[HN Gopher] New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search resul...
___________________________________________________________________
New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance,
search design
Author : leavjenn
Score : 191 points
Date : 2022-04-15 03:19 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.redditinc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.redditinc.com)
| brodouevencode wrote:
| "lipstick on a pig"
| phdelightful wrote:
| I wonder to what extent this is an early step toward walling off
| Reddit's content from third-party search engines. They probably
| recognize that without a functional search they'd take a big hit
| in such a scenario, but with search under their own control they
| can better influence how people end up seeing various content.
| theNJR wrote:
| This was my first reaction too.
| p1mrx wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=ipv6&type=comment
|
| I guess this is better than nothing, but you can't sort by time.
| There seems to be no sorting/filtering whatsoever.
| JetAlone wrote:
| You could use it to easily find any ongoing conversations on the
| site, about <topic you want to get into discourse about>,
| anywhere, and thereby be laser focus on artificially butting into
| the discussions about that thing. If this became common practice,
| perhaps we will see people externally agreeing to proxies for
| certain words so they can discuss certain topics publically on
| reddit without getting "jungled". Or maybe the feature isn't
| going to be used that much. I don't know.
| vgel wrote:
| You see this on Twitter sometimes -- people talk about "en eff
| tees", I think both to avoid people searching for the term and
| to be seen by people who have "NFT" muted.
| easrng wrote:
| They also do it to avoid bots that will reply with things
| like BabyDogeSugarMoonRocket NFT Airdrop
| :rocket: :rocket: :moon: :face_with_dollar_eyes: Get
| free $BDS token now! :diamond:
| BabyDogeSugarMoonRocket.io Claim now!
|
| Or other such annoyances.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| There's also certain people with very vocal fanbases who do
| this. Sometimes I'm rather happy Twitter added the feature to
| restrict replies to your follows.
| JetAlone wrote:
| I feel horrible whenever I sense a need to block somebody.
| It's occasionally people I know who are too far gone into
| desperation and self-loathing/contempt to deal with
| anymore. The other much more rare case is people who 1)
| open with 2) insultingly irrational/inconsistent 3)
| vitriolic hostility. In that latter case, I can live with
| any two, but not all three. For a lot of people the
| criteria for 2) is pretty variable so I try to give some
| benefit of the doubt, which leaves ample opportunity for
| the disappointment to be real.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| I've been pulled into the frontline of a culture war, so
| I've become pretty liberal with who I block, including
| using chainblocking on people who encourage harassment of
| others.
|
| It occasionally hits the wrong people, but it's the only
| way to make twitter usable for me. It's not my failing.
|
| It's of course all against the twitter rules, but twitter
| moderation is horrible and these people have also learned
| to speak in code. It's not "kill yourself" anymore, it's
| "join the 41%".
| gpgn wrote:
| I'm still going to use google to search to be honest.
| nolok wrote:
| Google search is terrible because reddit mangles all the dates
| in their seo
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Sounds like it's reddit that is terrible here. But then what
| else would you expect from a platform ?
| darwinwhy wrote:
| Is it too much to hope the addition of this Reddit feature can
| help the Google algorithm improve?
| HigherPlain wrote:
| jotm wrote:
| That was possible before with Google and even Reddit's own
| search.
|
| And nutters will manually scroll through your history anyway to
| find something to shit on, it's not like it's private.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Scrolling only goes back like ten pages.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder what they used for the search database,
| since that enormous amount of text can't fit in RAM, it would
| have to be partitioned & sharded in something like Scylla DB
| gilbetron wrote:
| Their job postings mention Solr:
|
| > Experience with Solr or similar search technologies.
|
| So I'm guessing that's most of it. Which makes sense given Full
| Text Search is the point of Solr/Lucene!
| inciampati wrote:
| I doubt that a succinct full text index (like an FM-index) of
| this data would require more than a modest server to keep in
| memory. Why aren't these used in this context?
| tmikaeld wrote:
| But we're talking petabytes of text comments and an index of
| that would be a lot larger. How do you access that data fast
| enough to enable search?
| inciampati wrote:
| Succinct full text indexes can be substantially smaller
| than the source text. It depends on the zero order entropy
| of the text. If things are highly repetitive, a very small
| index might be feasible. Usually lookup times are linearly
| proportional to query size, with logarithmic factors in
| database size.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| I've yet to see such a system (in production) except for
| Sonic, but sonic doesn't allow for full-text search only
| search on a key-by-key basis.
| lovelearning wrote:
| At one point, their search used LucidWorks Fusion [1], a
| commercial product based around Solr (that uses Lucene indexes
| under the hood) but also integrates a vector database and the
| like for semantic search. The linked wiki page still has
| Lucene-style queries.
|
| [1]: https://lucidworks.com/customers/reddit/
| tmikaeld wrote:
| That's kind of my point, Solr and Lucene put the index in
| memory.
| omegalulw wrote:
| Can't the index be shared across a cluster? Possibly with
| multiple replicas for a share to allow for servers to
| easily go up and down?
| tmikaeld wrote:
| It can, but that would be slow and cost would be
| prohibitive.
| kevincox wrote:
| Really? It's just a bit of text. RAM is fairly cheap
| these days.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| not the entire index, only what is needed for each query.
| speedgoose wrote:
| You can rent from various cloud providers many VMs with 2TB of
| ram each.
|
| AWS also offers some high memory machines with up to 24TB of
| ram in some locations.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Sure you can do that, but that's a hefty price per user.
| winrid wrote:
| IIRC they have a pretty standard PostGres setup. I'd bet they
| just setup another PostGres shard replicated just for search,
| using an extension for the index. Doesn't require the index or
| working set to be in RAM.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Why do some people write Postgres as PostGres?
| winrid wrote:
| Why do some people call Redis "read-is"? The world may
| never know...
| __alexs wrote:
| Because it's the database that came after Ingres.
| stavros wrote:
| Which isn't spelles InGres, is it?
| philliphaydon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_(database)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL
|
| Ingres and Postgres/PostgreSQL.
|
| I still don't know /why/ some people say PostGres. I've
| seen it a few times, on HN and elsewhere, but its wrong
| isn't it?
| datalopers wrote:
| inverted indexes do not require that much overhead
| ddorian43 wrote:
| can't use scylladb as a search engine
| fareesh wrote:
| Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was a
| dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a frequent
| visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will know
| exactly what I am referring to.
|
| The product has gone downhill ever since.
|
| Comment search is nice because it enables users to find
| interesting content directly in the good niche subreddits.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I wonder if your comment is an instance of the Eternal
| September effect [0]. The "quality" of a website is such an
| intangible and immeasurable thing, it's more or less impossible
| to say, in aggregate, if something has objectively gotten
| worse, especially considering the fact that Reddit has grown
| exponentially more popular.
|
| At the very least, there's a distinct lack of self awareness of
| how small your one opinion is, to the sea of overall opinions.
| "Has gotten worse" vs "I've grown to like it less" are very
| different statements; one externalizes the decline, eschews
| your role and responsibility for your own opinion, and the
| other owns up to the reality that something my be worse "for
| you" while getting better for many, many others.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
| Melatonic wrote:
| I don't think it was related to that at all - I think it was
| just around that time that Reddit also started to really become
| more mainstream popular. Anytime a forum or sub forum grows in
| size you end up with a lot more crap to sift through. And with
| greater number of users also of course comes greater numbers of
| bots / fake / shill accounts as well.
| stimpson_j_cat wrote:
| The biggest change came after the migration from Digg, which
| would have been about 5 years prior.
