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Reddit is still in turmoil

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Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#371

Post by CaptSpify »

maratd wrote: post #324
mindslight wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free software is merely user- unfriendly (presently). Webapps are user-hostile - overtly functioning as agents of third parties rather than their users. Blame isn't singular - describing users as lazy, including ourselves for using this website, both encourages individuals to exert more effort adopting better solutions and just plainly characterizes the problem. I do agree that the most productive way forward is for…

> Webapps are user-hostile What? What if I wrote it for my own use? What if it's among the thousands of web apps meant to be installed on a server you control? There's nothing inherent about the technology that requires third party control.

I'm not who you were replying to but...

I think web-apps are generally user-hostile. You are correct that there is nothing inherent about it though.

I think the same could be said for FOSS: There's nothing inherently user-unfriendly about it, it just has a tendency to go that direction.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#372

Post by makomk »

soundwave106 wrote: post #354
CM30 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the solution? Because attacking people for beliefs you don't like doesn't exactly make things better. A lot of the people that seem to be trying to attack those they see as facist would be just as bad in the power as those they oppose. Except you know, with different targets.

One rule of thumb would to be to recognize that, within all groups, there are extremists (and they often have the loudest voices). It is wise not to denounce an entire group based on the extremists. It is wise not to flippantly dismiss concerns raised based on the behavior of the extremists. The problem I see with a heck of a lot of online conversations is that it ridiculously fails this rule. Often times there are s…

The standard I often judge groups by is whether it's possible to be a decent person and remain a member of the group; rather than looking at the assholes, I look at how the group treats members who stand up to the assholes. Unfortunately, a lot of groups have been failing this spectacularly, and the older a group the worse it often seems to get.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#373

Post by xemdetia »

bloaf wrote: post #125
gdwatson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that Reddit even more than Twitter is structured as a meta-community, and so any standards which are imposed will be external to a given sub-community. That means that they will be perceived as, and may sometimes be , social and political censorship.

I think this is a somewhat more recent (i.e. within the past 4 years) development on reddit. For a long time it seemed to me that the various sub-communities grew out of some shared sense of what it was to be a redditor (memes like the dumb "narwhal bacon" thing were expressions of that.) People were redditors first, and members of the various sub-communities second. But recently this has not been the case. People se…

I find myself blaming the some of the default sub choices from within the past 4 years. The choices made there created a really frustrating global reddit user experience- it used to be that when you first logged in there was only a dozen subreddits people were looking at. In the last four years the default experience is now up to like 50 subreddits which in my opinion take a very curated and particular view of all that's available which just does not match up to everyone. You just didn't have worldnews, pics, science, gaming and then what you were interested in to be a redditor, it's 50 things + what you are interested in.

So the 'identity' of what was a redditor changed dramatically from the start, and it's left us worse since the a lot of the default subs aren't exposing what was good and are mostly mindless/bandwagon-y in operation. Not to mention that some of the default subreddits that got chosen were poisonous and it changed the tone.

Here is a list of what changed: https://www.reddit.com/r/defaults/

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#374

Post by bsg75 »

twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

Or perhaps the problem is that Reddit did not grow into its current userbase (with whatever problems that base brings with it) by being an advertiser friendly platform, which is what its current owner wants to try and mold it into.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#375

Post by toss1941 »

legodt wrote: post #315
reitzensteinm wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify the context, are you saying that gamergate members are literal neo-nazis?

I would definitely say that there is a strong overlap between the two groups

And what do you base this claim on? What the people in the Anti-GG media have been telling everyone?

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#376

Post by CaptSpify »

CM30 wrote: post #229
twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

And yeah, you're right about Reddit. Problem is, they're in between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, users want more freedom than on most traditional community sites. There's a certain expectation that communities nowaday are basically the equivalent to a free speech zone in a local park, where near enough anything goes. And because social networks originally were really hands off about what people posted, t…

IMHO: They had a working solution, but they threw it out. When they were free-speech, they made it a policy to only throw out stuff that they were legally required to. That allowed them to keep their hands clean. As soon as they filter one thing for non-legal reasons, they become responsible for everything else on the site, otherwise it becomes a "why did you filter me, and not them" issue. The laissez-faire attitude worked for a long time, and arguably, that's why reddit grew as popular as it did.

If they had made an announcement: "Hey, we're done with free speech. Here's our plan" then I think it would have been less of a problem. But like you said, they are trying to be on two sides at once: They want the benefits of free-speech, without the costs.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#377

Post by CM30 »

soundwave106 wrote: post #354
CM30 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the solution? Because attacking people for beliefs you don't like doesn't exactly make things better. A lot of the people that seem to be trying to attack those they see as facist would be just as bad in the power as those they oppose. Except you know, with different targets.

