I used it to follow some functional programming discussions that had chosen it as it's main bulletin board, as did many other software projects. (I am not a fan of Reddit, which is why it is of paramount importance to me to be able to continue to browse it without an account.)
But fine: if you think Reddit deserves the cut, please let me know why you think this site does not deserve it. Or why Discord (also used by a lot of software projects, to my annoyance ) does not deserve it. In a way that a "80 year old judge which hates computers" can understand.
We should have kept to mailing lists, as I said many times.
Reddit has pockets of sanity, but as a whole it is insane. The same is true of Instagram, TikTok, X, etc.
If Hacker News doesn't improve its moderation (especially of fascist propaganda) I do think it should go the same way. HN openly flaunts the fact that it only follows American law - e.g. the fact that it completely ignores GDPR. It wouldn't happen until HN got big enough to make some politician pay attention though, and HN is kept relatively small by design.
Reddit is a cesspool of bots reposting the best performing images and rage bait of the last 5 years ad nauseam, that and porn makes up the bulk of the traffic. So yes, again, there is nothing in common between reddit and hn
I read several subreddits and see nearly no images, nearly no rage bait (probably less than on Hacker News, in fact), and exactly no porn. My daily Reddit experience is so close to Hacker News that I've been known to forget which one I'm on.
Reddit still has the capacity to show you what you're actually looking for. It still lets you find content by interest, rather than by personalities. It still keeps replies together, still lets you order by time easily, and doesn't stick too much random crap in the middle (none if you use a decent ad blocker). It handles long form content well and doesn't try to force everything to be a sound bite that you have to click on to see more. It's still convenient to use it that way, and most users probably do use it that way.
Compare to, say, Youtube, which fight you ever step of the way if you try not to be drowned in a disordered flood of some combination of what a computer guesses you might want and what it's most profitable for the site for you to see (including what will keep you on the site), with your only control being which "influencers" you uprank by "subscribing" to them.
> Reddit still has the capacity to show you what you're actually looking for.
Reddit has the capacity to manipulate minors and groom them into believing all kind of sick "fictions", endorsed by the admins. It should absolutely be banned for minors.
This lacks hindsight. Whatever you subjectively dislike about Reddit will certainly apply here, if not today then tomorrow. If you want proof, check out Slashdot.
Open a new account on both platforms and tell me what you see. Let a 12 years old browse both platform and tell me how they behave, how long they browse, what they look at
Where are the ads on hackernews ? The fake posts which are onlyfan hooks ? The images/videos ? The infinite scroll? &c.
I do not see any of that on Reddit either. In fact the overlap between Reddit and HNs frontpages is striking (without an account). Are you sure you are looking at the same front-page?
Eh, with user links, user commentary, profiles and votes HN is "basically the same" on several key aspects and there is quite a bit of demographic overlap. It's just reached a very different equilibrium as to what goes on here due to the 2nd and 3rd tier aspects that are different.
Take two cesspools (I'm not gonna pass up the chance to use the analogy, sorry not sorry). Assume they are both serving the same quantity and quality of people. Feed one a bunch of inorganic matter, laundry bleach and only the finest most heavy duty multi-ply shit tickets. Feed the other nothing that shouldn't go down a drain, no bleach and Scott 1-ply. The latter will perform way better and go way longer between needing service despite the only differences being minor differences that don't even matter in system design.
> Eh, with user links, user commentary, profiles and votes HN is "basically the same"
Create a new account on both platform and check what you get by default... Another test you can do is let a 12 years old roam reddit and hackernews freely, I can guarantee you the results will not be "basically the same", they won't even be remotely similar in any way, shape or form
Does HN spread Fake News? Facebook and Youtube do.
Do you feel bad after using HN? Insta and Facebook it happens.
Does HN collect data to specify marketing? Every other Social Media do.
This is hard to define in laws so e.g. the EU chooses to force concrete measures from the social media pages.
Give me an example of websites on HN, which spread fake news by purpose and it was allowed by the mods even they knew the news / artice / website was spreading fake news.
You have quite an unatenable position (you really think there have never been outright wrong headlines on HN?). Even this very article is (being very generous) clickbait.
Yes? Even newspapers do that. You have never had Gell-Mann when reading something here outside mainstream topics of interest? (e.g. almost anything from outside the US, or health related).
Is this really the criteria you want to use to decide whether to require age checks for a website?
> the EU chooses to force concrete measures from the social media pages.
This just sidesteps the issue of how a website ends up in the list. Today, Reddit. Tomorrow, Discord. Then Github. Eventually, HN.
My news is almost outside of the US as I am not American. (wow this should be sent to r/USDefaultism). So let's say like this: I do read a lot outside of "American mainstream media".
Most good working journalist try to verify claim and statements. This is the opposite to Fake News, Clickbait and Russian state propaganda spread in Social Media because its their business model.