|
| the_donald brought a lot of a younger users and white
| supremacists. I haven't seen a DNC-related reddit conspiracy
| before though. Certainly no noticeable shift that night.
| dogleash wrote:
| >I haven't seen a DNC-related reddit conspiracy before
| though.
|
| What? You haven't noticed social media marketing on reddit?
| stimpson_j_cat wrote:
| I've never heard someone say "the night of the DNC primary
| in 2015 there was a dramatic shift." Not sure what your
| comment about ads is related to.
| [deleted]
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The digg exodus was nothing, just a bunch of group A basement
| dwellers moving in with group B basement dwellers. At the
| time the average person still had no idea what reddit or digg
| was.
|
| The whole thing was just internal internet geek culture
| drama.
| stimpson_j_cat wrote:
| No, it changed reddit from having interesting content and
| mostly useful constructive commentary to being full of
| memes and jokes (like Digg). Sure there were pun threads
| before, but you didn't have to custom tailor the front page
| to keep it from being complete shit.
| wtf_is_up wrote:
| czechdeveloper wrote:
| I use Reddit long term and /r/all was always bad and you should
| find your subreddits to care for.
| codingdave wrote:
| I have been browsing /r/all for years, but I aggressively
| filter subreddits out that hold no interest for me. It allows
| /r/all to be semi-curated content for me, while I still will
| see something that breaks containment from the niche
| subreddits.
|
| I don't feel that this makes reddit a great news source or
| anything - but it does make it palatable entertainment.
| site-packages1 wrote:
| I do this same thing, it has worked really well. I browse
| the all subreddit and aggressively block/filter subreddits
| that are of no interest, then smaller subreddits start
| bubbling up and all becomes relatively good for finding new
| content actually. Blocking the main default subreddits and
| subreddits where they just keep posting memes and all
| subreddits that have anything to do with gaming or new
| games gets you like 80% of the way there. It's nice seeing
| small subreddits on all after that curation.
| honksillet wrote:
| And hope it does not get quarantined then disappeared? No
| thanks.
| nvr219 wrote:
| Has this happened to you ever? I've been on reddit for 10
| years, and this never happened to me.
| dandellion wrote:
| I've also been on reddit for more than 10 years and it's
| also never happened to me, but I know what they're
| talking about. Let's not pretend like it doesn't happen.
| bena wrote:
| I also know it happens. And I'm also mostly like "Yeah,
| that makes sense".
|
| X: They keep banning my favorite subreddits
|
| Y: Like /r/programming?
|
| X: No, not that one
|
| Y: /r/movies?
|
| X: No
|
| Y: /r/lego?
|
| X: No
|
| Y: /r/nfl?
|
| X: No
|
| Y: Well, which ones?
|
| X: /r/letsmockminoritiesanddisabledpeople
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| The concern is with the subs, users (including mods), and
| behaviors that are miraculously exempted.
|
| For instance, reddit has a raging hardon for Sinophobia,
| but Asians in general aren't treated as a protected human
| class. Incredibly vile, vitriolic content and comments
| get huge acclaim as long as you frame anything Asian as
| being tacitly un-American.
|
| Look through the Olympic speed skater threads, or the
| recent "the result of Chinese lock down policies" video
| that's just a compilation of Asian people committing
| suicide, totally unrelated to lock downs.
|
| I get nobody wants to feel like they're surrounded by
| closet xenophobes and ethnopurists, but all it takes is
| seeing the collective blind-spot in "remember Russian
| people are innocent, it's just Putin we hate!" versus
| "makes sense, Chinese are all freedomless brainwashed
| moral aliens" to drive home how rotten it is.
|
| This is just one example. Terrible behavior by megamods
| going unacknowledged and unaddressed weakens the
| platform, and reddit stoking the tribalism that makes
| people feel like they're safe and powerful there lends
| itself to harmful extremism. It's like nationalism is
| okay as long as it's not white nationalism.
| ncann wrote:
| I'm not sure when it started, probably around Trump's
| time but the Sinophobia on reddit is becoming unbearable.
| Any random "China bad" thread is upvoted to the sky even
| with sketchy or non-existent sources, and anyone
| expressing skepticism or asking for source in the comment
| is immediately personally attacked and called names like
| tankie/50c army/Chinese bot/etc. Unlike HN, when it comes
| to politics everyone on reddit seems to immediately
| assume bad faith when discussing with someone who doesn't
| agree with your political view.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > "remember Russian people are innocent, it's just Putin
| we hate!"
|
| That's pretty much gone in the comments section on
| r/politics.
|
| The vitriol directed against Russians is often over the
| top now.
|
| As someone who remembers the hatred towards Russians by
| the American Right during the 80s that is fairly
| disturbing to me.
|
| Of course the Hacker News threads which try to play down
| the consequences of a nuclear exchange with Russia are
| probably worse.
| Spivak wrote:
| Right but the solution isn't to go backwards and say,
| "well we think it's fine to be xenophobic to the Chinese
| and so to be consistent we should allow xenophobia across
| the board," that would be absurd. It should really go the
| other way and I think you would get a whole lot of
| support for it.
|
| > It's like nationalism is okay as long as it's not white
| nationalism.
|
| I think the issue is because "white" isn't really a race,
| nobody is trying to cancel someone proud of their Polish
| heritage. Black ended up becoming a de-facto race to deal
| with the descendants of slaves who had their ancestry
| erased so they're not really comparable. I can only speak
| to the US but "white nationalism" (hell even "American
| nationalism") just became the rallying cry for white
| supremacists. Which sucks for anyone who was benignly
| proud to be an American but this is just the reality we
| have to deal with. It's political suicide to run on "I'm
| racist and proud" anymore so we're surrounded by
| dogwhistles and people organizing under informal banners
| and "you know what I mean _wink_ " type policy.
| site-packages1 wrote:
| I have seen it happen through complaints reaching the all
| subreddit. However it only seemed to happen to subreddits
| that were peddling deep hatred against outgroups like
| people of color, overweight people, or were just vile.
| Your comment makes it seem like any given subreddit is in
| danger of quarantining, but anecdotally that doesn't seem
| to be the case. However, I have an open mind: would you
| give me an example of a subreddit that was otherwise
| innocuous yet got quarantined?
| Miner49er wrote:
| /r/chapotraphouse wasn't any worse then say
| /r/conservative or /r/politics, but it got banned.
|
| /r/DarkNetMarkets. Just for discussing DNMs, AFAIK.
|
| /r/shoplifting
|
| /r/stealing
|
| /r/beertrade: for trading beers
|
| /r/gundeals for a bit. Several other gun buying subs are
| still banned.
|
| /r/fakeid
|
| /r/scotchswap: for trading Scotches
|
| /r/cigarmarket
|
| There's more, too.
| noelsusman wrote:
| IMO Chapo was banned as a misguided attempt at balance
| for banning /r/The_Donald, though it's not like they
| weren't an unruly bunch. Calls for violence weren't
| exactly unheard of there, ironic or not.
|
| The rest of those are just banning discussions of illegal
| activity. Seems like a reasonable policy to me.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Trading beer and scotch isn't illegal, is it though?
| Neither is buying guns, or visiting/discussing dark net
| markets.
|
| And it's not like there aren't thousands of other subs
| that discuss illegal activity. They haven't banned all
| the drug subs, or the hacking subs, etc. Pretty much any
| illegal activity you can still find subs for it.
| /r/streetracing, /r/piracy, etc.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| /r/bigchungus (pictures of fat Bugs Bunny? wha?)
