Reddit is so hard for newcomers

2 points by kannthu ↗ HN
How do you gain karma on Reddit when you constantly get blocked and filtered?

I am a cybersecurity expert and I have experience in writing decent technical content (like https://blog.vidocsecurity.com/blog/hacking-swagger-ui-from-xss-to-account-takeovers/ or https://www.moczadlo.com/2024/delightful-inputs-with-intellisense-and-syntax-highlighting)

It is almost impossible to translate it into Reddit karma - I tried posting content on some of the subreddits, but I simply can't cause of minimal karma requirements.

Reddit said that you need to comment before being allowed to post content on most of the subreddits, but for me, it is really hard to find interesting posts I could comment on.

It is far easier to create new engaging content, than finding ways of contributing to existing content. You need to filter through hundreds of bad posts to find a couple of interesting ones and be early enough to add value through comments.

How do you do it?

9 comments

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How do you do it?

This is how you do it:

  > Reddit said that you need to comment before being allowed to post content on most of the subreddits, but for me, it is really hard to find interesting posts I could comment on.
Sorry.. you're saying ..

  > It is far easier to create new engaging content, than finding ways of contributing to existing content.
Yes. This is tine consuming. Filtering takes time and effort. Remind me, how do you know your content is interesting and engaging?

  > You need to filter through hundreds of bad posts to find a couple of interesting ones and be early enough to add value through comments.
Yes. But, in any subject. Karma is earned across Reddit.

Your desire to achieve a high karmic outcome for low effort is hardly laudable. Do you think this deserves karma?

I see writing posts and commenting as two separate ways of contributing. These are 2 different styles.

I prefer writing high-quality content (posts) instead of commenting. It is not in my nature to write comments (and this style of contributing).

It does not mean that I am not putting high effort into writing posts - quite the opposite. When I write long content I put all my heart into it and many hours.

What I mean is that I would love to meaningfully contribute and gain karma by doing "content" the way I like and prefer and not being forced to comment.

Unless your ideas are a monolith ("Read my 2000 word essay or nothing!") then maybe reply to other posts with relevant snippets of your work and link to the longer content.

At the end of the day, the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts but if your content is good you'd expect your parts (shorter sub-ideas) would at least be clear and well-written enough to draw some upvotes as comments.

Also, even if "good" posts are rare (which as others have said sounds pretty arrogant), you should be able to post comments that are helpful clarifications or corrections on those posts.

I get that you'd prefer to gain karma by posting not commenting but the gating method is based on comment karma to earn the right to get posting karma.

I think you're stuck, until you either earn comment karma or find channels to write content on which gains karma.

Don't waste your efforts on this shit dude. Reddit is a playground for autists with awful mental impairments. If you aren't one you ain't going to get a lot of karma.

If you still want to try, there are communities like r/lostgeneration, r/antiwork and suchlike, where you can post almost any kind of stuff provided that it is utterly depressing and far left too, and will get lots of upvotes. Don't forget to upvote those imbeciles too lol! Open secret is that this is how these recommended-by-default communities operate: they are karma mills.

Karma shouldn't exist. Accounts shouldn't exist. Just posts. 4chan is the way.
Um, if you're an actual cybersecurity expert, positively perceived by others, you can contact forum mods to be allowed to post. No whining if they disagree with you. Go to the website and see the sidebar links.
Oh, I did not know about that, good idea!