
Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US - Mahn
https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US
======
Shank
The biggest value gain from Reddit, to me, is the ability to centralize
effectively around different hobbies and activities. In the past, if you
wanted to find an online community for a movie or a game, you had to find a
forum for that community. Finding forums that are well managed and capture a
good segment of the community is hard -- and Reddit just becomes a default
place to look now.

Let's say a new TV show starts airing, and you really like it and want to
discuss it more. You can probably bet there's a subreddit for it, and in that
community, a ton of people interested in it. You can bet there are threads for
discussing it in other parts of Reddit too. Worst case, you can make one
yourself.

This is something that everyone has in common. Everyone has a community they
want to "be apart of" and Reddit lets you express yourself to those
communities without having an identity tied to that community. There are
groups on Facebook, but it's so tied to you that it's hard to just be a part
of a community. On Twitter, people tend to congregate around others in their
interest domain, but by default, all posts go everywhere. Someone into a show
on Twitter is going to dilute their feed and have a similarly diluted feed if
they discuss it. In contrast, a subreddit is a concentrated mass of people
around a topic.

I don't really get much value outside of this centralization. The default
subreddits are too general for my taste, so I don't subscribe to many. But for
the 80-90 different topics and communities I like to see, it's great.

~~~
bradlys
I think it's okay to some extent but I find that forums definitely are a much
better resource and controversial threads or posts in forums don't get buried
or hidden by a downvote. Some of the most humorous threads you'll read would
have had a -inf rating and thus never seen on reddit.

To me, reddit seems a great way for a community to reinforce groupthink.

Instances I can think of are forums for motorcycles, cars, photography, and
certain tech forums. The ability to nest down by topic rather than having one
giant page for say all of BMW cars is what I like about forums. /r/BMW is
basically worthless to me as it's just picture sharing. I also dislike reddit
because it's hard to remember a name constantly. It's easier when there's a
little profile picture next to the name. You go, "oh yeah, that guy. He's
helpful." You remember those posters more often.

Never been a big fan of reddit as it feels pretty shallow in comparison to
forums and getting to actually know fellow members decently feels rare.

~~~
cortesoft
While it is true that sometimes valid, yet unpopular, opinions get downvoted
and buried, most of the times the things getting downvoted and buried are
simply comments or opinions that are worthless. They are either trolls,
racist, or derogatory comments that I WANT to have hidden from my view.

I think the upvote/downvote system is what makes reddit so popular, since it
acts to filter out the useless comments that often fill up other forums.

Unless you have VERY active moderators in those other forums, you will be
inundated by useless comments.

Now, reddit's system is not perfect, but the hiding of some comments is
certainly a feature and not a shortcoming of the platform.

~~~
hueving
>They are either trolls, racist, or derogatory comments that I WANT to have
hidden from my view.

This view is pretty naive. I suspect you just don't hold any opinions against
the groupthink of the subreddits you participate in.

~~~
didibus
I think when its moderated away, it often shows bias. But when its downvoted
away, in subreddits which have constituency that shows proper reasoning
skills, I tend to agree that its all about quality of the comment.

A controversial comment does in fact command a higher burden of proof. Thus
the comment has to be of even higher quality. And when it is, I feel it
survives the downvotes.

At least I've generally been able to go against the group think and survive
downvotes. But generally you need a clear argument, have a real point, and not
show bias.

Now, it won't always fly, but I think high quality controversial comments can.

~~~
hueving
Well they can't unless there are no other groupthink comments present. By
definition a controversial comment isn't getting upvotes from a significant
portion of the group so any regular "good" comment will quickly push it down
to the bottom.

If the majority of your group is rational, a rational comment will not be
controversial even if the view is unpopular. However, the vast majority of the
population is not rational when it comes to reading unpopular opinions and
that shows in every subreddit.

------
cm2012
Keep in mind:

1) Most Facebook users use the app, not the website, which Alexa doesn't track
(Which is also why Facebook doesn't fear commonly used ad blockers).

2) Alexa uses a number of metrics to rank sites, including pages visited.
Reddit users load many more individual pages than FB users.

In reality, Reddit is nowhere near close to the traffic and engagement
leviathan that is Facebook.

~~~
kkarp
plus a lot of Facebook users concerned about their privacy installed some
third party script blockers. They are probably now below Alexa's radar

~~~
thinkling
I would hazard a guess that percentage-wise more of Reddit's users are savvy
enough to install script blockers than Facebook users are.

------
exelius
Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free.
Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you.

It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic
user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic
users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in
non-toxic aspects.

I’m still skeptical of Reddit’s ability to turn a profit. But as a community
platform it’s the best out there IMO.

~~~
gitgacutils
> Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-
> free.