|
| /r/mgtow
| [deleted]
| Karunamon wrote:
| /r/chapotraphouse was calling for death on people on the
| reg with the full support of their moderators. _That 's_
| why they got banned.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/9m30os
| /rc...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/bmtdqb
| /ch...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/c66x0w
| /1_...
| Miner49er wrote:
| They cracked down on the baseball thing way before they
| got banned though; after they got quarantined. Yeah, they
| were saying killing slaveowners is good, but who doesn't
| think that? It's what the American Civil War was. It's
| self-defense, and no worse then everyone on reddit that
| is cheering for Ukraine to win the war against Russia (by
| killing Russian soldiers) or all the people that said
| what Kyle Rittenhouse did was good, or countless other
| calls for violence that occur on all types of subreddits.
| flutas wrote:
| >They cracked down on the baseball thing way before they
| got banned though; after they got quarantined.
|
| And the_donald literally disallowed submissions for
| months before being banned. When reddit has a sub in
| their sights, they will find a reason.
| Karunamon wrote:
| This defense falls apart once you remember that this is a
| pro-communist subreddit that believes 'wage slavery' is a
| thing. And besides, this is _hardly_ the only instance
| where content that breaks the sitewide rules was left up
| by the mods even after being reported.
| jerkstate wrote:
| the most recently banned subreddit to my knowledge was
| about disagreement with public policy for covid
| lockdowns. the ability to protest public policy is
| essential to a functioning democracy.
| [deleted]
| ncann wrote:
| r/watchpeopledie, despite the horrible name it is a very
| "educational" sub that helped me become painfully aware
| of my mortality and in many cases helped me become much
| more aware of my surroundings when I cross the streets,
| when I'm around elevators and big machinery and so on.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Though technically it wasn't banned, r/star_trek recently
| got locked from having new posts, and only just the other
| day became unlocked because the mod agreed to not allow
| discussion related to r/startrek.
|
| Wait, huh???
|
| r/startrek, without the underscore, is the official Star
| Trek community. r/star_trek is an alternative community
| created because r/startrek is very hostile to anyone who
| doesn't just slobber over anything Star Trek.
|
| So people would join the alternative community and bring
| up why they got banned on the official one, or how people
| were being ridiculous in general on the official one.
|
| But I don't buy that there was any meaningful amount of
| brigading that was happening. I think the official
| community, being its pious self, didn't like that people
| were exposing the mods for being arbitrary and
| condescending, or that anyone was exposing the likely
| possibility that they were highly controlled by
| ViacomCBS.
|
| When it got locked, for all intents and purposes it was
| banned, if not temporarily.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| innocuous to thee but not to meee
| hhmc wrote:
| Instead of being glib, take the challenge: name a
| subreddit that got quarantined that you think shouldn't
| have been.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| /r/2balkan4you (banned, not even quarantined)
| ulucs wrote:
| 2balkan4u was nothing but making fun of the _ingroup_ for
| the atrocities and other bullshit their contries were
| pulling
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This is a "razors in candy" kind of problem.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| Disagree. Reddit is not a safe place for political
| movements, minority groups, etc, for this reason
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| How do you discover subreddits if not by browsing /all? I
| mean I for one don't know what I'm missing.
| justaj wrote:
| This is one way: https://old.reddit.com/reddits/
|
| Another is subreddit search engines like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823109
| czechdeveloper wrote:
| Just to note, some subreddits decide not to appear on
| /r/all, so even there you're missing stuff.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Are you saying the DNC primary is to blame for reddit's content
| policies?
| z3c0 wrote:
| I don't know if that's exactly the claim they are making, but
| I can certainly attest to their timeline. It was a day-night
| shift from "Bernie or Bust" to "Eww Bernie Bros are gross".
| Putting my own politics aside, I was more shocked by the
| sudden, very drastic shift in narrative. It's really hard to
| believe that it was organic. It wasn't even a "maybe we
| should support Clinton now that Bernie is out" narrative,
| which would have been more believable. It was a "Bernie
| supporters are sexist" narrative.
|
| In the months leading up to the DNC primary, reddit was a
| battleground between Correct the Record[1] and /r/The_Donald.
| After the primary, it felt like every post on left-wing subs
| was inline with the narratives that CTR had been pushing for
| months. Before the primary, there was quite a bit of
| resistance to CTR, even from the left-wingers. That
| evaporated over a single night.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record
| Sahbak wrote:
| I can only recommend aggressively blocking popular subs, ones
| that are managed by the big mods, and any that have even one
| political thread that gets a suspicious amount of votes. All
| actually becomes a source of new interesting content that way.
| kevincox wrote:
| I tried this but quickly hit a limit on the number of subs
| you can block. It is fairly low, maybe a couple hundred.
| There are a lot more big, low quality subs than that.
| ncann wrote:
| Do you use RES? I don't think there is a limit with RES.
| yu-carm-kror wrote:
| I can't speak to that timeline but I'll add that I have a use-
| hate relationship with Reddit. It's a source of great
| information and misinformation, caring and callousness.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Sometime around the night of the DNC primary in 2015 there was
| a dramatic shift in the content on Reddit. If you were a
| frequent visitor of the homepage and /all at the time, you will
| know exactly what I am referring to.
|
| Indeed.
|
| It's especially visible when the effect temporarily abates.
| After Trump's 2016 election win, for a day or two, it was
| possible to post something non-leftist to /r/politics without
| having it be mercilessly downvoted; as if the shills were
| awaiting orders.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| r/t_d basically pulled every single trick in the book to
| frontpage their content constantly.
|
| However I think that no matter what they (reddit) would have
| had their hand forced eventually. The site has grown
| _massively_ since 2015.
| Perceval wrote:
| It was really just one trick, which was to immediately sticky
| select new posts. Those posts would garner large amounts of
| upvotes immediately by virtue of being stickied at the top of
| a subreddit where most users did not browse reddit overall
| but rather just browsed the sub. Reddit's algorithm favors
| posts that really take off with lots of votes right away, so
| as a consequence The_Donald's posts were constantly making
| r/all.
| flutas wrote:
| > It was really just one trick, which was to immediately
| sticky select new posts.
|
| and (imo) if they were really wanting to fix this trick
| they would have just made it so something that was ever
| stickied couldn't show up on /r/all. Instead they did what
| (to me) was basically a complete change of their algorithm
| with very slow changes to placement.
| drpgq wrote:
| I remember early on Reddit when Ron Paul was a big deal. Not
| really sure it went downhill once that got swamped.
| boesboes wrote:
| As someone who has been using reddit and frequenting r/all for
| over 10 years orso, I dont know what you are talking about.
| Either make you point, or just don't make such comments. They
| add nothing.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I think one could argue that your comment adds much less to
| the conversation. It's basically just "you're wrong, because
| I said so."
|
| Maybe - since you have a decade of material to draw from -
| you could offer a counter-example? I think that would be more
| conducive to discussion than "don't make such comments."
| [deleted]
| kehrin wrote:
| It's far more than that. The OP said "you know exactly
| what" - and the comment disproved that, by not "knowing
| exactly what". Also, how is the comment supposed to refute
| a negative? A negative that wasn't even a claim to begin
| with but rather a vague gesture towards some conspiracy
| (?).
| z3c0 wrote:
| And I am refuting the refutation by "knowing exactly
| what". Turtles all the way down.
|
| Do you see how silly this is yet? The comment you are
| defending is - logically - about as valid as not saying
| anything at all, which is exactly what they told the OP
| to do.
