[asclepi]

I also appreciate the open nature of Reddit. No account is required if you just want to read, and you don't need to be first "approved" to most subreddits to be able to contribute. No "real-name" policies that often do more harm than good either.

While Facebook by default erects walls around content, Reddit by default promotes the free sharing and equal access to information, which resonates much more with the original promise and mission of the internet.

It's encouraging to see Reddit overtaking Facebook in popularity at a time when the freedoms of the internet are often under attack. Yes, Reddit has its flaws, but in the end, it is one of the best defenses that we have.

[kgwxd]

They still allow anonymous sign-up without an email address, but I've noticed a few dark UI patterns hiding that feature with recent redesigns. I delete and create accounts all the time to improve anonymity and prevent karma-lust. A few months ago I almost swore off Reddit because it seemed not providing an email was no longer an option during sign up. Now you just have to hit "Next" with an empty email field, it used to be a discrete option. This leads me to believe they don't like it, and it might not stand forever. Sure, I could always just use a fake email but, because I didn't have to, and the fact they specifically told me I didn't have to, I knew they respected my choice to be responsible for remembering/protecting my own password and didn't want to scare me into giving up my email address using "account recovery" FUD. That respect seems to be slipping away.

[babuskov]

> didn't want to scare me into giving up my email address using "account recovery" FUD

It's not FUD. I run a small website (about 10k daily visits) where you can log in and play some games and don't have the "reset password via e-mail" mechanism. You won't believe the amount of "I forgot my password, please reset it" requests I get from people.

Majority of people give more value to being allowed to be lazy and forgetful than you having their e-mail address on record.

[Caprinicus]

I linked an email with my Reddit account long before it became recommended. Years later, I deleted that gmail account. Even more years after that, Reddit decided (automated) to lock my account until I reset my password for no discernible reason, the only option being via email. It took two weeks with support, across 3 different mediums of communication, to get it reset to a new email account.

I guess what I’m saying is that there is an internal motivation at play to get people to register their email accounts at Reddit, and it goes far beyond reducing customer support time because at present, they are going the opposite way. In fact, had I never registered an email, their automated account locking nonsense would never have triggered, and had I lost my password, their official policy is not to help at all.

[jasonkostempski]

I never considered what they'd do in the event of a forced password reset after a breach. Not a problem for my use case given I consider them throwaway accounts anyway. Maybe sites should have accounts specifically designed as throw aways. No visible karma, no email, clear indication that you can't recover if you forget password, if there is a breach, your account is deleted immediatley.

[tripzilch]

Listen up, I get your use case, but comparing it to Reddit is disingenuous, obviously they're not pushing to enter your email for being able to help you out of the good of their hearts.

Maybe your site does, but Reddit is a huge data mining company just like the other big players on the Internet. That is their motivation. Like Caprinicus' story demonstrates, if the situation were reversed, suddenly it takes weeks to provide customer support. That clearly shows the email isn't about being user friendly, they want to grab it just because they want to lock on to you and let themselves drift away from the anonymous registration they so proudly offered one day.

There's not a lot of goodwill left for this behaviour on the Internet.

[Latteland]

I also hate being encouraged to enter my email, because I think they want to connect me up via other places I use that email. But I have various ways that I usually use to create a new email for every website, so they can't track me. I have to do a tiny amount of work to manage this but it is not so hard.

I guess other people aren't aware of how to do this or its too much work. Having an email does help the 'reset automatically' the account, without human intervention (when you still have the email).

[SwellJoe]

On the email issue, I once talked to Steve (back when he was still the primary developer) about the issue, and he seemed genuinely sad about people signing up without emails mostly because people would forget their password and then couldn't log back in, and not for any nefarious purpose.

Of course, now that reddit is bigger than Jesus, there probably are nefarious privacy-destroying forces at work, but even more than a decade ago, there were totally innocent reasons for reddit to want an email address when you signed up. I think it says something good that you can still create an account without one (I require a valid non-temporary email on all of my own sites, mostly for spam reduction, even though I very much value/respect privacy and never sell any info we collect on our sites).

[iforgotpassword]

I (try to) block all throwaway mail providers, but give users the possibility to delete the mail after confirming the account. Then I keep a salted hash of the mail address for 6 month to deny another sign up. Only reason being spam protection.

[Latteland]

I love places that don't block throwaway mail providers, cause I really don't want to enter a real email address at every random site. But if I had a site that had a lot of users, I'd probably want that because it would automate many account maintenance issues. I have started thinking my main privacy issue is the phone company tracking my location all the time and then selling it to anybody in the world, and me not being able to do anything to block that is the real issue (short of getting rid of my phone).