Reddit is none of those now. It's not anonymous ( they track your identity and
feed it to the government ). You may be "anonymous" to fellow users, but not
anonymous to authorities. It isn't information dense. It's propaganda dense.
Almost all the content there now is government, media, ngo, etc propaganda. As
for ads, check out the videos, movies, music, etc subs when a particular
movie, album, etc comes out. The frontpage will be littered with ad-like
submissions ( aka ads ).

Reddit is 80% government, politics and news propaganda and 20% ads ( movies,
music, etc ). I think you are confusing the reddit of 2011 with today's
reddit.

> It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic
> user base that has total freedom.

Actually reddit could and did monetize "toxic content". How do you think
reddit has been around for nearly 13 years? And once again, you are confusing
reddit of 2011 to reddit of 2018. Today, reddit isn't any more "toxic" than
twitter, youtube, facebook, etc. Reddit is heavily censored. Besides, on
social media, you don't monetize content, you monetize eyeballs/clicks/data
points.

> I’m still skeptical of Reddit’s ability to turn a profit.

Do you really think reddit is unprofitable? Let me guess, you think that
youtube is not profitable right? You think these companies have been around
for more than a decade because they are not "profitable"?

Their "hollywood" style accounting may make it seem like they are not
profitable, but these companies are incredibly profitable. It's why youtube
has a valuation over $100 billion and reddit's valuation is in the billions.

> But as a community platform it’s the best out there IMO.

Have to disagree with you there. Any garden variety forum is better than
reddit. Also, reddit stopped being a community a long time ago.

I've stopped using it because it's all political nonsense or advertisements.

~~~
Analemma_
> Reddit is 80% government, politics and news propaganda and 20% ads ( movies,
> music, etc ).

I am a heavy Reddit user and I don't notice any of these things, except when I
specifically go looking for them. Curate your subreddit list and unsubscribe
from all the default subs - they are all garbage, and that isn't even Reddit's
fault, it's just inevitable once they reach a certain size.

~~~
gitgacutils
> I am a heavy Reddit user and I don't notice any of these things

You don't see politics related content on reddit daily? I used reddit since
reddit was days old ( years before the digg migration ) so maybe we visited
different websites.

> Curate your subreddit list and unsubscribe from all the default subs

That defeats the point of reddit doesn't it? Or what made reddit great. I
never used reddit to be part of a bubble. Not only are default subs a bubble
today, reddit itself is a bubble.

> and that isn't even Reddit's fault, it's just inevitable once they reach a
> certain size.

Actually it is reddit's fault. When they allowed and encouraged censorship, it
allowed a small faction of political and news media/ngo affiliated mods to
turn subreddits into their propaganda platform.

~~~
rootusrootus
How do you avoid being in a bubble? Usually of your own creation. Whether it
is curating the subreddits you see, or selecting the news sites you visit, you
are only ever going to see a tiny fraction of what's going on in the world.

I skip pretty much all the political and news subreddits and stick to the
focused communities that match my interest. Things like r/3dprinting, or
r/omscs, etc. I find most communities are decent as long as they're not
enormous. Any significant political content and I bail, I am just too tired of
being reminded how horrible many people are.

~~~
gitgacutils
> How do you avoid being in a bubble?

Simple. By exposing yourself to a variety of ideas, opinions, viewpoints.

>Whether it is curating the subreddits you see, or selecting the news sites
you visit, you are only ever going to see a tiny fraction of what's going on
in the world.

Hence why I never subscribed to a subreddit...

------
jimmies
I have recently created a software package and wanted a forum to have my users
post "fun" stuff that is not strictly technical since it's sort of a hobby. I
have decided that it is way too tedious to host my own forums, so I chose a
middle ground that is to create a subreddit. It is working out pretty well.

There are be several reasons that hosting a forum/fanclub on Reddit is better
than on Facebook. Facebook mandates real name use, one username for everything
that not everyone is comfortable with, I'm sure everyone on HN is already
aware of that. But I think there is another subtle reason.

In the past, I have relied on Facebook to host another hobbyist project, and
it was super active. I thought what is more convenient than having one place
to notify users about the ongoings and stuff and plus having a mobile app that
kicks ass, right? It turned out, after a while, the group died. No one would
interact with our news anymore, even when we don't spam them with junk news. I
think the subtle reasons is that Facebook is way too aggressive on
interaction. Maybe something exciting is happening and many people flock to
comment on it, and so Facebook spams everyone with notifications and emails
about the current ongoing that many of the users don't care about. If a user
gets annoyed and decides to mute the group, then I will lose a good, caring
person forever. Reddit has no such jealous nudging mechanism, the user has to
explicitly check that subreddit to know. So the participation becomes much
more passive and the user can choose to update about the ongoings at their own
convenience.