One rule of thumb would to be to recognize that, within all groups, there are extremists (and they often have the loudest voices). It is wise not to denounce an entire group based on the extremists. It is wise not to flippantly dismiss concerns raised based on the behavior of the extremists. The problem I see with a heck of a lot of online conversations is that it ridiculously fails this rule. Often times there are s…

Of course it's possible to be anti facist without being violent. It's possible to non violently get changes in the world, at least if you're in a remotely democratic society like the one you're in at the moment. People like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi proved it.

Responding to political concerns with violence just begets more violence. It just entrenches people's beliefs even further, inspires revenge from the 'other side' (or at least, their own axe crazy extremists) and eventually causes everything to erupt even further (through a civil war).

Honestly, I'd say this part in the most recent series of Doctor Who sums up some of the issues with people trying to solve all their problems with violence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvGND1i6Dj0

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#378

Post by kickme444 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #153
kickme444 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a thesis that is basically identical to yours about unmanaged expectations and community being the main root of the problem that reddit/twitter/etc are facing, which is part of the reason why we started Imzy https://www.imzy.com/imzy We got some press early on that really told an untrue narrative of what we are trying to do, but we've made a ton of progress in a few months of our private beta and our communiti…

Would you care to give a true narrative of what you're trying to do? You linked to an empty page where I can request an invite, and the "about us" page just says you're "rethinking" communities online. What is the nature of moderation and communication on the site? I can glean a bit of info from news sites, but not very much if you say they're fundamentally misunderstanding you.

Crap sorry, I was offline all night being with my family and didn't see this soon enough.

In short, Imzy is attempting to find a way to align the company as best as we can with the communities. We recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all type of community and trying to fit all communities into a simple, archaic message board doesn't give the communities much to work with. Compound this with our believe that having an advertising business model not being well aligned with community's best interests, we believe that we can build a flexible commerce system into the platform so that communities can use it if and when they need it for their communities (for instance, to sell each other things, to pay for events they are putting on, to support the community leaders).

How do we do this? It's going to take a long time and require us to make our platform extendable by developers.

Right now, we are at the starting point where we have to build some initial communities and get them starting their evolution process. We have innovated a lot on our community leadership tools (and still are) and have put a very rudimentary payments platform in place. Our next phase will be to start innovating on the developer platform and the things communities are able to do on the platform.

You'll notice that nowhere in this description did I talk about free speech or harassment. That is because it isn't part of our core thesis. Our core thesis is giving communities online the attention we feel they have never been given in the right way. However, we recognize that if we are successful, we will have a lot of people on the platform and be faced with the same challenges that twitter/reddit/facebook/etc are faced with regarding harassment. So, we are focusing on it early because we feel we need to set the tone for the early communities so that as we grow they can help. There are a few things we don't allow on the site due to our past experiences: porn, hate speech, harassment, doxxing, etc.. We realize there are a lot of gray areas here and so we are equally focused on building and scaling our community team early.

That ended up being longer than I thought it was going to be, but probably not as long as it should be. I hope it gives you at least a little better idea of what we are doing.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#379

Post by CaptSpify »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #361
twblalock wrote: post #6

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

> much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to a failure to manage. Removed some words to make this statement more accurate. Reddit itself doesn't manage the communities, and that's a problem because the Thought Police are now doing it for them. The idea that people should be allowed to create and manage their own communities is nice in theory, but why should Xx_JoeSchmoe123_xX be in control of the larges…

> Reddit itself doesn't manage the communities...

That used to be true. But they've been stepping in and trying to clean up speech they don't like. As soon as you take on the responsibility of cleaning up one group, you take on the responsibility for every group. And reddit just doesn't have the manpower to do it.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#380

Post by CM30 »

mrweasel wrote: post #331
coliveira wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation. If Twitter gets consistent with moderation, any profits that they could ever have will go puff ! It takes real people to do consistent moderation.

They would also lose a large number of users. It wouldn't look good when the stockholders get a presentation saying that the user base shrunk, because the moderators kicked out a significant part of the users. Consistent moderation means kicking out anyone exhibiting that behaviour you just punish one person for.

And that's why a lot of social networks originally ended up in this mess. That's why there is so much controversy and so many personal attacks and flame wars.

Because at the end of the day, numbers mattered to them more than a decent community. It's kind of like why the media is so polarised and broken now. Because getting your readers to flame you and each other to a crisp gets page views and ad clicks. It's easy to sell junk that preconfirms your followers personal biases.

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