[jfoutz]

Isn’t the flip side to that Cambridge analytica? A bunch of anon accounts devoted to pushing an agenda? Maybe not. It sure seems like a knife edge to balance on.

I agree with you, I like the ability to create random one shot accounts to comment on something, but that’s exploitable in weird ways.

[brownbat]

It's funny that was a Facebook scandal, while Reddit has movements like hail corporate trying to self-police dishonesty and manipulative behavior.

It seems like anonymity should be more of a driving force, but seeing both good and bad social media sites with each model, I'm no longer sure anonymity either preserves or inhibits culture... it might just be orthogonal.

[vanderZwan]

> Reddit has movements like hail corporate trying to self-police dishonesty and manipulative behavior.

Self-policing can also be manipulated. You cannot rely on user-intent alone, you need some structural protection against these kinds of things. Although I don't know what the best kind is.

[brownbat]

I didn't mean to imply hail corporate completely fixed anything, at its worst it's unsubstantiated allegations.

Just pointing out that true names didn't inoculate Facebook, which doesn't even get as far as that problematic response.

That's why I said anonymity is orthogonal--that was my main point.

For example, anonymity is easier on HN, and I prefer our comments to FB. On the other hand, I'm not typing this on 4chan. There are dozens of other examples on the spectrum. Anonymity just doesn't seem like the determining factor for culture everyone makes it out to be. Maybe it has some impact, but it seems washed out by the typical culture of the group, driven by that group's interests, style, and tolerance of (or preference for) obnoxiousness.

[vanderZwan]

I think the mistake a lot of people make is mixing up anonymity with a lack of persistence. You may be anonymous, but you still have a persistent handle (unless the situation calls for it). That persistence is also "rewarded" with upvotes (or downvotes), which on HN even have some consequences.

[krageon]

It's not clear to me why structural protection would be better than self-policing, given that both can fairly trivially be manipulated by a wallet the size of a corporation.

[vanderZwan]

Nobody said it was better. You need both. Ideally, they complement each other in a bigger-than-the-sum-of-its-parts manner that is better than using either one alone.

Tangential example of technology/community interaction: Clay Shirky's "A Group Is It's Own Worst Enemy" is a great essay on how self-policing can backfire even without external influences[0]. The overall conclusion being that the technological framework surrounding the community needs to provide the means for it to support itself not only against internal influences, but also to prevent it from harming itself.

On reddit you can see in practice how the many different subcommunities apply this self-policing in practice, and what kind of effects it has. From the echo chambers of the more extremist ones (won't name any examples to avoid provoking anyone), to examples of subreddits dying due to sloppy moderation not holding back meme-ification and shitposting (same), to communities with very clear goals that are achieved through iron-fisted moderation (usually knowledge-oriented communities like /r/AskHistorians).

[0] http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

[alexanderdmitri]

+1 for karma lust

[joe_the_user]

I go to Reddit and HN for technical topics I have an interest in. Mostly Machine Learning on Reddit.

For more political and personal topics, Facebook is far better. Mostly because there are far more Facebook groups than there are subreddits, so in a controversial topic you tend to get vicious, abusive individuals taking control of a given category on Reddit. Because there are a lot of these folks out there and there's no objective way to remove them. On Facebook, you can create a group on topic X, run it sanely and gradually get credibility and get people migrating from the less-sane groups. If there's a way to do this on reddit once some dubious character has claimed a given topic, I'd like to known.

And for really small groups, Dischord seems best.

[brandonjm]

> If there's a way to do this on reddit once some dubious character has claimed a given topic, I'd like to known.

There is nothing preventing multiple subreddits dedicated to similar or identical things. If you feel abusive people are taking control, chances are others do too. So the best course of action would be to start another subreddit dedicated to the same thing. You and others who feel this way can build a better, less abusive, less controlled environment and people who prefer that environment will move over in time.

Edit: Also if you install the right moderators for the environment you want to create it can ensure the abusive individuals can't take control of your subreddit.

[systematical]

I had to stop going to any thing political related on reddit, between russian trolls and hyper-liberals downvoting reasonable opinions it got to be to much.

I installed the Reddit Enhancement Suite plugin to hide /r/politics and /r/the_donald from my home page. If I do read something political on there its from /r/NeutralPolitics which requires anything you post to be cited with evidence.

For everything else reddit is great. I don't even use Facebook anymore because it became too political on there. If I want politics I'll watch PBS News Hour or go to a news site.

