For as long as it has existed, Reddit is known for being an echo-chamber propelling extreme views and giving a platform for the most controversial and contentious content. Which are more likely to maximize engagement amongst its users. Over the years, the site has undergone numerous evolutions, but given its core features, it has always been a tad toxic, hateful and arrogant. 

Being the 20th most popular website in the world, and with over 430 million monthly active users, there is a lot that goes into the molding of the site’s overall personality in such a manner. Ranging from the initial set of users, to the current demographics, site structure, content sharing and promotion mechanisms, and the most important of all, moderation.

GenZ & Millennials

One of the biggest reasons behind the excessive trolling, personal attacks and arrogance in Reddit is the average demographic. With nearly 42% of US internet users between the ages of 18 to 24 active on the platform, it has taken on the persona that is often associated with millennials and GenZ’ers. 

This generation is known to be politically aggressive, often wearing their views and beliefs on their sleeves, and that is reflected throughout the platform, with all forms of content eventually descending into political narratives. 

With millennials having lived through three major recessions during their lifetime, and Gen Z growing up in the midst of ‘The Great Recession’, and reaching adulthood during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have strong views on various economic, public health, and public policy issues.

Flawed Incentives

At the beginning, Reddit was quite the place to have intellectual open-minded conversations and discussions on various topics. A bygone era that long-time Redditors now reminisce about, with the most popular comments and posts these days usually being snarky takes or sarcastic statements.

This was entirely the result of Reddit’s flawed incentive and content promotion system, which makes use of upvotes and downvotes to judge the quality of content submitted. It goes without saying that users with a contrarian take are often downvoted to oblivion, and those who conform see popularity on the platform.

There is absolutely no incentive to craft elaborate arguments on topics, when one-line takes that add no value to the community receive 100s of upvotes, while sensible arguments that fail to conform to majoritarian norms can easily be downvoted.

Karma Farming

This is an extension of the flawed incentives discussed above, but karma farming, or the more pejorative term ‘Karma Whoring’ deserves its own section. This is essentially the practice of circulating cheap, circlejerk posts and comments that add no value to other users, and is mainly aimed at maximizing karma for the poster.

Karma, the point system followed by Reddit has no utility beyond just bragging rights on the platform, but this doesn’t stop certain users from going out of their way to game the system and accumulate as much karma as possible. This goes beyond just useless comments, into the stealing of other people’s works, creating fake sob stories, and much more.

Again, this is the result of flawed incentives, with every post or comment getting rewarded with karma points, and the limitless availability of karma points, allowing users to endlessly dole out upvotes with no regard for quality or value added. While the karma system was initially supposed to determine the standing of various users on the platform, it has increasingly become worthless.

Rising Bot Spam

Being a free platform, there are very few barriers to stop users from creating multiple accounts for either self-promotion, commercial intent, or attacking others. This is all the more prevalent with programmable bots, which have since become a nuisance on the platform.  

Even though Reddit constantly updates its algorithms to identify and shadowban such accounts, spammers are often a step ahead, and bots continue to get more and more advanced, leading to unsatisfactory experiences for other users.

With the rise of GPT-2 and GPT-3, this will only get worse with bots increasingly becoming indistinguishable from human writers. Reddit is becoming the platform of choice for vested interests and authoritarian regimes, whose main job is to attack naysayers, making the platform all the more arrogant.

Biased Moderation

Being a community run platform, all of Reddit’s 3.1 million subreddits are run and moderated by other users, who often exercise total control over their respective communities. Moderators usually come with biases and prejudices of their own, that is often reflected in their communities via the actions they take, moderation policies, and the rules they formulate.

In the case of /r/Antiwork, after the disastrous interview with Doreen Ford aired, the community’s mods dealt with the criticism from long time members with blatant censorship, and even outright bans, before taking the entire subreddit private. Such abuses of power are habitual, with moderators turning a blind eye towards toxic behaviors, while acting against narratives that go against the flow.

Similar patterns can be observed across other communities such as /r/LateStageCapitalism, /r/MaleDatingStrategy, along with subs that have since been banned for outright hate speech or promotion of violence, which includes the infamous /r/TheDonald, and on the other end of the spectrum /r/ChapoTrapHouse, and /r/Incels. 

Final Verdict

Despite its flaws, Reddit still remains a delightful place, with millions of users from across the world, and fruitful discussions on a wide range of topics. While vested interests continue to play spoilsport, we have great hopes for the future of this platform. 

