
Reddit.com on July 25th, 2005 – 1 month after launch - holler
https://web.archive.org/web/20050725010627/http://reddit.com/
======
duderific
Kind of OT but the links to articles mostly work, and I stumbled onto this
ArsTechnica article postulating about rumors of an upcoming iPhone release:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20061201011009/http://reddit.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20061201011009/http://reddit.com/viewlink?id=954)

The comments below are well worth a read. Here's a sample:

"...yaaawn...

it's going to take a REALLY impressive phone for anyone to give a damn at this
point.

and as far as that pug-fugly blue & green mockup goes, if that's the phone
(and it's not, where are the numbers? ive would not let something that ugly be
associated w/ apple) it would be a disaster."

~~~
ksaj
I left Reddit because the extreme levels of opinion mixed with self-righteous
cynicism inevitable in every single thread was unbearable. I enjoy reading
conversation threads, which I think Hacker News has basically mastered.
Reddit, not so much.

These people think they know everything, dramatize the crap out of their
hostile opinions, and yet as time goes on, they're quite often proven wrong.
But that's what they seem to enjoy, so let 'em at it.

I see Reddit as a rite of passage. Go there in your youth and pretend you know
everything. Once you grow up and learn you don't know everything, move onto
less obnoxious forums where you can discuss things like an adult. Not
everything has to end in a meme of the day or an attack based on someone's
assumptions of your personality/ knowledge/ skill/ appearance/ etc.

~~~
fragsworth
I wouldn't say HN has mastered the conversation. There are still major issues,
like how late comments can be drowned out by the noise, despite being really
high quality. And how there's a tendency to brigade one side of an issue on
particular topics.

I think these problems are solvable with a bit of creativity.

~~~
ksaj
Yes there is that issue. If someone posts something, and you post the one and
only correct answer 12 hours later, it is highly likely nobody will notice.

But it does suit my attention span, so I don't even mind missing upvotes if
I'm able to answer something a bit late for the party. Upvotes just mean that
something I've said might be worth looking back on just in case there are
replies to reply to. If I get an upvote for something I said more than 12
hours ago, I will at least notice that and get a chance to reply to it.
Without that, they're lost, too. I just hope the OP notices whatever it was I
tried to add, and move on. I'm not the center of what OP was presenting.
Unlike Reddit, where everyone is competing to be that center.

It's why I always upvote anything resembling a good thread. Sometimes its the
only hope of noticing if a comment got any traction.

There probably is no way to solve it for everyone. But at least here it
doesn't automatically devolve into a meme or fire storm of utter hatred. When
that is the norm, I know I'm not among peer and search for a different site.

And I say all that knowing that nearly nobody will notice. ;p

------
codeulike
[https://web.archive.org/web/20061201000220/http://reddit.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20061201000220/http://reddit.com/viewlink?id=958)

 _As Lance Armstrong heads for a record seventh win in the Tour de France,
Denis Campbell analyses the physical and emotional strengths that make him
great_

hmmmm

 _' Genetically Lance is a freak,' says his friend Tony Doyle, the British
former pursuit cycling world champion. 'His heart and lungs are bigger than
most people's, and most other elite cyclists', so they make him more efficient
as an athlete. He also generates far less lactic acid than the others, and he
recovers quicker - vital in a race where you push yourself to the limit day
after day after day.'_

hmmmm

~~~
p1esk
Pretty sure that's 100% accurate, what's with 'hmmm'? Or perhaps you think he
used more drugs than others?

~~~
W-Stool
He always claimed - always - that he never used performance enhancing drugs or
blood processes (doping). Which of course he did.

~~~
ajhurliman
Do you think the other cyclists are not?

~~~
dmm
If you have a sport where the honest cannot compete it's no surprise to
discover it's full of cheaters.

~~~
dfischer
Exactly - you’re compelled to cheat and have to find out how to get away with
it since you _know_ others are doing it.

It’s a huge issue. Very interesting psychology. Joe Rogan has a few episodes
on it but I can’t remember who he interviewed. I think there’s a documentary
related to this, perhaps Icarus if I recall correctly.

------
Whut
I know this gets said over and over again, but it's so depressing to look at
what major social networking sites have become. I remember actually having fun
on Facebook and twitter when they were in there early years. I feel like when
I used Facebook in high school I didn't have this overwhelming sadness and
whenever I logged off.

~~~
Aeolun
Probably because nobody was using actual psychologists to fuck with your mind
yet.

------
echelon
I wish there was a giant, global social network protocol. Open and distributed
that connected all of us. Email, but more modern to capture the kind of stuff
that Reddit and Twitter are great at. Photos, videos, discussion.

I then wish we could overlay filtering to keep out the high-noise drivel and
advertising. Probably using social graph metadata.

I'd like to have an anonymous or pseudonymous presence, the ability to
cryptographically sign my posts, and automatically elevate the score of
individuals along my interest graph. This should "just work" and be invisible
to the average user. It shouldn't seem like geeky technology.

I know that this is probably a terrible thing to bring into the world given
all the conspiracy theory groups (it keeps them in their filter bubble), but
I'm dying to have something that removes marketing and spam and only brings me
high quality content.

Marketing and spam are still the biggest problems on the Internet.