It turns out being more gentle for hobbyist groups wins over being aggressive.
Not that I only have those two choices, though...

~~~
chaseha
A lot of that may be due to the way Facebook has changed their algorithms in
the last few years. I know that both Pages and Groups that don't pay for
engagement have had huge issues with their content no longer showing up in
follower's feeds. Could be that rather than users "ignoring" the group

------
rc-1140
Reddit has always been a strange place to me, even as it has grown to be a
cornerstone of socialization on the internet. I didn't grow up with it, I'm
still not a huge fan of the layout even after the redesign, the way comments
work still annoys me, and there are still plenty of stereotypical Reddit users
that I do not want to associate or be associated with. However, I can no
longer deny that it serves no purpose or that it is arbitrarily bad: it has a
bevy of information I simply can't get anywhere else, "everyone" uses it in
some manner so it's not an unknown in conversation, and it's got plenty of
niche communities that might appeal to my interests.

In the process, it's eaten up all sorts of one-off forums and communities that
don't wave the Reddit flag because it's just way easier to make a Reddit board
for your interest/community. Reddit also doesn't have cute features like
emoticons, their markdown isn't as intuitive as BBCode tags to me, and the
versatility of a given Reddit board is limited to what can be done with CSS
and each board's Wiki. Files have to be hosted elsewhere (game mods, game
recordings via SourceTV and similar, etc.), though this isn't anywhere near as
big of a deal as I'm making it.

Am I joining the e-Dinosaur ranks?

~~~
agentdrtran
Restricting CSS and wikis to be standardized is fantastic - it means that
mobile users and desktop users might actually get to see the same subreddit.

~~~
rc-1140
For my interests, I guess I can't see the value in a mobile user; maybe in
some really one-off cases in my interests it would be prudent for a unified
view? The most I've seen a Reddit board do is have fancier sidebar links. My
thoughts when it comes to having differentiated Reddits are forum-like
features such as shoutboxes, hyper-specific file uploads, or even flat-out
disabling Karma on that board (dunno if that one is already possible).

Sure I can have a forum with all of these features, but not the ease of use or
traffic that Reddit gets. Like I hope I got across in my previous post, still
undecided and hesitant on Reddit as a whole, even to this day.

~~~
danso
The value of a mobile user is that a huge proportion of social media usage
comes from people using their smartphones. I appreciate the quirky designs for
a few subreddits (r/mildlyinfuriating is a standout), but I have my user
settings configured to ignore custom CSS on desktop, just for ease of use.

------
Matachines
What surprises be about reddit is that they get advertisers and ads while
having one of the largest porn communities.

No one talks about this, and people are quick to say "Tumblr/4chan is just
porn!", but not only is there a myriad of porn subreddits, many of them have
OC content (people posting themselves), who thanks to reddit's new profile
followers feature have a fanbase. One only needs to look at /r/sexsells (NSFW)
to see this in action.

With the shutdown of Craigslist personals, people are (using and have been
using) reddit for hookups as well. Crazy that they "get away" with the #1
killer of social media platform ad revenue.

~~~
manfredo
If my understanding is correct, subreddits that host NSFW material (or at
least, a substantial amount of it) get tagged and age gated. I imagine it's
pretty easy to let advertisers opt out of those areas.

~~~
Anon1096
Well 4chan has safe for work boards as well but has a lot of trouble
attracting advertisers even to those.

~~~
sotojuan
All blue boards mean is no actual porn or like, gore. You can post people in
the underwear or other racy imagery that is not actually safe for work.

------
to_bpr
As a long, long time user of Reddit, it has been quite saddening to see its
descent into the shallow, ultra-toxic husk of a corporate entity that it is
today.

I'm not surprised by its popularity; it's a headline-surfers paradise, one in
which you get feel good points for displays of virtue or shitposting easily
digested content in an era of unparalleled narcissism and shortened attention
spans.

All is not lost though; as the steaming pile of defecation of the internet it
serves effectively in attracting and distracting basically those who would
otherwise pollute the greater internet community with their presence.

So congrats, Reddit, I guess.

~~~
hoffbrau99
I'd like a reddit-like site that is more exclusive, it filters out the non-
serious users with a yearly subscription fee of say $100.

~~~
rsync
"I'd like a reddit-like site that is more exclusive, it filters out the non-
serious users with a yearly subscription fee of say $100."

This exists: [https://www.metafilter.com/](https://www.metafilter.com/)

The fee is $5 which turns out to be an insurmountable barrier for just about
everyone. I personally like the site very much.

