[jedberg]

Lol HN didn't exist until reddit was popular. HN was in fact created because reddit go so popular it no longer appealed to PG, so he started HN so he could moderate the conversation himself and steer the community they way he wanted it to go.

The other thing you said partly true -- in the beginning the founders had about 100 accounts that they posted with, but there were no comments back then. There was never fake commenting, and the posts weren't "fake" either. Alexis would scour the internet all day looking for interesting things and then posting them with random accounts, as would Steve.

So if anything Alexis and Steve were just really prolific users.

But the site was self sustaining by the time comments launched. ie. There would be fresh content even if Steve and Alexis didn't post anything that day.

[doublerabbit]

Digg had it first, Reddit was Digg's second cousin. Reddit never took off until Digg shot itself in the kneecap. Digg was where the "fresh content" came from.

If Digg hadn't made the v2.0 mistake; Reddit wouldn't be where it was now.

The accounts may of not been fake, but reddit for sure had many plants; it was even boasted by the administration team prior Conde Nest. And now it's more blatant than before.

[hayst4ck]

> Digg was where the "fresh content" came from.

This is not quite true. StumbleUpon is where fresh content came from. It was popularized on digg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon

[doublerabbit]

Fancy that. Thanks for the update in history.

I guess before that it was Newgrounds.

[mattlondon]

Came here to say this. Reddit was this quaint tiny site that was a breath of fresh air after digg's self-destruction. In those days there were no sub-reddits, just the front page.

I left after sub-reddits started and it went to shit as a result. It has been downhill since then (at least for what I want). HN is much more like what the original Reddit was like. I can imagine that if HN gets "sub" things it will also self-deatruct like Reddit has.

[earthscienceman]

Jedberg. I've called you and them out on this before. There are HackerNews comments from '08 and '09 where the astroturfing and fake accounts are openly mentioned.

Don't make me go through the effort to dig them up.

As for the order of events, I wasn't clear. I meant they talked about it on HackerNews but not contemporaneously.

[effingwewt]

Thats some mighty handwavy mental gymnastics to not call them liars.

Pretending to be different people to post qualifies as 'fake posts'.

Fake it till you make it, or fraud?

Either way it's still bullshit.

[inkywatcher]

While I am very ready to be critical of Reddit, including its creators, community, interface, and aesthetic, I am not personally offended that a couple jabronis posted a bunch of stuff to build up some initial momentum.