigotry overnight. Plus the handful of users that moderated every major sub.
I loved f7u12, I don't think content that you can simply avoid is a red flag that shows any particular degeneracy?
HN has 3? moderators. Number of moderators isn't the issue it's whether they're operating with ulterior motives, particularly hidden motives. Here, I think you can assume promoting Ycombinator and other pg associations are a motive that's not explicit.
HN has 3? moderators. Number of moderators isn't the issue it's whether they're operating with ulterior motives, particularly hidden motives. Here, I think you can assume promoting Ycombinator and other pg associations are a motive that's not explicit.
I guess it’s more that low effort content became popular. I say this as someone who loved f7u12. But I realized over time that it became a game of “how do I make enough references for the front page?” and then, as always, dog whistles. DAE and advice animals were notorious for the latter.
>Nobody wants the redesign.
People who only stick to the image-posting part of Reddit seem to like it. Not that it speaks highly of it.
People who only stick to the image-posting part of Reddit seem to like it. Not that it speaks highly of it.
> Not that it speaks highly of it.
Is looking at images profane all of a sudden?
Is looking at images profane all of a sudden?
There's nothing inherently wrong with images - but if a website shows more of highly upvoted content; and if users can upvote a cute cat picture after 10 seconds while a written article takes 10 minutes to read, the cute cats are going to dominate.
That's why there are different subreddits.
That doesn't really help much. Most enthusiast subreddits are full of posts that are just "look at my [basic standard hobby gear] picture". Even those places are overrun with this.
Every day on /r/CRT:
Post blurry picture of tv “is this any good?” Every response: “the model # is on the back.”
Post blurry picture of tv “is this any good?” Every response: “the model # is on the back.”
I hate the redesign so much. It just seems objectively worse to me. But maybe that's because I don't primarily look at pictures? I continue to use old.reddit.com and I will for as long as they offer it.
Even aside from the visual aspect which I still don't think is great (although the old reddit is famously quite ugly), the new site just chugs constantly. I'm on a decently powerful machine and it's intolerably sluggish.
Thankfully there is respite in third party apps. I use Apollo, but there are many good options that push the new "features" to the side or omit them entirely.
Thankfully there is respite in third party apps. I use Apollo, but there are many good options that push the new "features" to the side or omit them entirely.
Performance is much worse, but am I the only one that likes the redesign? Better fonts, better spacing.
Ah, 2007 Reddit. When the death of Fup the cat, of Powell's Books fame, could make it to the tippy-top of the front page.
Feels like a lifetime ago...
Feels like a lifetime ago...
> asymptotically
Had to look that up, fancy pants.
I don’t think there is an near tangent approach plan at all, more like what seems a clear intention.
Add in their beta-ing a pay to win karma system right now... it’s like they want the worst of everything.
Next they’ll make a “Reddit award” that is just a loot box, trying to edge a n the worst part of gaming.
Had to look that up, fancy pants.
I don’t think there is an near tangent approach plan at all, more like what seems a clear intention.
Add in their beta-ing a pay to win karma system right now... it’s like they want the worst of everything.
Next they’ll make a “Reddit award” that is just a loot box, trying to edge a n the worst part of gaming.
Saidit.net is pre-2015 reddit, with some minor tweaks. Might take off
I don’t mean to offend, but looking at Saidit, seemingly every single item on the front page is political in nature. Unless that changes, I don’t see the average person migrating there.
Top voted comment on the top voted thread is a racist joke, with someone replying "are we on Voat?" and then another commenter saying "go back to reddit".
Something I found when I used the redesign is it has the same addictive quality as Twitter. It's hard to pull away. Reddit is even worse paired with an engagement-driven design because it has the depth Twitter lacks if you find the right communities.
This is actually part of the reason that I created an account here. I used to just visit once in a while, but now HN is one of my pinned tabs.
I still use Reddit rather often, don't get me wrong, but my interest has been dwindling.
I still use Reddit rather often, don't get me wrong, but my interest has been dwindling.
Honestly boggles my mind how unusable and slow the redesign is. But I don't think it matters anymore, seems like most Reddit users just use the app these days which is equally bad design wise but runs ok at least.
I regularly wish there were avatars on Reddit to make it easier to recognize the regulars in subs I hang out on. Hearing they added avatars in the redesign tempts me to finally switch.
Same here, really.
Same here, really.
The Reddit Enhancement Suite plugin is everything that Reddit actually needs. Nicknames and user tags give all the benefit of profile pics, but less obnoxious and without needing MB’s of JS or needing to subject yourself to adds
Wish that still worked on Safari.
to go even further, reddit in 2007 was amazing, discussion on the same level you'd find on sites like this. one trend i remember noticing over time was that the quality dip coincided with more posts that had "I" or "me" in the title as we started to enter the social media age
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I have a question regarding the reddit redesign (of a while ago). This is not a joke. I literally have trouble reading relevant comments there now.
I guess I don't understand how to browse reddit correctly. Say there is a thread and it has replies. Now I want to read the replies. Via "old.reddit.com", the replies are listed below.
In the new reddit, most replies are hidden. If I click on "continue thread etc.", then again a window opens where some replies are shown, but not all - neither in the branch of the thread nor generally. If I scroll down, I end up in a different reddit thread altogether.
I have to frantically click several links to find all replies, or alternatively I switch to the old layout.
I am convinced I am just dumb, but I just don't get the interface. So let me genuinely ask: How does one browse reddit correctly nowadays? There must be some logic behind the redesign that I don't get.
I guess I don't understand how to browse reddit correctly. Say there is a thread and it has replies. Now I want to read the replies. Via "old.reddit.com", the replies are listed below.
In the new reddit, most replies are hidden. If I click on "continue thread etc.", then again a window opens where some replies are shown, but not all - neither in the branch of the thread nor generally. If I scroll down, I end up in a different reddit thread altogether.
I have to frantically click several links to find all replies, or alternatively I switch to the old layout.
I am convinced I am just dumb, but I just don't get the interface. So let me genuinely ask: How does one browse reddit correctly nowadays? There must be some logic behind the redesign that I don't get.
If you’re dumb, then so am I. Like everyone else here, when I ran into that problem, I abandoned the new reddit for old.reddit.
It helps to realize that you’re not really their target audience. The goal is to keep reddit users on reddit for as long as possible. Counterintuitively, one way to do that is to stuff the screen full of seemingly unrelated stuff, because most people are there to see unrelated stuff. They’re not there to read a comment thread in full. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that 90% of traffic doesn’t read comments at all, most of the time.
It helps to realize that you’re not really their target audience. The goal is to keep reddit users on reddit for as long as possible. Counterintuitively, one way to do that is to stuff the screen full of seemingly unrelated stuff, because most people are there to see unrelated stuff. They’re not there to read a comment thread in full. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that 90% of traffic doesn’t read comments at all, most of the time.
> In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that 90% of traffic doesn’t read comments at all, most of the time.
I don't think so. Askreddit is one of the most popular subreddits.
I don't think so. Askreddit is one of the most popular subreddits.
One solution is to simply use old reddit until they get their act together. With a plugin it is easy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
Not sure how long they will keep old.reddit.com around though...
Not sure how long they will keep old.reddit.com around though...
> With a plugin it is easy
Why would you need a plugin? You just set it in your preferences and it will switch to that as soon as you log on, isn't it...? At least that's what happens to me.
Why would you need a plugin? You just set it in your preferences and it will switch to that as soon as you log on, isn't it...? At least that's what happens to me.
Same for me. Some report this doesn't work but I can't confirm if they are choosing the correct settings as I have never had an issue with that even on multiple accounts.
It's useful if you use something like Firefox containers and aren't necessarily logged in when you visit a reddit link
I use the Multi-Account Containers extension [1] and make sure the "always with" option is ticked, so the browser will automatically switch to the right container, where the right cookies live. This said, obviously it doesn't work in Private Windows and it's indeed annoying as hell to use Reddit in that case.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account...
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account...
they switch you back to the "new" design every day or so and you have to switch it again.
That's simply not true.
It does happen that you can have the setting on and them sending you to new reddit. It’s happened many times for me.
It did happen to me, but only a few times and it was transient, it seemed like the frontend can't reach the settings DB intermittently.
I'm really not sure if I can attribute Hanlon's razor to this. When you log in, that's by definition hitting the database, and should return your settings. Place that in a cookie/localstorage and it should still know your settings offline.
There is no single database at the scale reddit operates.
at this point they should have those setting at an equilibrium
My bad, *a database.
I'm pretty sure I saw in an AMA that Reddit has an Accounts database (maybe split further by sharding) which I'd assume holds your settings as well.
But I rescind my point; it could very well be attributed to database infrastructure issues, whether that's hitting a shard with stale data, or splitting account settings to its own DB that it can't access when you log in.
I'm pretty sure I saw in an AMA that Reddit has an Accounts database (maybe split further by sharding) which I'd assume holds your settings as well.
But I rescind my point; it could very well be attributed to database infrastructure issues, whether that's hitting a shard with stale data, or splitting account settings to its own DB that it can't access when you log in.
How many years have we been saying that now?
I have wondered the exact same thing. Hiding and fragmenting the comments like they do is such an incredibly awful UX that it seems incomprehensible to me that it's intentional. And yet, it sounds like we aren't missing anything, the design really is that bad.
I guess it's supposed to increase engagement/addiction, but it does the complete opposite for me. Having to click through 5+ links just to try to read 15 short comments is extremely aggravating. I know about old.reddit but its days are probably numbered so why keep fighting with a site that hates me and my time? I just avoid Reddit whenever possible these days.
I guess it's supposed to increase engagement/addiction, but it does the complete opposite for me. Having to click through 5+ links just to try to read 15 short comments is extremely aggravating. I know about old.reddit but its days are probably numbered so why keep fighting with a site that hates me and my time? I just avoid Reddit whenever possible these days.
New reddit is so bad I can’t believe they are pushing it. It’s slower. It’s less usable. The us is worse. It’s worse in every way. I hate it and I only say that I hate anything very, very rarely.
If you ever figure it out please post it here.
Funnily enough it would probably be front page news here and on Reddit :)
i also just open every sub conversation in new tab, on occasions when i can't login to reddit. (since they conveniently forget that you were on old.reddid.com if you are not logged in )
i also just open every sub conversation in new tab, on occasions when i can't login to reddit. (since they conveniently forget that you were on old.reddid.com if you are not logged in )
They just want people to use their app. I honestly think their strategy is to piss off non app users into using their app. I tried out the app after years of mobile safari browsing and the experience is clearly heavily optimized.
Reddit is the worst site on the web. I absolutely hate trying to read anything on there for all the reasons you listed, and I _never_ go there intentionally. I have no idea why something so user-hostile is seemingly so popular.
[deleted]
The new layout is just bizarre, I'm guessing their real goal was something else, like more clicks (on ads?).
You can continue using the old design, where avatars don't show. Check under your account preferences[0] where it's either "Opt out of the redesign" or "Use new Reddit as my default experience" (I remember seeing the first, but checking just now on the old design it shows the second)
I prefer it, even though they regularly "forget" that you've opted-out of the redesign, on desktop, and "forget" that you don't want the Mobile version of their site on phone.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/prefs/
I prefer it, even though they regularly "forget" that you've opted-out of the redesign, on desktop, and "forget" that you don't want the Mobile version of their site on phone.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/prefs/
> they regularly "forget" that you've opted-out
That's putting it mildly -- I think the "door close" button in elevators is more reliable than the reddit opt-out.
That's putting it mildly -- I think the "door close" button in elevators is more reliable than the reddit opt-out.
I can confirm that the door close button works at least some of the time. I used to ride an elevator every day on the way in to work and was surprised to hear about that button being a sham, since my general impression was that it worked. So, I did a test.
I started timing how long the door would take to close on all of the solo rides I took on my regular elevator, alternating hitting or not hitting the button. The results confirmed my intuition that the button did speed things up significantly. I've forgotten the exact numbers but the increase was pretty large, something like 5 seconds vs 15 seconds, if I hit or didn't hit the button.
I started timing how long the door would take to close on all of the solo rides I took on my regular elevator, alternating hitting or not hitting the button. The results confirmed my intuition that the button did speed things up significantly. I've forgotten the exact numbers but the increase was pretty large, something like 5 seconds vs 15 seconds, if I hit or didn't hit the button.
Strange. Even with multiple accounts they have never once forgotten what my preference is.
I'm not even sure it's malice. New reddit drops my user session once every few days it seems like. It would also forget my "default to markdown" option as well, regularly. So I just switched back to old reddit.
Why is it that the door close button never works? Any elevator engineers out here?
Why is it that the door close button never works?
The Door Close button is not for you. It's for when the elevator is in an override mode, like when there's a fire, or when someone is moving something large in the elevator.
If you have the right key, you can turn the switch to a mode like "Fire" or "Independent," during which the doors do not automatically open and close. This is so the elevator can be moved to a particular floor, ignoring all of the other elevator requests, and the door only opened and closed when the keyholder wants it.
There are some building owners who configure the Door Close button to respond to pushes. But they're not common.
/I briefly worked for a large apartment complex, and had to assist people moving in and out of the buildings.
The Door Close button is not for you. It's for when the elevator is in an override mode, like when there's a fire, or when someone is moving something large in the elevator.
If you have the right key, you can turn the switch to a mode like "Fire" or "Independent," during which the doors do not automatically open and close. This is so the elevator can be moved to a particular floor, ignoring all of the other elevator requests, and the door only opened and closed when the keyholder wants it.
There are some building owners who configure the Door Close button to respond to pushes. But they're not common.
/I briefly worked for a large apartment complex, and had to assist people moving in and out of the buildings.
Here’s a fascinating look into hacking of elevators and how the different modes work
https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus
https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus
Largely it's up to building choice. It's a tradeoff of throughput (more people in a single car) and rider privacy. If it frustrates you, grab a UTA key [0] and that will let you put many elevators into independant service mode where the buttons should do exactly what they say.
[0] https://www.ultimatesecuritydevices.com/Original-OTIS-UTA-ke...
[0] https://www.ultimatesecuritydevices.com/Original-OTIS-UTA-ke...
It's an ADA [1] thing. The door will always remain open a certain length of time, after which the door close button starts to work. If you keep it open past the normal automatic closing time (whether with the Door Open button or by manually obstructing the door/sensor), you can usually use the "door close" button to close it immediately after.
[1] Americans with Disabilities Act
[1] Americans with Disabilities Act
The ADA requires elevator doors to be open for >3 seconds, it's easier to just disable the door close button in general than time it
Funny enough, in the UK/islands I've found it to be much more common for the 'door close' button to work.
As the other replies have said, the button isn't for you, but it does have the psychological side effect of giving you a feeling of control over your experience, which can help quell anxiety. This is also the reason mirrors are common in elevators; the space feels much bigger and less claustrophobic, and you can waste a few seconds while you check yourself out in the mirror which makes the trip feel faster.
However, the button will usually work in a hospital, as they want the door to be open for a long enough period that people who are less mobile can enter before the door closes, but at the same time there are often urgent situations where seconds count, so you need to be able to get the door closing faster in an emergency.
As the other replies have said, the button isn't for you, but it does have the psychological side effect of giving you a feeling of control over your experience, which can help quell anxiety. This is also the reason mirrors are common in elevators; the space feels much bigger and less claustrophobic, and you can waste a few seconds while you check yourself out in the mirror which makes the trip feel faster.
However, the button will usually work in a hospital, as they want the door to be open for a long enough period that people who are less mobile can enter before the door closes, but at the same time there are often urgent situations where seconds count, so you need to be able to get the door closing faster in an emergency.
I've heard it justified as forcing you to politely wait for people rather than letting you close the door on them, but that has always seemed implausible because usually there is either nobody nearby or there is someone close enough to trigger the photo-eye. Shrug.
It doesn't do anything in the USA in normal automatic mode since the ADA became law.
It works in Europe :)
Really? I've been on old.reddit since they first started messing with the design. Not once has that been "forgotten" by reddit.
> even though they regularly "forget" that you've opted-out of the redesign, on desktop
Has this been fixed? I was relying on a workaround, but forgot to set it up again when I reinstalled Windows a few months ago. I only realised that just now, when I went to check the details in order to recommend it. (I'm being vague because I'm unsure what it was; I think it was a Firefox extension.) I wouldn't have lasted this long if I was still frequently being sent back to new reddit.
Has this been fixed? I was relying on a workaround, but forgot to set it up again when I reinstalled Windows a few months ago. I only realised that just now, when I went to check the details in order to recommend it. (I'm being vague because I'm unsure what it was; I think it was a Firefox extension.) I wouldn't have lasted this long if I was still frequently being sent back to new reddit.
Try the Old Reddit Redirect extension, I've been using for over a year and I haven't seen the new reddit since then.
For Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
For Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
For Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
For Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
After reading recently, here I think, that any addon can be a security risk, it feels a bit risky installing ones for just one site.