~~~
ajryan
Metafilter has just about the highest groupthink quotient of any site I know
of. Every single post ends up being about social justice, even when it isn't.

~~~
rsync
Agreed. I know that going in, though, and I still enjoy a lot of it.

------
minimaxir
Looking at Reddit data on BigQuery, the number of sitewide submissions has
been growing steadily, despite the continual drama:
[https://i.imgur.com/V8AptYU.png](https://i.imgur.com/V8AptYU.png)

Query to reproduce:

    
    
       #standardSQL 
       SELECT TIMESTAMP_TRUNC(TIMESTAMP_SECONDS(created_utc), MONTH) as mon,
         COUNT(*) as num_submissions
         FROM `fh-bigquery.reddit_posts.*`
         WHERE (_TABLE_SUFFIX BETWEEN '2016_01' AND '2018_02' OR _TABLE_SUFFIX = 'full_corpus_201512')
         GROUP BY mon
         ORDER BY mon

~~~
wrinkl3
The continual drama bothers only a relatively minor group of power users. A
lot of newcomers to Reddit are casual submitters who neither know nor care
about it.

~~~
woah
I think the continual drama mostly bothers non reddit users and reporters

~~~
snarkyturtle
I haven't seen very negative coverage about the redesign, which I assume is
what the "continual drama" is about.

------
nielsbot
The also have the highest "daily time on site" of all the sites on the list by
a good amount. (15m vs 10+m for runner-up Facebook)

That said, are these numbers reliable? And: Don't a lot of people visit FB via
an app? I assume that's not counted here.

~~~
iamunr
Same could be same for Reddit, and their app ecosystem.

~~~
emn13
I can't say I'm enthused by reddit-on-mobile. I stick to the desktop version.
No idea if I'm alone in that...

~~~
AlexandrB
Narwhal on iOS is pretty great. First-party reddit app is quite bad.
Ironically reddit heavily pushes their official mobile app if you visit on
mobile Safari.

~~~
thirdsun
These days Apollo seems to be the best reddit client on iOS:
[https://apolloapp.io/](https://apolloapp.io/)

------
tammer
I've recently been thinking that Reddit holds a lot of potential that has yet
to be tapped or expired. The recent pivots post CEO change (mobile app,
redesign, crackdown on garbage) speak to a future where currently fractured
private communities such as those on Discourse or Slack can find a more
publicly accessible presence. Facebook Groups, while immensely popular,
currently falls into the same opt-in, zero-discoverability category.

The timing couldn't be better with the hollowing-out of Tumblr.

~~~
tenryuu
Facebook also tending to restrict access to information behind a login.
Compared to reddit, which most of its content is publicly visible. They are
built on two very ideas though.

The amount of times I have to ask someone on Facebook to get information for
me is upsetting. To clarify, I'm banned from Facebook, not for being a
dickhead though

~~~
igravious
In the old days we used to call that excommunication. To be banned from your
social network is to be excommunicated.

------
danso
So this doesn't account for mobile native app usage, right? My impression is
that mobile accounts for the _vast majority_ of Facebook users. In the 2018 Q1
earnings report, FB saiid that 91% of its ad revenue came from mobile:

[https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-
details/...](https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-
details/2018/Facebook-Reports-First-Quarter-2018-Results/default.aspx)

~~~
NullPrefix
Because adblock is not available for apps?

------
Alex3917
Reddit’s year-over-year growth has been outrageous. A year ago I categorized
each of the top 5,000 subredddits, and many of them have gained 10x the
subscribers since then. For a website that’s been around for this long it’s
absolutely unreal.

~~~
tim333
Yeah congrats Spez.

------
IronWolve
Newsgroups took a dive when people moved to web forums, scattered all around
the web.

Now people are moving back to a centralized website, reddit, that's
interestingly almost like reading newsgroup threads.

Always thought the biggest problem with forums, not feeding RSS feeds back
into newsgroups to keep it alive. But then, you couldn't reply, and was only
for archival purposes.

At least with Reddit, I can use ifttt to push content into reddit, and make
the discussion happen on reddit, in dedicated subs.

------
ChrisArchitect
tell me again how Alexa even gets this data these days? I mean ages ago it was
thru sketchy browser addon toolbars etc, but seriously how many are installed
now? Never really trusted their numbers

~~~
jakewins
Same as how TV and Radio ratings are done - statistically significant sampling
of the population via surveys: [https://support.alexa.com/hc/en-
us/articles/200449744-How-ar...](https://support.alexa.com/hc/en-
us/articles/200449744-How-are-Alexa-s-traffic-rankings-determined-)

~~~
cm2012
The global data panel is not surveys of a random population. It's data
collected from people using Alexa toolbars. It's highly weighted towards
desktop traffic and the kind of people who install toolbars.

