Reddit is still in turmoil • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#481

Post by whateveracct » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 11:35 PM UTC

jswny wrote: post #323

intoverflow2 wrote: post #249

The main problem with Reddit is the users dishonesty to themselves. Ask a reddit user why they like reddit they'll probably mumble something about AMAs. Then visit /r/all and a completely different picture will be painted for you as the sites most popular content is a mixture of pornography, racist jokes passed off as being subversive and political ranting.

> Then visit /r/all and a completely different picture will be painted for you as the sites most popular content is a mixture of pornography, racist jokes passed off as being subversive and political ranting. This is just false. I have no idea where you are getting this idea from or why you are stating such clearly inaccurate claims, but they are false. Take a look at the history of /r/all and find me a single day wh…

Porn is very consistently within the top 25/50 (first 1 or 2 pages) of /r/all at certain times of day. It doesn't dominate it, but it is just sIt only shows up if you're logged in though since it's marked nsfw. It's pretty embarrassing and, frankly, gross. I used to use RES to filter out every porn sub I knew of and that was more pleasant.

fwiw, there is blatant porn at #90 at the moment.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#482

Post by overgard » Fri, Jul 22, 2016, 11:41 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #104

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…

Reddit's main problem is that they spent years building their user base as a site to find 'jailbait' porn (it was by far the largest search result that brought people to Reddit for a long time). That created a toxic culture, which allowed stormfront and similar groups to use it as a recruitment ground for racists. Reddit still refuses to do anything about it. The 'quarantined' a bunch of truly vile subreddits but all…

That's a pretty big stretch -- reddit's original audience and content were pretty similar to the hacker news audience (with more tolerance for silliness). The introduction of sub-reddit's expanded (and diluted) the audience, but it's not like reddit's origins were sketchy.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#483

Post by zevyoura » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 12:03 AM UTC

programminggeek wrote: post #422

It seems like the tribe that built the site and the tribe that is trying to run it now are not the same thing. The culture of reddit is not civilized, equal, or any of the other HR type directives they are going to try and make. If the people in charge now tried to start reddit back then, with all the focus on fairness, equality, correctness, and inclusiveness reddit would never exist. It would be something else. I'm…

The current CEO of Reddit (Steve Huffman) is one of the co-founders.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#484

Post by dimino » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 12:20 AM UTC

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #465

dimino wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The admins of Reddit have said over and over again that shadowbanning is for spammers, and if non-spammers are getting shadowbanned, it's due to a bug. It was never and is not currently used to silence humans, only robots.

right... /sarcasm

Please follow HN rules when commenting.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#485

Post by int_19h » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 12:37 AM UTC

vec wrote: post #416

ythl wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This strategy backfired immensely when the Donald Trump subreddit ended up being the only one reporting on the news. Say what you will about republicans, but they often end up being the biggest defenders of constitutional rights. Democrats on the other hand (aka "progressives") are always looking for ways to limit constitutional rights in order to create a "safer society" and stable "social climate". Just look at E…

Speaking as a progressive, that's because most of us consider the US Constitution to be a means, rather than an end unto itself. We tend to make a strong distinction between Natural and Legal Rights[1] and to group the Constitution into the latter category. And Legal Rights are useful only insofar as they align with the underlying Natural Rights they support (i.e. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). Our con…

Speaking as a liberal who refuses to identify as progressive, this kind of thing - the idea that e.g. freedom of speech is a legal rather than a natural right, and that the only natural right a person have is basically "to be happy" - is one of the reasons why.

To address your specific point, by itself, speech cannot harm the worth and dignity of any human being. Worse yet, what constitutes "worth" and "dignity" is so extremely subjective and culturally relative, that any such analysis would be the same. Because of that, I dare say that it is a poor basis for legal constructs. We should stick to laws that reflect measurable, objective harm, and use other mechanisms to deal with things like these.

For example, hate speech is best dealt with not by fines and prison terms (which tends to create martyrs out of those people, and boost their propaganda - "if they're trying to silence them, they must be saying something important"), but by voluntary boycotts, public shaming and other forms of social ostracism. This makes the definition of "hate speech" fluid, subject only to the social mores of the given era - as it should be. It also means that no idea can be completely silenced solely on account of being offensive, which is important to ensure true political freedom.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#486

Post by mindslight » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 1:03 AM UTC

maratd wrote: post #480

mindslight wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Webapp" generally implies something administered by a third party. The extra overhead of (dedicated server, network setup, redundancy, each user requiring connectivity) only pays off when it's amortized over many users who do not have to set things up. Sure, some of these release their code as "open source" and you can setup your own copy. But I've never heard of one where the majority of users actually do so [0]. T…

> But I've never heard of one where the majority of users actually do so https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted

The majority of that list has nothing to do with the web (eg sendmail). And many of the projects that do also fail the requirements - for instance most users of a blog platform are readers, who still aren't in control of said software.

We're obviously not disagreeing about the utility of local software, just that of "web apps". I assert that the platform itself is inherently biased towards making non-Free software. It's not impossible to create something that qualifies as a web app and Free software, it's just that this puts it in one small corner of an ecosystem based on user-disempowerment.

Obviously many web technologies could be useful to build freer systems (like say if DNS/HTTP were replaced with something distributed), but as it stands the term basically refers to the modern generation of proprietary software.

I get that a lot of by-day web developers want to apply their skills to build Free software, and that is great. They just need to be aware that it's an uphill battle against one's own assumptions, and building the same type of centralized systems desired by business interests (but releasing the code) likely does not suffice.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#487

Post by MustardTiger » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 1:09 AM UTC

legodt wrote: post #318

MustardTiger wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always amazing how consistently people will lie about what reddit is "full of" when anyone can just look at the site and see they are lying. Reddit is overflowing with BLM and islamic terrorist apologists, and we're supposed to believe reddit is all nazi KKK grand wizards.

Black Lives Matter is not a terrorist organization, please take your racist opinion back to reddit

Pie is not a fruit, please take your sexist opinion back to facebook.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#488

Post by MustardTiger » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #393

MustardTiger wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single thing you said is incorrect. Reddit ranked high when searching for jailbait, that does not mean jailbait was the largest search that brought people to reddit. The "toxic culture" predates the jailbait sub. And stormfront does not recruit on reddit, reddit recruits for stormfront. The insane, dishonest, censorious leftism that runs rampant on reddit is driving people to become racist, and sexist, and homo…

> Also many of the subs being punished are in no way vile. They are just too popular and not leftist. You mean subreddits like /r/european and /r/truecels? Where death threats against women in interracial relationships were common? Where it was common to wish rape on women who don't hate Muslims? Where the former subreddit routinely called for ethnic cleansing and the latter subreddit talked about how western women a…

>You mean subreddits like /r/european and /r/truecels?

"Many" means many, not all.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#489

Post by MustardTiger » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 1:11 AM UTC

rmc wrote: post #282

MustardTiger wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, in particular since neither national socialism nor fascism was a boogeyman then.

Before the Nazis came to power, there were plenty of people in Germany who thought the Nazi party & Hitler were thugs and dangerous.

Yes, but they were not a boogeyman, like I said. Where you can just say "you are a nazi!" to shut down any discussion of anything you please. There's a difference between "some people didn't like them" and being a boogeyman.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#490

Post by 67726e » Sat, Jul 23, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #10

matwood wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have beer in the fridge and a keg at work. Sometimes it's nice to have a beer at the end of the day, but after a working all day I usually just want to go home.

Yeah, i can see that. Finish a big project and have a beer with your team. I have a hard time seeing that as a daily or even weekly thing.

Hell, is having a beer with lunch that big of an issue?