I use Redirector [0] to perform this and other sites redirections for me (Twitter --> Nitter instance; Instagram --> Bibliogram instance, Zoom calls --> zoom web calls). So, at least it's not for just one site.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/redirector/
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/redirector/
I had to edit the expiry date on the "redesign_optout" cookie that gets placed when you tick the optout. But an add-on (see sibling comment) is probably more reliable long-term.
Or just go to old.reddit.com
Breaks some subdomain certs (wildcard doesn't cover *.old.reddit.com), causes links you send to others to not honor their preference, and causes links you follow to default to new Reddit (unless you also run a redirection extension).
I've even found that the apartment building that my friend lives in has an elevator that the button _does_ actually work.
But then you have to keep diverting over to old.reddit.com, when a bunch of links go to either www.reddit.com or np.reddit.com or whatever.
Boom.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
The fact that you need a browser add-on is very telling about the quality of the website.
it's definitely worth the inconvenience
It says a lot about the redesign that reddit keeps supporting old.reddit.com for years afterwards.
They probably didn't want to repeat the Digg failure (new design led a lot of power users to abandon the platform and move to Reddit).
I'm sure they'll force it on everyone once the new design is tweaked and/or becomes more popular (I see new users don't care or don't know about the old design).
I'm sure they'll force it on everyone once the new design is tweaked and/or becomes more popular (I see new users don't care or don't know about the old design).
How long do you think before the old reddit goes away?
You can also use the URL “old.reddit.com” For a quick fix (and for all you lurkers out there)
> You can continue using the old design, where avatars don't show.
If I go to the old design and hover over somebody's username, a popover with their avatar appears. Tested on desktop safari. I find it very annoying.
If I go to the old design and hover over somebody's username, a popover with their avatar appears. Tested on desktop safari. I find it very annoying.
Heck, you don't need to use the reddit website at all. There's no lack of reddit clients, even several open source ones.
The old design is broken. For example it refuses to "load more comments" in large threads.
Prior to the initial sale of Reddit, it was self sustaining. At the least, modest means would have been necessary to continue.
It sold for a lot, and suddenly the new owners are eager to get returns on that investment.
And here we are.
A new Reddit, that somehow does not get sold, would run just fine without all the BS and people would love it and do damn near anything for it.
I consider Reddit a great example of why a public utility type model could work and serve users much better than what exists right now.
Or... some other ownership model that does not include a billion dollar exit would do the same and mean a very nice living for whoever does it.
It sold for a lot, and suddenly the new owners are eager to get returns on that investment.
And here we are.
A new Reddit, that somehow does not get sold, would run just fine without all the BS and people would love it and do damn near anything for it.
I consider Reddit a great example of why a public utility type model could work and serve users much better than what exists right now.
Or... some other ownership model that does not include a billion dollar exit would do the same and mean a very nice living for whoever does it.
> It sold for a lot, suddenly the new owners are eager to get returns on that investment.
Reddit launched in June 2005, sold to Condé Nast in October 2006, and was spun off as an independent company with Advanced Publications (Condé Nast's parent) maintaining a majority interest in 2011. So it's only actually been sold once, back in 2006, and that was not for a lot of money -- under $20M. Maybe there's a billion dollar exit in the company's future, but there definitely hasn't been one in its past.
(N.B.: I doubt there's one in its future, either.)
Reddit launched in June 2005, sold to Condé Nast in October 2006, and was spun off as an independent company with Advanced Publications (Condé Nast's parent) maintaining a majority interest in 2011. So it's only actually been sold once, back in 2006, and that was not for a lot of money -- under $20M. Maybe there's a billion dollar exit in the company's future, but there definitely hasn't been one in its past.
(N.B.: I doubt there's one in its future, either.)
Whatever the sale price, revenue expectations clearly exceed user value.
Thanks for the data.
"Billion" was not intended literally. "Large" would make as much sense.
The point being the current parent expects more than may make sense and appears willing to devalue what they have to get there.
Likely does not understand and or care what they have.
Thanks for the data.
"Billion" was not intended literally. "Large" would make as much sense.
The point being the current parent expects more than may make sense and appears willing to devalue what they have to get there.
Likely does not understand and or care what they have.
> The point being the current parent expects more than may make sense and appears willing to devalue what they have to get there.
The people in charge may absolutely expect more return than makes sense and may be willing to devalue what they have to get there -- but those very same people were literally there at the beginning. What I was getting is that there is no "current parent". Reddit is, as of this writing, an independent company whose current CEO is one of its original founders, and whose executive chairman until recently was one of its other original founders.
So I guess I just think this is a more complicated case than the usual story of "great thing ruined by new owners." If Reddit is being ruined by executives who don't understand the the product, it's not because the original founders sold out to uncaring corporate overlords -- it's because they chose to become uncaring corporate overlords themselves. It's not at all impossible that former corporate overlords at Condé Nast may have understood the value of Reddit better than Reddit's creators do.
The people in charge may absolutely expect more return than makes sense and may be willing to devalue what they have to get there -- but those very same people were literally there at the beginning. What I was getting is that there is no "current parent". Reddit is, as of this writing, an independent company whose current CEO is one of its original founders, and whose executive chairman until recently was one of its other original founders.
So I guess I just think this is a more complicated case than the usual story of "great thing ruined by new owners." If Reddit is being ruined by executives who don't understand the the product, it's not because the original founders sold out to uncaring corporate overlords -- it's because they chose to become uncaring corporate overlords themselves. It's not at all impossible that former corporate overlords at Condé Nast may have understood the value of Reddit better than Reddit's creators do.
Fair enough. The general dynamic still applies.
The original vision was perfectly sustainable.
Now it is generally not, and the value is dropping away.
Wasted.
The original vision was perfectly sustainable.
Now it is generally not, and the value is dropping away.
Wasted.
It sounds like what you’re describing is what is commonly referred to in the HN crowd as a lifestyle business.
They generate a good life for their owners, although less than billions, are self sustaining, are privately owned, and often times the brands are known for quality, uniqueness, or exceptional user experiences.
Wolfram Research, author of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, is a great example of this type of business as a software company.
They generate a good life for their owners, although less than billions, are self sustaining, are privately owned, and often times the brands are known for quality, uniqueness, or exceptional user experiences.
Wolfram Research, author of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, is a great example of this type of business as a software company.
Yup, in one sense.
Could be any of the following:
User owned
Public entity
Lifestyle
Non profit with a charter to maintain value to users
I remain unconvinced discussion requires the increasing messes thrown at it.
Could be any of the following:
User owned
Public entity
Lifestyle
Non profit with a charter to maintain value to users
I remain unconvinced discussion requires the increasing messes thrown at it.
Craigslist is probably another good example.
And if we look at corporations that are privately owned in a large part, IKEA and Valve come to mind.
Small nit : the founder of Ikea is the eigth-richest person in the world (58G$). Though I suppose it's easier to amass wealth if one does not pay taxes.
https://nomoretax.eu/ikeas-founder-paid-tax-for-the-first-ti...
https://nomoretax.eu/ikeas-founder-paid-tax-for-the-first-ti...
Small nit: was, not is - he died 2 years ago.
Pursuit of profit poisons the product
The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4Ow69QWJmo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4Ow69QWJmo
I love and used reddit over the last decade. The day they force me to use the redesign will be my last day.
I really hope we will have an alternative or some 3rd party client because reddit is still a great way to get information or "socialize" with same minded people.
I really hope we will have an alternative or some 3rd party client because reddit is still a great way to get information or "socialize" with same minded people.
The Apollo client on iOS is wonderful. Not affiliated or anything, I just love it.
https://apolloapp.io/
https://apolloapp.io/
Slide for reddit on android is great. None of the new garbage and you can download videos.
Or just use https://i.reddit.com/
Slide is definitely a better experience than that. It's also released under the GPL and available at https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.ccrama.redditslide/
Every time I land in it and try to actually read a thread, it fails to display additional comments when I click Read More. It bounces around to a reload of the "card" with the same handful of comments showing.
The new design is literally unusable.
The new design is literally unusable.
You have to scroll up. It's absolutely stupid.
I've really loved Reddit's new design. It's very clean and focused. I found their old design to be cluttered and give too much emphasis to clickbait titles over actual content. I frankly wasn't really interested in Reddit until the redesign.
Oh my god I hate the redesign. Not the concept of it, but the execution.
The stacked modals so that less than 1/3 of your screen is used for content. The laughably terrible performance and failure rate when loading comments that don't show on the main thread page. The fact that comments more than 3-4 layers deep can't be expanded on the same page and to see them you have to go to a different page. And when you do that, it saves your vertical scroll position so that they jump you past all the contents you were trying to look at, to where the 'related posts' are. Like honestly how hard is it to build a UI where the comment tree expands in-place?
I honestly think it's the worst engineered site on the internet that operates with that scale of users.
The stacked modals so that less than 1/3 of your screen is used for content. The laughably terrible performance and failure rate when loading comments that don't show on the main thread page. The fact that comments more than 3-4 layers deep can't be expanded on the same page and to see them you have to go to a different page. And when you do that, it saves your vertical scroll position so that they jump you past all the contents you were trying to look at, to where the 'related posts' are. Like honestly how hard is it to build a UI where the comment tree expands in-place?
I honestly think it's the worst engineered site on the internet that operates with that scale of users.
The whole component simply known as "the comments" is terrible, my only theory is that someone is paying them to destructively test mice through needless clicks.
My theory is that they are struggling to monetize a website that is extremely expensive to run and the engineering team is either too small or is forced to spend all of their time trying to develop monetization features.
Are there numbers about the money the make? I think gold brings quite a lot. But otherwise I think (and fear) reddit might be a great influencing tool if done correctly.
[deleted]
> give too much emphasis to clickbait titles over actual content
How so? I don't see what changed on that front.
How so? I don't see what changed on that front.
Surprised no one has mentioned that you can change to old reddit styling using the settings menu in the top right. That said, Reddit has become mindless fluff which makes me actively less happy.
I deactivated my account of 13 years, 4 weeks ago. As far as I'm concerned, its a propaganda machine the Soviets only could have dreamt of.
Its a shame because I got to briefly meet Alexis Ohanian in person and he's a great guy. I remember when redditors used to speak of the hivemind, but you don't hear about it anymore.
I was one of the Digg refugees from 2007.
Its a shame because I got to briefly meet Alexis Ohanian in person and he's a great guy. I remember when redditors used to speak of the hivemind, but you don't hear about it anymore.
I was one of the Digg refugees from 2007.
I'm also a Digg refugee. 13 years, man, what a trip.
Didn't Digg v4 happen in 2010?
Right, you deactivated your account, but when was the last time you visited Reddit?
Particularly chilling if you engage with some of the recent theories about a certain power user who recently stopped posting.
Lmao, that can't be anything else than a shitpost. Would be hilarious though.
Can you spell this out? I'm curious but not curious enough to go digging.
There's a post that came out earlier today which claims Ghislaine Maxwell operates one of the most popular Reddit accounts.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/hnckn0/umaxwellhil...
It seems...sort of strange, to say the least? I don't buy it, but you can see the discussion linked.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Epstein/comments/hnckn0/umaxwellhil...
It seems...sort of strange, to say the least? I don't buy it, but you can see the discussion linked.
There's a massive ban wave for everyone who participated to this topic so maybe they are onto something here.
I coincidentally came across the following article a few hours after being puzzled by nothal’s comment:
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/is-ghislaine-maxwell-secret...
Summarizes the current claims, while providing healthy reminders about exercising skepticism.
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/is-ghislaine-maxwell-secret...
Summarizes the current claims, while providing healthy reminders about exercising skepticism.
old.reddit.com is still there and removes a lot of the dross. There's also extensions to ensure you always get redirected to it from any reddit link you follow.
But it's still a dumpster fire of hate, bots and/or paid-for responses, for any sub that reaches critical mass.
But it's still a dumpster fire of hate, bots and/or paid-for responses, for any sub that reaches critical mass.
i.reddit.com also works amazingly better than the redesign on mobile, it loads easily 10x as fast, has better usability and doesn't force you to log in to browse by subreddits.
Given how far they're willing to go with dark patterns to con people into installing an app I'm actually amazed that they still bother to maintain this legacy versions. Seems like it would've been easy to let them bitrot into being unusable.
Given how far they're willing to go with dark patterns to con people into installing an app I'm actually amazed that they still bother to maintain this legacy versions. Seems like it would've been easy to let them bitrot into being unusable.
> I'm actually amazed that they still bother to maintain this legacy versions.
According to my traffic stats (moderating ~400k subscribers), old + mobile web frontends make up about twice the traffic of new frontend. Apps are by far the most popular, about ~3x of all web frontends combined.
I do not know a single person that moderates a 100k+ subreddit using the redesign, everyone still seems to be using old + modtools + enhancement suite. Personally, I believe this is the only reason they didn't kill it already.
Edit to add: The new frontend is the default for logged-out users, and it still makes up half of old. If that isn't a failed redesign project, I don't know what is.
According to my traffic stats (moderating ~400k subscribers), old + mobile web frontends make up about twice the traffic of new frontend. Apps are by far the most popular, about ~3x of all web frontends combined.
I do not know a single person that moderates a 100k+ subreddit using the redesign, everyone still seems to be using old + modtools + enhancement suite. Personally, I believe this is the only reason they didn't kill it already.
Edit to add: The new frontend is the default for logged-out users, and it still makes up half of old. If that isn't a failed redesign project, I don't know what is.
Wow, those numbers are astonishing. I think "defaults matter" has been one of the biggest themes in modern tech. Countless inferior products have won out simply by being the most discoverable and least friction option. That the new design is still failing despite that massive advantage is damning.
Interesting that quarantined subs cannot be used on i.
All quarantined subs have been banned now though?
Not all quarantined subs got caught in the banwave. I'm aware of MGTOW still existing, I'm sure there are others.
Opening posts with videos will redirect you to the new design unfortunately
You don't actually need old.reddit.com, as I commented above, you can change your account preferences to turn the redesign off.
e: I just realised, you may need old.reddit.com if you don't sign in.
e: I just realised, you may need old.reddit.com if you don't sign in.
On mobile it reverts you every few days whether you want it to or not and you have to set it again.
There are a few extensions around for each browser that fix this, but every time it happens it makes me angry at whatever person thought this was a good idea.
If they rely on metrics for old vs. new this 'feature' obviously distorts the reality.
There are a few extensions around for each browser that fix this, but every time it happens it makes me angry at whatever person thought this was a good idea.
If they rely on metrics for old vs. new this 'feature' obviously distorts the reality.
Strange, mine doesn't revert that frequently. I think over a month since the last time.
I think they do experiments, I used to get reverted daily, and so changed all my bookmarks to old.*. And at some point, they removed that behavior, and now remembers my prefs. The day they stop supporting old, I'm out of reddit.
I use the boost client on mobile. It's quite nice.
I was there when everyone left Digg. They definitely have turned into another digg 4.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Digg_v4
* Waste of real estate with redesign
* pushing users towards more social features
* Increasing ad presence in feeds instead of just the sidebar
* Taking no steps to stop the hategroups that flocked to it in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Digg_v4
* Waste of real estate with redesign
* pushing users towards more social features
* Increasing ad presence in feeds instead of just the sidebar
* Taking no steps to stop the hategroups that flocked to it in 2015.
> Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open letter to Rose:
> … this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg
Couldn't make this more ironic if I tried.
> … this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg
Couldn't make this more ironic if I tried.
Since many people are declared a hategroup by now if they have opinions detrimental the mainstream zeitgeist of power mods, the ban wave is a major factor in content decline in my opinion. A lot of people I know moved to greener pastures. There is meme spamming too and those subs are mostly uninteresting but I think it is the smaller problem.
I still go there for content of smaller subs, but not nearly as often as before.
From Wikipedia:
> Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings
This circle jerking can also be seen on reddit. People have suggested that moderators should be restricted to a few subs, but that didn't happen. They actually removed diversity they so often proclaim to champion.
I still go there for content of smaller subs, but not nearly as often as before.
From Wikipedia:
> Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings
This circle jerking can also be seen on reddit. People have suggested that moderators should be restricted to a few subs, but that didn't happen. They actually removed diversity they so often proclaim to champion.
> A lot of people I know moved to greener pastures.
Name some? That's how I found HN and reddit after Digg.
Name some? That's how I found HN and reddit after Digg.
"So many people are declared a hategroup now". Can you give any examples of recently designated hate groups that you disagree with the designation?
Reddit has been a hot mess for 5 years. It's T_D's fault. Content is less of an issue when you don't subscribe to the lowest-common-denominator subs and you just go there for focused interests like hobbies. It's the only way Reddit is of any use anymore. Social discourse is dead there. The trolls ruined the site.
Before the election, Reddit was not so popular, more tech, more news, less drama, though it existed.