~~~
jwagenet
How do you moderate marketing and spam without also 'accidentally' censoring
controversial views on an open platform?

~~~
gumby
You’d subscribe to viewing sites that implemented the view protocols / spam
fighting you wanted.

------
andai
I heard in the beginning most of the posts were posted by the admins. They had
a box where they could just type in a new username for each post, to make it
look like people were using the site.

~~~
gfody
there's a thread here somewhere with an OG founder describing how they would
seed entire threads emulating the sort of voice and attitudes they wanted to
encourage. with that and technology like GPT3 (plus downright scary shit I've
seen from SubredditSimulator) I can't shake the suspicion that reddit is
largely artificial.

~~~
chx
I also can't shake the suspicion that aside from the very carefully moderated
subs it's mostly a completely natural toxic cesspit. triketora's recent AMA
was truly something else.

------
dang
Bugbear is PG, btw.

[http://bugbear.com/](http://bugbear.com/)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=bugbear%20pg&sort=byDate&type=comment)

------
maxton
Honestly, it looks like HN does right now, albeit with a different color
scheme.

~~~
nend
That's because hn was modeled after it.

~~~
_1
I thought this place was just a fork of the old lisp-based reddit.

------
bognition
I've never quite understood HackerNews's obsession with reddit over other
social networks. I'd love if someone could it explain it

~~~
renewiltord
It's an absolute phenomenon, man. Recommendations, discussion, backstage
access to celebs. And it's YC.

~~~
echelon
> It's an absolute phenomenon, man.

It was. Now it's a cesspool.

> Recommendations, discussion,

It's become the worst kind of echo chamber. The comments feel like they're
written by GPT-3, and there's a lot of prideful ignorance or confidence when
it's undeserved.

I had to laugh when they added "avatars" and everyone started setting theirs
to dancing seizure cockroaches.

My avatar is the Digg logo.

> backstage access to celebs

AMA was sincere when it started. Now it's just lame cash grab marketing and
self-promotion.

> And it's YC.

Yeah. I feel like they exited too early. Conde Nast made all the money here.

~~~
Diederich
> It was. Now it's a cesspool.

All of it?

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians)
for example.

~~~
chx
AskHistorians moderation is legendary -- and unique.

Tiny subreddits (like usbchardware where I am mod) are easy to keep nice. But
most larges ones are horrible, horrible toxic cesspools. It is basically a
phenomenon that communities break off the larger one when it becomes too toxic
-- but all too often the larger one won't wither. /r/canada and
/r/onguardforthee/ is a classic example.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/7z706y/whats_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/7z706y/whats_going_on_in_rcanada_eh/)
and an example post from /r/canada within the last hour, you don't need to
look far for stuff like this "I feel like ISIS would be better the liberals at
this point for canada."

Let's not even mention the childfree subs because what the original one became
is _shudder_

------
agambrahma
I liked this old "Why FreeBSD?" article there :-)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20061130234337/http://reddit.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20061130234337/http://reddit.com/viewlink?id=1043)

~~~
agambrahma
... and then I was wondering what the modern equivalent of that would be,
probably this: [https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-
freebsd/](https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/)

------
narrator
Not a single headline with a politician's name it. How things have changed!

------
Osiris
My favorite headline: "Drivers using cell phones are more likely to crash".

15 years later and we still haven't solved that one. It's interesting how much
has changed and how much has stayed the same in 15 years.

~~~
codeulike
We solved it in the UK. Illegal to touch your phone unless parked.

~~~
TheCycoONE
Ontario Canada too.

------
baggy_trough
Better UI than it has now.

~~~
teraflop
They haven't yet gotten rid of
[https://old.reddit.com/](https://old.reddit.com/), as much as they seem to
want to.

~~~
Jtsummers
And the day they do will be the last day I (deliberately) visit that site. The
new UI is just so non-functional for me. Some quality-of-life improvements (I
think there are some improvements in the markdown handling in comments), but
beyond that the old one is just faster to load and much easier to use.

~~~
Bluecobra
Funnily enough, I used to be a big Digg user and what drove me to Reddit was
when they redesigned everything.

~~~
Jtsummers
I wasn’t big on Digg, but I was moderately active. And I switched at the same
time. This pattern plays out over and over. At least Reddit has left
old.reddit up.

------
open-source-ux
If you are looking for a "lighter" version of the Reddit site, try this:

[https://i.reddit.com/](https://i.reddit.com/)

------
joshu
Incredibly reminiscent of early del.icio.us too.
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/765859193/in/album-72157...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/765859193/in/album-72157600740166824/)

------
MichaelZuo
There may be an opportunity for someone to create what reddit was meant to be.
A minimally designed and curated site that enforces some sort of unique ID
system to prevent all the trouble of online communities.

------
lobster45
Why FreeBSD? Some things never change!

~~~
acheron
I thought FreeBSD died when Netcraft confirmed it.

------
sunstone
I was there around this time. They were posting links on slashdot to drive
traffic to their site.

------
codezero
Oh wow, this also is such a record in time - Armstrong wins in France - that's
when I was there, on that very day, the day before my birthday :) The next day
I was in Warsaw celebrating over some fireworks that were apparently in
celebration of a former communist holiday, and a local guy we needed up
hanging out with told us "We don't let invaders change us, but we'll keep the
fireworks and beer they leave behind."

