It's really time for a good alternative to Reddit to arise. They are ready for disruption.
If that's not a rhetorical question, are the "people" in your question about mainstream users or people like you?
I consider myself a "mainstream user" and have been using it since the beginning. I don't see that reddit is unbelievably user hostile nowadays. (I do acknowledge that it's annoying that I have to type "old.reddit.com" instead of letting it default to "www.reddit.com" to get the previous thread layout back.)
To describe my usage: I only go to the reddit front page to click on a few stories for that quick dopamine hit and that's it. I don't have a login. I don't participate in any subreddits or bother customizing my front page.
I'm guessing my usage pattern is similar to 90% of the lurkers on reddit.
>They no longer let people view nsfw boards without logging in
I just tried some random nsfw reddits and they don't require login. Just a "are you sure?" confirmation prompt.
I hold very mainstream, socially conservative but fiscally liberal opinions. My viewpoints aren't welcome there.
> I just tried some random nsfw reddits and they don't require login. Just a "are you sure?" confirmation prompt.
My IP must be flagged for an A/B test, because I can't view some nsfw subreddits without logging in.
Edit: I hate doing this, but could someone explain the downvotes? I just want to understand how I'm wrong here.
You can use their web version? Aren't they constantly trying to get you to install the app? Or are you on desktop? In which case... wow, I didn't know people could use that.
Reddit is an absolute dump, though. It just has enough constant activity that people will keep dealing with it until some major update breaks it for, like, a whole week and people migrate because they don't really have a choice.
Basically it wants to be a service that is easy to deploy, not resource hungry and with minimal overhead over the base federated protocol (ActivityPub in this case) that allows it to sustain a small/medium community that shares similar interests, but also have access to the wider federated community (composed of various instances of Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed, etc.).
> They no longer let people view nsfw boards without logging in
That's false, or perhaps limited to the new webui – RedReader on android still shows them fine.
Agreed on the state of "frontpage", sure – but was it ever that different?
Okay, so it's only possible with 3rd party apps? I think saying 'they no longer let people view nsfw boards without logging in' holds up.
Name a couple, I'm curious what the difference between "advertiser friendly" and "openly hostile to site rules" is.
/r/nflstreams, /r/gundeals, /r/gunsforsale, /r/shoplifting, /r/thefappening, /r/darknetmarkets, /r/deepfakes
I didn't notice that, what do you mean? any examples?
Also this is untrue
>They no longer let people view nsfw boards without logging in
They don't always block it, it seems random.
>>They no longer let people view nsfw boards without logging in
Could be a regional thing.
I delete the account if I feel I'm starting to get too excited about my karma level.
If you know a better place for this, I'd love to know.
Counteropinion: We don't need a good alternative.
I've learned a lot on reddit, but honestly, I've spent so many hundreds of hours there that I'm pretty sure it wasn't worth it. Reddit was extremely addictive and universally available, so I'm glad to see it gone (gone in the sense that it stopped giving me "my fix" long ago so it was easy to stop using it).
I really don't see this "hostility". HN loves to complain about the new design, but I don't mind it, and sometimes I like it. RES works with it just fine. The only annoyance I get is RPAN, which I have been able to disable.
After 10 years of using Reddit, I don't feel like the site itself is worse. I just move to subreddits with good mods that don't want memes and I really enjoy my usage of the site.
I see, and I am not using hyperbole, literally none of the problems you state. Reddit is massive with more communities than either of us can appreciate and I think the direction the admins are going is actually fine? Sure, I don't agree with everything they do, but I don't see it as hostile or such a negative experience to my usage that I would think of leaving Reddit.
Try asking people what subreddits they go to, what their use-cases are like, when/why they use it. I really don't think it is so hard to "understand" why Reddit is a massively popular as it is.
[citation needed]
What do I not read on reddit? Pretty much the stuff that’s posted on HN. HN has a worse interface (especially since there is no Reddit Enhancement Suite) than old Reddit, but the comments are usually (unless it’s US related) better.
So yes, I’d like to move off Reddit (and probably will if they ever turn off old reddit), but there is simply nothing comparable besides Reddit clones usually overrun with rightwing nutjobs and barely any other content.
Also notably the Reddit clones all seem to just be full of the people who were banned from reddit... And while I defend everyone's right to free speech, I really don't want to read the speech of these particular people (I just checked the front page of voat. Top stories include a headline insinuating Hollywood is run by Jews, and a video that is described as "great for redpilling normies")
I don't think that's a good argument against forums. First threads can be split by mods, thus creating a new thread (not a perfect solution, but it can be useful when part of a thread goes too off-topic). And I've found that the reply mentions make forking conversation readable, even if it's not as good as the HN/reddit format. And even then, I don't really think the lack of forking is the biggest issue with niche forums, but rather than a sub reddit can be easily created (and many people already know reddit and may have an account), whereas creating/setting up a forums is more difficult.
Incorrect. There definitely are subreddits that aren't very useful to advertise in and they're left to be.
> Others are quarantined,
Only the most vile shit.
> and users shadow banned for showing wrongthink.
I don't think they do shadowbans any more, stuff does however get caught in spam filters and removed by mods. And Mods have each and every right to take out holocaust-denying, racist, homophobic garbage.
> The majority of top posts come from the same old users, generally paid content creators.
Learn how to pick subreddits.
They absolutely do.
> And Mods have each and every right to take out > holocaust-denying, racist, homophobic garbage.
They 'take out' users for much less.
No, that much is very true. Top content is definitely driven by paid content creators, unless you are talking about massively small subreddits without traffic.
I tried the default non-logged page and I think 9gag was better than that.
I can't describe in non-colorful analogies how I felt seeing that so I won't bother. But I'm sure that once the old theme goes so am I
Understandably they took a small step back early on and decided to remove communities sharing pictures of children, but jumping forward to today Reddit is almost unrecognisable...
Pressure from advertisers has caused them to ban adult content from the front page, and as you point out it seems they're actively trying to make it as difficult as possible to view adult content. More worryingly though communities with unpopular political positions are quickly removed to avoid potential media push back.
I know Twitter gets a lot of hate, but the political environment on Reddit is far more toxic and hostile IMO. To their credit I do occasionally see some right-wing trends and opinions on Twitter, but on Reddit even creating a subreddit in support of the current president of the United States is likely to be seen as a bannable offence.
There are some good alternative social networks cropping up now though. Unfortunately I haven't found one that isn't highly partisan, but there are alternatives for those of us who sometimes think the wrong things. I suspect any popular social media platform will succumb to the same corporate pressure with enough time though. Corporate interest has changed almost all websites from a decade ago in one way or another.
It's pure speculation on my part, but it fits.
I've been using Reddit Ads recently, and the UI for it barely seems to work. The dashboard updates days later with incorrect information. Crazy for their main revenue source to be so flakey.
I used that account mostly for answering startup related questions and related content. If IFTTT was the problem why not just inform so? I used IFTTT to know if someone has asked any startup related questions on couple of subreddits.
I have never broken Reddit Content policy, In fact I have never received any warning before from moderators of the subreddit I participate in. I always post, comment relevant content appropriate to the subreddit and reddit rules.
I don't think there's any part here which is "official" though?
It's begging to be put out of its misery by a better alternative, just like it did to Digg.