Fast forward to 2015. T_D is created, pepe the frog is the mascot, and Trump is now the 4chan troll candidate. (You remember GOD PEDE EMPEROR, right?) T_D was a disgusting cesspool of brigading, trolling, and platform abuse. It wasn't just the politics, those people fucked up the experience for everyone else. That fucking sub got every pass possible from the admins and the owners.
To go back in history from where T_D came from, Trump wasn't even that popular early in 2015. T_D was made-popular, if-not-started by 4chan's /pol/ board. That board was one of the biggest hotbeds for your "Jewish question of the week" / racist memes, "OK guys, redpill me" trash designed to turn young, white, "disenfranchised" teens into internet warriors. Russian internet troll agencies like the IRA worked on these campaigns used to recruit and redpill.
They recruited enough people using heavily-doctored SJW cringe videos and "Carlson Dunking" talking head videos on people to convince their followers that Reddit must transform into T_D-land, and the Reddit community (And the rational admins) hated what it became.
Soon, racist subs like frenworld / clownworld showed up casually displaying nazi signs. These subs do damage, and these posts were all intentional. All these subs were flocked to by T_D members.
After each of these hate subs shut down, they start infiltrating mod spots on popular subs, trolling entire subs until they are kicked out by Admins.
Now, mass accounts have started flocking here, because, again, like Reddit, there's no barrier to making an account here, so why not troll and shitpost all over every thread with doctored counter-arguments like "So many people are declared a hategroup now".
Reddit has been a hot mess for 5 years. It's T_D's fault. Content is less of an issue when you don't subscribe to the lowest-common-denominator subs and you just go there for focused interests like hobbies. It's the only way Reddit is of any use anymore. Social discourse is dead there. The trolls ruined the site.
Before the election, Reddit was not so popular, more tech, more news, less drama, though it existed.
Fast forward to 2015. T_D is created, pepe the frog is the mascot, and Trump is now the 4chan troll candidate. (You remember GOD PEDE EMPEROR, right?) T_D was a disgusting cesspool of brigading, trolling, and platform abuse. It wasn't just the politics, those people fucked up the experience for everyone else. That fucking sub got every pass possible from the admins and the owners.
To go back in history from where T_D came from, Trump wasn't even that popular early in 2015. T_D was made-popular, if-not-started by 4chan's /pol/ board. That board was one of the biggest hotbeds for your "Jewish question of the week" / racist memes, "OK guys, redpill me" trash designed to turn young, white, "disenfranchised" teens into internet warriors. Russian internet troll agencies like the IRA worked on these campaigns used to recruit and redpill.
They recruited enough people using heavily-doctored SJW cringe videos and "Carlson Dunking" talking head videos on people to convince their followers that Reddit must transform into T_D-land, and the Reddit community (And the rational admins) hated what it became.
Soon, racist subs like frenworld / clownworld showed up casually displaying nazi signs. These subs do damage, and these posts were all intentional. All these subs were flocked to by T_D members.
After each of these hate subs shut down, they start infiltrating mod spots on popular subs, trolling entire subs until they are kicked out by Admins.
Now, mass accounts have started flocking here, because, again, like Reddit, there's no barrier to making an account here, so why not troll and shitpost all over every thread with doctored counter-arguments like "So many people are declared a hategroup now".
Your last point is just ridiculous. Reddit has taken not just steps against hate groups, but they basically banned any opinion that isn't "correct". Before 2016 I often found interesting people to have insightful and controversial discussions with. Now, it has become just another boring echo chamber.
the real big misgiving with Digg was letting web companies like mashable auto-submit all their articles. It was no longer a user-driven community.
Say what you want about astroturfing and power-users but most of the content is user submissions still.
Say what you want about astroturfing and power-users but most of the content is user submissions still.
> If there weren't significant opportunity cost, I'd happily work on a replacement.
Are you aware of Lemmy as a federated replacement for Reddit, which is under development?
https://dev.lemmy.ml/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067
Are you aware of Lemmy as a federated replacement for Reddit, which is under development?
https://dev.lemmy.ml/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067
Lemmy looks great. The codebase is really nicely done. They really need serverside rendering though. I started working on a PR a few weeks back but it's a huge undertaking. Also it needs non-websocket support. I really hope it takes off though.
Lemmy acts broken on Palemoon with no plugins enabled but then again Palemoon is old and tired and should be tossed.
Just can't stand Firefox or chrome.
Just can't stand Firefox or chrome.
That’s kind of a defeatist attitude. It’s not worth doing something so I’ll just change my avatar in a glorious show of passive aggressiveness. If you really believe what you’re saying then delete your account and find new ways to spend time online. I did, and I survived.
Just leaving the site is kind of a defeatist attitude. There's nothing that can be done, so I'll just give up and go home. If you really believe what you're saying, change your avatar as a message, so at least someone notices.
Given that you are enriching the site with your continued engagement, then yes, continuing to patronize the site is propagating its unethical behavior.
There’s a lot more to the Internet than the karma-farming thieves, astroturfing shills and larpy activists on reddit. Broaden your horizons and you might be pleasantly surprised!
There’s a lot more to the Internet than the karma-farming thieves, astroturfing shills and larpy activists on reddit. Broaden your horizons and you might be pleasantly surprised!
> Just leaving the site is kind of a defeatist attitude.
Yes but you should do it anyway for the good of humanity, if you don't want to feel defeated then help to build the alternatives like Lemmy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067
Yes but you should do it anyway for the good of humanity, if you don't want to feel defeated then help to build the alternatives like Lemmy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067
Or Ruqqus https://github.com/ruqqus/ruqqus
I'd be interested why this comment is greyed out?
Can anyone explain?
Can anyone explain?
I didn't vote, but based on a glance at the ruqqus front page, it looks like (and this is my attempt at being charitable) it may have fallen into the usual trap for 'free speech' platforms.
They initially attract some combination of 1) principled free speech absolutists, 2) ordinary people annoyed by the political leanings of the dominant platforms (maybe because they are on the opposite side, maybe because they simply want more free discussion and less groupthink), 3) genuine extremists (of the kind that the average person would not be comfortable sharing even a virtual space with), and 4) people unwelcome elsewhere less for political reasons than because they are dedicated to being extremely obnoxious. If you begin with too many people from groups 3 and 4, they pretty quickly cause an exodus of groups 1 and 2.
edit: and even if it doesn't go to that extreme, you can easily end up with at least as bad an echo chamber as the ones you were trying to escape, only with the polarity flipped.
They initially attract some combination of 1) principled free speech absolutists, 2) ordinary people annoyed by the political leanings of the dominant platforms (maybe because they are on the opposite side, maybe because they simply want more free discussion and less groupthink), 3) genuine extremists (of the kind that the average person would not be comfortable sharing even a virtual space with), and 4) people unwelcome elsewhere less for political reasons than because they are dedicated to being extremely obnoxious. If you begin with too many people from groups 3 and 4, they pretty quickly cause an exodus of groups 1 and 2.
edit: and even if it doesn't go to that extreme, you can easily end up with at least as bad an echo chamber as the ones you were trying to escape, only with the polarity flipped.
The paradox of tolerance. Gets em every time. It's exceptionally hard to thread the needle like reddit mostly dude pre-2013/2014 or so. It's incredibly easy to be another Voat.
Ruqqus cofounder/dev here. We're trying to thread that needle. We've so far dodged the massive racism influx that doomed voat.
Personally I'd suggest "regular", nonpolitical guilds like +Dumpsterfire, +mansbestfriend, and +memes
Personally I'd suggest "regular", nonpolitical guilds like +Dumpsterfire, +mansbestfriend, and +memes
[deleted]
Just want to put this out there: Between being "defeatist" and believing a project has reached a point of no return is a gargantuan chasm.
Sometimes things need to be scrapped and started over, largely because of mistakes in the foundation. That's not being defeatist, it's just refusing to try to fix something that is almost certainly easier to rebuild (even if that's a lot of work).
Sometimes things need to be scrapped and started over, largely because of mistakes in the foundation. That's not being defeatist, it's just refusing to try to fix something that is almost certainly easier to rebuild (even if that's a lot of work).
Someone might notice, but will they care? Probably not.
Reddit's goal is to make money. They sell flashy badges and other worthless items and make ridiculous cash from things with literally zero value in addition to their ad money. Any activity there boosts their numbers and just makes them look better on paper.
Unless you're the type of person who solely posts about how horrible reddit is and how everyone needs to leave it (in which case you'll just annoy 90% of the users while the other 10% agrees and buys you a useless badge, fueling the problem more), there's nothing you can do. Ceasing activity is the best action to take. Boycotting is an old and proven method.
Reddit's goal is to make money. They sell flashy badges and other worthless items and make ridiculous cash from things with literally zero value in addition to their ad money. Any activity there boosts their numbers and just makes them look better on paper.
Unless you're the type of person who solely posts about how horrible reddit is and how everyone needs to leave it (in which case you'll just annoy 90% of the users while the other 10% agrees and buys you a useless badge, fueling the problem more), there's nothing you can do. Ceasing activity is the best action to take. Boycotting is an old and proven method.
> Boycotting is an old and proven method.
Usually only if the boycott is coordinated effectively, which isn't going to happen unless you remain in communication with the relevant stakeholders.
Usually only if the boycott is coordinated effectively, which isn't going to happen unless you remain in communication with the relevant stakeholders.
I don't think it's defeatist. It's just a website. There are good places elsewhere on the internet, and better things to be doing than reading a web forum as well. It shouldn't be hard to leave these sorts of things behind.
> Just leaving the site is kind of a defeatist attitude.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I recently started using lainchan, an imageboard, and I really enjoy the security board. It has some of the toxicity inherent from the chan culture, but otherwise I've been pleasantly surprised with the quality and depth of discussions I've read so far.
Yes I like lainchan too. Some of the blue boards on 4chan are fine most of the time as well.
(Disclaimer: promoting my own site)
I worked at reddit for 4 years but quit in late 2016, largely because of the direction the site was starting to go even then. They've taken $500 million in venture capital in the last 3 years, so it's only going to keep getting worse as the pressure builds to create a return for those investors.
A few months after leaving, I decided to start a non-profit so I could work on building a community site that would be able to stick to the principles I believe are important: no advertising or investors, open-source, privacy, higher-quality non-fluff content, etc. There's more info about the site and its goals in the original announcement post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of the announcement here, but note that it was completely private at the time and you couldn't even view it without getting an invite first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093)
It's still invite-only for registration, but it's relatively active and consistently gets several hundred posts/comments a day. If you (or anyone else here) is interested in an invite, please read the blog post I linked above and send me an email at the address listed in there and I'll be happy to give you one. It's not intended to be much of a barrier, I just want to keep the growth controlled while we continue to get the site culture built up.
I've already paid that opportunity cost to get most of the basic functionality built, so if you're interested in helping with development on Tildes itself or even adapting it for your own similar site, it might be worth taking a look at the code as well. This is probably the best place to start: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING....
I worked at reddit for 4 years but quit in late 2016, largely because of the direction the site was starting to go even then. They've taken $500 million in venture capital in the last 3 years, so it's only going to keep getting worse as the pressure builds to create a return for those investors.
A few months after leaving, I decided to start a non-profit so I could work on building a community site that would be able to stick to the principles I believe are important: no advertising or investors, open-source, privacy, higher-quality non-fluff content, etc. There's more info about the site and its goals in the original announcement post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of the announcement here, but note that it was completely private at the time and you couldn't even view it without getting an invite first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093)
It's still invite-only for registration, but it's relatively active and consistently gets several hundred posts/comments a day. If you (or anyone else here) is interested in an invite, please read the blog post I linked above and send me an email at the address listed in there and I'll be happy to give you one. It's not intended to be much of a barrier, I just want to keep the growth controlled while we continue to get the site culture built up.
I've already paid that opportunity cost to get most of the basic functionality built, so if you're interested in helping with development on Tildes itself or even adapting it for your own similar site, it might be worth taking a look at the code as well. This is probably the best place to start: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING....
There's literally no one on that site. 1 comment per day in many subs, while /r/gamedev has about hundred of posts peer day.
/r/gamedev didn't even exist until Reddit was 3 years old, and then it took years more until it was getting more than a couple of posts per day. Here's a snapshot of it when it was about a year and a half old, there were 10 submissions in the last week: https://web.archive.org/web/20090905190637/http://www.reddit...
Communities don't just magically spring into existence, it's a long process.
Communities don't just magically spring into existence, it's a long process.
I had the idea to set mine to the Digg logo as an act of protest
I'm protesting by not using Reddit. Ruqqus has so far been an OK alternative, though it's a bit slow both in terms of content and site speed.
If the front page is any guide, it's full of people even more insufferable than the worst parts of Reddit.
>it's a bit slow
+dumpsterfire would like to upvote you
+dumpsterfire would like to upvote you
It's not even a website now. It just a wall that begs you repeatedly to download the damn app. I don't want the stupid app. You just want better tracking.
Can I interest you in the word of Gopher?
I’ve seen Gopher mentioned more frequently here on HN in the past few months. Is the Gopher community active again?
Personally, I want to see Usenet come back. The idea of pulling down content and reading them later offline appeals to me.
Personally, I want to see Usenet come back. The idea of pulling down content and reading them later offline appeals to me.
> Personally, I want to see Usenet come back.
I agree. Though our perception of usenet from the compuserve era is probably tinted by nostalgic fondness.
Once the internet took off - as I recall - usenet started to become a cesspool of trolls and advertisements.
I agree. Though our perception of usenet from the compuserve era is probably tinted by nostalgic fondness.
Once the internet took off - as I recall - usenet started to become a cesspool of trolls and advertisements.
Usenet atrophied slowly and suffered from multiple problems, but the turning point was when AOL started offering a gateway.
That's when it become obvious that a lot of what made Usenet work so well was that the population was small and very homogenous (making it easy to build a high-trust culture), and that neither of those were staying true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
That's when it become obvious that a lot of what made Usenet work so well was that the population was small and very homogenous (making it easy to build a high-trust culture), and that neither of those were staying true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
"Once the internet took off - as I recall - usenet started to become a cesspool of trolls and advertisements."
I can confirm. I'm still active there, however when USENET was created they couldn't know that when Internet entered in every house, the worst individuals would access it and very predictably abuse/exploit it. As of today I see no way it can be brought back without some serious technical modifications to keep trolls/shills/abusers away.
I can confirm. I'm still active there, however when USENET was created they couldn't know that when Internet entered in every house, the worst individuals would access it and very predictably abuse/exploit it. As of today I see no way it can be brought back without some serious technical modifications to keep trolls/shills/abusers away.
That's even too pessimistic. In the pre-Canter & Siegel days[1], we saw USENET and thought it would be wonderful if it entered every house, because it would elevate the general level of discourse. How optimistic was that?
With hindsight, it turns out people have more of an influence on a medium than the medium does on the people.
[1] for memory: when nearly everyone on USENET was highly geeky and it was aggressively non-commercial, the former due to barriers to access and the latter due to trying to stay under the radar of the organisations which were footing the long-distance bills.
(one of the best discussion media I'm on is pre-USENET, or nearly so. Unfortunately it has no ouija gateway, so it's been losing members to organic attrition: cancer, heart disease, etc., more rapidly than the epigonoi have been adopting.)
With hindsight, it turns out people have more of an influence on a medium than the medium does on the people.
[1] for memory: when nearly everyone on USENET was highly geeky and it was aggressively non-commercial, the former due to barriers to access and the latter due to trying to stay under the radar of the organisations which were footing the long-distance bills.
(one of the best discussion media I'm on is pre-USENET, or nearly so. Unfortunately it has no ouija gateway, so it's been losing members to organic attrition: cancer, heart disease, etc., more rapidly than the epigonoi have been adopting.)
Usenet's still around, but the signal to noise ratio is low and the lack of moderation is a real problem.
Eternal September is still active.
But, Gopher is growing again, and unlike Usenet, there is no (minimal..) noise, only signal.
But, Gopher is growing again, and unlike Usenet, there is no (minimal..) noise, only signal.
It never went away and is there for you when you want to return: https://www.eternal-september.org/
Reddit was always cringe.
The best internet communities are ones that don't need to be a "company".
HN is a great example. HN is run by a rich guy as a hobby. There will never be ads, there will never be a board of directors, the UI will basically never change, there will never be consultants hired to figure out how to make money off of us posting. Yeah you probably could put ads on HN or data mine and make some money, but it won't be enough money for Paul Graham to get out of bed for.
Twitter is also like this. Jack makes his real money from Square. He can run Twitter like his hobby. That's what makes it so great.
The best internet communities are ones that don't need to be a "company".
HN is a great example. HN is run by a rich guy as a hobby. There will never be ads, there will never be a board of directors, the UI will basically never change, there will never be consultants hired to figure out how to make money off of us posting. Yeah you probably could put ads on HN or data mine and make some money, but it won't be enough money for Paul Graham to get out of bed for.
Twitter is also like this. Jack makes his real money from Square. He can run Twitter like his hobby. That's what makes it so great.
