I wish Stumble Upon still existed just so I could find the weird corners of the web again. This site and Reddit sort of fill that but also don't quite fit it at all.
Not to be a downer again but reddit is pretty much dead for this. It's turning into FB more and more every day with a lot of young kids and teenagers filling it with memes and begging for engagement and such. It's not much of an aggregator anymore and is turning into more of an actual social network now except they still have "anonymous" profiles
I guess it's what the people running it want but I find myself going there less and less every day and only look at a few curated subs
I've found Reddit improved by careful curation of my subscribed subreddits. If I spent most of my time in there rather than /r/all then it's great. I still feel like scrolling through memes on /r/all from time to time and that has the beneficial side effect of helping me add to those subscriptions.
This is true to an extent, but I find that reddit culture seeps its way into all subs. There is a overreaching lack of seriousness.
It's my observation that the average redditor is more interested in gaining upvotes via silly class-clown behavior, than actually contributing meaningful conversation. Or interested in upvoting silly comments.
Even in subreddits where the topic of discussion is something serious, such as a forum for advice seeking, people can't help but reply to posts with jokes.
What is worse is when people are downvoted for a reply which is intelligent and serious, but is contrary to popular opinion.
Definitely true about most subs, but not all. Some, such as /r/askhistorians, are very strict about low effort posts so what you end up seeing (amongst a handful of deleted replies) are very well resourced to whatever the subject of the thread is. Of course, this requires an engaged moderating team which not all subs have. That being said, it still doesn't quite match the magic of stumbleupon and clicking a link to be shown a page matching your interests from obscure corner of the web.
To be honest, I don't know why a similar app or extension hasn't come up to replace what Stumble did. Surely there's advertising potential there (1 ad per every X clicks) and even a subscription option (remove ads or access to unlimited interest categories for $x dollars).
I feel like even with moderation, Reddit has a natural limitation by dint of being "adoration by upvote". You can't start a conversation outside of the boxes defined by the sub. If your post comes across as even slightly promoting of an undesired subject it mostly falls into the spam and downvote bucket, unless the sub is very specifically trying to include that, you have gained pre-approval, or you have manufactured some kind of storyline that loopholes both rules and human emotions. The average mod team is prone to abuse of power, so they also come down hard on anything potentially disruptive to the intended discourse. The incentives then move towards posting on Reddit in an intentionally deceptive "influencer" mode at all times - equal parts hype, pity, and outrage.
And there's both a reason for that being the case(nobody wants spam, and moderating can curate effectively in the best subs) and for it being harmful(community interaction ossifies into a familiar set of things that get upvotes, which subsequently pollutes every thread).
I don’t get complaints like this, my Reddit front page looks fine. Are people subscribing to crappy subreddits and then getting mad at the inevitable results?
I don't really think it's that the niche stuff has moved away from the web - it's that nearly every functional discovery mechanism (that my now 30ish year old self knows about) has been captured by advertising or killed.
When all you ever get served up is links to the same drivel promoted by folks who have no honest interest or curiosity, but are essentially mercenary marketing/sales (sorry - influencers blegh...), then the web starts to feel like a bland wasteland.
Some of this is entirely related to being older - but I do genuinely think the current tech powerhouses on the web are trying their damn hardest to kill off any & all organic discovery mechanisms they can. Often through completely disingenuous means. If that fails, they buy them and shutter them, or roll them into the brand where it becomes the same drivel again.
It's so bizarre to me that StumbleUpon came from the same mind as Uber (well one of the minds).
However true or untrue all of the political intrigue, journalistic threats, etc., it's just crazy to me that such an innocent corner of the web that I loved so much in the mid-late 2000s was sending death threats to journos in London not 8 years later.
I guess it's what the people running it want but I find myself going there less and less every day and only look at a few curated subs