Reddit is a cesspool of bots reposting the best performing images and rage bait of the last 5 years ad nauseam, that and porn makes up the bulk of the traffic. So yes, again, there is nothing in common between reddit and hn
I read several subreddits and see nearly no images, nearly no rage bait (probably less than on Hacker News, in fact), and exactly no porn. My daily Reddit experience is so close to Hacker News that I've been known to forget which one I'm on.
Reddit still has the capacity to show you what you're actually looking for. It still lets you find content by interest, rather than by personalities. It still keeps replies together, still lets you order by time easily, and doesn't stick too much random crap in the middle (none if you use a decent ad blocker). It handles long form content well and doesn't try to force everything to be a sound bite that you have to click on to see more. It's still convenient to use it that way, and most users probably do use it that way.
Compare to, say, Youtube, which fight you ever step of the way if you try not to be drowned in a disordered flood of some combination of what a computer guesses you might want and what it's most profitable for the site for you to see (including what will keep you on the site), with your only control being which "influencers" you uprank by "subscribing" to them.
> Reddit still has the capacity to show you what you're actually looking for.
Reddit has the capacity to manipulate minors and groom them into believing all kind of sick "fictions", endorsed by the admins. It should absolutely be banned for minors.
This lacks hindsight. Whatever you subjectively dislike about Reddit will certainly apply here, if not today then tomorrow. If you want proof, check out Slashdot.
Open a new account on both platforms and tell me what you see. Let a 12 years old browse both platform and tell me how they behave, how long they browse, what they look at
Where are the ads on hackernews ? The fake posts which are onlyfan hooks ? The images/videos ? The infinite scroll? &c.
I do not see any of that on Reddit either. In fact the overlap between Reddit and HNs frontpages is striking (without an account). Are you sure you are looking at the same front-page?
Eh, with user links, user commentary, profiles and votes HN is "basically the same" on several key aspects and there is quite a bit of demographic overlap. It's just reached a very different equilibrium as to what goes on here due to the 2nd and 3rd tier aspects that are different.
Take two cesspools (I'm not gonna pass up the chance to use the analogy, sorry not sorry). Assume they are both serving the same quantity and quality of people. Feed one a bunch of inorganic matter, laundry bleach and only the finest most heavy duty multi-ply shit tickets. Feed the other nothing that shouldn't go down a drain, no bleach and Scott 1-ply. The latter will perform way better and go way longer between needing service despite the only differences being minor differences that don't even matter in system design.
> Eh, with user links, user commentary, profiles and votes HN is "basically the same"
Create a new account on both platform and check what you get by default... Another test you can do is let a 12 years old roam reddit and hackernews freely, I can guarantee you the results will not be "basically the same", they won't even be remotely similar in any way, shape or form