------
FrozenVoid
Most of reddit content is facebook-tier entertaiment, I have to create a
filter script to block thousands of irrelevant subreddits to increase signal-
to-noise ratio. (filter script in question:
[http://void.wikidot.com/code:reddit-contentfilter-user-
js](http://void.wikidot.com/code:reddit-contentfilter-user-js) )

------
_seemethere
Why doesn't reddit try to roll out an enterprise product?

I'm sure a lot of companies would be willing to pay to have an interface like
reddit internally. Most current solutions for this problem aren't very good
and I feel like reddit could be a good alternative. (not the redesign though,
loading times on that would make it basically unusable)

~~~
RandallBrown
About 6 years ago we had a self hosted reddit that someone hacked to hook in
to our ActiveDirectory.

It's the best QA/Wiki/Group communication tool I've ever used at a company.

I've thought a few times that you could build a startup on selling a modified
version of open source reddit to enterprises. (Not sure how much of reddit is
open source anymore though.)

~~~
usmannk
How does this solution compare to, say, Slack in your experience?

~~~
RandallBrown
It's much better for threaded discussion.

If I post an interesting article in our team slack room, if people aren't
actively discussing it, it gets lost very quickly. The threading in slack
never seems to attract people's attention (but that may be just people on my
team ignoring it.)

With reddit, you can have discussions and sub discussions, and sub discussions
if you really want to.

I actually left that company a couple months after they set up the reddit
server so I'm not sure how it ended up being used or if it even was. When I
was there we mostly used it for discussing interesting articles or projects
that people came across. (Much like you'd use reddit for in general.)

------
gsich
Reddit on mobile browser is the worst experience one can have. A very big
chunk of the screen is hidden with "get the app". You click on the mini text
and the you need to scroll down to dismiss the bar.

It has become similar with their new design, even on desktop platforms. "click
here for old reddit or dismiss" and sometimes the old.reddit.com link has no
underline with it, suggesting that a click there won't work.

------
Jur
I don't know how it is for other countries outside the US, but in the
Netherlands it doesn't add up at all. E.g. Russian social media site VK.com
ranks #4 and another 5 Russian sites (in Cyrillic, which most Dutch people
can't even read) decorate the top 20:

[https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/NL](https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/NL)

------
mastrsushi
The initial idea of Facebook is great. I can't exactly knock it when this site
is heavily influenced. But the problem with having specific boards that
satisfy every little interest is that an echo chamber effect often occurs. My
karma on that site is so low, not because of trolling, but speaking my own
opposing views. I'll never be able to post on a FreeBSD subreddit, claiming a
specific case where I find Linux better suited. Or when I read the OpenBSD
mailing list and post that Theo De Raadt needs to get a grip, when he rejects
Rust because no core utilities have been implemented. Making points that
radical are just asking for trouble.

It's a great way to collaborate with people within the same niche, but it's a
clique. They only want to hear themselves talk. Believe it or not, despite
4chan's well known toxicity, boards like /g/, /adv/, and /mu/ are perfect
examples of true anomity. Where specific interests are shared within threads
of each board. They may come off harsh to the light hearted, but they're not
afraid of opinions.

~~~
steveklabnik
Side note, my understanding is not that OpenBSD rejects Rust due to "no core
utilities have been implemented", but because it cannot bootstrap from a C
compiler alone.

~~~
mastrsushi
Do you have a link to that? So much for self-hosting.

~~~
steveklabnik
What do you mean? Rust is self-hosting; that’s exactly the issue. It’s written
in Rust.

------
nategri
I admit after reading this headline I was scratching my head as to what #2
could be. And then I looked and it was super obvious haha.

~~~
aantix
"You're Not Going to Believe Who is #2.."

------
glorkk
I’m really surprised Yahoo is #7, I thought Yahoo was all but dead.

~~~
wcfields
Think of all the grandparents that have Win Vista / XP machines with IE
defaulted to Yahoo.

Also, all the spyware/malware/adware seems to be wrappers around a Yahoo
search for some reason.

------
bad_user
What’s interesting to me is that YouTube is more popular than Facebook.

I realize that Facebook gets used a lot on mobile phones and that overall it’s
probably more popular. But it’s still incredible that YouTube.com is more
popular than Facebook.com.

That’s just one of Google’s properties. Google is basically dominating the
web.

------
echelon
Anyone interested in building an open source, add-free, Creative Commons-
licensed (perhaps not the posts as these belong to users, but the posts in
aggregate) copy of Reddit?

My ideal "Reddit" more closely follows the freedoms of Wikipedia / FOSS.
Reddit currently allows 3rd party clients to have access, but I envision more
- an analytics API, ML tools to train your own consumption / discovery agent
about what you like, filter out noise (including comments!), etc.

