Reddit

I like Reddit because the userbase is extremely engaged on the platform. There are users there that genuinely care about helping others. I said 4 stars because Reddit won't let you mention your products, only if you pay for ads. And sometimes your product, whatever it may be, a SaaS or a company, can actually help someone.

I used to love Reddit for discussions, especially about tech topics (new hardware, software, etc.). But after they banned all third party apps and api access, it quietly died for me and I'm since looking for alternatives. Also: age verification is here too now, even though it's not (yet?) mandatory in my country. So I deleted my accounts as I'd never hand them over any official documents. I'll never comply with any age verification bs and rather stick to alternatives, even though those alternatives might be less populated or feel less finished. Sad to see where we are heading...

Cesspool of pseudo intellectuals protected from non-hive ideas by a Western Civilization hating brigade. The mere mention of that which made the internet possible is deemed hate. Censorship is a loving act? Stay away or gamify signing up to poke the tiny bear

The use of vpn is possible: simply outsmart the apex of the intelligence bell curve

Reddit isn’t the Reddit of 2011 for sure, but the complaints here seem to uniformly miss the point and indeed what “free speech” actually means.

Actual cons: Moderating a subreddit of any size can easily take up so much time and energy that it’s amazing that not more people quit the unpaid drudgery, even with the tools (most of which are written by mods to start with anyway). Almost everyone who modded subreddits with me in 2011-2013 have quit, and the few remaining are in charge of super niche subs. When you get over 10k subscribers the amount of drama and nonsense that gets put through mod mail gets insane. God help you if you didn’t get the offer to buy into their IPO at the rate offered, since that was almost like free money pretty much from the start, provided that you had money to invest. But that’s a one time thing and not everyone got the opportunity.

Search function remains suboptimal. It’s easier to use Google than the actual reddit search, which is fine on a computer but makes the experience on mobile clunky, and they had what, 15 years to fix this?

Management (well, really it’s Spez’s handiwork) doesn’t really understand how ad hoc communities work. Imposing prescriptive values inconsistent with the communities is something tried over and over and never really works. The point is not to be facebook-but-anonymous-if-you-know-what-you’re-doing. It’s a separate thing and the users, not the devs, really run the content and in turn, the show. Management though seem bewildered by this . I know that ad sales is part of the equation, but thanks to ublock I don’t see ads and a smart agency can use the quirks in effective, natural ways. Don’t treat your content creators or your customers as children, please.

Literally no actual lawyers will give advice in /r/legaladvice, which is obvious to actual lawyers and the generation that took the internet as implicitly BS-until-proven-otherwise. But at this point enough normies are on there that you have the blind leading the blind and potentially screw up people’s lives because they aren’t familiar with the cynical culture the site is predicated on. No need to actually censor, but a note of “you should probably not trust advice from internet randos farming karma” is long overdue on a site-wide level.

Why free speech isn’t an issue? Because free speech is a phrase that carries the implicit question “free from whom?” In the US, it’s from the state. Internet randos talk trash. The state shows up in SWAT gear and shoots people. Reddit is not a private platform anymore but it is not state media and therefore they are respecting free speech by not actively working with the government. You are free to open your own clone anyway. Nobody is forcing you to be on reddit. State moderation is far worse than private censorship/curation. I can’t come and paint over your bedroom walls just because you let me in the door, right? It’s expressive, but private entities are allowed to police within. Reddit isn’t going to barge down your door, but the US government did that aplenty. Those are the two sides of the speech issue when “free speech” is actually invoked in court or in the Constitution. Nazis are bad for ad sales is surely not news, right?

I agree with the others, it's just not good.