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How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

theguardian.com

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Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#11

Post by harlanji »

wutbrodo wrote: post #6
selectodude wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No different than anything involving humans. I think people hate Reddit or twitter because raw humanity is mostly good but sometimes awful.

I dislike Twitter because the medium is so crappy,and has crappy effects on discourse. By contrast every summary dismissal I've heard of reddit revolves around overgeneralizing from portions of raw humanity, as you say.

Most of my major life breakthroughs have been supported by communities on Reddit. Career, health, hobbies, you name it. Lots of irrational hate on there, but the irrational love is why I keep going back.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#12

Post by 52-6F-62 »

quchen wrote: post #10
vinhboy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…

What’s /r/the_donald, and how did it »then happen«?

It's a safe dwelling for a mix of sycophant bots, Trump supporters/red-pillers, trolls, and possibly Russians (depending on who you ask).

Warning: once you see it, you can't un-see it.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#13

Post by bredren »

rifung wrote: post #9
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

What bad things have come out of it?

This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, but the sheer number of people and crawlable public content it is an ever-growing training dataset for AI. This has potential to be dangerous.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#15

Post by Chardok »

vinhboy wrote: post #7
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…

The core of Reddit has become rotten not from the_donald; the site admins are 100% at fault. Trying to make their site 100% advertiser friendly has subsequently killed all transparency in what votes do, how subreddits are ranked, and killed a lot of discourse that was not corporate palatable.

I still enjoy the smaller subreddits. Unfortunately anything political becomes brigaded, but things like /r/gamingsuggestions and local city subreddits still make the site worthwhile to me.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#18

Post by ajross »

vinhboy wrote: post #7
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…

Nothing you're saying is untrue, but is no less true than any other internet forum. There were discussion cesspools on CompuServe and USENET and Myspace. Facebook has its shady groups too, and 4chan is worse than any of these. There's nothing about "reddit" that makes it much different, other than its size.

Good and bad people everywhere. It sucks.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#19

Post by zeep »

vinhboy wrote: post #7
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…

/r/politics is similar to /r/the_donald but it is the exact opposite (it could have been called /r/the_hillary)

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#20

Post by dionidium »

vinhboy wrote: post #7
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…

This is silly. I follow a number of subreddits on topics ranging from baseball, local news (city subreddits), credit card churning, maps, history, and many others. None of them have been affected by /r/the_donald.
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