Reddit functioned with a skeleton crew for awhile. A small team could subsist
on donations and build something for the public good.

Something community owned and operated could be of tremendous value, and we
wouldn't worry so much over its uncertain future.

Federation could even be built in...

~~~
lightyrs
The federation aspect is very interesting to me. Can you describe in more
detail?

~~~
echelon
I imagine it would be similar to Mastodon, but instead of people being on a
node, you'd have communities on a node.

One server might focus on the southeast, eg. /r/atlanta, /r/georgia,
/r/falcons, etc. Another might focus on gaming, hosting subtopics such as
/r/nintendo, /r/minecraft, /r/ps4, etc.

If you're on one machine, you can have it pull in discussions from other
nodes. Or your client software might do that automatically for you.

Nodes might agree on a common short form namespace to refer to different
communities, and we might even be able to bolt this on to existing systems,
eg. /r/me_irl is Reddit, whereas /hn/show is "Show Hacker News". It doesn't
necessarily have to be backwards-compatible with non-fedarated systems, but it
could be.

I imagine single sign on, and good APIs for ingesting another community's or
user's content. Ranking metadata can also be supplied by the host community,
but local communities or individuals can apply their own transformative
equations on top of them.

~~~
iN7h33nD
I was just thinking of something exactly like this. I started my own nas in my
basement using yunohost and I really think self hosting on old hardware and
federation could finally help decentralize the internet.

------
toephu2
Anyone know what reddit's DAU is?

They used to publish this publicly
([https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/about/traffic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/about/traffic))
but since trying to become a real business and monetize they have since taken
that down.

edit: I see from
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170507102752/https://www.reddi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170507102752/https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/about/traffic)
on 2017/5/1 they hit 1M DAU.

------
John_KZ
Eh. Reddit's userbase is increasingly younger (have you seen the home page
while logged out lately?) and they can't really monetize them. Sure, they have
contracts with pizza and soda companies in the US, but that's it.

Recently they've been trying to "Facebook-ize" their UX, they gather a lot
more data, implement affiliate links and a _lot_ more logging, but it's still
not going far because the last of their adult users are leaving the site. At
least this was my experience with Reddit in the past 2 years or so.

I only go back to look for very specific things and leave afterwards.

------
TekMol
I wonder how much traction a lightweight Reddit with a nice clean html
interface would get.

Something like HN but with unlimited categories, not just all/show/ask.

I would _love_ such a thing. For me, Reddit already was on the edge of being
too bloated before the redesign. Now I barely use it anymore. Before the
redesign, I was on HN like 10 times a day and on Reddit 5 times a day or so.
Now I use Reddit maybe once a day. And I always have this 'Uh oh this is going
to be annoying. Do I really want to check it?' feeling.

~~~
newman8r
I think you need a pretty significant community size to make the 'subreddit'
model work. It's kind of a 'chicken or the egg' problem. I believe reddit
didn't even offer subreddits initially.

~~~
TekMol
Maybe. Then starting with just a few categories and slowly adding more might
be a good approach.

~~~
gnulinux
You mean like 4chan? Also you can make your own reddit client, it has a pretty
open API. So, you can make your own reddit client looking like HN.

------
methodover
Reddit frightens me way more than Facebook ever did. Reddit gives the
impression of what ideas are popular with its rating and comment system. But
those systems are remarkably easy to manipulate.

Imagine a Russian troll farm operation making a certain favored candidate look
far more popular than he is, for example. Or a corporation rallying fake
support around a piece of legislation.

Sock puppetry on an industrial scale could pose a serious threat to our
democracy. Reddit needs to figure out how they could mitigate that threat.