| mb7733 wrote:
| How can you offer a counter example to such a vague claim?
| z3c0 wrote:
| With a _specific_ claim demonstrating a contrary
| phenomenon, one would think. "Vague claims" aren't some
| rhetorical ace-in-the-hole. They can be argued against,
| presumably better than "you're wrong, and you should feel
| bad."
| Gareth321 wrote:
| My account is 15 years old. The fact that you pretend not to
| notice the dramatic shift indicates that you subscribe to
| r/politics and believe it to be fair and balanced in content,
| moderation, and community sentiment.
|
| You know exactly what he means. We all do. Stop playing
| games.
| ahzhou wrote:
| /r/politics has definitely shifted from "OMG Ron Paul It's
| Happening Narwhal Bacon!!!111!!" to dominated by
| progressives, but I think you're seeing it through rose
| tinted glasses. After all, /r/atheism was also a default
| sub.
|
| /r/all is populist as ever, but Reddit as a whole has
| simply fragmented. For politics specifically, non-
| progressives just live outside of /r/politics. Neoliberals
| tended to hang out in /r/political discussion, Trump
| supporters in /r/the_donald, neoconservatives in
| /r/tuesday, etc.
| [deleted]
| rjh29 wrote:
| My account is 10 years old. I have noticed no shift. But I
| do not subscribe to any of the popular subreddits, I only
| subscribe to niche subs, which is clearly the best way to
| use the site and avoids the issue of political nonsense
| getting in the way of enjoyable conversation.
| stimpson_j_cat wrote:
| Mine's older than yours and I don't know what you mean, the
| DNC targeted reddit? Dramatic shift? Reddit started far
| left (being focused on science and tech) even horse-shoeing
| to the point where it attracted a big Ron Paul fan base.
| There was an r/obama before users could _make_ subreddits.
|
| It's been heading right or center-right ever since
| the_donald (2015), r/conservative, etc have gotten so huge,
| if there's been any political shift.
|
| Do you really think you'd regularly see white supremacist
| content on reddit in 2006 as often as you do now?
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > It's been heading right or center-right ever since
| the_donald (2015), r/conservative, etc have gotten so
| huge, if there's been any political shift.
|
| Wait - you seriously and unironically believe reddit has
| become _more_ rightwing in the past 7 years?
| mathgorges wrote:
| I'm not who you're replying to, but this has been my
| experience in some communities I enjoy while I've had the
| opposite experience in others.
|
| For example, I used to love /r/conspiracy which is now
| rather overrun with a _particular kind_ of conspiracy
| theorist and I no longer feel welcome.
|
| Speaking from the gut I'd say more communities have slid
| to the left than the right, but nearly all of my
| communities have been more politicized and it reduces the
| amount I use the service considerably.
| Izkata wrote:
| They're referring to Correct the Record, which flooded
| the site with fake accounts to push narratives that
| supported the US Democatic party.
|
| It was really obvious when something unexpected happened,
| like that video of Hilary collapsing and having to be
| pushed into a vehicle during the presidential campaign -
| for several hours the sockpuppet accounts didn't know
| what to say so comments from regular users started making
| it to the top again.
|
| (Quick edit, had the wrong organization in mind before)
| mathgorges wrote:
| Thanks for citing something! I've been a casual Reddit
| user since ~2008 and felt very lost in this discussion.
|
| In case anyone is in the same boat as me, heres an
| article on the subject:
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-
| dollar1-mil...
| stimpson_j_cat wrote:
| That was an SPAC in 2016, OP said "the night of the DNC
| primary in 2015." I was there for the CTR debacle, the
| SPAC hasn't existed since 2016(?), do you think they're
| still funding accounts?
| Izkata wrote:
| The DNC primaries started in early 2016, so they're
| definitely misremembering part of the timeline. If we go
| by "primaries" and not "2015", then they probably are
| remembering CTR - it lines up almost exactly to when they
| started.
|
| And yeah, it's probably not them but it definitely feels
| like something is still going on. In the Chicago
| subreddit, for example, on anything that touches a
| politically-charged topic, the comments and votes will be
| exactly opposite what they might be on a different day.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >It was really obvious when something unexpected
| happened, like that video of Hilary collapsing and having
| to be pushed into a vehicle during the presidential
| campaign - for several hours the sockpuppet accounts
| didn't know what to say so comments from regular users
| started making it to the top again.
|
| Same thing happened after Trump's 2016 election win. For
| a day or two, it was possible to post something non-
| leftist to /r/politics without having it be mercilessly
| downvoted; as if the shills were awaiting orders.
| ratg13 wrote:
| This has been a theme on reddit since comments were introduced.
|
| The largest shift in the site was something 12-14 years ago
| when they redesigned the site to have thumbnails.
|
| This brought people to the site for images instead of content.
| That was absolutely the original torpedo.
|
| It made the site much more popular, but the quality tanked
| fast, and has continued since due to having to cater to the
| lowest common denominator of millions of people.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| Republicans have used Russian help to spread disinformation
| against Democrats.
| mherdeg wrote:
| One of my favorite ways of discovering niche content has been
| browsing /r/all/gilded and taking a look at the variety of
| highlights throughout the site that never make it to the front
| page or other kinds of publicity.
|
| I dug in there one time and found a fascinating obituary for a
| user on a subreddit for people living with addiction -- full of
| some touchingly personal and weirdly public stories. Following
| the user's profile from there taught me about the wild world of
| the "opiate roll call" subreddit (a thinly veiled Craigslist
| for drugs) which was at the time flourishing. Fascinating
| stuff.
| chaosbutters314 wrote:
| /r/chonkers is the holy grail of reddit. I was sad it took me
| 10 years to find that subreddit
| ulucs wrote:
| How on earth is that animal abuse subreddit not banned?
| Those animals deserve a better life, not diabetes for the
| sake of memes.
| recuter wrote:
| What is wrong with you chaosbutters.
| sph wrote:
| > browsing /r/all/gilded
|
| These days that awards are free, that's just a list of
| popular things, not a list of cool things. The major
| subreddits can have a selfie posted that gets a dozen awards.
| easytiger wrote:
| Hardly worth it. I one designed & maintained an archive of
| certain subreddits. Now nuked for various reasons.
|
| The modding to craft a narrative and ban dissenting right think
| is so pervasive (and even the admins banning individual
| wrongthink comments) that what you see on the site doesn't
| represent what people posted.
|
| It's toxic beyond repair.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| Would love to hear what those "certain" subreddits were!
| tomatowurst wrote:
| my biggest gripe are purchased aged accounts, awards, and
| coordinated manipulation of opinions in r/cryptocurrency
| r/wallstreetbets in particular.
|
| there's clearly pump & dump scams happening here. but its
| impossible to regulate and prove (VPN).
|
| there will come a point where you just can't straight up trust
| what somebody says anymore on reddit, unless there's some sort of
| consensus...but even that can be manipulated.
|
| if you go to regional subreddits like r/japan or r/korea, you
| will notice its not even natives jumping on like r/singapore, its
| mostly expats and surprisingly quite very prejudiced and biased.
| You would think people exploring other cultures to be open
| minded, its not in these circles, its an echo chamber for
| whatever demographic it represents.
|
| all in all, reddit as a product and value is as good as 4chan.
| there's no defense or nuanced balanced views with active
| moderation like you will find on HN.
|
| Hackernews, with its current moderation, that can possibly allow
| "subreddits" would be far more valuable for me. But lately I also
| see that HN is not immune from astroturfing and manipulation.
