Thread

1. nomilk · 1790655652 · focus · HN ↗

   The biggest problem I have with reddit is mods can slowly but systematically ban users who express unfavourable opinions, and over time, anyone casually browsing could mistakenly believe those views are unpopular, whereas in reality everyone with that view (everyone who spoke it, anyway) was banned.

   To give a simple example, one video game franchise subreddit bans any negative discussion on the most recent title. Over 5-10 years, this shielded them from negative feedback. But the franchise has tanked because core users weren't listened to, and they ended up making something nobody wanted.

   1. aurareturn · 1790656841 · focus · HN ↗

      My biggest problem with Reddit is that trolls, memes, unintelligent posts have taken over the platform. Go to any semi-popular subreddit and most upvoted posts are just low effort memes. Posts that are long and well thought out don't win over memes and trolls. One of the reasons is that posting a few short words wins in upvotes because they get posted first while it takes much longer to write something thoughtful.

      Reddit's system rewards these low effort posts for some reason. Over time, the platform becomes less and less trustworthy until it becomes something like Quora.

      1. EA-3167 · 1790659257 · focus · HN ↗

         A non-trivial number of the newer accounts that do that are bots, ban-dodgers building karma, people aging accounts for general resale and so on. Even a lot of "human" activity on Reddit isn't in good faith before you even get to the general triviality 99.9999% of it represents.

         Plus at this point if you really want to ask what Reddit thinks ask an LLM, it'll tell you in painful detail without exposing you to that place. Just remember to check claims and sources (a good practice for human claims as well as LLM ones).

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