[chasontherobot]

Why are they showing up on your home page at all? Are you subbed to them?

[stevewillows]

they're most likely in /r/all. Reddit now has filters for subs that will show up in that feed, which handy.

[systematical]

It would show up in all. I won't no part of the hyper-liberal echo chamber or the national-populist cesspool.

[chasontherobot]

why go to r/all/ at all? Maybe we just use reddit differently but I only read the subreddits I'm subbed to, so I never see stuff from r/politics or r/TheDonald

[aeorgnoieang]

How would a Facebook group really work any differently than a subreddit? They're both just names. There are no 'categories' on Reddit; just good (better) names.

[conductr]

> No "real-name" policies

What I enjoy most about Reddit is the quirky, people just being stupid (in a fun way), jokes and humor around many subreddits and prominent on most that appear on /r/popular.

I don't think people would post as openly if real names were attached. So I really think this fosters/allows for that to happen. It's odd that that was something I loved the most about the early internet too and it seems to be rare now.

[cryptonector]

Pseudonymity makes this possible. Users don't post selfies on Reddit, nor their names, nor do they friend people (though you can follow users). On FB users fear for their privacy, and users fear moralizers.

[codeismylife]

> Pseudonymity makes this possible.

It makes me think that privacy is highly underestimated by Facebook. While it was once their key value proposition that real identity was desirable on a social site, with increasing political polarization and increased threats of government surveillance, the roles are now reversed and we'll continue to see privacy being treasured.

I have a Facebook account I NEVER post to and only check twice a week for about 30 seconds each instance. I do however spend an inordinate amount of time on Reddit. So much so that I deliberately have to wean myself off Reddit otherwise I'll waste too much time on it.

[coldseattle]

But there is a lot of groupthink on Reddit, too. Some popular forms you just have to stay out of if you have a different opinion.

[cryptonector]

Sure, but so there is in FB. On Reddit you can have multiple accounts (all pseudonymous) and you can participate on whichever subreddits you like. If there's some sub that isn't too welcoming of your views, chances are there is another that is -- an echo chamber if you want it thus, sure, but no worse than FB.

[wyclif]

You can also have multiple accounts and pseudonymous accounts on FB. Sure, I think it's against their TOS (unlike Reddit) but I see people doing it.

[cryptonector]

It's a pain, so few do it.

[andrei_says_]

There are also spaces which are extremely tolerant to difference of opinion. You can choose those.

r/changemyview is one favorite example for excellent rational discourse on often very controversial topics.

[systematical]

I'll add r/NeutralPolitics to this list.

[collyw]

r/poltics is awful.

Its a Trump hate thread with very little objectivity.

[genghizkhan]

And then there are those which require objectivity which can be cited and followed up upon. /r/AskHistorians is perhaps the best example of this.

[dm319]

There's nothing wrong with stating an opinion that is unpopular and being downvoted. It usually still contributes to the discussion.

But I agree that aggregate comment vote is not an indicator of correctness - more of whatever way the wind is blowing at a particular time in a particular community.

[megablast]

Why? The worst that will happen is you get downvoted.

[codexon]

You will get rate limited more severely the more downvotes you get.

I've also run into subreddits run by very biased moderators who will mark any stories as spam they disagree or competes with their friends. And due to the shadowban system, many people never realize it.

That's why I stopped submitting comments and stories on reddit. I only browse it now.

[ConceptJunkie]

Yeah, I don't get the idea of shadowbanning. It seems like a particularly capricious feature.

[stevewillows]

shadow-banning is handy for spammers and bad-posters because, to them, it looks like their posts are public. Its not hard to find out if you're shadowbanned (use incognito mode), but it often does the trick.

In the subs I mod I have a long list of awful contributors on an auto-remove list executed by automoderator. I've got people who have been saying awful thing to people for years, but those posts are never seen. Banning them will only lead them to create a new account.

[mistermann]

I wonder if Facebook happens to know people's Reddit ids through some nefarious data collection scheme.

[bfuller]

I'm not sure about that but 100% what you post on reddit will get you targeted for specific ads that appear on facebook

[mistermann]

Corresponding to the subreddit you post in (worrisome but understandable), or the content of your comment (scary)?

[rangibaby]

> No account is required if you just want to read,

It nags you SO hard to sign up. On this front it's no better than using Facebook to look at public posts.

[xjwm]

Visiting old.reddit.com/r/all seems to work around the signup popup nag.

[rangibaby]

When that was "the" Reddit it would only show a few comments before replacing comments with a nag link. I see that behavior is gone now. Thanks