| It's not hard to see this, you have accounts that aren't active
| suddenly becoming activated in a particular thread (recent
| example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31015328) I suspect
| these are run by the same person trying to "win" or feels they
| have something to lose.
|
| tldr: Text based, anonymous discussion platforms are problematic
| and rife with manipulation and unreliable trust vectors and don't
| see any good solutions
| optimalsolver wrote:
| I use this:
|
| https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/
|
| Search Reddit comments and posts by keyword, user, sub, or all
| three.
|
| Includes deleted comments and posts.
| siva_ wrote:
| That's so helpful, thank you so much. I just found a reddit
| post I'd deleted in 2015 that had the title of an earworm.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Glad to help! :-)
| speedgoose wrote:
| If you want to delete your Reddit account from the pushshift
| Reddit dataset, you have a Google form:
| https://teddit.net/r/pushshift/comments/pat409/online_remova...
| trinovantes wrote:
| > Right now, we internally blacklist the account so that the
| data is not exposed via any public API. For full disclosure,
| we currently do not permanently delete any data unless there
| is a major issue involving PII, etc. While you have the right
| to request that people cannot search your comments and
| submissions via the public API, we reserve the right to keep
| data in our private archive so long as we never allow any
| data that you requested be removed get exposed through any
| public API endpoints.
|
| Your deleted comments even after requesting to be removed
| from pushshift can still be found in the archives e.g. what
| https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/ uses
| ma2rten wrote:
| It says it's using the pushshift api on the page.
| trinovantes wrote:
| Don't know what to tell you, I tried opting out a year
| ago [1] and they still have some of my deleted comments
| today [2]. Pushshift is a massive GDPR violation so I'm
| surprised they haven't gotten into any trouble yet.
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/Gjp7YOA
|
| [2] https://camas.github.io/reddit-
| search/#{%22author%22:%22trin...
| basisword wrote:
| Report them to the relevant authority if you can.
| Assholes like this need to be stopped.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| They get reported and fined EUR10m. However, if they're
| not European or have EU-based assets, what makes you
| expect they'd care or ever pay?
| nicbou wrote:
| > we reserve the right to keep data in our private archive
| so long as we never allow any data that you requested be
| removed get exposed through any public API endpoints.
|
| This is why I'm really happy to have GDPR. If this were a
| European company someone would eventually tear them a new
| one.
|
| "Reserve the right" is a cheeky choice of words for keeping
| data that isn't theirs against people's consent.
| capableweb wrote:
| > "Reserve the right" is a cheeky choice of words for
| keeping data that isn't theirs against people's consent.
|
| How is it "your data" if you use their property
| (reddit.com) to post content on their website? IP and
| other PII I can understand, as reddit gets that no matter
| what interaction you do with the website, it makes sense
| to protect that. But as soon as I make this comment on
| HN, I don't really expect to "own" this comment anymore,
| it now belongs to news.ycombinator.com.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| When you make a post on Reddit, you give _that site_
| permission to publicly display and retain it. However,
| what is being talked about here is a third-party scraping
| that post and keeping it without your permission, the
| permission that you did grant to Reddit.
| nicbou wrote:
| Not according to GDPR and its right to be forgotten. The
| data subject always has the last say about data that
| concerns them.
|
| Just because data about me exists doesn't give unlicensed
| third parties unlimited rights to it.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Good luck with enforcement.
| nicbou wrote:
| That has no bearing on whether or not its right or legal.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > But as soon as I make this comment on HN, I don't
| really expect to "own" this comment anymore, it now
| belongs to news.ycombinator.com In
| Article 17, the GDPR outlines the specific circumstances
| under which the right to be forgotten applies. An
| individual has the right to have their personal data
| erased if: The personal data is no longer
| necessary for the purpose an organization originally
| collected or processed it. An organization is
| relying on an individual's consent as the lawful basis
| for processing the data and that individual withdraws
| their consent. An organization is relying on
| legitimate interests as its justification for processing
| an individual's data, the individual objects to this
| processing, and there is no overriding legitimate
| interest for the organization to continue with the
| processing. An organization is processing personal
| data for direct marketing purposes and the individual
| objects to this processing. An organization
| processed an individual's personal data unlawfully.
| An organization must erase personal data in order to
| comply with a legal ruling or obligation. An
| organization has processed a child's personal data to
| offer their information society services.
| However, an organization's right to process someone's
| data might override their right to be forgotten. Here are
| the reasons cited in the GDPR that trump the right to
| erasure: The data is being used to exercise
| the right of freedom of expression and information.
| The data is being used to comply with a legal ruling or
| obligation. The data is being used to perform a
| task that is being carried out in the public interest or
| when exercising an organization's official authority.
| The data being processed is necessary for public health
| purposes and serves in the public interest. The
| data being processed is necessary to perform preventative
| or occupational medicine. This only applies when the data
| is being processed by a health professional who is
| subject to a legal obligation of professional secrecy.
| The data represents important information that serves the
| public interest, scientific research, historical
| research, or statistical purposes and where erasure of
| the data would likely to impair or halt progress towards
| the achievement that was the goal of the processing.
| The data is being used for the establishment of a legal
| defense or in the exercise of other legal claims.
|
| Source: https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/
|
| I wonder how all of this works out when you're taking
| public comments from someone else's forum and re-hosting
| them. Someone who specializes in law or even is more
| familiar with GDPR and related laws might be able to
| comment in more detail. I'm just linking the source which
| attempts to clarify these things, hopefully those are
| useful.
| GordonS wrote:
| If I post to Reddit, I'm giving Reddit permission to
| display that comment. I haven't read the T's and C's, but
| my _expectation_ would be that I retain copyright over my
| own comments.
|
| I could well be wrong (probably, even :), but my point is
| that giving permission to use my comments on one site
| shouldn't automatically give carte blanche to anyone and
| everyone to use them.
| bagels wrote:
| Any sane tos gives them irrevocable, royalty free use of
| content you post.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Well, you almost certainly give reddit a free, unlimited,
| global, transferable, [...] license to reproduce your
| comments. That's just standard, and it's unclear how they
| could display your content otherwise. Whether there is
| any way for you to revoke the license (either in the T&C
| or in applicable law) is a different matter.
| shmde wrote:
| Off topic: If Anyone reading this thinking of joining reddit you
| can navigate it two ways without getting engaged(also enraged)
| with the the scum and filth and rage-baits that is r/all or
| r/popular.
|
| 1). Use old.reddit.com, create an account ( it will bait you to
| enter your email, but its not necessary to proceed. ). Go to
| subreddits that you want to follow, there are hundreds of niche
| subreddits which are frankly quite awesome. Subscribe to them.
| click on r/Home to get the feeds of the subscribed subreddits.
|
| 2). Read-only subreddits, privacy focused. Use libredd.it go to
| niche hobby subreddits and subscribe. Come back to homepage.
|
| There you go the correct ways to navigate through the piles of
| garbage. Thank me later for your saved time, sanity.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| > If Anyone reading this thinking of joining reddit
|
| Just don't
|
| > there are hundreds of niche subreddits which are frankly
| quite awesome
|
| They are condoning reddit by continuing to use it
|
| ----
|
| There's another comment that points out that reddit screws up
| search engines results in order to get more front page hits.
|
| Just how long will it need to be pointed out that platforms are
| evil, and anti-Web, and you should be shunned for using them ?
|
| (I had some hope for reddit myself - that it would not fall to
| the same issues somehow, but that hope is long gone now...)