Twitter is a dumpster fire of companies self-promotion and angry people yelling at each other.
Don't kid yourself that it's anyone's hobby. If it were, they wouldn't constantly ask VCs for money, wouldn't run ads, and wouldn't have quarterly earnings calls about how they can grow revenue.
Twitter is just a less successful Facebook.
Don't kid yourself that it's anyone's hobby. If it were, they wouldn't constantly ask VCs for money, wouldn't run ads, and wouldn't have quarterly earnings calls about how they can grow revenue.
Twitter is just a less successful Facebook.
Twitter's actually worse I think, there's almost literally nothing nuanced you can write in 140 characters. The very nature of microblogging reduces discourse to "I'm right, you're wrong, shut up about it".
I don't think the world would be worse off if Twitter or even the concept of microblogging had never taken off.
I don't think the world would be worse off if Twitter or even the concept of microblogging had never taken off.
Yeah, and it makes me kind of sad. I think the idea of microblogging is really cool, and with the right user base it could be really awesome.
But, with a general audience of hundreds of millions of users, it does devolve into smug, uninteresting arguments very quickly.
But, with a general audience of hundreds of millions of users, it does devolve into smug, uninteresting arguments very quickly.
I was with you on the HN part...but then you compared it to Twitter. HN is full of mostly educated, inspired, helpful people. Twitter is a dumpster fire full of people spreading lies and rumors, arguing, and trying to get each other fired. In what world are the two in any single way alike?
> Reddit was always cringe.
Just out of curiosity, when did you first come across Reddit? Prior to the Digg exodus 10 years ago it was a super solid community, and if my memory serves correct, it didn't really start going downhill until somewhere between 2012 and 2014.
Just out of curiosity, when did you first come across Reddit? Prior to the Digg exodus 10 years ago it was a super solid community, and if my memory serves correct, it didn't really start going downhill until somewhere between 2012 and 2014.
Twitter is nothing like that. It's a publicly-traded company with thousands of employees, covered in ads, and Jack Dorsey owns something like 2%.
Yeah and Steve Jobs owned even less of Apple. There's a difference between ownership and leadership. Twitter would be a very different place without Jack. It would turn into Facebook or TikTok.
Twitter is like a BDFL hobby project. I obviously don't mean that literally and am aware it's a publicly traded corporation. Twitter is a hobby project in the way that Oculus is a hobby project of Zuckerberg, even though Zuckerberg is the biggest shareholder of Facebook. It's a matter of where the leader made his money--Zuckerberg made his money from selling ads on FB (not VR), Jack made his money from selling a financial product (not social media).
Twitter is like a BDFL hobby project. I obviously don't mean that literally and am aware it's a publicly traded corporation. Twitter is a hobby project in the way that Oculus is a hobby project of Zuckerberg, even though Zuckerberg is the biggest shareholder of Facebook. It's a matter of where the leader made his money--Zuckerberg made his money from selling ads on FB (not VR), Jack made his money from selling a financial product (not social media).
[deleted]
There are already ads on HN. They just happen to be tasteful and well targeted.
Are you referring to the Work at A Startup posts? I agree that it's perhaps one of the best cases of aligned incentives I've seen. How do you get a group of high competency engineers to congregate in the same place so you can hire them? Create a forum with content uniquely of interest to high competency engineers (who consequently engage with and enjoy the content, creating more content, causing more engineers to join).
> Are you referring to the Work at A Startup posts?
Yes. it's brilliant and highly tasteful IMHO. I haven't responded to any of those myself, but their frequency is low enough and interesting enough that they don't bother me. I'm glad the site gets support to cover costs.
Yes. it's brilliant and highly tasteful IMHO. I haven't responded to any of those myself, but their frequency is low enough and interesting enough that they don't bother me. I'm glad the site gets support to cover costs.
Twitter... great? In what way?
Twitter is a modern-day gladiator arena, where all the spectators are also actually inside the arena.
I'm not a web developer, so I'm curious to see if you guys could answer this for me: why are social media feeds so narrow on desktop now? Both Twitter and Reddit have feeds that are less than 1/3 the width of the screen. Is it because advertising feels more sparse if you pepper it along a long skinny string? Is it because they are using inflexible design frameworks for all devices? I seriously don't understand, I hate it, there's so much wasted space.
In my experience it's more the latter. Not only is it simpler (no need to maintain parallel ui implementations, easier to update, speed-up implementation time) to use a framework that "optimizes" layout for all devices, but it also increases consistency in experience across them.
> significant opportunity cost
Definitely agree, it's a long and challenging journey to build any new product, and more so with no guarantee anyone will use it. I'm working on a new hybrid discussion site after being exhausted from using reddit and other sites for the past decade. There will _never_ be animated avatars on this site. Still in active dev but feel free to check it out! https://sqwok.im
Definitely agree, it's a long and challenging journey to build any new product, and more so with no guarantee anyone will use it. I'm working on a new hybrid discussion site after being exhausted from using reddit and other sites for the past decade. There will _never_ be animated avatars on this site. Still in active dev but feel free to check it out! https://sqwok.im
> Advertising is eating the Internet alive. I fucking hate it
Advertising is one of the biggest factors for wealth disparity. What used to be thousands of people handling marketing now consists of millions of people gambling away their life savings on ads in hopes of making it big.
I speak to at least 20 sellers a week and some of them have acos of more than 60% taking in a loss for months in hope of making it big. Most of them go bankrupt.
The house always wins.
Advertising is one of the biggest factors for wealth disparity. What used to be thousands of people handling marketing now consists of millions of people gambling away their life savings on ads in hopes of making it big.
I speak to at least 20 sellers a week and some of them have acos of more than 60% taking in a loss for months in hope of making it big. Most of them go bankrupt.
The house always wins.
> I suppose Reddit's new userbase may
> not even know what that means.
It's so bad. It showed me a notification on the messages icon, so I thought I had a PM. Click on it and it's some stupid "check out this subreddit you haven't heard of" noise that some "growth hacker" added. It's crazy how quickly after taking VC money they were able to run usability into the ground. It's a dumpster fire now.
Sadly, there are a number of replacement sites and almost without exception they're most of the way towards being Voat 2.0
[deleted]
This reminds me of when Google+ implemented an always-visible, always-above-the-fold, animation-permitted profile image.
I immediately set mine to a nausea-inducing (or worse, apologies) red-green-blue strobe. In protest.
That was ... eventually ... fixed. But yes, gratuitous user-specifiable animations are horrible.
Reddit decidedly has problems.
I immediately set mine to a nausea-inducing (or worse, apologies) red-green-blue strobe. In protest.
That was ... eventually ... fixed. But yes, gratuitous user-specifiable animations are horrible.
Reddit decidedly has problems.
Checkout dev.lemmy.ml for an alternative. It will be federated soon, very promising!
I quite enjoy browsing through the deleted reddit posts on ceddit.
Much better signal to noise ratio.
Much better signal to noise ratio.
I recommend using https://old.reddit.com/ plus the Reddit Enhancement Suite Firefox plugin. Makes it bearable :-)
For anyone interested in just consuming pictures/videos from Reddit without clutter, try https://popular.pics
The Internet is still pretty rad if you avoid sites with the chode-monetization business model.
I agree with everything else you’ve stated.
I agree with everything else you’ve stated.
What is chode?
Advertising is eating the internet alive? Advertising has made the internet as we know it possible.
If I could filter just to sites that don't advertise I would.
That would just leave labour of love sites, institutional sites or sites you are on because you want to buy things. This covers all the sites I actually like.
That would just leave labour of love sites, institutional sites or sites you are on because you want to buy things. This covers all the sites I actually like.
> Advertising is eating the internet alive? Advertising has made the internet as we know it possible.
A hot streaming mess....
A hot streaming mess....
If nobody wants to pay for forums and content then ads become necessary.
"Advertising is eating the Internet" is the evil twin of "Software is eating the world".
I do not know how we solve it but it needs to be solved.
Reddit got killed by the Digg diaspora.
But fundamentally it's just more proof that a centralised internet only ever turns to rot.
But fundamentally it's just more proof that a centralised internet only ever turns to rot.
[deleted]
wow, what a great place
https://saidit.net/s/whatever/comments/55v1/since_hate_speec...
https://saidit.net/s/whatever/comments/55v1/since_hate_speec...
Your comment has absolutely nothing to do with this article.
I wouldn't just blame ads, the implementation of the new design is awful. Browsing the site as an anon is a complete tire fire (especially mobile), constantly losing scroll position and often not loading content at all... comments are gated by weird expanding areas that load a separate page into history, and again more scroll position issues.
Helped me stop using the site impulsively anyway.
Helped me stop using the site impulsively anyway.
The design is driven by engagement, growth, and ad sales.
Old Reddit wouldn't have cared if you left the site to read an interesting linked article. The new one does everything it can do get you to stay on the site, or better, install and never leave the app.
Judge this through the lens of the bigger picture. See their endgame and how it may not be in line with your expectations.
Old Reddit wouldn't have cared if you left the site to read an interesting linked article. The new one does everything it can do get you to stay on the site, or better, install and never leave the app.
Judge this through the lens of the bigger picture. See their endgame and how it may not be in line with your expectations.
Can't I just judge it on the basis of being broken?
- being an SPA prevents the browser from remembering the scrollheight of a page so if I click on the margin (why does the entire margin act as a back button closing the comments?) I lose my place in comments. How hard would it be to stick a "scrollheight = localstorage[url].scrollheight || 0" in the 6 megabyte javascript bundle?
- clicking "view more comments" does keep my scrollheight since its not a page reload, but since there's like 5 comments instead of 5000, I'm suddenly at the bottom of the page and have to scroll to the top
- it loads the top level comments before the subthreads, so while I start reading the 2nd or 3rd comment, everything gets pushed down to make room for more comments -- or even better I just get a "something went wrong" for like a half second and then the replies come in. I actually see this pattern a lot - SPA thinks that everyone has a megabit connection and if content.length = 0 then something must have gone wrong !
Or how about when it says "18 more replies" and I click on it and there's only one reply? Can't javascript count?
- being an SPA prevents the browser from remembering the scrollheight of a page so if I click on the margin (why does the entire margin act as a back button closing the comments?) I lose my place in comments. How hard would it be to stick a "scrollheight = localstorage[url].scrollheight || 0" in the 6 megabyte javascript bundle?
- clicking "view more comments" does keep my scrollheight since its not a page reload, but since there's like 5 comments instead of 5000, I'm suddenly at the bottom of the page and have to scroll to the top
- it loads the top level comments before the subthreads, so while I start reading the 2nd or 3rd comment, everything gets pushed down to make room for more comments -- or even better I just get a "something went wrong" for like a half second and then the replies come in. I actually see this pattern a lot - SPA thinks that everyone has a megabit connection and if content.length = 0 then something must have gone wrong !
Or how about when it says "18 more replies" and I click on it and there's only one reply? Can't javascript count?
> Or how about when it says "18 more replies" and I click on it and there's only one reply? Can't javascript count?
This one is actually a reddit quirk. The API reports the number of comments, however doesn't take into account removed comments, or users that have been shadow-banned.
However users notice and complain about this constantly, so it still needs to be improved
This one is actually a reddit quirk. The API reports the number of comments, however doesn't take into account removed comments, or users that have been shadow-banned.
However users notice and complain about this constantly, so it still needs to be improved
Actually I just noticed this on Facebook too, especially comments on ads it will say "16 comments", but even when I select from the dropdown "All Comments" instead of "Most Relevant" I can count 10 comments.
So it's querying an API to ask how many comments there are, and getting a different result when it actually fetches the comments. So there's two different SQL queries somewhere I get that, but how can they diverge so much, is there a team assigned to "Queries that count comments before showing them" and a different team assigned to "queries that show comments" ?
It's just so frustrating as a developer to see the same broken behavior all over the largest web properties.
So it's querying an API to ask how many comments there are, and getting a different result when it actually fetches the comments. So there's two different SQL queries somewhere I get that, but how can they diverge so much, is there a team assigned to "Queries that count comments before showing them" and a different team assigned to "queries that show comments" ?
It's just so frustrating as a developer to see the same broken behavior all over the largest web properties.
This seems to explain, as I'm sure @aahhahahaaa understands, why a company might design their web site this way. It doesn't seem to say anything about their point that the design is a tire fire and drove them away. Why should they "Judge this through the lens of the bigger picture"? If a site that isn't essential to my functioning becomes awful, then I'll leave it; there's no reason I should care why it became awful.
Isn't this ultimately asking me to imagine "what if the bad things were good things" - their endgame isn't going to convince me that the site isn't incredibly frustrating.
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Even aside from the fact that it's an SPA full of ads and big graphics, the performance is especially terrible. Plenty of SPAs of similar functionality are able to deliver much snappier experiences.
jaekash(1)
It's like pulling teeth to browse it anon on mobile even on the old design. They're all but putting a gun to your head and saying "USE THE FUCKIN APP"
Apollo for iOS is a delightful experience; highly recommended.
I deleted my reddit account last week after 13 years. It's really gone down hill, the level of discussion there is simply awful. Not visiting the site after a week has really been a good change. Reddit probably jumped the shark a while ago, in the last 2 or 3 years it's been toxic garbage.
There are alternatives, I tried notabug.io for a few weeks, but realized the racist brigade is already infesting that corner of the web.
I'm having a lot less fun on the internet lately than I had 20 years ago.
There are alternatives, I tried notabug.io for a few weeks, but realized the racist brigade is already infesting that corner of the web.
I'm having a lot less fun on the internet lately than I had 20 years ago.
The title is misleading because they are not using DRM to generate a unique identifier like, for example, Netflix would use. Instead, it is using the type of DRM implementation for fingerprinting/bot detection. It's just a few more bits of unique entropy, along the lines of your screen size and user agent.
This might seem like a small difference, but reason activists hate DRM is that it enables service providers to go a step beyond traditional fingerprinting and gain a truly unique identifier.
This might seem like a small difference, but reason activists hate DRM is that it enables service providers to go a step beyond traditional fingerprinting and gain a truly unique identifier.
Bot detection seems like one of the more defensible uses of fingerprinting, and it might become a casualty in this war. If automated bot detection becomes impractical, the consequences are pretty negative for users: frequent captchas, login walls, aggressive throttling, mandatory email/SMS validations, and reduced accessibility.
Some may suggest that web services should just give up on bot detection, open up all of their private APIs, and accept bots and third-party clients as facts of life. But this idealism is out of touch with the reality of running an expensive, large-scale web service and a customer-facing business.
Some may suggest that web services should just give up on bot detection, open up all of their private APIs, and accept bots and third-party clients as facts of life. But this idealism is out of touch with the reality of running an expensive, large-scale web service and a customer-facing business.
It's not misleading, they check for DRM presence and that's bad enough.
> but reason activists hate DRM is that it enables service providers to go a step beyond traditional fingerprinting and gain a truly unique identifier.
The reason is that in some places on Earth you can be sentenced for violation of special computer laws prohibiting you to even look at such code and disclose what it does, you just run it and see what happens
> but reason activists hate DRM is that it enables service providers to go a step beyond traditional fingerprinting and gain a truly unique identifier.
The reason is that in some places on Earth you can be sentenced for violation of special computer laws prohibiting you to even look at such code and disclose what it does, you just run it and see what happens
> The reason is that in some places on Earth you can be sentenced for violation of special computer laws prohibiting you to even look at such code and disclose what it does, you just run it and see what happens
You couldn't in this case, no license object is served. It literally just asks the browser which systems it supports.
You couldn't in this case, no license object is served. It literally just asks the browser which systems it supports.
maybe this a silly question, but isn't that like most closed source code?
No. You can basically always decompile proprietary software and work out how it works. And even publish most of your findings. In some places like the US, if that code is DRM its now illegal to study (Under the DMCA specifically I think).
Is there a specific definition that makes something DRM?
Sounds like all software companies should add some trivial DRM only for the specific purpose of exposing people to legal risk if they attempt to reverse engineer their code.
Sounds like all software companies should add some trivial DRM only for the specific purpose of exposing people to legal risk if they attempt to reverse engineer their code.
Reverse engineering is generally legal. Reverse engineering DRM can potentially get you a lengthy jail sentence.
> Instead, it is using the type of DRM implementation for fingerprinting/bot detection.
Currently. Do we know that? Is that in their privacy policy? If it works well enough technically, will they use it for other things?
Currently. Do we know that? Is that in their privacy policy? If it works well enough technically, will they use it for other things?
How has Reddit not had its Digg 2.0 moment yet? They are blatantly user-hostile in so many ways nowadays.
For those who don't know, a UI change at Digg triggered a mass exodus to reddit years ago.
For those who don't know, a UI change at Digg triggered a mass exodus to reddit years ago.
Reddit has been (rightly) attempting to drive away it's far-right troll userbase, so whenever a potential viable alternative to Reddit pops up, it's them that go there first, resulting in no-one else wanting to go there, which results in the inevitable failure of that alternative, or at least it becoming an entrenched hangout for bigots.