------
erd0s
More surprising is that yahoo is #7! I might be out of touch but I can’t think
of a single person that uses yahoo, maybe it might be the default homepage on
my grandmas computer...

~~~
gnulinux
I've never seen anyone who used Yahoo too. I've seen one or two people who
used Bing and even Yandex (lol) but no Yahoo.

------
O1111OOO
The sourced link states that Facebook as 7,127,042 sites that link to it.
Seems excessive. I often find sites linking to Amazon (824,044), Youtube
(2,722,482), Wikipedia (1,928,776), Imgur (172,079) but rarely to Facebook.

Maybe this has to do with Facebook's plugin/commenting system that tracks
across the web(?). Possibly social networks cross-supporting eachother, that
is... twitter (5,421,978) linking to Facebook and _vice versa_.

------
paulsutter
Alexa ratings are based on people who run the Alexa toolbar. Which is
dominated by webmaster types who care about Alexa.

Who are more likely to be redditors than the average user.

------
BadassFractal
Reddit is super valuable from the perspective of being able to poll a "hive
mind" specialized in a certain thing about best practices and ideas. e.g. I
want to learn more about making EDM, more about photography, more about
shibari etc. Usually the advice is pretty decent between beginner and
intermediate level, for the high end super-custom guidance usually it falls
flat.

------
z3t4
Reading Reddit is like reading an article in a newspaper on a subject you are
well versed in ... Then you read about something you know nothing about -
while having the ability to upvote/downvote, and happily vote, even if you are
not really qualified, and have now forgotten that the facts are probably
backwards or wrong.

------
tromp
The Alexa statistics look suspect in some countries. The top 10 most popular
websites in the Netherlands [1] includes 3 Russian websites, with Vk.com at
#4.

[1]
[https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/NL](https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/NL)

------
igammarays
I gave up on Reddit a while ago because it is such a massive time-sink. Kills
productivity like no other. Atleast Twitter is short and digestible. Reddit
can eat entire days.

But now I want to come back and see if I can strike a balance. Can anyone
recommend great focused subreddits to keep my frontpage junktainment-free?

~~~
fwn
Your frontpage is junkfree after you unfollowed all the defaults and blocked
the ads. After that, it's literally empty.

Now follow subs on topics you are interested in. I do it that way and I only
have to unfollow in very few cases due to a lack of moderation or an
usergrowth that brings in the masses.

I also avoid threads that get discovered by an audience beyond the initial
subreddit it was posted in. That's easy to notice as conversation immediately
stops and mindless chain commenters make karma rain over each other.

------
chiefalchemist
No disrespect to Reddit, but that's __a lot__ of visitors + page views for
what a fair percentage of the population might not be aware of (in a FB, etc.
sort of way).

Maybe I'm not questioning Reddit's "fame" per se, but the validity of the
algorithm that puts them at #3.

Perhaps it's just me?

------
jxub
An interesting part of it is the low number of references from outside sites.
Reddit is amazing for concentric closed tribes with occasional ripple-like
effects in the main page from some niche subreddits. Is this the real hivemind
of a big chunk of mankind?

------
myth_buster
Wow, the _Daily Time on Site_ is the best in top 50. I've always felt they
sold early.

------
massysett
Says more about the stagnation of the Web than the rise of Reddit or the fall
of Facebook. Facebook has market-leading apps. People are getting their
Facebook through apps, not Web. Meanwhile, until very recently Reddit's app
was a joke.

------
rblion
I don't use FB at all, IG once or twice a week, SC a few times a months when I
eat out nice or do something super cool worth sharing.

I use reddit every day and sometimes night. Favorite website of all-time.

------
rurban
It also has by far the most daily pageviews per visitor, about 3x more then
the top others (9.7 vs 2-3). Only xvideos.com the 2nd most popular adult site
tops that, but close (10.56).

------
HeavyStorm
Side effect of people migrating to Facebook Mobile while reddit is still more
popular on desktops?

On Google's Play Store, Facebook is said to have 76 million users. Reddit has
only 630k users.

------
sg7
Isn’t Alexa traffic counted by its toolbar?

So this is not really accurate data all. It only comes from people who have
the toolbar installed. Which aren’t many.

Facebook is still way more popular probably.

------
rakamotog
Is it interesting that people spend the most time on Reddit than on every
other website in the list? Even more than xVideos (which is #2)

------
mastazi
And according to the same link Reddit is first in terms of daily time on site,
which apparently is extremely valuable in the ads world.

------
slics
Facebook no longer has the same purpose as it started. Reddit on the other
hand it’s still true to its purpose. Free, open, and fun.

------
beauzero
Unfortunately they may think that it was because of the redesign.

joking, joking, well kind of. yeah, no, the redesign is awful...still.

------
Iggyjay
This is less about reddits sudden greatness and more about the canis
familiaris that faceache have been fornicating

------
microcolonel
How do they sort this? It is astonishing to me that they measure ~75% more
time spent daily on Reddit.

------
_raoulcousins
I've never heard of diply or providr. Everything else on the top 50 I'm at
least aware of.

~~~
RandallBrown
Diply is one of those horrible list aggregator websites. I see ads for it on
facebook constantly. Generally it's just a list of 10 things from an AskReddit
thread.

------
dynofuz
What does it mean by popularity? Number of visitors? Number of visitors x time
spent on site?

------
codeismylife
It's strange to see GitHub so high up there. I wouldn't have thought it
plausible.

------
askafriend
I didn't realize Quora was so incredibly dependent on search...even more so
than Yelp.

------
DonHopkins
What surprises me is now far down PornHub is on the list. Reddit way sticker
than PornHub!

------
chaolam
How much of this is due to FB's migration to apps vs visits on the browser?

------
tomc1985
That's crazy how Yahoo is at #7 and is widely considered a failure

------
iblaine
But which site gets more traffic from Russian bots, facebook or reddit?

------
jackmodern
Love reddit. Don't understand why it took this long to pass FB.

------
ThinkBeat
Why is Yahoo so far up the list? Do they have anything good anymore?

