[gitgacutils]

> Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free.

Reddit is none of those now. It's not anonymous ( they track your identity and feed it to the government ). You may be "anonymous" to fellow users, but not anonymous to authorities. It isn't information dense. It's propaganda dense. Almost all the content there now is government, media, ngo, etc propaganda. As for ads, check out the videos, movies, music, etc subs when a particular movie, album, etc comes out. The frontpage will be littered with ad-like submissions ( aka ads ).

Reddit is 80% government, politics and news propaganda and 20% ads ( movies, music, etc ). I think you are confusing the reddit of 2011 with today's reddit.

> It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom.

Actually reddit could and did monetize "toxic content". How do you think reddit has been around for nearly 13 years? And once again, you are confusing reddit of 2011 to reddit of 2018. Today, reddit isn't any more "toxic" than twitter, youtube, facebook, etc. Reddit is heavily censored. Besides, on social media, you don't monetize content, you monetize eyeballs/clicks/data points.

> I’m still skeptical of Reddit’s ability to turn a profit.

Do you really think reddit is unprofitable? Let me guess, you think that youtube is not profitable right? You think these companies have been around for more than a decade because they are not "profitable"?

Their "hollywood" style accounting may make it seem like they are not profitable, but these companies are incredibly profitable. It's why youtube has a valuation over $100 billion and reddit's valuation is in the billions.

> But as a community platform it’s the best out there IMO.

Have to disagree with you there. Any garden variety forum is better than reddit. Also, reddit stopped being a community a long time ago.

I've stopped using it because it's all political nonsense or advertisements.

[protonimitate]

I disagree wholeheartedly.

> You may be "anonymous" to fellow users, but not anonymous to authorities. True, but this only matters to a very small percentage of its user base. A vast majority of people who use Reddit don't know or don't care about data collection. They only care if their friend/coworker/family can ID them from what they post.

>Reddit is 90% government, politics and new propaganda and 20% ads... The front page/top posts, maybe. 90% of the content doesn't reach the top of /r/all though. And I don't know if I consider what is popular/part of the echo chamber as an 'ad'.

>Do you really think reddit in unprofitable? Profitable or not, what's the difference? They've maintained a relatively ad free experience and don't expect you to 'pay to play'. Content isn't pay-walled. Yes they've made cosmetic changes to shift towards a more 'social-media' style experience, but the changes are not that bad and haven't drastically changed the user experience.

>Any garden variety forum is better than reddit. This is personal and can't be claimed with any objectivity. You may find that certain nice forums offer you more value, personally, but that doesn't apply to everyone.

In my experience, whatever shortcomings Reddit has are greatly outweighed by the information and entertainment I've received.

[Analemma_]

> Reddit is 80% government, politics and news propaganda and 20% ads ( movies, music, etc ).

I am a heavy Reddit user and I don't notice any of these things, except when I specifically go looking for them. Curate your subreddit list and unsubscribe from all the default subs - they are all garbage, and that isn't even Reddit's fault, it's just inevitable once they reach a certain size.

[gitgacutils]

> I am a heavy Reddit user and I don't notice any of these things

You don't see politics related content on reddit daily? I used reddit since reddit was days old ( years before the digg migration ) so maybe we visited different websites.

> Curate your subreddit list and unsubscribe from all the default subs

That defeats the point of reddit doesn't it? Or what made reddit great. I never used reddit to be part of a bubble. Not only are default subs a bubble today, reddit itself is a bubble.

> and that isn't even Reddit's fault, it's just inevitable once they reach a certain size.

Actually it is reddit's fault. When they allowed and encouraged censorship, it allowed a small faction of political and news media/ngo affiliated mods to turn subreddits into their propaganda platform.

[rootusrootus]

How do you avoid being in a bubble? Usually of your own creation. Whether it is curating the subreddits you see, or selecting the news sites you visit, you are only ever going to see a tiny fraction of what's going on in the world.

I skip pretty much all the political and news subreddits and stick to the focused communities that match my interest. Things like r/3dprinting, or r/omscs, etc. I find most communities are decent as long as they're not enormous. Any significant political content and I bail, I am just too tired of being reminded how horrible many people are.

[gitgacutils]

> How do you avoid being in a bubble?

Simple. By exposing yourself to a variety of ideas, opinions, viewpoints.

>Whether it is curating the subreddits you see, or selecting the news sites you visit, you are only ever going to see a tiny fraction of what's going on in the world.

Hence why I never subscribed to a subreddit...

[djsumdog]

> It's not anonymous ( they track your identity and feed it to the government )

Are you referring to the missing warrant canary? That's about the time I stopped using Reddit, but I doubt they're selling data to the government. They're probably ordered to give out data due to National Security Letters.

> The frontpage will be littered with ad-like submissions ( aka ads ).

/r/hailcorporate is kinda interesting in that they like to point this out. It's not necessarily advertisers pushing their stuff, but a mix of regular users who just embrace consumerism and corporatism + ad bots. It's sometimes impossible to tell the two apart.

> Actually reddit could and did monetize "toxic content". How do you think reddit has been around for nearly 13 years?

I think OP is talking about all the now banned subs: /r/jailbait (and all the other bait subs), /r/niggers, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc. etc.

> Also, reddit stopped being a community a long time ago

I don't use Reddit anymore, except for local subs sometimes. The combination of the warranty canary and the mass bannings made me fed up. But what pissed me off the most was the CEO that edited comments in the database, and then kept his job with an apology. You should have to step down after that.

I agree though. Reddit isn't a great service. I hope we see more smaller sites based around the concept; maybe more Lobster instances for niche communities.

[gitgacutils]

> Are you referring to the missing warrant canary?

That's certainly part of it. But even before then, reddit was sharing data with the authorities. Just like google removing "don't be evil" didn't mean that they weren't evil before they removed it. It just made it "official".

> I think OP is talking about all the now banned subs:

Right. And reddit was monetized while those subs were around.

> I don't use Reddit anymore, except for local subs sometimes.

The only time I check reddit is if there is a major news event, but the news and worldnews subs are now run by the news media employees, so it's all links to bbc, cnn, nytimes, etc, so even those subs are pointless now.

[catach]

> Reddit is 80% government, politics and news propaganda

I don't think the list of top 50 subreddits [0] particularly supports that assertion.

[0] http://redditmetrics.com/top

[Zak]

> You may be "anonymous" to fellow users, but not anonymous to authorities.

reddit doesn't collect a large amount of information about users. They can give authorities the contents of your "private" messages and non-public subreddits, and your IP address. If you're making even a minimal effort to be anonymous, this will not be useful to the authorities.

[obelix_]

On the internet of 2018 sites like Reddit/FB/YouTube/Twitter are perceived to have VALUE to users for just one simple reason - instant validation of whatever bull is flitting thro their minds.

The like/upvote/view/retweet counts never existed next to every thoughtful or thoughtless utterances prior to these sites. Just as in the real world. And just as it should have been. Everything your mom says doesn't need a popularity score next it.

The ppl who defend these sites have blindly accepted that popularity scores next to every thought/speech/action have no downside.

These days I don't even expect them to overcome that blindness which is why comments like yours will always get down voted despite the common sense in them.