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Comment by anyfactor | Hacker News Reader

I know this is a stupid thing but I firmly believe that Tumblr imposing content filter ruined Reddit and to some extent Twitter. The distraught tumblr userbase had a unifying demographic characteristics that wasn't on par with the culture of (old.)Reddit. When this group left reddit was very quick to embrace them and alienated a large parts of it userbase. Reddit created an internal clash by attempting to merge these polarizing groups and trying their best to be marketable at the same time.

It is a very difficult to put into words but I think having a tribe of userbase is far better for a social media than to appeal to majority.

I think instagram and tiktok as social media still provides a good experience for their longterm userbase compared to social media that appeals to majority like twitter, facebook and reddit.

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Agree there was a shift, and while it hadn’t occurred to me before, your timing makes sense.

Reddit used to be that place where you had definitely “read it” first.

Now, to your point, most subs that bubble via algo to all and popular are tumblogs (infinite image/meme scrollers), and posts come after it’s already been on IG and Facebook groups.

I’d chalked this up to IG influence, but Tumblr diaspora makes as much sense, together with your hypothesized shift to pop engagement over niche quality.

Still works that if you dump the subs that show up in all or popular, you can get back to text / long-text niche interests. Most seem to be slowing pace of posts and discussion replies though, so unclear how much longer that will last.

Sorry, but I was on reddit atleast since 2008 and it was obvious even then that 80%+ of the redditors hadn't read the articles, the whole reason they were on reddit was to chat to other redditors, not to actually read the article. It's a different story now, where the whole conversation has turned meta though (people arguing obout whether people have or haven't read the article and what the behaviour of redditors says about society in general)

“redditor for 15 years“ here

And yes, in a niche sub the idea was to discuss the post, and yes, just as in class or at the local book club, as reddit became more popular soon 80% didn’t read the assignment.

We were talking about tumblrization though. I had intended to make a point about image “content” vs. post or article content, the thing the comments you’re talking about hang off of. Whether for comments or content, there had been more text.

So. I’ve gone and looked it up. Here’s a picture of the home page from Dec 2005:

- https://i.imgur.com/tsisrVy.jpg

- https://web.archive.org/web/20060104090150/http://reddit.com...

No image thumbnails, no subs, and a lot more article upvotes than discussion comments.

And of course, a post about “signal to noise ratio” and another about “the Flickrization of Yahoo”.

> Reddit created an internal clash by attempting to merge these polarizing groups

Isn't segmentation of audiences built in to Reddit in the form of subreddits?

That's true, but they sort of converge on pages like All and Popular. I'd never thought of a Tumblr exodus affecting reddit, but I remember the Digg exodus.

And even before the Digg exodus Reddit was rife with tribalism. I remember all the pro- vs. anti- Ron Paul stuff when he was running in the GOP primary.

The quality on the default subreddits kept dropping so they tweaked the front page to bring content from smaller subreddits. Which then dropped in quality &etc.

You might be sharing thirst comments about fetish porn pics. Or you might be discussing tips and techniques for artisanal home cheesemaking. Either way, it feels like Reddit.

Different subreddits have different levels of quality and effort in the average post. But "group" != "audience". The culture trends on Reddit are site-wide, even if the subject matter of each sub varies wildly.

I THINK that what parent commentor is trying to say is that pre-Yahoo-Tumbler, Reddit culture was predominately male libertarian Ron Paul fans... while post-Yahoo-Tumbler, there was an influx of "purple hair" female social leftists. And that Reddit's culture has been somewhat fractured and at war with itself ever since.

I'm not sure that I accept this theory (I think simply has more to do with a continuous influx of newbies, and general youth culture shift over the past 15 years). But I do agree with the result, and the timeline happens to match up neatly.

Reddit has always been at war at itself. Subredditdrama didn't magically appear after the Tumblr meltdown.

People talking about reddit degrading reminds me of people talking about when music was the best; it was great when you weren't quite new but weren't quite jaded about it yet.

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