Hacker News Reader

I think it's disingenuous to try to classify Reddit as only a porn site, or to report on its communities in that context - by nature of its size and nature, individual (or groups of) subreddits are nearly as disparate as two separate websites, and should not be generalized based on Reddit as a whole; while the porn communities of Reddit may be the largest section, that does not exclude functionally distinct bodies such as writing groups, political activists, and racist gatherings from existing, each with their own identities.

While there is doubtless overlap that influences demographics and discussion, that influence does not preclude non-porn subreddits from relevance or discussion.

> I think it's disingenuous to try to classify Reddit as only a porn site

I completely agree, there are zillions of different experiences depending the subreddit and many of them can amaze you. For example, I have asked very specific questions in subreddits like sysadmin and networking on how AWS and Google Cloud handle layer 2 network protocol like Ethernet, and received the correct answers that I never received posting on the specific AWS or Google Cloud groups outside Reddit.

I run a Reddit post scheduler (https://laterforreddit.com/), and I have noticed a substantial bias towards posting in various adult subreddits.

I suspect in my case that this has a lot to do with how people who are browsing porn use Reddit, versus how people use the rest of the site at large. Most subs moderate posts and discussion actively and have norms (and moderators) that act against posting frequently, cross-posting and self-promotion. On the other hand, most porn subreddits are quite happy to accept x-posts, self promotion, etc, because their goal/approach is to provide more porn faster.

This seems to be an emergent property of Reddit rather than a deliberate strategy, but they seem happy enough to keep the revenue coming (as am I).

> reddit is a 1960s Playboy magazine fifty years in the future [...] Just like the old saying about Playboy, I only read it for r/ama not the nekkid ladies.

That's a thought-provoking way of putting it, though I'd add the /r/gonewild subreddit and its variants makes it considerably more meta. A lot of people, particularly females, are posting explicit imagery of themselves - revealing a hidden culture exhibitionism as the vast majority of them do it for little profit beyond comments and upvotes. There are people on Reddit who do actually make money from posting explicit content, but the vast majority of users who do it are in it for a sense of self-worth from the "updoots" and the thrill of exposing themselves relatively anonymously.

Taking your observations about advertising into account, it's a complex ecosystem. The closest thing I've seen to Reddit is Usenet, but in a age where digital cameras are ubiquitous.

Have any data on it mostly being girls doing it for the thrill? It seems like every time I like a photo and look the posters profile, they've got something else going on where the free photo was just marketing. Tons of underwear selling.

> It seems like every time I like a photo and look the posters profile

No offence intended but could it be that well-proportioned, model-like subjects are more likely to have their profile viewed, so it's a case of sample bias?

While no, I don't have any hard data so my points are anecdotal, I tend to be disinterested in subjects that are more model-like as the point for me is to look at everyday people getting their kit off. And from what I can tell those everyday people make up the lions-share of self-posted content.

> revealing a hidden culture exhibitionism

Not only do many females seem to enjoy exhibitionism on subs like /r/gonewild, there's also a not-so-hidden culture of exhibitionism that takes place in real life that "strangely" seems to have so far escaped being raised in the ongoing gender wars discussions. Human beings are very complex beings.

> culture of exhibitionism that takes place in real life that "strangely" seems to have so far escaped being raised in the ongoing gender wars

I'm not sure what discussing a lack of clothing or dressing provocatively would achieve - it's never an adequate defence for poor behaviour or assault by a third party. Any nuanced debate about the topic is difficult and likely to be a no-win scenario.

One of the few reasonable points to be made is that revealing clothing can be inappropriate in professional settings, however I think other females need to be the ones who encourage appropriate attire in the office. A male delivering the message would lead to anger and resistance as it'll be viewed as a form of control rather than something formed from consensus.

This might be an overly simplistic way of looking at it, but female exhibitionism is not dissimilar from a guy flashing how much power and resources they have. It's a signalling system, and it attracts both wanted and unwanted attention, but in a civil society assault and harassment are never acceptable no matter how provocative someone's behaviour might seem.

Is that relevant? If only 1% of Reddit traffic is destroying civilization then civilization is still being destroyed.

> There's just enough excellent articles to keep the advertisers amused, but the fact has to be faced that 99% of the traffic is young men looking at scantily dressed young women.

Then again, these young men probably aren't paying attention to the ads (unless maybe they're porn ads!), so those subreddits aren't a target audience.

If I may ask, how do you jump from posting volume:

> 100 to 1000 times the sheer posting volume

to traffic:

> 99% of the traffic

?

Also, just to clarify - do you consider porn something not legit or bad? Your tone suggests it, but I may have misread, so just want to make sure. If so, why?

Porn is not a banned word.

That's legitimately hilarious. Thanks for sharing this tidbit.

What tidbit? His totally made up statistics?

Because I've noticed that the amount of posting on mainstream subreddit is maybe 5-7 gazillion times more than the porn ones so he's full of shit.

Thanks for mentioning statistics, then using gazillion in your post, really makes it seem more valid.