~~~
ben174
Mail, for one. People are very tied to their email address and don't like
changing it.

~~~
B0btheBuilder
I have three siblings and one parent still using Yahoo. The other parent uses
Outlook. They just don't wanna deal with the hassle of moving to Gmail.

------
u801e
> Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-
> free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you.

Usenet meets all three criteria, but it definitely is not used nearly as much
as it was in the past.

------
moultano
Facebook's app is popular. Reddit's app isn't.

------
jhund
I love the fact that I can consume reddit via RSS feed.

------
swami26
This data does not take into account mobile app usage.

------
bane
And yet, what's the relative valuations?

------
trisimix
Just as reddit is losing its charm to me...

------
johan_larson
How the heck is Yahoo still in the top 10?

------
pwaai
Well reddit is pretty much the only site that I compulsively check.

I no longer care about Facebook.

Actually I prefer anonymous reddit users more.

------
camelCaseOfBeer
Funny how the figure is ultimately inversely proportional to quality of
content. Sites begin wanting great content so they can end by attracting the
users who make awful content.

------
beedogs
Reddit's also become the #1 white nationalist site on the Internet. And the
admins don't seem to care.

Shut it down.

------
synaesthesisx
It blows my mind that Facebook is even top 5. Do people actually spend time on
the site?

~~~
cm2012
Dude, 50% of the american population uses Facebook every single day of their
lives (according to FB's quarterly statements, which would be a serious crime
to lie on).

~~~
anonytrary
I think he was making a distinction between the app and the site. AFAIK, most
Facebook users utilize Facebook primarily through the mobile app. If you look
at Google trends[0] for Facebook, you'll notice a linear decline since 2011. I
believe this is due to the onset of the Facebook mobile app, but feel free to
correct me if I'm wrong.

[0]
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=f...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=facebook)

------
hit8run
Thx to Aaron.

~~~
soulchild37
I am still sad about how corporate greed caused his death

------
hoffbrau99
Why did it take so long?

------
zer0faith
Now the NSA will collect data from Reddit.

~~~
to_bpr
>Now

You'd have to be very naive to believe the intelligence agencies haven't been
tapped into Reddit for a very long time already.

If JTRIG is active on Flickr[0], you can be damned sure they're all over
Reddit.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intelligence_Group)

------
intrasight
I avoided Reddit for many years - for no good reason mind you, I just didn't
"get" it. Now I do and I am a big fan.

------
cuddlypsycho
Reddit has the illusion of anonymity which gives its users a false sense of
privacy so they can act the way they truly are (parallels to Westworld if you
watch the show).

It would be incredibly easy for Reddit to de-anonymize its user base, the same
way Facebook was trying to do with medical metadata, and sell that info (at
least for the US users, given GDPR in EU now)

------
midoreigh
Reddit is going down.

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

~~~
ahmetkun
After all, this isn't reddit, right? :)

------
cwperkins
Reddit is quickly becoming a tool for the majority on the site to suppress
minority on the site's opinions. Until a viable solution is created to promote
diversity of thought it will always suffer from this problem. Reddit is just
as bad of an echo chamber as facebook. Please everyone who read stuff posted
on reddit, engage in critical thinking after each article you read.

~~~
jerf
I laid out some ideas what appears to be 79 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16570017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16570017)

In a nutshell, one of key aspects of the reddit system is that an upvote arrow
affects everybody equally, so the majorities affect whether something is
negative or positively rated. When you take that into account for where and
whether you show a post, the net effect is that at scale you pretty much
guarantee that the majority within a given community can suppress the
minority. The majority may not even have to necessarily _try_ ; it's something
built in to the system, even before we get into matters of people deliberately
trying to game the system.

Systems like Slashdot, HN, and Reddit try to fix that either with human
moderation or a variety of heuristics to try to minimize the impact ("that
looks like a voting ring, let's make its votes worth less", etc.), but another
alternative is to make the upvotes not be universal anymore. Instead of an
upvote meaning "I think everybody should see this more", it could be rewritten
to mean "I think I want to see more of this poster". It's more math, but we
have bigger computers now. As a side effect, it's robust against a lot more
attacks, though I don't guarantee it wouldn't have other weaknesses.

~~~
aldoushuxley001
That would be done much more effectively using a graph database, as it would
simplify the calculations immensely. But I think the reason people aren't
doing this is certainly the computation required.

