

Study: Reddit used by 6% of adult Internet users - grizzy
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/03/tech/social-media/reddit-stats

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julianpye
'of US American adults on Internet' I can believe and is kind of established
by the article. Certainly not global.

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colmvp
Yeah that's a pretty important detail that's not included in the HN headline.

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dfc
Can any HN/reddit folks recommend some interesting and useful subreddits?
Whenever I stumble across a link to reddit I am not impressed with the level
discussions. I have tried a number of different subreddits across a wide range
(this is a wide net: anything from Call of Duty to Woodworking to Security) of
topics and I usually find inane chatter or comments with nothing more than a
link to the latest animated gif of a duck expressing gratitude. Where are the
gems I am missing?

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minimaxir
It's interesting how the Reddit hivemind tries to reconcile images and low-
quality content.

Case in point, /r/atheism recently banned direct links to images, requiring
users to put links to them in self posts instead (where they would earn no
link Karma). A mass exodus ensued due to these "two-click memes" to
/r/atheismrebooted. Which subsequently imploded due to low-quality content and
bad moderation.

Reddit drama is actually quite revealing.

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seanmcdirmid
Drama...

/r/pyongyang is a joke subreddit where users are banned immediately if they
don't tow the DPRK party line and ingratiate themselves with the Kims. OK,
this is good for a 30 second laugh, but /r/conservative is mostly the same
way! I guess conservatives feel they are in a siege with the rest of left-
leaning (6% of US adults) reddit that they ban anyone who might seems not to
toe the line.

On the other hand, /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians are of amazing high
quality. There is tons to learn in many gems subreddits like these ones.

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dhughes
Yes /r/askscience is great but I find there can be a lot of drama at
/r/askhistorians there seems to be a strong clique of users and heavy-handed,
strange moderation.

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r-s
I know its easy to hate on Reddit, but there is certainly some good content on
a few of the smaller subreddits. I suspect that the majority of people in this
6% are only going to the front page and a few of the large sections.

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minimaxir
The problem is that Reddit encourages low-quality content (/r/funny,
/r/AdviceAnimals) because it generates more engagement (the picture bias). And
as with many social networks, discovery is nonexistent.

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psbp
Most of the smaller subreddits are dead until they hit a critical mass where
it just becomes a flavored microcosm of the front page. Strict moderation
helps, but its hard to distinguish a community that is necessarily part of a
much larger community.

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epa
I got on reddit around 2007, left in about 2011. The quality of discussion has
fallen so badly that the site is unusable for comments. Before, it was
irregular to see a sentance with less than 5 words, now, these quick comments
rule the top karma ladders.

It is interesting to see how a community that is small, gains popularity over
time and quality degrades. User generated media especially seems to normalize
to a generic trend. Look at Digg, the same thing happened, and users went over
to reddit.

This is actually one of my fears about hacker news, as currently the
discussion is very intelligent and useful.

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halo
I'd argue HN has seriously degraded over the last year or so, with masses on
articles containing low-quality shallow content, including endless stories
about the NSA and Bitcoin, burying any interesting in-depth content. This has
come to a head over the past few weeks where I'm finding the site nearly
unreadable.

I'm not really sure where to go to find high quality content anymore.

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Kequc
And that's of the population smart enough to use the internet... think about
that the next time you are reading some of the stuff people write there.

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marrusl
I am the 94%.

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danso
I'm kind of surprised the number is that high, actually, and I've been an
active member for 3 years. Outside of my tech/media circle, I know almost no
one who uses Reddit. My local subreddit, r/nyc, could potentially be a good
community board except that it's badly managed, though most of the local news
sites skim content from it.

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raymondduke
The thing I don't like about Reddit and HN is that it is full of dudes. These
types of sites are the 21st century equivalent of the man cave.

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raymondduke
Downvote me all you want, it doesn't make it any less true.

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txttran
reminds me of
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

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thorum
I had the same thought, but I don't believe Pew run surveys at the request of
PR companies.

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seivan
I love the puns :)