It's happened more than once already.
It's happened more than once already.
I remember voat. Originally it was looking like it would become the new reddit. The UI was good, the site was stable, but then it become totally flooded with racists so it never took off.
I started building https://20-things.com with a rather big barrier to entry (requires SMS verification) in order to discourage racists from signing up, which is what happens when anonymous registration is allowed, as seen on voat example. So far a few hundred people signed up, but I am the only one actively posting content, I use it like my personal bookmarking service. Without SMS verification, registration would be anonymous which enables racism, and in order to go this route, I'd have to have an army of moderators.
SMS verification is good but I doubt it works on a larger scale.
I've long thought about a social network where each user is required to verify their identity. That comes with its own problems of course, especially in the current times of data protection, misuse of data and a lack of trust for these kinds of things. I'm sure it can be done properly, but who's to say what "properly" means.
I've long thought about a social network where each user is required to verify their identity. That comes with its own problems of course, especially in the current times of data protection, misuse of data and a lack of trust for these kinds of things. I'm sure it can be done properly, but who's to say what "properly" means.
I think I have seen a startup doing exactly this here in Sweden, can't remember their name though. We have a well-established e-ID which makes the verification part dead simple.
I'm working on bringing e-IDs to more people which would make ideas like your much easier to implement. If you want to make your idea reality I'd love to collaborate!
I'm working on bringing e-IDs to more people which would make ideas like your much easier to implement. If you want to make your idea reality I'd love to collaborate!
> If you want to make your idea reality I'd love to collaborate!
One day, maybe... I am focused on my business at the moment (check my profile here on HN).
A social network is certainly not a small undertaking but I can see it starting off as a side project and building a small community. I can forsee lots of costs involved however. I will keep your offer in mind!
One day, maybe... I am focused on my business at the moment (check my profile here on HN).
A social network is certainly not a small undertaking but I can see it starting off as a side project and building a small community. I can forsee lots of costs involved however. I will keep your offer in mind!
Totally understand! In my mind, it doesn't end at social networks. There are so many applications which become better with trust, like dating apps, product reviews, and online marketplaces.
There's now another one called ruqqus. I'm not sure whether to call it a reddit-clone or a voat-clone. Even the front-page is full of right-wing trolling, whether or not that was the intended purpose of the site.
Hate to break it to you but theDonald.win, where T_D went after reddit imposed its "quarantine", just steamed through the top 1200 spot in the USA according to the Alexa rankings.
Isn't that a good thing for alternative social media sites? A centralized site run by that crowd is probably the optional solution for everyone.
Maybe so, but that's just one of dozens of controversial communities reddit has banned. So I think reddit still has a 'defensive moat' of disgruntled offensive ex-redditors looking for a new reddit-clone.
I don't think it's optimal. It already was an echo chamber back on Reddit, but a centralized site is probably even worse in that regard.
It depends; on the one side, the people 'inside' will probably become more radicalized, but on the other they no longer have a platform, new members of the 'club' are harder to find, and they no longer cause stress / strain on (in this case) Reddit. Reddit must've had hundreds of complaints daily about something posted in T_D. I know I complained once because they adjusted their algorithms so that T_D wouldn't be as prominent in the top lists anymore, but given that I'm one of those idle scrollers on r/all, eventually I went down the list so far that EVERY post was a T_D post.
> but on the other they no longer have a platform
But they do have a platform.
But they do have a platform.
The only reason to go there is if you are already of that mindset. Without access to the wider reddit platform they might end up having a harder time recruiting new users.
I think the fact that Reddit and similar sites block URLs to competitors like thedonald.win is a really good argument for an anti-competitive lawsuit. They are overtly suppressing competition.
Doubt it. There are plenty of ways to share the links. Reddit isn't the internet.
Indeed, that would be the "entrenched hangout for bigots" part I mentioned.
The definition of a bigot is someone who is intolerant to differing views. That being the case, perhaps this accusation is better leveled at the people relentlessly driving right-wing opinion off of every major platform.
> The definition of a bigot is someone who is intolerant to differing views.
It's genuinely quite hard to find a post on TD or TD-replacements that doesn't boil down to bigotry. Mocking and attacking their strawmen-of-the-day is basically the entire site.
So yes, I am intolerant - I am intolerant of intolerance. Civil society doesn't only permit this, it requires it. Being anti-bigot doesn't make me a bigot. Thinking so is perverse.
It's genuinely quite hard to find a post on TD or TD-replacements that doesn't boil down to bigotry. Mocking and attacking their strawmen-of-the-day is basically the entire site.
So yes, I am intolerant - I am intolerant of intolerance. Civil society doesn't only permit this, it requires it. Being anti-bigot doesn't make me a bigot. Thinking so is perverse.
You're absolutely correct, but the hypocrisy will fall on deaf ears at the current point in our timeline. However, I'm confident that history will accurately portray these times as the textbook definition of psychological projection.
Does anybody know anything about who runs that site?
The moderators of r/the_donald
so how can anyone build an alternative without falling into this trap?
Communicate the fact that it's going to be well moderated and isn't a bastion of free speech.
Most alternatives are all for free speech and consequently become platforms for hate speech. Perhaps the key is the moderation model.
The key is to have less politics and more alternate topics such as hobbies, videos etc.
You can't. You can either have free speech and laissez-faire moderation and let the extremists take over, or you can have moderation aggressive enough to drive those elements elsewhere, and have limited (not free) speech.
There is no third option, because people can't be trusted to simply be civil. Nazis or Fascists, pick your poison.
There is no third option, because people can't be trusted to simply be civil. Nazis or Fascists, pick your poison.
Not one alternative, all the alternatives, decentralize everything.
isn't that what mastodon is doing?
[deleted]
imgflip has already become the latest hangout for the expelled right wing contingent. https://imgflip.com/m/politics
It seems like they learned a lot of lessons from the Digg redesign and are being a lot smarter (or insidious...) about the transition. Digg rolled out massive changes overnight which caused a sharp, immediate rebuke.
Reddit has been slowly rolling out changes for a couple years, and at least so far are leaving the old interface available at old.reddit.com. The redesign is as bad or worse in every way; but it's so slow there hasn't been the organized revolt.
Reddit also has the advantage of doing it during a major UI shift - it's easy to justify design changes when everyone is heading for mobile browsers anyway. Digg didn't have that excuse.
It's funny though, I actually really like the new Digg. It's nothing like what it used to be, but it's a nice curated list of interesting articles, major headlines, and tech news.
Reddit has been slowly rolling out changes for a couple years, and at least so far are leaving the old interface available at old.reddit.com. The redesign is as bad or worse in every way; but it's so slow there hasn't been the organized revolt.
Reddit also has the advantage of doing it during a major UI shift - it's easy to justify design changes when everyone is heading for mobile browsers anyway. Digg didn't have that excuse.
It's funny though, I actually really like the new Digg. It's nothing like what it used to be, but it's a nice curated list of interesting articles, major headlines, and tech news.
> Reddit also has the advantage of doing it during a major UI shift - it's easy to justify design changes when everyone is heading for mobile browsers anyway. Digg didn't have that excuse.
On the contrary, Digg’s UI changes were happening when “Web 2.0”-hype was peaking, including bold new web-design trends - many sites were actively redesigning themselves with a brighter theme and better visual-effects: this was around 2007-2010 when IE6-support was starting to be discounted by tech-oriented websites so they could start using new CSS features and alpha-channel PNG images that IE7, Firefox, and Opera supported.
I argue that the changes to their recommendation algorithm - and the introduction - and eventual promotion - of mainstream news (especially sports news) meant that their early users: technology news readers, lost interest in the site. The redesign of the site was a contributing factor, but a bad redesign is nowhere near as damaging to a site’s popularity than it losing relevance to its core user base.
On the contrary, Digg’s UI changes were happening when “Web 2.0”-hype was peaking, including bold new web-design trends - many sites were actively redesigning themselves with a brighter theme and better visual-effects: this was around 2007-2010 when IE6-support was starting to be discounted by tech-oriented websites so they could start using new CSS features and alpha-channel PNG images that IE7, Firefox, and Opera supported.
I argue that the changes to their recommendation algorithm - and the introduction - and eventual promotion - of mainstream news (especially sports news) meant that their early users: technology news readers, lost interest in the site. The redesign of the site was a contributing factor, but a bad redesign is nowhere near as damaging to a site’s popularity than it losing relevance to its core user base.
Digg's decline began before Web2.0 and any redesign - it was mainly a result of the "bury brigades" killing anything that was remotely interesting through downvotes and leaving it to be a dull feed of mainstream news links, which got progressively worse over time.
Reddit has the bury brigades too in some of the more popular subreddits (the ones which you used to be subscribed to by default), but you can avoid them by only participating in the subreddits that interest you. This is where Reddit is a huge improvement over what digg was, but I wouldn't say it's immune to failure. The more they try to be the arbiters of what people ought to find interesting, the less people are going to put the effort into interacting with the platform as a whole.
Reddit has the bury brigades too in some of the more popular subreddits (the ones which you used to be subscribed to by default), but you can avoid them by only participating in the subreddits that interest you. This is where Reddit is a huge improvement over what digg was, but I wouldn't say it's immune to failure. The more they try to be the arbiters of what people ought to find interesting, the less people are going to put the effort into interacting with the platform as a whole.
5 mods control 92 of the top 500 subreddits. Those bury brigades are real, but instead they just remove what they don't want seen or promote content they do want seen with huge influence in the most popular subreddits. The same issue with Digg power users having too much control (among other reasons it failed) is also apparent on Reddit.
https://i.redd.it/bfhl8s6o2fn41.png
https://i.redd.it/bfhl8s6o2fn41.png
Yep. Check out r/redditminusmods
On average, 80-100% of the content of the frontpage is removed by mods every day.
On average, 80-100% of the content of the frontpage is removed by mods every day.
> It seems like they learned a lot of lessons from the Digg redesign and are being a lot smarter (or insidious...) about the transition
+1. They learned how to boil the frog much better. Note how the top comments are recommending old.reddit as a valid option. While old is specifically there as an A/B test of sorts to prevent the most vocal people from leaving.
It's all quite amazing in a way...
+1. They learned how to boil the frog much better. Note how the top comments are recommending old.reddit as a valid option. While old is specifically there as an A/B test of sorts to prevent the most vocal people from leaving.
It's all quite amazing in a way...
I just don't get what is taking reddit so long. It has been a long time and at least once a week the "new" version forgets you are logged in and won't let you log in. Functionality from the old version like managing multireddits is still missing. Yet they are adding things like chat and the reddit public access network thing that no one seems to be using. Not to mention the things that are just bad about the new layout like how everything is hidden behind an extra click now.
Eh, I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. As you say, the reason there hasn't been a revolt is because the old UI is still up and working, but no matter how gradually they update the new one, the day they get rid of the old UI, there will be a revolt.
I guess the plan is that enough people will have started with the new UI and have never known the old one that even with the old people leaving, the site may still remain alive?
I guess the plan is that enough people will have started with the new UI and have never known the old one that even with the old people leaving, the site may still remain alive?
Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if a huge chunk of reddit users have never even seen the old UI before. Most users probably use the official app these days.
I recently switched from the new to the old UI simply because the new UI became very laggy after scrolling for some time, sometimes taking a second to react to clicks.
Reddit attracted a much larger share of the normie vote than Digg ever did. Back when they were competitors, you could expect the average user was part of the fairly homogenous group of tech workers. They were better organized, more politically aligned, and generally more likely to be early adopters of new tech
That was a decade ago, and tech has become a lot more normalized since. Today's Reddit gets visibility on MM possibly more often than any site other than Google. Its users span the political spectrum, treat it as a utility, and for the most part never chose to come to Reddit, never critiqued it, and wouldn't notice if anything about it changed much. It's easy to imagine many modern users never make it off the front page.
I don't think Reddit will die like Digg did. It's the megaphone of the Internet, and could probably commit much worse transgressions than some random DRM technobabble before the common user would take notice.
That was a decade ago, and tech has become a lot more normalized since. Today's Reddit gets visibility on MM possibly more often than any site other than Google. Its users span the political spectrum, treat it as a utility, and for the most part never chose to come to Reddit, never critiqued it, and wouldn't notice if anything about it changed much. It's easy to imagine many modern users never make it off the front page.
I don't think Reddit will die like Digg did. It's the megaphone of the Internet, and could probably commit much worse transgressions than some random DRM technobabble before the common user would take notice.
Reddit was already superior to Digg as a news aggregator. Before the exodus, the joke (and I had observed this to often be true) was that Digg’s content was mostly the same as reddit’s... just posted a day later.
At present there isn’t an obvious choice for where to migrate. Maybe more specialized boards like Hacker News will be the thriving suburbs outside of a dystopian reddit metropolis.
At present there isn’t an obvious choice for where to migrate. Maybe more specialized boards like Hacker News will be the thriving suburbs outside of a dystopian reddit metropolis.
Sounds like SlashDot. See the article on HN then shortly thereafter in the /. firehouse.
I'm thinking of going back to metafilter myself.... not sure why I stopped.
Parler is becoming more popular, but it's mostly only conservative stuff and frankly their UI is non-intuitive.
While I long for a Reddit replacement, parler doesn't seem like it. I've seen numerous anecdotes of parler banning people for posting milquetoast non-conservative content.
The problem with reactionary, "free speech" platforms is that they're always filled with the worst of the worst from other platforms.
If the sibling comment to yours is any indication, the speech might not actually be that free either --- it's just biased in the other direction.
Because they are smart and provide old.reddit.com for those of us that would otherwise have left.
But it's a pretty shit site now anyway compared to how it used to be. It's the law of forums it seems to be.
But it's a pretty shit site now anyway compared to how it used to be. It's the law of forums it seems to be.
Because they keep the old UI around still, at:
https://old.Reddit.com
But I agree with the user hostile notion. They are terrible nowadays
https://old.Reddit.com
But I agree with the user hostile notion. They are terrible nowadays
I suspect the redesign was motivated to make ads look more like regular content. At least I seem to click ads looking like regular posts frequently since the redesign, and in my opinion, it is an underhanded tactic.
I think it’s because there’s no good alternative. All the copy cat sites aren’t interested in a good user experience, they just want a place with less content restrictions.
I only use my own multireddit, /r/popular and /r/all are cesspools now
To be honest, as a whole the content has slowly decreased in quality. Now I finally understand that a lot of content on reddit is just farming karma for bots, so those bots can be sold for astroturfers. So I have a lot of distrust for reddit in general.
I'm feeling more and more frustrated, and I tell myself more and more that I have little interest going to reddit.
To be honest, as a whole the content has slowly decreased in quality. Now I finally understand that a lot of content on reddit is just farming karma for bots, so those bots can be sold for astroturfers. So I have a lot of distrust for reddit in general.
I'm feeling more and more frustrated, and I tell myself more and more that I have little interest going to reddit.
Reddit is too nebulous to get very mad about. You can leave a subreddit you're sick of. Trash your account if you're worried your comments risk doxing yourself. Start afresh, it's easy. Everyone is pseudonymous and reputations seem to matter far less than places like Hacker News.
I've been using Reddit - reading a lot, commenting quite a bit, posting a little - since I read about it in the Joel on Software blog in 2006. It has been fascinating and fun but I've made no lasting friendships or connections. I'd move to something better with no regrets, but the site owners are probably never going to annoy me enough to move to something worse out of principle.
I've been using Reddit - reading a lot, commenting quite a bit, posting a little - since I read about it in the Joel on Software blog in 2006. It has been fascinating and fun but I've made no lasting friendships or connections. I'd move to something better with no regrets, but the site owners are probably never going to annoy me enough to move to something worse out of principle.
I'm guessing because most users are on mobile, using Apollo on iOS or Reddit is Fun on Android. Both of which are miles and above superior to the "official" Reddit app, which seems to have been the driving force for the redesign.
[deleted]
I don't believe Reddit's demise will be like Digg's.
IMHO Digg was a success despite itself. Run more like a sophomoric Animal House [i] than a facebook or twitter. It was only a matter of time until it imploded.
[i] https://youtu.be/Wp5qAP1iH-g?t=57
IMHO Digg was a success despite itself. Run more like a sophomoric Animal House [i] than a facebook or twitter. It was only a matter of time until it imploded.
[i] https://youtu.be/Wp5qAP1iH-g?t=57
I thought the site would have been done after spez abused his admin rights to edit user comments.
I thought the AACS key fiasco triggered the exodus. At least that was my reason for leaving.
>How has Reddit not had its Digg 2.0 moment yet? They are blatantly user-hostile in so many ways nowadays.
There's nothing more user hostile than going bankrupt due to advertising fraud.
There's nothing more user hostile than going bankrupt due to advertising fraud.
i.e. the main redesign domain, not old.reddit.com
If the old one didn't do this, there's yet another reason to use it...