| jotm wrote:
| It's sad, but few people these days put in the minimal effort
| to set up a forum. Or sign up for one.
|
| Reddit is the easiest free way, but you pay the price in the
| end, and it's very high.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Related is how both storage and processing is very cheap
| these days, and yet you don't see many ISPs providing an
| out of the box experience featuring a mini-NAS, Nextcloud
| server, e-mail server, website server (including a personal
| blog and a phpBB forum ?)... on their modem/router boxes !
| danhor wrote:
| An important thing is also that reddit still doesn't require a
| mail address. Just click continue on the signup form without
| filling in the mail and bypass the dark pattern.
| jotm wrote:
| You can't comment or even _view_ some subreddits without
| verifying your email, though. But creating an email address
| takes 5 minutes at most.
| Root_Denied wrote:
| What are some examples of subreddits you can't view without
| verifying email? I haven't run across any.
| vimy wrote:
| The quarantined ones.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Requiring an email is a dark pattern?
| matt_kantor wrote:
| _Not_ requiring an email but making the UI look like you do
| is a dark pattern.
| Frotag wrote:
| For (1), a userscript like this does wonders. There's also a
| way to replace new-reddit links with the old-version, but it
| takes a bit of tinkering to get it to work on google.
| // ==UserScript== // @name old_reddit //
| @description replaces www.reddit with old.reddit //
| @match *://www.reddit.com/* // ==/UserScript==
| const url = new URL(window.location.href); window.locatio
| n.replace(`https://old.reddit.com${url.pathname}`)
| jedberg wrote:
| Or just log in and tick the box that says "always use old
| reddit" and then it will always use old reddit.
| Seredo wrote:
| Until you accidentally click the "Get new reddit" in the
| top right corner. You can hide it with your adblocker
| though.
| Klonoar wrote:
| That doesn't work for certain cases - e.g, if you're
| browsing Reddit in an icognito window.
|
| e.g, you want to browse for a gift for your SO and you're
| review-hunting, but you don't want it showing up in your
| sidebar as a recently viewed thread, or being in your
| history, or whatever - so you don't sign in.
| Userscripts/extensions force old.reddit.com regardless.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Or just log in and tick the box that says "always use old
| reddit" and then it will always use old reddit.
|
| Not sure if it's just me, but that setting seems to
| frequently get reset, as I tick that box maybe once a
| week/two weeks or something, but I keep getting sent to the
| new reddit at one point. Maybe I accidentally access
| new.reddit.com which forces the new layout and then reset
| the setting?
|
| In any case, I'm giving one of the new -> old redirection
| extensions a try now instead.
| kevincox wrote:
| It's never got reset for me. I've set it once and it's
| stayed applied across all my desktop browsers. I'm also
| pretty sure I've visited new.reddit.com and it didn't
| reset the setting.
|
| It doesn't apply to mobile but IMHO the new site is
| slightly less terrible on mobile than the old one anyways
| so that's my preference.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| if you love constant popups to install their (crappy)
| app, including not letting you use parts of the site at
| random, I guess.
| staindk wrote:
| I think a worthy addendum to (1.) is to review the 'default'
| subreddits that your new account is auto-subscribed to (unsure
| what the current list is, but probably stuff like /r/news,
| /r/funny, /r/videos...) and unsubscribe from the ones you
| don't/won't like.
|
| Reddit of course has its issues but by working through and
| around them it's still an amazing site - not because of its
| features or politics but because of the discussions and
| communities i.e. users of the site. The default subreddits are
| generally awful though.
|
| I use the RES extension on my PC and the Reddit Sync app on my
| phone and would recommend both.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| review the 'default' subreddits that your new account is
| auto-subscribed to and unsubscribe from all of them
| HigherPlain wrote:
| In particular the posts from /r/politics which hit the front
| page are often Q-anon tier; absurd misinformation and extremist
| rhetoric. But yes the smaller sub-reddits can be good.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| The default subs are great if you have low blood pressure but
| there are good niche communities on reddit.
| toomim wrote:
| And you can install the "old reddit redirect" extension in
| chrome to make this automatic.
| crtasm wrote:
| If you're logged in to reddit you don't need an extension,
| just set it in the options.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| I like seeing the popular posts, so I browse r/all but use the
| 'filter subreddits' option in the right-hand sidebar to remove
| all the dross.
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| Over time I'm starting to dislike threaded comments. I kind of
| wish everything was a single thread with numbers and people could
| reply to specific numbered comments.
|
| Then if you'd like you could just view said thread as a tree but
| it's still a single threaded comment thread.
|
| My problem with trees is that unless expanded and then flattened
| finding the newest relevant comments is more trouble than it's
| worth.
| Otek wrote:
| I have to say I strongly disagree with this take. I hate it
| every time that I have to go through a thread that's just
| comment under comment. It's so hard to keep up with multiple
| conversations going around.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| I wonder if a threaded discussion where the parent being
| responded to is always visible as you scroll would be a
| workable and usable interface? I get turned around sometimes
| if there are dozens of replies to a comment in a threaded
| discussion, especially when I get to the grandchild or great
| grandchild comment level.
|
| It would be analogous to when people quote entire paragraphs
| in a forum post to add their 1 sentence reply (which always
| bothered me for reasons I've never come to terms with). Once
| I found reddit, I really appreciated the threaded discussion.
| endisneigh wrote:
| That's a fair take. I suppose it depends on what you
| prioritize. Even in this post it's difficult to see the most
| latest comment unless you read and expand all of them.
|
| After a few hundred I personally don't bother. great example
| is the musk Twitter thread. Good luck finding the globally
| newest comment.
| Otek wrote:
| It's probably hard for me to relate with your problem,
| because I'm literally never interested in most recents
| comments. What is your "usecase" in reading newest
| comments?
| endisneigh wrote:
| I mean, the same reason why you'd want the newest of
| anything. Stuff on the top gets out of date. Even in the
| context of a comment thread, I'd want the latest comment
| in the thread, etc.
|
| Not to mention with threads you waste time reading things
| over and over again.
| infologics wrote:
| mrfusion wrote:
| I thought you could always search comments. What am I missing?
| kyruzic wrote:
| Reddit search has been notoriously horrible since its
| introduction. It couldn't even search for subreddits
| effectively. It could never search comments for content.
| nameisname wrote:
| I have not actively used Reddit in over a year and am better for
| it. Their design is one of the most hostile I have seen in a
| website. I wish it was an area that allowed for competition
| because someone needs to give Reddit's head a shake.
| MMS21 wrote:
| I don't use Reddit in the sense that I have an account, instead
| I go through teddit.net using a privacy redirect browser
| extension, this lets me bypass their redesign by using a
| different front end.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I find that using the Old Reddit interface with RES on desktop,
| and Apollo on mobile, more or less eliminates the icky parts of
| the Reddit experience.
|
| The catch is that both of those usage modes are pretty much at
| the mercy of Reddit Inc., which could decide to "deprecate"
| them at any time they see fit. And given that Reddit Inc. seems
| to be planning an IPO, I imagine that those will both be on the
| chopping block sooner rather than later.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| One of the most annoying things is to open a thread and be forced
| to click all over the place to see comments rolled up under each
| other. You can't even search comments inside a single post until
| you have somehow unwound everything. Thats why I use Sync for
| Reddit and will logout proper if they dump 3rd party clients.
