What exactly did reddit do right?

[K-One]

I have never come across a site where people will discuss and engage in everything from Tarot readings to math homework help to Food Recipes to Religion to Porn…..

Anywhere else where you’d try to group those things and people would run a mile.

What did they do right?
And also what’s to stop them from taking over the internet lol What are the downsides of reddit?

 

[nakamura]

For me, Reddit is a social experiment. You go to a subreddit, ask a question or say something which is not in their general opinion and they will just ban you.

What did they do right? they created a bubble for every topic, so mindlike people meet, etc. and they can fight with other communities/subreddits.

People don't have to search for different forums, etc. anymore. Instead, they are all on one single platform (Reddit) and they can create subreddits or just join communities. I am not a heavy reddit user tho, its way too toxic for me.

 

[Starblazer]

Reddit allows people to form their own subgroup and discuss whatever they want. This is uncommon with other social media platforms like Facebook, IG, Twitter etc. which are heavily censored and communities like Discord and Telegram which are extremely private. Reddit is probably the most popular platform for public communities. We keep complaining that Reddit mods are too strict or have a bias, but we rarely see such criticism for other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Quora which have explicit bias.

The downside of Reddit is that platform has no control over subreddits. For example, one can create a subreddit called blackhatworld and promote white hat SEO while censoring black hat SEO tactics and ban members who complain. This behavior doesn't encourage more people to join Reddit.

 

[Gogol]

What did they do right?

I dunno... may be ppl are more open there because the admins don't ban you instantly for posting something? It ultimately does not matter because the community will vote you down if they don't like something.

 

[dashing_sana]

For starters, they have kept spammers away. Every other platform is spammed to death, and has hell lot of ads.
In case of Reddit, it is quite different. The ads frequency is very less, they are unobtrusive.

 

[Alexion]

I would say them being the first in their category would count as number one. I'm 34, been hearing about Reddit pretty much for at least 15 years.

 

[HustleTong]

Subreddits

They make it easier for people with common interests to socialize

 

[Gogol]

Please Subscribe to my youtube channel

what the actual flying duck?

 

[Nine0wl]

Frankly I think the new(ish) redesign did wonders for it.. It looked like shit till not too long ago and that was a major put-off. Secondly, mainstream socials before facebook, and even early facebook allowed for more anonymity. With most platforms moving to pushing blue ticks / real identity, it makes sense reddit has grown. Also it's been around forever, so people recognize it when its mentioned...

 

[K-One]

One thing I have always wondered is how many people use apollo or that android version compared to the official app

 

[Zwielicht]

Thread Moved​

Personally, I like Reddit, and I go there every day. Sometimes I browse it for entertainment, and other times, I look into what we can learn from there in order to improve BHW. As a result, I do have my thoughts on why I feel the site has grown to be so popular, and I'll cover those below.

Positive

• As others have said, the ability for almost anyone to create a subreddit and run a community has helped them out immensely.
• I have to give Reddit users credit here, but their community moderation is something to envy sometimes. They don't usually just call someone out without evidence, they scroll through a user's entire history to find one post that contradicts their most recent post.
• Related to the above, and as another member mentioned, considering how many people try to spam their platform, it's relatively well-moderated in that regard.
• The paid ads on the website aren't too bad. It definitely doesn't get in the way of me browsing the website.

Negative

• One thing I feel has helped Reddit grow is that the administrators (not moderators) on Reddit are slow to act. There are so many blatantly illegal subreddits on the site it's ridiculous, and some only ever get closed after there's a news segment or mass reporting. For example, there was one subreddit called ReptimeBST that was up for years, and only recently did the admins ban it after mass reporting. ReptimeBST didn't even try to hide what they were doing. Even after it was banned, associated subreddits such as ChinaTime and RepTime were actively promoting the new replacement subreddits and discords. This is important, because normally when something is banned from a forum, the members who were engaging in that activity need to either go to another forum or skirt around the rules on the same forum. Due to the nature of Reddit, they can just create a new subreddit and continue on with what they were doing. To compare this to BHW, this would be like if members were posting threads that violate rule 3.1. You can bet we'd see an increase in activity here, but it's not the kind of activity BHW wants to be associated with. When the administrators are slow to act on major issues, this results in unwanted growth within a community, but on Reddit, they only see the word "growth", which is clearly working out to their benefit.
• Like many other social websites, echo chambers are a huge problem on Reddit, but it gives people looking for that a place to go.
• Get banned from one subreddit, and you can whinge about it on the exact same website in a different subreddit, all without having to create a new account.
• Anyone can look like an expert as long as they regurgitate what they read. This isn't really exclusive to Reddit because even BHW can have this problem.

If I had the time, I would post more on this topic, but I'll save the rest for another day.