I still believe that part of the reason a lot of sites are moving to JS-only SPAs and the like is that it becomes much harder to block things like this. Regardless of sandboxing, the idea of letting a site execute Turing-complete computations on its visitor's computers, just to display what could be done without, is quite repulsive.
If the old one didn't do this, there's yet another reason to use it...
I still believe that part of the reason a lot of sites are moving to JS-only SPAs and the like is that it becomes much harder to block things like this. Regardless of sandboxing, the idea of letting a site execute Turing-complete computations on its visitor's computers, just to display what could be done without, is quite repulsive.
> the idea of letting a site execute Turing-complete computations
I'll admit that I have never been keen on the "browse with Javascript disabled" idea, but after my digging around yesterday to figure out why Reddit kept asking me to enable DRM [which I totally should've blogged about but oh well....] it shocked me to see just how much JS code was being loaded on each pageview.
Now I'm seriously considering taking the NoScript plunge.
The problem is that a light sprinkling of Javascript really can go a long way towards making HTML more usable -- how can we find a way to permit the "good" uses of Javascript while prohibiting all of the "bad"?
I'll admit that I have never been keen on the "browse with Javascript disabled" idea, but after my digging around yesterday to figure out why Reddit kept asking me to enable DRM [which I totally should've blogged about but oh well....] it shocked me to see just how much JS code was being loaded on each pageview.
Now I'm seriously considering taking the NoScript plunge.
The problem is that a light sprinkling of Javascript really can go a long way towards making HTML more usable -- how can we find a way to permit the "good" uses of Javascript while prohibiting all of the "bad"?
how can we find a way to permit the "good" uses of Javascript while prohibiting all of the "bad"?
By imposing resource limits? I know browsers already have time limits on script execution, but perhaps a memory limit would help too. A "light sprinkling of Javascript" would probably need KBs or a few MB at most to do what it needs to. The problem is that none of the mainstream browsers nor web developers (and especially not Google's) will want to do that --- compare new vs (unfortunately, quickly disappearing) old YouTube, for example; the latter is a mostly-static site with JS enhancements, and the former is basically a SPA. Despite the reduction in functionality of the former, the most common complaints are about how slow it is, and it uses a huge amount of RAM too.
By imposing resource limits? I know browsers already have time limits on script execution, but perhaps a memory limit would help too. A "light sprinkling of Javascript" would probably need KBs or a few MB at most to do what it needs to. The problem is that none of the mainstream browsers nor web developers (and especially not Google's) will want to do that --- compare new vs (unfortunately, quickly disappearing) old YouTube, for example; the latter is a mostly-static site with JS enhancements, and the former is basically a SPA. Despite the reduction in functionality of the former, the most common complaints are about how slow it is, and it uses a huge amount of RAM too.
Make websites pay to run remote instructions on users' computers. It'd never happen, but it's a fun concept.
> how can we find a way to permit the "good" uses of Javascript while prohibiting all of the "bad"?
I always thought HTML could've been gradually extended with new elements for capturing and replacing UI techniques which Javascript is essential for, but that hasn't happened. Instead, HTML is stuck with what was envisioned in 2008 or earlier (coming from a hierarchical document structure for casual academic publishing), and everything else in the browser (CSS, Javascript) evolved to work around it. Today, we have CSS with it's absurd ninja powers to completely change and reinterpret the HTML DOM with a secondary document structure in the name of "semantic" HTML, locked to a 1990's idea of how a generic document should look like. It seems the evolution of HTML as a markup language suffered from being organizationally fossilized, after W3C ventured into an unrealistic XHTML2 moonshot, thus giving HTML language extensions a bad name, and the proponents of CSS believing their own "separation of concerns" story after the fact when it just started out as a hack to overcome HTML's limitations (it being in the hands of W3C and W3C focussing on a ten-year roll to replace HTML with XHTML and other XML vocabularies). HTML/SGML always had all the power you could want to define new vocabulary, even ways to define new elements in terms of fragments/combinations of existing ones for vocabulary evolution.
To be fair, though, during most of the web's existence, a visual language had to evolve as there simply was no blueprint available for how we'd use hypertext on a massive scale, especially with mobile devices. Unfortunately, the mechanisms HTML5 today has for vocabulary evolution (ie. custom elements and maybe template elements and web components) all require tons of Javascript as well.
FWIW, there's GNU's LibreJS initiative to block all but F/OSS or "trivial" JavaScript, but I don't believe it has had any impact (and it focuses solely on the licensing aspect).
I always thought HTML could've been gradually extended with new elements for capturing and replacing UI techniques which Javascript is essential for, but that hasn't happened. Instead, HTML is stuck with what was envisioned in 2008 or earlier (coming from a hierarchical document structure for casual academic publishing), and everything else in the browser (CSS, Javascript) evolved to work around it. Today, we have CSS with it's absurd ninja powers to completely change and reinterpret the HTML DOM with a secondary document structure in the name of "semantic" HTML, locked to a 1990's idea of how a generic document should look like. It seems the evolution of HTML as a markup language suffered from being organizationally fossilized, after W3C ventured into an unrealistic XHTML2 moonshot, thus giving HTML language extensions a bad name, and the proponents of CSS believing their own "separation of concerns" story after the fact when it just started out as a hack to overcome HTML's limitations (it being in the hands of W3C and W3C focussing on a ten-year roll to replace HTML with XHTML and other XML vocabularies). HTML/SGML always had all the power you could want to define new vocabulary, even ways to define new elements in terms of fragments/combinations of existing ones for vocabulary evolution.
To be fair, though, during most of the web's existence, a visual language had to evolve as there simply was no blueprint available for how we'd use hypertext on a massive scale, especially with mobile devices. Unfortunately, the mechanisms HTML5 today has for vocabulary evolution (ie. custom elements and maybe template elements and web components) all require tons of Javascript as well.
FWIW, there's GNU's LibreJS initiative to block all but F/OSS or "trivial" JavaScript, but I don't believe it has had any impact (and it focuses solely on the licensing aspect).
One way web components can evolve to help this is with declarative custom elements, a feature many of the people who've worked on web components have wanted to pursue.
The idea is that you could define a custom element, with style and DOM encapsulation, purely in markup with either no script at all, or script only for progressive enhancement.
There are still a few features that need to be finalized and proposed, like Template Instantiation [1] to allow for expressions in HTML. When put together it would look something like this:
From there I'd hope we could find a way to use worklets to allow components to use script, but limit them to only the component's shadow DOM, not the global DOM, and not have default access to APIs like XHR and fetch, or other APIs used for fingerprinting.
[1]: https://github.com/w3c/webcomponents/blob/gh-pages/proposals... [2]: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/maste...
The idea is that you could define a custom element, with style and DOM encapsulation, purely in markup with either no script at all, or script only for progressive enhancement.
There are still a few features that need to be finalized and proposed, like Template Instantiation [1] to allow for expressions in HTML. When put together it would look something like this:
<custom-element name="x-summary" attributes="href">
<template>
<style>
::slotted(h1) { color: blue; }
</style>
<article>
<a href="{{ href }}"><slot name="title"</a>
<slot></slot>
</article>
</template>
</custom-element>
<x-summary href="http://...">
<h1 slot="title">Hello</h1>
<p>This article is about...</p>
</x-summary>
From there I'd hope we could find a way to use worklets to allow components to use script, but limit them to only the component's shadow DOM, not the global DOM, and not have default access to APIs like XHR and fetch, or other APIs used for fingerprinting.
[1]: https://github.com/w3c/webcomponents/blob/gh-pages/proposals... [2]: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/maste...
I'd recommend uMatrix over NoScript. I used NoScript for years but switched over to uMatrix a few years ago (at the time it was working in Firefox Quantum but NoScript didn't yet), and I like it better now.
It's quite a bit easier to see what's going on, toggle scripts and other assets from multiple sources, and you can change the defaults to do things like allow first-party scripts by default if you don't want to go all the way to full blocking.
It takes a while to get used to using a script-blocker like it, but it's pretty straightforward most of the time, and once you get your most commonly-used sites set up you don't need to mess around with it very often.
It's quite a bit easier to see what's going on, toggle scripts and other assets from multiple sources, and you can change the defaults to do things like allow first-party scripts by default if you don't want to go all the way to full blocking.
It takes a while to get used to using a script-blocker like it, but it's pretty straightforward most of the time, and once you get your most commonly-used sites set up you don't need to mess around with it very often.
I had an issue where every time I restarted firefox it would lose my umatrix data.
Sorry to ask, but you clicked the padlock, right?
Nope. Is that how you save?
Yes. Otherwise everything will be lost when you close the browser.
There is also a cloud backup feature in the options if you are into that sort of thing.
[deleted]
You might want to try umatrix. there's a slight learning curve.
I set the defaults to load only the main site, and load no javascript. Then per-site I turn things on until it's workable.
basically start with:
that + reader mode makes even horrendous sites pleasant.
I set the defaults to load only the main site, and load no javascript. Then per-site I turn things on until it's workable.
basically start with:
* * * block
* * frame block
* * script block
* 1st-party * allow
* 1st-party frame allow
that + reader mode makes even horrendous sites pleasant.
I browse with js off by default using the setting in uBlock Origin. It works great.
When you encounter a site (usually news sites) where the article looks wonky, just use Firefox's "reader view" which pulls out the text and puts it into a nicely formatted, clean tab.
When you encounter a site (usually news sites) where the article looks wonky, just use Firefox's "reader view" which pulls out the text and puts it into a nicely formatted, clean tab.
Until they work out how to properly disable reader view because it allows you to avoid JavaScript driven paywalls and Incognito/Private Mode nags.
Good point. I think some sites have already figured this out. I'll find one every now and then that clearly has a giant chunk of text in the center, but the reader view option doesn't activate.
Wonder if there's a flag that disables it or something.
Wonder if there's a flag that disables it or something.
I find that Pocket frequently works to get around paywalls. I use it primarily for this purpose.
It might be as simple as not adding any semantic markup (an article element for example) for Reader View to use, but you could do all sorts of things with element positioning or pseudo elements to mess it up for non-humans.
Apparently it's a pretty complicated, holistic system of pulling just the main text.
FF uses this for its reader view: https://github.com/mozilla/readability
FF uses this for its reader view: https://github.com/mozilla/readability
Something that's surprised me is that there hasn't been a push to allow users to restrict a websites access to JS APIs.
If I can restrict certain sites to different browser APIs, it would make it so much easier to get rid of annoying browsing behaviour. For example, there is no good reason to allow websites to sniff my clipboard or to play multimedia without my consent.
If I can restrict certain sites to different browser APIs, it would make it so much easier to get rid of annoying browsing behaviour. For example, there is no good reason to allow websites to sniff my clipboard or to play multimedia without my consent.
I think there is a move toward that, certainly for newer features as of several years ago (though they present their own issues to work out, see the deluge of permissions prompts for notifications).
Clipboard stuff is permission gated on some browsers at least already, I think. Autoplay disabling is an option for most (all?), though that's a little different.
The issue with introducing a permission system to an older feature is always a balancing act between increasing user control and potentially breaking older content.
Clipboard stuff is permission gated on some browsers at least already, I think. Autoplay disabling is an option for most (all?), though that's a little different.
The issue with introducing a permission system to an older feature is always a balancing act between increasing user control and potentially breaking older content.
God, what a good idea. Why doesn't Chrome do this the way Android does?
LibreJS may be an option, but I've never used it myself.
Even HTML without CSS can leak more things than one might want with things like pings and lazy loading, adding in CSS it's Turing complete again (albeit much clunkier).
The reason the web could and can never end up being a read only protocol is people like the little features that make it exactly not that. People like that a page can not load images until they are needed, people like that their food delivery status can update without constantly reloading the page, people like the "cool" page that has some wizz bang interactive graphic, people like interactive content with the stream, people like live web chat like discord or twitch. Plenty of people don't have any interest in those things, they just want a book with the occasional image, but that's not what the majority get pulled in by on the web.
And once you have those things someone will always take advantage of it. If they didn't have these things they would take advantage of whatever they could. Even now there are tracking pixels and a bunch of other things that have nothing to do with JS being in the browser.
The solution isn't to try to say a page shouldn't be able to do "complicated" (for lack of a better term) things. Most people don't find a page running code repulsive. Maybe ads, bad actors, tracking. Even then a surprising number of people don't mind. But the problem wasn't that the browser has Turing complete interfaces.
What is the solution for these bad actors and use cases? Don't know. I don't think anyone knows. What I do know is if all people want are books with pictures the web isn't the medium to try to find that content in and hasn't ever really been intended as such (i.e. it's not a new development it's just easier to make and/or abuse dynamic content now).
The reason the web could and can never end up being a read only protocol is people like the little features that make it exactly not that. People like that a page can not load images until they are needed, people like that their food delivery status can update without constantly reloading the page, people like the "cool" page that has some wizz bang interactive graphic, people like interactive content with the stream, people like live web chat like discord or twitch. Plenty of people don't have any interest in those things, they just want a book with the occasional image, but that's not what the majority get pulled in by on the web.
And once you have those things someone will always take advantage of it. If they didn't have these things they would take advantage of whatever they could. Even now there are tracking pixels and a bunch of other things that have nothing to do with JS being in the browser.
The solution isn't to try to say a page shouldn't be able to do "complicated" (for lack of a better term) things. Most people don't find a page running code repulsive. Maybe ads, bad actors, tracking. Even then a surprising number of people don't mind. But the problem wasn't that the browser has Turing complete interfaces.
What is the solution for these bad actors and use cases? Don't know. I don't think anyone knows. What I do know is if all people want are books with pictures the web isn't the medium to try to find that content in and hasn't ever really been intended as such (i.e. it's not a new development it's just easier to make and/or abuse dynamic content now).
>What is the solution for these bad actors and use cases?
A model of paying for resources not based on serving ads and selling data? If you're not paying for a service, you are the product, not the customer.
A model of paying for resources not based on serving ads and selling data? If you're not paying for a service, you are the product, not the customer.
The models exist they just aren't as profitable as models where you pay for a service and they still gather data. You can pay for Reddit, and YouTube, Twitch (3 personal examples) but that doesn't mean they stop tracking the same kind of usage info or trying to suggest more content to you (additional cost or just trying to hook you on the platform more) like service upsells or side markets they are getting into (YouTube TV, YouTube Gaming, YouTube premium which I think includes YouTube Music now).
The problem isn't the inability to create or fund products where the problems don't exist it's making them more attractive and financially successful than ones that don't (regardless of platform).
The problem isn't the inability to create or fund products where the problems don't exist it's making them more attractive and financially successful than ones that don't (regardless of platform).
You're a product either way.
Plenty of services you pay for cheerfully sell your data to pad the margins a bit more. As a verified person with the ability and inclination to pay for something, you're even a more valuable product.
Plenty of services you pay for cheerfully sell your data to pad the margins a bit more. As a verified person with the ability and inclination to pay for something, you're even a more valuable product.
And that's not the only way the redesign is infringing upon user's privacy. See also: http://archive.is/FGLEF
I used to really feel the same, and tried to make no-js sites for a bit.
Long story short, eventually you're going to want some user interaction beyond submitting forms, and if you've built your site as anything other than a js SPA, it's quickly going to become ugly.
Long story short, eventually you're going to want some user interaction beyond submitting forms, and if you've built your site as anything other than a js SPA, it's quickly going to become ugly.
I wonder, would it be possible to identify a subset of Javascript that is benign? Perhaps some rules about which functions the script is permitted to use, along with restrictions on looping constructs (iterate through an array = OK; unbounded recursion = not OK)...
That way simple stuff like:
And then, as a bonus, we could dump the entire JIT infrastructure and go back to a simple JS interpreter (a la Duktape) because there just wouldn't be much code left to interpret in the first place.
That way simple stuff like:
var form = document.forms[0];
document.getElementById('foo').addEventListener('change',
function (e) {
if (e.target.value == 'xyzzy')
form.elements['bar'].classList.add('show');
}
);
And then, as a bonus, we could dump the entire JIT infrastructure and go back to a simple JS interpreter (a la Duktape) because there just wouldn't be much code left to interpret in the first place.
> (iterate through an array = OK; unbounded recursion = not OK)...
Right, so all we need to do is solve the halting problem... <smirk>
Right, so all we need to do is solve the halting problem... <smirk>
Yeah, so some syntactic rules (using Array.forEach() instead of for(;;) loops) and prohibiting some of Javascript's more dynamic features might be enough to render the language non-Turing complete. It would also -- and this is kind of the point -- render the language unable to perform certain computations that plain vanilla Javascript can perform.
The halting problem is about the general case, but when deciding a sane subset of JS, one can always be more conservative.
Yeah, if your subset of JavaScript is not Turing complete.
If you can prove whether recursion or even a loop is bounded or not, you have solved the collatz conjecture.
reddit also packs in analytics into the voting XHR endpoint
I believe they used to use a separate domain or endpoint but being a more tech savvy audience this was blocked by a lot of people.