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| I love Sync for Reddit. This script loads more comments inline:
|
| https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/5578-reddit-load-continue-...
|
| For some reason the icons are large, so I tweaked the CSS to
| make it smaller. Don't recall my exact change though >_>
|
| Video of it in action: https://imgur.com/a/lOansZO
| knorker wrote:
| old.reddit.com fixes that, no?
| Izkata wrote:
| Let's go all the way back to i.reddit.com
| dbetteridge wrote:
| No, they've changed something recently where sufficiently
| nested comments with replies now seem to show 'click to see
| more' thing as well
| staindk wrote:
| As per the other reply to you, I'm pretty sure this has
| always been a thing.
|
| At least in the past it was a 'non-gold' restriction[1]
| that you could only set your account to load up to 500
| comments automatically.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/3z7xac/can_i_loa
| d_all... (could not find an official recent source so
| things may have changed)
| flutas wrote:
| Another change we could be seeing. Reddit allows mods to
| collapse comment threads as of 03-12-2019.
|
| > such as an ability to auto-collapse comments by
| users[0]
|
| [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/b0a
| 8he/dete...
| garbagetime wrote:
| That's always been the case, it should not be as bad as new
| Reddit though
| londons_explore wrote:
| 'reddit enhancement suite' has an expand all button. You can
| then search with the regular browser search feature within the
| page.
| driscoll42 wrote:
| Reddit without RES (also uBlock Origin) is reddit that's only
| 50-75% usable. Though I would also say old.reddit is
| infinitely superior to the newer reddit interface as well.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I agree - I mostly was using Reddit on mobile for years for
| this reason (using Reddit is Fun on android) because I was
| too lazy to setup RES on desktop. Once I got a proper
| config setup + constant redirect to old.reddit.com (was
| already using Ublock) the site is a millions times better
| even without logging in. And of course even if you make a
| throwaway username and do a little subreddit subscription
| customization that makes it even better.
| lvl102 wrote:
| This is awesome. While, comments are generally lacking in info
| (but still entertaining) there are always gems in there. It's a
| bit like needle-in-haystack. I think there's even a subreddit
| dedicated for this. I'd love to see ML/DL deployed to make it
| easier to find such comments.
| endisneigh wrote:
| you mean... like if people could vote on the best comments, and
| you could sort by the votes? The issue is that figuring out
| what is actually useful is intractable and subjective.
| lvl102 wrote:
| No, it's a bit more complicated than that because the
| comments are threaded. It could take a few passing to find a
| gem comment. Also, the comments evolve over time meaning you
| might not find anything at the time of your browsing.
| glowingly wrote:
| That's sort of how I feel about comment trees. ~100-200
| comments is the safe max for me, after that, sufficient
| garbage is present to degrade readability. It's
| subreddit/topic/ToD dependent, since some are difficult to
| follow from the beginning.
| endisneigh wrote:
| But even with a single thread you'd have the same problem.
| How would you know what's useful beyond using votes and
| sorting?
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| I wish I could set multiple sortation options at the same
| time. So I might see the top 'best' post, followed by the
| top 'controversial' post, followed by the 'newest' post.
| Then the second best of each.. etc..
|
| As for threaded, I like how StackOverflow handles this.
| You have separate top level answers, but underneath that
| is flat comments that can be filtered a tad for quality
| or totally unwrapped. That system works very well.
| jokoon wrote:
| I use RIF for android and it now has a GDPR consent thing that I
| refuse everytime.
|
| It's amazing that reddit survived its redesign, I wish they would
| rollback. I'm also curious about how many users still use the old
| design.
|
| If they remove the old design, I would obviously not use reddit
| anymore, and I don't know if there are viable frontends that
| would allow me to login.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Last time I looked at the graphs, it was something like a
| single-digit percentage of users that are still using
| old.reddit.com, and shrinking.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Is it shrinking due to conversions to new reddit or due to
| new users signing up and throwaway alts who never convert to
| old Reddit?
| bruce343434 wrote:
| How? The site is so slow and unresponsive, as for threads it
| hand-picks like 3 comments at best, you have to click to see
| all and it still won't show all. How and why do people put
| up?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| low visibility for the option to revert to old Reddit.
| tim-- wrote:
| But how many people does that single percentage number
| represent? With hundreds of thousands of active accounts,
| loosing 5% of users is not an insignificant amount of a user
| base.
|
| I can't see anything replacing Reddit any time soon, though.
| nojito wrote:
| The redesign by all metrics has been a resounding success.
|
| It's probably one of the best examples of a company ignoring
| the vocal minority in order to succeed.
| costcofries wrote:
| This is an excellent move from Reddit. I've been appending Reddit
| to my Google searches for years. There is nothing better than
| testimonials from real humans within a focused interest
| community.
| boredumb wrote:
| Haven't used reddit in about 5 years and my life has improved
| almost as significantly as a few years prior to that when I
| deleted facebook. HN is the only place I have social interaction
| on the internet, even while interacting with people I may
| adamantly disagree with the tone of comments are generally more
| respectful, informative and less band-wagony than any social
| media platform out there. Good for them for fixing their
| infamously broken search feature, but it isn't remotely enough to
| entice users back onto their platform.
| ultra_nick wrote:
| HN has unique demographics.
|
| Mostly science and business literature adults. Other platforms
| have wider demographics.
| smm11 wrote:
| Still staying away.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| How long did it take them to implement full text search across a
| couple replicas. What the hell is Reddit doing with all this
| time?
| muskfear wrote:
| Good move. Don't get stagnant or else you never know, you might
| be on Elon's "I will buy you" list.
| groffee wrote:
| > With this latest update, for the first time in sixteen years
| everything on Reddit is now searchable - users, posts,
| communities, and now comments - making Reddit one of the first
| platforms with this capability.
|
| I mean this is a straight up blatant lie, every single
| forum/social site out there has proper search and has for years,
| I know all of mine do. Most of them you even have image search.
|
| So honest question, how does a multi-million dollar site just not
| have such basic functionality? Does it not matter?
|
| Better question, and this is something I see time and again, how
| do sites missing such basic functionality even get any funding to
| start with? It's just weird. Reddit didn't even have a working
| user block till recently either.
| raldi wrote:
| It's also a lie because "everything" on reddit is still not in
| fact searchable; buried in the comments on the announcement
| post, they admit that pre-2020 comments are still not indexed:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/u3oz2x/whats_up_wit...
| bduerst wrote:
| This is likely intentional though.
|
| Reddit's engagement model relies on new posts with which to
| comment on. Being able to easily find previous content means
| less reposting, and less opportunities to give users a place
| to engage. A standard, working search function would only
| hurt reddit's growth metrics.
|
| It's so obvious to the userbase that you have certain users
| complaining about _reposts_ , or even subreddits that
| intentionally flag for _original content_ (OC).
| pavs wrote:
| Hi Raldi, when did last work with Reddit. I can't remember,
| genuinely curious.
| raldi wrote:
| 2008-2011
| whymauri wrote:
| LOL!
|
| Well time to continue using "site:www.reddit.com" on Google,
| then. I find the old search from old.reddit.com to be way
| better than the newer search (but I haven't tried this newest
| search linked in the thread).
| Melatonic wrote:
| Interesting - I did not even know that old.reddit used a
| different search. I rarely even use the search
| (occasionally I will use it to search a specific subreddit
| and assume it is only searching post titles). I pretty much
| exclusively use old.reddit + customized reddit enhancement
| suite and on mobile use the app Reddit is Fun. Anytime I
| have to go back to vanilla new reddit it feels like a
| totally different site. I'm not even really changing the
| default subscriptions all that much either at all - often I
| browse without being signed in. The part I find the most
| odd is that even without signing in the "hot" algo seems to
| organize top posts occasionally differently between the two
| (old and new).
