>Hacker News is superior by almost every metric.
In the most narrow of topics, it's semi-superior... and because of bizarre circumstances that aren't easily replicated. We can't do politics here (though that erodes every day, looks like), which keeps the worst shit-shows out of here, but anywhere else that wouldn't ever happen. dang is some sort of minor saint, had this been reddit that would have morphed into "we can't do politics except those I like".
Even in that one topic (tech, software, engineering) we still have these bizarre status quo opinions that you dare not buck.
>Reddit was also way better than 4chan for serious discussion in the years before Trump was elected.
Sure, for a brief period as the reddit population was ramping up, but before ever slack-jawed imbecile showed up thinking it was the new Facebook, it was pretty good. But that was earlier than 2016. Might have to go back to 2012ish. Pre-2010 even.
>The model works as long as the managers are not incompetent.
...
>Federated networks might be the solution here.
Doubtful. Then instead of bans, it's just a bunch of weirdo tiny forums that have all de-federated from each other. Have you checked out Lemmy? The first and biggest instance was a bunch of Stalin-esque commies who camped out on it with the intent of dominating the entire system. See, with reddit, no one quite understood that it might become big, and so no one was eyeing it with the intent od a landgrab. But once it failed, everyone was on the lookout for the next-big-thing, and if there was even a chance of it they set up shop. No technical solution can exist to fix that sort of a problem.