Load a page in old.reddit.com and you'll see a "vote" pop up in the network requests
https://www.reddit.com/api/vote
I believe they used to use a separate domain or endpoint but being a more tech savvy audience this was blocked by a lot of people.
Load a page in old.reddit.com and you'll see a "vote" pop up in the network requests
https://www.reddit.com/api/vote
>the idea of letting a site execute Turing-complete computations on its visitor's computers
Why is Turing-completeness the issue here?
Why is Turing-completeness the issue here?
I think that's being used to mean "it's impossible to predict/reason about/constrain what the computation might do". Turing completeness => it can do anything, you can't predict anything
Maybe, but I think it's an overblown term in these sort of questions. Being Turing-complete doesn't mean that it can do anything. It means that it is isomorphic to a Turing machine; in other words, it can emulate a Turing machine, which means it can compute anything a Turing machine can compute.
That's definitely not the same as "do anything." For instance, it doesn't mean it's suddenly granted access to APIs to communicate with the system/break out of a sandbox. I mean, I guess it's theoretically possible for it to create an entire simulated CPU (is it though? not sure...), but not in practice.
The more concerning thing is how strong your sandbox is.
That's definitely not the same as "do anything." For instance, it doesn't mean it's suddenly granted access to APIs to communicate with the system/break out of a sandbox. I mean, I guess it's theoretically possible for it to create an entire simulated CPU (is it though? not sure...), but not in practice.
The more concerning thing is how strong your sandbox is.
> it's theoretically possible for it to create an entire simulated CPU
A Javascript x86 implementation already exists: https://copy.sh/v86/
A Javascript x86 implementation already exists: https://copy.sh/v86/
This only makes sense as far as resource usage goes, Turing completeness has nothing to do with access to APIs which you really need to do anything interesting.
Brainfuck is turing complete but can’t call any APIs, you can very much predict that a Brainfuck program won’t be doing anything very exciting.
Brainfuck is turing complete but can’t call any APIs, you can very much predict that a Brainfuck program won’t be doing anything very exciting.
If it is not Turing complete, your sandbox/interpreter/whatever can be certain that the code does not do anything "surprising". Basically, you can know at compile time that the program fulfills certain constraints. For practical examples, see the newish virtual machine inside of the linux kernel used to execute constraint "scripts" to control the firewall (https://lwn.net/Articles/740157/)
Proving the same constraints and having the same trust in a Turing complete language is basically the halting problem, which is not computable.
Proving the same constraints and having the same trust in a Turing complete language is basically the halting problem, which is not computable.
It real stupidity to push for that 2.0 UI. I don’t know why reddit insisted on that. It’s honestly really bad, pages feel real heavy and wastes a lot of screen real estate. The only reason people haven’t migrated away is because there isn’t an alternative.
> I don’t know why reddit insisted on that.
It's likely that they discovered through A/B testing that they could improve their metrics and monetization strategy this way better than the original UI. Reddit doesn't exist to satisfy us, it exists to make money.
It's likely that they discovered through A/B testing that they could improve their metrics and monetization strategy this way better than the original UI. Reddit doesn't exist to satisfy us, it exists to make money.
> The only reason people haven’t migrated away is because there isn’t an alternative.
I agree the new design is just awful, but you can switch to the old design in the settings menus (equivalent to browsing https://old.reddit.com ).
I agree the new design is just awful, but you can switch to the old design in the settings menus (equivalent to browsing https://old.reddit.com ).
This is what I do but recently they changed it so the mobile browser doesn’t honor your settings. So I have to type the old.reddit url every time. I do that and don’t give in to them
@OP and others, here's how to enable this flag temporarily.
In the pretty printed version of https://www.redditstatic.com/desktop2x/Reddit.de2e3f279d82ee... add a breakpoint to the first line of this part of the code.
In the pretty printed version of https://www.redditstatic.com/desktop2x/Reddit.de2e3f279d82ee... add a breakpoint to the first line of this part of the code.
if (!as(e))
return;
const t = e.user.account ? Jt()(e.user.account.id).toString() : void 0
, s = document.createElement("script");
s.src = Object(es.a)("https://s.udkcrj.com/ag/386183/clear.js", {
dt: "3861831591810830724000",
pd: "acc",
mo: 0,
et: 0,
ti: $t()(),
ui: t,
si: "d2x"
}),
e.runTimeEnvVars.staging=trueLots of sites use "DRM" (content protection, obfuscation) techniques to fingerprint for anti-abuse. Somewhere, there's a truly excellent writeup from (I think?) Mike Hearn about the work they had to do to build anti-abuse for Youtube; it involved nested VMs implemented in Javascript.
I’ve never heard obfuscation referred to as DRM. The author is referring to the DRM browser checks.
> Specfically, it looks for Widevine, PlayReady, Clearkey, and Adobe Primetime
> Specfically, it looks for Widevine, PlayReady, Clearkey, and Adobe Primetime
DRM and obfuscation are traditionally related because unobfuscated DRM wouldn't be effective for long. Hardware assisted DRM is newer and a bit different.
Perhaps you mean encryption, not obfuscation.
For content-controlled code, meaningful encryption tend to imply obfuscation.
That talk sounds interesting. I tried searching but didn't find anything like that about a nested VMs in js. Any idea if the talk is online. I am curious to see why they needed nested VMs.
What are they trying to detect?
Non-interactive account signups, in their case. Success measured in the black market price for fresh working accounts, if I remember correctly.
Later
[wait, no, I'm wrong about that link]
Later
[wait, no, I was wrong about being wrong; here's the link. Thanks, Pinboard!]
https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2014/000780....
Later
[wait, no, I'm wrong about that link]
Later
[wait, no, I was wrong about being wrong; here's the link. Thanks, Pinboard!]
https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2014/000780....
Great read in the link
That's why I'm so happy that HN stayed roughly the same :
fastest UI in the west, respectable community, and non-profit. Just like Wikipedia and Craigslist.
I wish we had an equivalent for every big website.
I wish we had an equivalent for every big website.
Still wouldn't mind some basic formatting options in comments like bullet lists and code though.
The equivalent for websites is probably reader mode supported in various browsers or addons, but that too is probably limited. Pretty sure it doesn't work for Reddit, but for Reddit there may be browser addons that clean up the interface by a lot.
The equivalent for websites is probably reader mode supported in various browsers or addons, but that too is probably limited. Pretty sure it doesn't work for Reddit, but for Reddit there may be browser addons that clean up the interface by a lot.
There is a pretty popular one for Reddit, yes -- it's called Reddit Enhancement Suite, adds a ton of features.
Totally agree. This is also why I keep donating to Wikipedia.
Just another reason why I am never going to touch the new reddit with a 10-foot pole. If they phase out the “old” design, I’m done with it.
Reddit as of late has crossed my enough is enough line, used extension to wipe out 8+years of posts and deleted my account.
Alternative will happen, there is a pile already being promoted we will see who wins.
Alternative will happen, there is a pile already being promoted we will see who wins.
Why did you wipe out all of your posts and comments though?
That just makes it harder for people trying to see insightful comments from years ago.
That just makes it harder for people trying to see insightful comments from years ago.
what extension did you use?
Was it this one? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nuke-reddit-histor...
Was it this one? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nuke-reddit-histor...
I will check, it was a bookmarklet actually, not extension my bad.
Is Reddit not doing enough to identify and remove bot accounts and bad actors, or are they doing too much fingerprinting? The former is definitely a problem, and I imagine most users care about it to some degree.
If you as a user care about both, perhaps a nuanced opinion is warranted.
If you as a user care about both, perhaps a nuanced opinion is warranted.
A lot of these bugs are used to test for fake user agents. Even sophisticated bots may not know that their fake user agent’s V8 version had a jit or rounding bug. If you watch change logs you can spot this stuff. Most of these are obvious and sophisticated fraudsters are well beyond that.
I could say it’s defensible but a big reason bots are a problem is the way the entire online ad system is still the Wild West. There is no regulation so I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the bots were just competitors. It has to be tempting to use that black hat fraud defense knowledge against your competitors, especially if there is so little regulation or transparency.
I could say it’s defensible but a big reason bots are a problem is the way the entire online ad system is still the Wild West. There is no regulation so I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the bots were just competitors. It has to be tempting to use that black hat fraud defense knowledge against your competitors, especially if there is so little regulation or transparency.
I have recurring thoughts of implementing something like reddit, by writing a server which would present a list of groups/posts actually stored on an NNTP server.
This would allow sharing posts, and decentralized hosting, because all the real content would be stored on the NNTP host.
(A simpler approach would be to use an IMAP server - a different mailbox for each group, and threads naturally being stored as .. threaded emails.)
Perhaps I should have a stab at actually implementing it!
This would allow sharing posts, and decentralized hosting, because all the real content would be stored on the NNTP host.
(A simpler approach would be to use an IMAP server - a different mailbox for each group, and threads naturally being stored as .. threaded emails.)
Perhaps I should have a stab at actually implementing it!
I've been thinking about this for quite a while and finally worked out a way to do this in my head the other day and I plan on writing it down to code soon-ish. I'm glad to see others interested in this, and would love to collaborate if you're interested!
this is his the d programming language forums work
You know how this works those days on a big corp level: the CEO buys a "solution" from 3rd-party "vendor". The solution does things but no one cares what exactly and how. A few insider developers get upset when they run a debugger and notice weird stuff going on, but they don't have any power over it. Anyway rolling this kind of things on your own in a non-creepy way is not viable unless you're Google scale, so you pay the 3rd party like WhiteOps or Distil or Cloudflare or use Google captcha.
There's an interesting philosophical question raised here, which looks like this:
User Privacy Vs. Troll/Bot Protection
If you want stronger privacy (weaker browser fingerprinting), then you must equal-and-oppositely accept that that allows Trolls and Bots to flourish on the network...
On the other hand, you can have less Trolls and Bots on the network -- but this means that you must give up some of your privacy via stronger browser fingerprinting...
So, the next logical question is, is there a way to have the best of both worlds, that is, more privacy (less browser fingerprinting), and less Trolls and Bots simultaneously?
The answer I come up with at this time is:
"No -- UNLESS Reddit were to call up every single user that registers, and voice verify them and/or make sure they have a credit card or other valid ID on file... and then they'd have to take extra steps to validate those..."
So yes, it could be done... but then Reddit might lose its automated registration process -- and possibly casual users, who didn't want to provide all of that information as well...
It's interesting, because all online user commmunities represent various types of compromises between the different factors I've outlined above (there are more factors, of course)... in the future, I should create a matrix of all of them, and see where other various famous online communities exist as points on it... I think such an exercise would be enlightening in some way or other...
User Privacy Vs. Troll/Bot Protection
If you want stronger privacy (weaker browser fingerprinting), then you must equal-and-oppositely accept that that allows Trolls and Bots to flourish on the network...
On the other hand, you can have less Trolls and Bots on the network -- but this means that you must give up some of your privacy via stronger browser fingerprinting...
So, the next logical question is, is there a way to have the best of both worlds, that is, more privacy (less browser fingerprinting), and less Trolls and Bots simultaneously?
The answer I come up with at this time is:
"No -- UNLESS Reddit were to call up every single user that registers, and voice verify them and/or make sure they have a credit card or other valid ID on file... and then they'd have to take extra steps to validate those..."
So yes, it could be done... but then Reddit might lose its automated registration process -- and possibly casual users, who didn't want to provide all of that information as well...
It's interesting, because all online user commmunities represent various types of compromises between the different factors I've outlined above (there are more factors, of course)... in the future, I should create a matrix of all of them, and see where other various famous online communities exist as points on it... I think such an exercise would be enlightening in some way or other...
I joined reddit more than 14 years ago, before subreddits, when it was written in lisp and top posts were Paul graham essays and Joel on software. Today HN is the place for this kind of content. When digg died there was a fear what their user base would turn the site into. I have no issues with the design but probably because I’m mainly on my mobile. What did change for me though was the amount of toxic people in almost every subreddit I frequent.
http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html suggests the world may be getting “more toxic” (fragmented + interconnected), rather than some underlying force (“It’s because Digg’s user base invaded”).
Thank you!
I just followed the privacy URI FOR iOS Reddit on Apple App Store, the link is no longer valid. I am searching and reviewing their privacy statements.
EDIT: their blanket policy I found on the web was what I expected. I donate money to Reddit and I wish that as a perk I had more privacy “We may share information between and among Reddit, and any of our parents, affiliates, subsidiaries, and other companies under common control and ownership.”
EDIT: their blanket policy I found on the web was what I expected. I donate money to Reddit and I wish that as a perk I had more privacy “We may share information between and among Reddit, and any of our parents, affiliates, subsidiaries, and other companies under common control and ownership.”
> Contains what appears to be a Javascript engine JIT exploit/bug, "haha jit go brrrrr" appears in a part of the code that appears to be doing something weird with math operations.
Ignoring everything else, this made me chuckle quite a bit. I can only imagine how much funnier it'd be if I actually saw that line while picking apart minified code.
Ignoring everything else, this made me chuckle quite a bit. I can only imagine how much funnier it'd be if I actually saw that line while picking apart minified code.
Reddit died with Aaron Swartz.
Check out r/watchredditdie and r/declineintocensorship to see blatant examples of how Reddit censors right wing opinion. I left Reddit when they recently banned 2000 subs to curb "racist" speech while racist subreddits against whites are okay because they are the majority (America is the only country that exists). Reddit has become such an echo chamber it's worse than Facebook now.
Does anyone know of a nice open-source desktop client for reddit which runs on Linux?
For CLI values of desktop, there's the (no longer maintained) rtv (https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv), though last I checked it works well, and three others:
https://gist.github.com/michael-lazar/8c31b9f637c3b9d7fbdcbb...
https://gist.github.com/michael-lazar/8c31b9f637c3b9d7fbdcbb...
Not a new phenomenon.
Google's anti-bot team in St. Petersburg had a lot of positions for such "talent" good at using borderline exploit techniques to detect bots as far back as 2012-2013
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17649371
> You know, mobile ads companies resort to borderline exploits to fight botting, but even they loose out.
> Lockdown is a useless measure, from my experience. Both IOS and Android ad nets croak under 60-70% bot traffic.
Google's anti-bot team in St. Petersburg had a lot of positions for such "talent" good at using borderline exploit techniques to detect bots as far back as 2012-2013
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17649371
> You know, mobile ads companies resort to borderline exploits to fight botting, but even they loose out.
> Lockdown is a useless measure, from my experience. Both IOS and Android ad nets croak under 60-70% bot traffic.
Reddit is absolutely one of the worst things to ever happen to humanity. Reddit invented modern bubble building.
It is impossible to understate how much better off this world would be without Reddit.
It is impossible to understate how much better off this world would be without Reddit.
As much as it's a meme, something like reddit should exist. A lot of communities are too small to have a dedicated forum and often dedicated forums are even worse from a design perspective.
Old reddit had easy to use features like a built in wiki system that let a lot of communities form with minimal friction.
I'm not sure what a better alternative would be that is also as easy to use.
Old reddit had easy to use features like a built in wiki system that let a lot of communities form with minimal friction.
I'm not sure what a better alternative would be that is also as easy to use.
You meant 4chan, right? w.r.t. bubbling, how is Reddit as a platform different than a forum?
4chan is pretty niche these days, and for good reasons. It was never mainstream but it definitely lost a lot of its prestige and relevance.
But at least 4chan was always upfront about its policies: you could always basically post anything as long as it didn't put the site's existence in jeopardy, so effectively as long as the lawyers/cops/fbi didn't come knocking it was free for all.
Reddit is roughly the same thing except they hypocritically attempt to maintain a façade of being "the good guys". I remember in particular how, after having hosted "jail bait" and other very questionable content for years they finally decided to no longer allow it they felt the need to publish a heartfelt message about how "we thought about our daughters" and all that crap instead of saying the truth, which is that it just generated too much bad publicity and made the advertisers go away.
Reddit is 4chan pretending to be Facebook.
But at least 4chan was always upfront about its policies: you could always basically post anything as long as it didn't put the site's existence in jeopardy, so effectively as long as the lawyers/cops/fbi didn't come knocking it was free for all.
Reddit is roughly the same thing except they hypocritically attempt to maintain a façade of being "the good guys". I remember in particular how, after having hosted "jail bait" and other very questionable content for years they finally decided to no longer allow it they felt the need to publish a heartfelt message about how "we thought about our daughters" and all that crap instead of saying the truth, which is that it just generated too much bad publicity and made the advertisers go away.
Reddit is 4chan pretending to be Facebook.
