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Comment by myrandomcomment | Hacker News Reader

I am six months into reddit detox. The amount of time I have back is amazing. Only semi social site I read is this one. I have internet down to BBCNews, NHK, Reuters, HN, a few comics, Ars, next platform, the morning paper, Matt Levine and el reg. I am much happier :)

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I only user Reddit a few times a month, specific focused subreddits, but find it invaluable for hive mind opinion/debate without product shilling (which is all you get on Google or Youtube). Reddit is great. It reminds me of Usenet back in the day

I suppose it can get addictive too, but I haven't found that to be the case for me, not yet anyway. HN on the other hand... :)

The problem with reddit is that you get downvoted simply for going against the hivemind, even if you supply evidence that you are right. It's impossible to have a meaningful conversation on the more popular subreddits, especially on politics.

That totally depends on the subreddit. r/politics? You're absolutely right. But the more focused subs offer a wealth of information about obscure topics. For example, check out this recent thread on r/machinelearning where people have an in-depth discussion about hype versus reality: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/donbz7/d_i...

Politics, internet, meaningful conversation - choose two

Can I just have internet?

BBC fell of the wagon for me in the last 2 years especially.

Been checking out The Independent more so lately.

Just thought I’d share as I used to read BBCnews daily.

I stick with BBC News, but I balance it out with news from other sources, and somewhere in the middle of it all, is the 'real' story. In so far as the media are prepared to tell it.

Curious but why do you qualify HN as semi social?

Ah, well I guess semi is the wrong word here? I guess I mean HN has a group of people in general that have a shared background. I would guess that a large % of people on HN have some sort of STEM background, which doesn’t match to the reddit community. I do not see many people on /r/the_donald with a STEM background arguing against climate change.

Not OP, but personally I definitely view HN as a comment board that points to links as a way to drive discussion as opposed to a news site that allows comments. Probably not how it is normally described, but it's definitely how I use it.

Agreed. That's how I use it too.

There's no real culture here of meta discussion or throwaway comments/in jokes like there is on more socially engaged platforms.

The majority of discussion here is "on topic" - which is good but very different to Reddit or Slack communities which tend to revolve more around personalities.

None of those sources of info feel like you're reading information written by a human - there is limited emotional context or web context(ongoing internet history is often excluded)

Some of the stories ARS presents you won't even be able to parse as to why they were written unless you're aware of the general tech and social zeitgeist - which you can see on reddit somewhat

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