| Melatonic wrote:
| LOL This is ridiculous. The majority of Reddit is Pre-2020 !
|
| Or as I like to call it - The Before Covid times. BC. Surely
| there's no other acronym that uses those two letters. 2018 BC
| was a good year for me personally
| vinnymac wrote:
| In other words, the most valuable dataset (the majority of
| the data) is not yet searchable.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I expect post-2020 is the majority of the data given
| Reddit's exponential growth. But definitely pre-2020 is
| more valuable.
| wtf_is_up wrote:
| Any data to suggest that the past 2 years have generated
| the majority of reddit's data? I've been a user for a
| decade and it doesn't feel like this is the case to me.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| "Better question, and this is something I see time and again,
| how do sites missing such basic functionality even get any
| funding to start with? "
|
| By abandoning ethics and building a moat so that those with
| ethics can't breach the moat.
|
| "In the early days, reddit's community was built up thanks to
| hundreds of fake profiles created by the site's co-founders,
| according to Steve Huffman (coincidentally, a reddit co-
| founder). To make the site look populated and diverse, Huffman
| and Alexis Ohanian, the other founder, would submit links of
| their own choosing, each time under a new username."
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...
| Melatonic wrote:
| Reddit search has always been laughably bad - it is quite
| amazing that for the biggest and most popular forum on the
| internet they have not worked harder on this. Reddit should
| have the BEST search on the internet.
|
| Or hell - can they not just pay Google and embed a customized
| version into their site?
| ahtihn wrote:
| I don't understand why search is something that Reddit needs to
| have. Google does the job perfectly fine. Search isn't a core
| feature for Reddit and it's certainly not "basic"
| functionality.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| But then Reddit doesn't get to collect all the search data. I
| would imagine knowing what people are actually looking for is
| quite valuable
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| > I don't understand why search is something that Reddit
| needs to have. Google does the job perfectly fine.
|
| No, it absolutely does not. I have used Google to search
| Reddit for a string and got no results. That string was
| present in a Reddit comment open in another tab. It was a few
| years old so there is very little chance it hadn't been
| indexed yet.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| People have complained about the poor quality of Reddit
| search for as long as it has existed.
|
| Aside from that, certainly, a site with its own indexing and
| awareness of its own internal structure can provide a better
| search experience than a third-party.
| pmlamotte wrote:
| Google does an okay job and certainly is the best option for
| searching Reddit that I'm aware of, but there are many cases
| where Google breaks (largely due to Reddit's site). It's
| common to get results that don't match anything in the
| content itself, but matches a title in the "more from this
| subreddit" section at the time Google scraped it. Dates are
| often wrong so adding date filters often doesn't work as
| expected.
|
| Even old Reddit has the "more from this subreddit" type links
| now so I imagine it breaks even if you scope your query to
| the old domain. I noticed most of this appeared after they
| launched the new Reddit UI, I don't remember having this
| problem in the past. Note that these are problems they could
| likely fix so I agree, but any platform can likely build a
| more context aware search as well.
|
| Disclaimer: I work at Google but don't work on search,
| opinions are my own, blah blah
| CreatedAccount wrote:
| Yeah, the broken date range search drives me nuts. "Oh,
| there's a month old reddit post about what I'm searching
| for... nvm, it's 4 years old."
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I've always assumed Reddit is lying about dates on
| purpose for SEO reasons
| Barrin92 wrote:
| because reddit is a for-profit business and if it can wrestle
| search from Google obviously it will. In a broader sense the
| internet is moving away from its protocol nature to
| vertically integrated firms and you can expect this
| fragmentation of search in many places.
| endisneigh wrote:
| How can you search specific comments in a single Reddit post
| with Google accurately?
|
| Take a recent Reddit post and try on Google:
|
| site:https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u3vzo2/russi
| a_wa... arms
|
| Even subreddit comment search on Google is flimsy due to
| Reddit not properly exposing the dates, so Google's indexed
| dates are usually wrong.
| aghilmort wrote:
| yes, hit or miss on comments; appears Google indexed that
| post ~15 hours ago
|
| does work properly for those comments did index, e.g., http
| s://breezethat.com/?q=%22Putin+is+in+no+shape%22+site%3A...
| Melatonic wrote:
| I find this hit or miss - often Google gets it right and
| often it does not. Definitely would be nice if they were
| able to fix this!
| fintechjock wrote:
| site:www.reddit.com/r/whatever_subreddit "whatever you are
| searching for"
|
| Works for me every time. I haven't used Reddit search in 10
| years.
|
| I'm at a loss for why anyone would want to read Reddit
| comments in the first place though. At least on one of the
| top 100 subs.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Comments are literally the whole point of forums - what the
| point be if people did NOT want to read the comments?
|
| I agree there are a lot of crap comments on the bigger
| default subs (as is the same with any forum) but those are
| relatively easy to ignore and recognize with experience. Or
| maybe I just have been using internet forums for too long !
| stevage wrote:
| Subs like AskReddit literally are their comments. That's
| why you read them.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even for private subreddits? Severe doubt.
| fintechjock wrote:
| That isn't a problem faced by the vast majority of Reddit
| users. What I posted is a workaround that has been
| available since Reddit was founded and would be useful
| for the average user to know.
| samstave wrote:
| Maybe they set it up to be more easily crawlable by AI bots
| internal to reddit to begin developing a sale-able data pack
| on the profiles of its users?
| Melatonic wrote:
| Good search is really a must for any forum though - I
| remember back in the day when more forums were independent
| (pre Reddit) and less moderated a common thing to tell a new
| user that made a very common (repeated) post was to use the
| search function. Some people were dicks about it but often
| people just were gently steering the person in the right
| direction. No need to have the same exact post every week
| clogging things up when a simple search can lead you to high
| quality discussion content on the same exact topic.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Increasing impressions/time-on-site increases ad inventory
| and also juices all the other engagement numbers.
|
| This is a good move by Reddit (whose search has always been
| abominable). Many HN'ers have pointed out that they add
| "reddit" to their Google searches, ex: "<product X> reviews
| reddit". Why let Google get the ad dollars for that SERP?
| aadvark69 wrote:
| multi-billion* dollar site
| [deleted]
| cush wrote:
| Scale. Basic stops being basic at their insane scale.
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| I understand your point, but scale also applies to reddits
| resources and number of developers / options, so I disagree
| with this reasoning/excuse.
| xeromal wrote:
| Scale isn't a linear kind of problem though. The
| complexity, if not carefully managed, in my experience
| grows faster than linearly.
|
| I always see Salesforce as a huge company with tons of
| resources whose products struggle frequently.
| jdauriemma wrote:
| You might be surprised at how small the Reddit team is
| whymauri wrote:
| They keep raising money. Might as well hire more and pay
| better. I'm blown away that after nearly 2 decades,
| search is effectively unfunded at this company.
| criddell wrote:
| > Might as well hire more and pay better
|
| Would you want to work there? I suspect a lot of great
| candidates want nothing to do with that company.
| whymauri wrote:
| If they paid competitively, yes.
| syrrim wrote:
| Basic was previously provided by an external service called
| pushshift, which was free to use and allowed searching
| individual comments.
| krolden wrote:
| The userbase is what made reddit valuable to conde mast and all
| the investors since then.
| robertoandred wrote:
| > one of the first platforms
|
| I mean, I'm one of the first humans, just one of the first 117
| billion. Weasel words will get you anywhere!
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