> how is Reddit as a platform different than a forum?
you can have meaningful on topic discussions on a forum spanning across months and even years, reddit has the priority and visibility on new threads same as HN. The style of writing seems to be different but that of course depends on the forum or subreddit (I have yet to find the good ones if there are any)
you can have meaningful on topic discussions on a forum spanning across months and even years, reddit has the priority and visibility on new threads same as HN. The style of writing seems to be different but that of course depends on the forum or subreddit (I have yet to find the good ones if there are any)
This isn't newsworthy. There are hundreds of ways to use the browser's built-in API for fingerprinting purposes. It's actually overkill because you only need a handful and a decent statistical model derived from device testing.
Any big company with ad revenue has their own research and proprietary methods to catch fraudulent ads and TOS violators. It's been happening for years, and as long as browsers "improve", it will continue.
Any big company with ad revenue has their own research and proprietary methods to catch fraudulent ads and TOS violators. It's been happening for years, and as long as browsers "improve", it will continue.
Is it possible to use DRM to display a captcha? I tried to lookup Chrome's DRM doc but it was removed and can be only accessed by DRM members.
I wasn’t on Reddit often at the very beginning, I only really started to use it when I found out about rage comics and would log on every morning before university to check the new ones out.
That must have also been around the time the same guy who introduced me to Reddit also asked me to check out a cool game he was playing called Minecraft!
That must have also been around the time the same guy who introduced me to Reddit also asked me to check out a cool game he was playing called Minecraft!
This is basically supercookie from Samy.
So fraud detection becomes a new excuse for tracking, when ads targeting doesn't sound solid enough.
I've been a Reddit user since about the time that the Digg Patriots poisoned the well over at Digg... At least that's what prompted me to make an account.
Reading through the comments here is a bit weird for me because it seems like I have a much different experience that most folks here. I suspect this is because a) I use the RES browser extension to filter out a great many useless or unpleasant subreddits and b) most of my time on Reddit is spent moderating.
The redesign however, is a bit of disaster. Even though I don't care for the look I would have used it but when they rolled it out and made it the default experience it lacked the basic functionality for moderators which is where I spend the majority of my time on Reddit. For two years every time the admins released some improvement to it, I would go back and try to use it and couldn't... so I gave up and branded it "worse.Reddit"
Anyway, I suppose it's about time to find an alternative to Reddit but I've yet to find a site where I can create and curate niche communities, like I do on Reddit or where I could somehow transfer the collected data and experience of the larger subreddits I moderate to some other site (which isn't already home to unpleasant extremists who left Reddit).
So far I know about: https://tildes.net/ and https://dev.lemmy.ml/. I sorta lean towards lemmy but I don't have a solid reason for that.
Lastly fingerprinting on Reddit seems like a very useful and very needed solution to problems that have little to do with targetted advertising or selling private user data.
Reading through the comments here is a bit weird for me because it seems like I have a much different experience that most folks here. I suspect this is because a) I use the RES browser extension to filter out a great many useless or unpleasant subreddits and b) most of my time on Reddit is spent moderating.
The redesign however, is a bit of disaster. Even though I don't care for the look I would have used it but when they rolled it out and made it the default experience it lacked the basic functionality for moderators which is where I spend the majority of my time on Reddit. For two years every time the admins released some improvement to it, I would go back and try to use it and couldn't... so I gave up and branded it "worse.Reddit"
Anyway, I suppose it's about time to find an alternative to Reddit but I've yet to find a site where I can create and curate niche communities, like I do on Reddit or where I could somehow transfer the collected data and experience of the larger subreddits I moderate to some other site (which isn't already home to unpleasant extremists who left Reddit).
So far I know about: https://tildes.net/ and https://dev.lemmy.ml/. I sorta lean towards lemmy but I don't have a solid reason for that.
Lastly fingerprinting on Reddit seems like a very useful and very needed solution to problems that have little to do with targetted advertising or selling private user data.
> Lastly fingerprinting on Reddit seems like a very useful and very needed solution to problems that have little to do with targetted advertising or selling private user data.
Ohhhh cliffhanger!
Tell us more?
I suspect you're referring to abuse???
Ohhhh cliffhanger!
Tell us more?
I suspect you're referring to abuse???
DRM is a bit clickbaity here.
The site does a lot of fingerprinting, and the EME module is one of the least useful bits and doesn't really reveal anything the browser user agent string doesn't already.
The site does a lot of fingerprinting, and the EME module is one of the least useful bits and doesn't really reveal anything the browser user agent string doesn't already.
As if another reason was needed to leave that cesspool behind.
I sat this every time I see a post about Reddit - selete your accounts. I did this about two years ago and as a result I was multiples happier and more productive.
[deleted]
Not to sound like an idiot - but aside from CPU usage, what's the downside to this exactly?
Honestly speaking a lot of the list pointed out in the article is weird that way. For example, "Checks if function bodies that are implemented in the browser contain [native code] when stringified" - that's a very straightforward way to check if a particular feature is browser-supported or was polyfilled.
>"haha jit go brrrr"
Ah, that’s why Firefox was notifying me that Reddit wants me to enable DRM recently. We new it was only matter of time, since they got this crap into the standard. Pity mofos.
honestly disgusting behaviour IMO, everyone should use noscript or ublock origin to turn off all js by default. Even though it's a hassle it gets easier once you've established your allow/deny list for frequent sites over time. First time visits remain a bear though since sometimes you have to do a bunch of guesswork to determine which js bits are required for a given site to work
sometimes you have to do a bunch of guesswork to determine which js bits are required for a given site to work
I've been browsing with off-by-default JS basically since JS was invented, and my list of trusted sites has remained very small (around a dozen) --- the majority of sites I come across on searches that ask me to enable it will simply cause me to go somewhere else. The rare occasion that I can't find the information elsewhere, I will view source and sometimes it's sitting there, or even RE the API, but actually getting me to enable JS is close to a "never", as it's reserved for the very few sites I have far more trust in, e.g. my bank.
Once --- and only once --- I was enticed by a site that doesn't need it to "enable JS for a better experience", and immediately disabled it again when I was bombarded with ads and other distracting, irritating shit (selecting text causes a popup, elements animating around while I'm trying to focus, etc.)
I've been browsing with off-by-default JS basically since JS was invented, and my list of trusted sites has remained very small (around a dozen) --- the majority of sites I come across on searches that ask me to enable it will simply cause me to go somewhere else. The rare occasion that I can't find the information elsewhere, I will view source and sometimes it's sitting there, or even RE the API, but actually getting me to enable JS is close to a "never", as it's reserved for the very few sites I have far more trust in, e.g. my bank.
Once --- and only once --- I was enticed by a site that doesn't need it to "enable JS for a better experience", and immediately disabled it again when I was bombarded with ads and other distracting, irritating shit (selecting text causes a popup, elements animating around while I'm trying to focus, etc.)
vprza.com strikes again
what is that domain? cant seem to find any useful info about it.
Stallman was right. Holy shit.
GDPR says hello. Even something as easy as Google's recaptcha is impossible to implement GDPR-compliant according to many German authorities, so I highly doubt that this kind of invasive tracking is in any way legal.
Why can't they just use something like a proof-of-work mechanism to combat spam?
Why can't they just use something like a proof-of-work mechanism to combat spam?
I agree that this is gross, but I do want to add some subtlety to the discussion. Reddit is trying to combat a different kind of activity than traditional spray-n-pray “buy our pills” spam. It is a large and influential enough forum that corporate and nation-state actors try to manipulate the tone and content of conversation with both words and votes. None of that is necessarily a volume-based issue, which is what proof-of-work is effective against.
It’s not clear to me how fingerprinting helps... eventually to defeat such protections, a nation state could develop virtual machines or botnets to trick any script into seeing their posts as unique. The newest trick is to amplify posts written by third-parties, for extra authenticity. I can see how this kind of service protects against “normal” sorts of abuses, but nation states can build their own Amazon Turk and at that scale, it seems impossible that a service like this would be effective for long. Sadly the only long-term defence of this might be to start slowly closing down the open internet borders, to make it harder for other countries to mimic a country’s citizens online. Similarly, countries have an added incentive to do this to spy on local servers. It’s possible that one way or another, we’ll all be living under a Great Firewall whether it’s government or corporate controlled, or both. Nation states hiding behind anonymity might just kill some of our abilities to be completely anonymous, that seems to be the trend here...?
Yeah, I can see the internet being segregated in future. It's just better that way and more moderate able according to local laws/culture. Give it 10 years.
Reddit could require users associate a mobile number with their account and use an SMS to validate. Zelle (the payment network) performs fraud validation using your mobile number as a signal, for example (using a Google Voice, Twilio, or similar virtual number will cause onboarding to fail).
A prepaid SIM card is $5.
There are also now services that do this for you so you don't even have to buy the SIM card yourself. They add some new phone numbers every day and publish the numbers along with every SMS they receive on a public site with ads on it. The "higher end" ones give you your own personal throwaway phone number but then you have to pay the $5.
This means sites should immediately stop using this verification method because it obviously isn't going to stop adversaries with even trivial resources, and the security implications of encouraging vulnerable populations to use random sites like that is hugely bad.
SMS verification is also ridiculous to begin with because phone numbers get recycled quickly and users should neither lose their account just because their phone number changed nor have some stranger enabled to steal it.
There are also now services that do this for you so you don't even have to buy the SIM card yourself. They add some new phone numbers every day and publish the numbers along with every SMS they receive on a public site with ads on it. The "higher end" ones give you your own personal throwaway phone number but then you have to pay the $5.
This means sites should immediately stop using this verification method because it obviously isn't going to stop adversaries with even trivial resources, and the security implications of encouraging vulnerable populations to use random sites like that is hugely bad.
SMS verification is also ridiculous to begin with because phone numbers get recycled quickly and users should neither lose their account just because their phone number changed nor have some stranger enabled to steal it.
This is a poor argument against a mechanism which clearly has both a cost and time component against an attacker. Of course you're not going to subvert attackers with enormous resources, but you will slow down most of them and it is cheap to implement (both upfront and for ongoing SMS costs).
What cost and time component? They go to a website like this (this is not an endorsement, the security of doing this is terrible):
https://receive-smss.com/
It costs zero dollars and takes the same amount of time as the SMS verification would on a regular phone. If the sign-up site is continuously vigilant enough to find and prohibit every number on every one of these sites (not so cheap to implement) then there are sites that give you immediate access to a non-published number for $5. Even this is not "enormous resources" by any means.
But the even bigger implementation cost is that there are many people who don't have a personal cell phone number to receive SMS, and you're either disenfranchising them or pushing them to use sites like that which obviously allow anybody to see the verification codes sent to the phone number which is now associated with their account.
> A significant amount of online properties use SMS for 2FA and authentication
Using SMS for optional 2FA is a mediocre security practice but is mostly harmless (because people can opt out; though it still makes it possible to lose your account if you use it, your number changes and then the site requires you to authenticate with it).
Using it for mandatory 2FA has the problems discussed.
But I also want to point out that actual major sites exist that use SMS as the sole and mandatory authentication factor, and they are very powerfully incompetent.
https://receive-smss.com/
It costs zero dollars and takes the same amount of time as the SMS verification would on a regular phone. If the sign-up site is continuously vigilant enough to find and prohibit every number on every one of these sites (not so cheap to implement) then there are sites that give you immediate access to a non-published number for $5. Even this is not "enormous resources" by any means.
But the even bigger implementation cost is that there are many people who don't have a personal cell phone number to receive SMS, and you're either disenfranchising them or pushing them to use sites like that which obviously allow anybody to see the verification codes sent to the phone number which is now associated with their account.
> A significant amount of online properties use SMS for 2FA and authentication
Using SMS for optional 2FA is a mediocre security practice but is mostly harmless (because people can opt out; though it still makes it possible to lose your account if you use it, your number changes and then the site requires you to authenticate with it).
Using it for mandatory 2FA has the problems discussed.
But I also want to point out that actual major sites exist that use SMS as the sole and mandatory authentication factor, and they are very powerfully incompetent.
>Why can't they just use something like a proof-of-work mechanism to combat spam?
I don't believe there is a level of work that one could do that would both be too expensive for scammers and not grind your battery to a halt.
I don't believe there is a level of work that one could do that would both be too expensive for scammers and not grind your battery to a halt.
This actually played out on the reddit-alike notabug.io (federated all js thing with proof of work anonymous voting). What happened was a couple users had the programming skill to write better than JS could ever be voting bots and then they controlled the "front page" and only looking at all posts by 'new' worked. This of course meant the anti-spam proof of work voting was not working and so useless.
[deleted]
How would the PoW mechanism work?
You can see anonymous proof of work voting in action over at notabug.io.
I was able to upvote something 30 times, myself.
Like, the first point of an anti-spam system on a forum is so that you can't just upvote your own crap to the front page.
Wonder why this never caught on. /s
Like, the first point of an anti-spam system on a forum is so that you can't just upvote your own crap to the front page.
Wonder why this never caught on. /s
[deleted]
It's the least worst system that allows for anonymous people to participate (no accounts required). Rather than stopping people the idea is to add just a little friction.
To say that, you're kinda assuming the objective though and then suggesting that it's a worthwhile one.
Like, this poor solution is probably the best thing on some dimension, I would just wonder if it's a dimension worth caring about.
The objective seems to be eliminating the requirement of registration at all. Why? Why would I care to enable people to upvote/downvote content that don't care to spend 1 second registering? I also don't think you can make a convincing case that the friction of registration makes or breaks any websites when almost all of the most popular websites require registration. Seems to be me users are willing to jump the hurdle by the millions if they care to engage.
It can't be a matter of privacy because the site could be logging your IP address in both cases.
It can't really be friction because you could make the most frictionless process possible. Maybe clicking upvote summons a tiny tooltip where you enter a username and password. EZBoard forums back in the day had that -- You would write your whole post and the submit button would assign you a random username that you could then customize.
I just see a forum that made the questionable decision to let you infinitely manipulate rankings without even trying to stop you, the actual impl of that (no registration, PoW puzzle, etc.) rather irrelevant.
Like, this poor solution is probably the best thing on some dimension, I would just wonder if it's a dimension worth caring about.
The objective seems to be eliminating the requirement of registration at all. Why? Why would I care to enable people to upvote/downvote content that don't care to spend 1 second registering? I also don't think you can make a convincing case that the friction of registration makes or breaks any websites when almost all of the most popular websites require registration. Seems to be me users are willing to jump the hurdle by the millions if they care to engage.
It can't be a matter of privacy because the site could be logging your IP address in both cases.
It can't really be friction because you could make the most frictionless process possible. Maybe clicking upvote summons a tiny tooltip where you enter a username and password. EZBoard forums back in the day had that -- You would write your whole post and the submit button would assign you a random username that you could then customize.
I just see a forum that made the questionable decision to let you infinitely manipulate rankings without even trying to stop you, the actual impl of that (no registration, PoW puzzle, etc.) rather irrelevant.
Separate from GDPR, I'm wondering whether using security exploits (such as ones the article listed) will be considered violation of US law pertaining to unauthorized access of a computer system.
do you have a source on this? I've only seen assertions that recaptcha is against GDPR from US sources
Only in German: https://www.lda.bayern.de/de/faq.html
Translating the captcha-related items:
> It it allowed to embed captchas that prevent bots?
> Yes. The website operator has not only a vested interest in using captchas but is even obligated to do so as they have to guarantee website availability.
(I don't understand what this obligation is about - surely it's my own choice whether my website is up or down?)
> Is it allowed to embed Google captchas on the website?
> Website operators should strongly consider alternatives. If Google reCAPTCHA is used regardless, the responsible should be aware that they must be able to prove that this use is lawful according to [data privacy law]. When unable to explain how Google uses user data, the user cannot be informed transparently and the lawful use cannot be established.
> It it allowed to embed captchas that prevent bots?
> Yes. The website operator has not only a vested interest in using captchas but is even obligated to do so as they have to guarantee website availability.
(I don't understand what this obligation is about - surely it's my own choice whether my website is up or down?)
> Is it allowed to embed Google captchas on the website?
> Website operators should strongly consider alternatives. If Google reCAPTCHA is used regardless, the responsible should be aware that they must be able to prove that this use is lawful according to [data privacy law]. When unable to explain how Google uses user data, the user cannot be informed transparently and the lawful use cannot be established.
> (I don't understand what this obligation is about - surely it's my own choice whether my website is up or down?)
They are likely either saying that the uptime of the service relies on the use of captchas (i.e. it's a technical obligation), or it is implying that the majority of sites are commercially operated, wherein the operator has a financial/legal/contractual obligation that they deliver a working product.
They are likely either saying that the uptime of the service relies on the use of captchas (i.e. it's a technical obligation), or it is implying that the majority of sites are commercially operated, wherein the operator has a financial/legal/contractual obligation that they deliver a working product.
Why the hell do we need avatars on Reddit anyway? Most of them are animated, strobing distractions.
Reddit has jumped the shark. If there weren't significant opportunity cost, I'd happily work on a replacement. It's become a low-signal, high-noise ad-laden dumpster fire.
Advertising is eating the Internet alive. I fucking hate it.