[carboy]

I’m done with Reddit. It was a nice ride, but now it’s officially over. They’ve been trying to turn reddit into Facebook, a personal data vacuum, but now it’s going to get ugly.

Considering the valuation, remaining as an unpaid moderator for a reddit sub, is absolutely crazy. Hopefully all the mods up and leave, nothing like letting others get rich from your free efforts.

[0xADEADBEE]

While I think this is a little extreme, I understand fully the sentiment behind it.

It's lamentable considering how simple the site is but there exist currently, no good alternatives! I suppose we can attribute that at least partly to the Network Effect. I've been tired of it since the front-end redesign; I grew weary of the dark patterns, the constant nagging to use their app when on mobile, the fact that my back button took me to the top of the page and (most of all, in fact) the overall quality of the threads, so my usage has decreased dramatically over the last 3 months. I suspect I we are no longer longer Reddit's target audience and they will do very well going forward but it's a shame for me at least, that something I've been using for over a decade is fading into background noise.

[Deimorz]

I worked at reddit for 4 years but quit in 2016, largely because they were clearly beginning to switch from a small, fairly independent company (despite being owned by Advance/Conde) to one that was going to become completely dependent on venture capital and I knew what that would end up doing to the site (which, like you mentioned, is manifesting through the redesign, the dark patterns, and so on). They've now taken $500M in VC since I left.

A few months later, I decided to start a non-profit with the goal of building a site that would actually be able to stick to its principles and address a lot of the issues that I think are hurting online communities: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of the announcement here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093)

It's in private alpha and is still fairly small, but it focuses on higher-quality non-fluff content and discussions, and gets several hundred posts/comments a day. If you (or anyone else) is interested in an invite, please read the blog post I linked above and send me an email at the address listed in there and I'll be happy to give you one.

[baroffoos]

I was going to mention tildes but who better to do it than you!

I have been using tildes for about 6 months so far. I love the technical side of the website. Its fast and its minimal and doesn't seem to be sucking up my data. I also love the interactions I have had while using it.

What its missing is the specialty stuff. On reddit I can find a whole community focused on one programming language. On tildes I'm lucky to see a programming post.

But this leaves me with an interesting problem, how can you have a website that has enough users to make up a group for specialty interests without it becoming big enough that it turns in to reddit. It almost seems like the only way is to have totally separate sites for every interest.

[Deimorz]

Yeah, agreed. That's mostly just due to the small userbase, and hopefully we'll be able to build up specialized communities as the site grows (and the hierarchical group system should work very well for them).

It's worth remembering that reddit didn't even have user-created subreddits until it was over two and a half years old, and only had a handful of admin-created ones before that. It takes quite a bit of growth and time to be able to support specialized communities.

[nindalf]

This comment would have been fine without the preceding humblebrag. "Oh its so difficult dealing with massive interest from HN, but oh well I'll take the hit for your sake". Admit it, if a bunch of folks from HN join it's great for you.

[Deimorz]

It was more that I already spent about 6 hours between yesterday and today replying to emails instead of doing the things that I'd prefer to, but you're right, I wouldn't be posting if I didn't want the attention.

I'll remove that line, it was just me sighing and didn't add anything of value.

[knolax]

Having just tried Tilde, I think a bunch of users HN going to Tilde would probably be equivalent to a bunch of Reddit users going to HN. The quality of discussion is going to go down as the forum gets bigger.

[sublupo]

Can you at least make it public for lurkers?

[Deimorz]

Yes, that should be happening within the next week (but it will still require an invite to register/participate).

[computerex]

Not to mention the fact that the site for some reason performs like shit on mobile. Never underestimate a corporate company's ability to overcomplicate/encumber a simple product to the point where it's barely usable.

[Simon_says]

They want to push you to the app.

[fortytw2]

I also decided it's as good a time as any to rip reddit out of my daily life, after using it for the better part of the last 10 years.

Between the crushing "download our tracking riddled app" / "switch to our shitty new redesign" push recently and massive amount of engineered sponsored content, instead of paid-for advertisement, there's nothing there keeping me interested. This most recent funding round is just icing on the cake.

It's only a matter of time before they go down the twitter path and outright ban third party apps.

[0xADEADBEE]

I appear to have independently parroted your comment! I do apologise. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way though!

[etrautmann]

I quit cold turkey from ~1 hour a day in 2014 to zero and have never regretted it once.

[chrisper]

I tried that but I get FOMO. Like I feel like I get to discover so many interesting things (news about niche games etc) because of Reddit but at the same time I also hate it.

[chrisper]

A lot of the moderators in Reddit are powerhungry or are marketing shills. Since it satisfies their needs I don't think they mind it being not paid.

[rchaud]

Before long, a glorious new age will dawn: the era of the Reddit influencer.

[dymk]

You and I both know that's not going to happen. There's no shortage of people willing to moderate subs.

[movedx]

My advice would be to treat it like a tool: look up what you need, ask questions when you need to, but ignore it the rest of the time.

[rchaud]

It's not Stack Overflow; Reddit is designed to be visited daily and 'engaged' with.

That said, I do go to Reddit first when I'm looking to answer questions like HDD recommendations or things to do in my city. That's because searching Google for it will give me nothing but awful content mill blog posts stuffed with affiliate links and SEO-optimized keywords ("Best USD Hard Drives in 2019"). On Reddit you actually get the feeling that the question is trying to be answered by actual people.

[movedx]

> It's not Stack Overflow; Reddit is designed to be visited daily and 'engaged' with.

I don't care how it's designed. It can be used as a tool.

[frosted-flakes]

I used to spend hours a week on Reddit, but I've consciously made the effort to avoid it. Unless it comes up in search results, in which case I'm using it as a tool.

[baroffoos]

Its a tool covered in weird gunk and makes your hand feel dirty every time you use it. The website is slow and bloated and filled with mountains of JS and tracking

[movedx]

True. The new UI is a joke. I've always hated most modern website UIs, though.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

Where do you find yourself spending your internet time instead?

[sureaboutthis]

I don't have internet time. I only go to the internet when looking for something specific or to kill time waiting for something else. Otherwise it's more important to spend it getting things done or with real people. Sitting on the internet, otherwise, is no different than clicking channels on the TV.

[diminoten]

A lot of the replacement sites are trying to do things differently, but honestly at this point a straight clone that does nothing/only the very few most obvious things might just be what's needed, if only because the next company will get a clean(er) slate to work with.

[confounded]

At least the APIs mean it’s possible to have third-party open-source clients.

[rchaud]

I remember having 3rd party Twitter and FB apps in 2011. That didn't last long.

[dopamean]

If they ever make a change that badly affects RedReader it'll be over for me. I love that app and I have a pretty solid reddit experience with it.