If you don’t have a Reddit account yet, make sure to get in on the action, there is a lot we can do to make it truly the ‘front page of the internet’. After all, any community is ultimately a reflection of its inhabitants, and while the site has been attracting the wrong crowds off-late, it is never too late to change.

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Quora and Reddit are similar in many ways but differ in some respects. Both the websites work as forums where people post questions, give answers, and communicate with others. Let us try to understand the main differences between the two popular platforms.

What is Quora?

Quora is a popular question and answer site where users can ask for responses to questions they may have. The U.S-based website was founded in 2009 and opened to the general public in 2010. It is completely user-controlled which means users create, manage and organize the content. Quora is available in a variety of languages and enjoys global popularity.

The platform lets you follow your topics of interest. It can be used as a research tool as votes from users help verify the accuracy of the information available. You can respond to questions and vote on the answers. It is basically a crowded online community focused on question-answers.

What is Reddit?

An American social platform founded in 2005, Reddit is a community-oriented discussion forum and social news aggregator that allows posting on varied subjects. It is a highly popular website that boasts over 430 million monthly users known as ‘Redditors’. It is available in several languages including English and there is no limitation to who can use it.

Reddit also works as a web content rating platform. Users can upvote or downvote the content posted on the website depending on whether they like or dislike it. There is no limit to following topics (subreddits) on Reddit and you can post images, text, links, and videos. It has a user-friendly, simple-to-use interface that lets you get information on the topic of your interest, find a solution to your problems and promote your business.

Main Differences Between Quora and Reddit

Though both Quora and Reddit are social platforms where users can interact and share their thoughts and ideas, the two have some key differences worth noting. Quora is basically a question and answer site while Reddit is a social news aggregator and discussion forum. Let us try to understand how the two services differ from one another.

Functionality

While both Quora and Reddit allow people to post on their topics of interest and respond on a variety of subjects, there are some differences in their functionality. Quora is solely based on the concept of question-answer.

It is quite professional in terms of the content and structure of posts. The community on the platform consists of professionals and experts holding in-depth knowledge about the subjects.

On the other hand, Reddit is more self-sufficient with a robust booting and downvoting system. The platform grows at a tremendous rate, with about 8,000,000 visitors added every month. The community is knowledgeable and updated about the latest trends. The website is popular for its ‘ask me anything’ section.

This does not mean Quora does not expand. It keeps adding new genres and subjects along with technical fields, giving more variety to the questions and answers you can find on the platform. The difference is that it is not easy to find an expert opinion on Quora as there are so many answers available for any question.

Popularity

Talking about the popularity, Reddit boasts a larger user base as compared to Quora though the latter has been continuously multiplying users in the past few years. When you are interested in learning about a social media trend or insight, Quora remains the best choice as you may easily find an expert answer that is difficult to get on some blog or website.

Comparing the traffic of the two platforms, coming to an accurate conclusion is difficult. However, reports suggest that Reddit had about 1.7 billion visits, making it one of the most popular social networks. This clarifies that it is much more popular than Quora. While Quora grows at a fast pace, Reddit achieves better popularity largely due to its IAMA section.

Areas of Interest

Talking about the topics mainly dealt with on the two services, Reddit is a more diverse platform as compared to Quora as it welcomes diverse thoughts and opinions. Any user can share his viewpoint and create a community.

The Reddit community is known to support charity causes and consists of people interested in bringing a positive change in society. Overall, it is a platform for those who want to join a network and accomplish a positive goal. Quora, on the other hand, emphasizes more on professional subjects and genres.

User Experience

Reddit is known to offer a better user experience with its support for a variety of media including videos, images, and text. It is more engaging and user-friendly as compared to Quora. The latter is more of a professional platform that appeals to users interested in to-the-point answers. Quora is not the best option for assistance on trending topics as it only deals with questions and their answers.

Both Reddit and Quora work with the support of communities but the former has a larger audience base and wider coverage whereas the latter restricts the experience to information on specific topics. It does not rank or identify the latest trends and the most popular subjects like Reddit.

Final Thoughts

Looking at the differences between Quora and Reddit across key areas, it is difficult to conclude which of the two is better. As both the platforms are Q&A-focused, it is not easy to rank one over the other on the basis of their merits.

Both the websites have millions of users and a steady growth rate. However, Reddit enjoys a bigger audience and popularity for the huge variety of subjects it covers. Users should analyze the platforms and pick their choice based on their requirements and expectations.

The post What’s The Difference Between Quora & Reddit? appeared first on TechInfoSite.