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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

#31

Post by untog »

zeep wrote: post #19
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…

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

That simply isn't true. The most obvious evidence of why: there was a huge, endless, sprawling debate about Sanders vs Clinton. I wouldn't deny that /r/politics leans to the left, but it's a big stretch from that to a subreddit dedicated entirely to promoting a single candidate at all costs.

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

#32

Post by traverseda »

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«?

/r/the_donald is a subreddit devoted to donald trump. Reddit didn't ban it.

It follows the "safe-space" "you're not allowed to dissent" model pioneered by some "leftist" subs, and will ban people for having perfectly legitimate dissent.

It managed to exploit some loopholes in how reddit works to take-over the front page. The most interesting one was "stickying" new posts so they were shown on their front page. They did this to a new post pretty frequently. This let them

* Coordinate which posts got to the front page of reddit

and

* Exploited the reddit algorithm for determining "hotness"

For a while, 8 out of every 10 posts on the front page were from /r/the_donald.

It marks the first major incidence of the community engineering tools (that I believe were pioneered by subs like /r/shitRedditSays) being used by the right.

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

#33

Post by gooseus »

fapjacks wrote: post #17

Kratom saves lives.

If that's true, then perhaps you should put some links to good resource explaining what it is and where to get it? Also maybe something indicating why and how it saves lives, any studies on people who kicked opiates using kratom and can attest to it's life-saving properties?

I know people who use kratom and they have good things to say, but I've known people who say the same thing about x, y, and z supplement/nootropic whatever.

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

#34

Post by dionidium »

Chardok wrote: post #15
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…

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…

"things like /r/gamingsuggestions and local city subreddits still make the site worthwhile to me."

Local city subreddits are one of the best things about reddit. National politics sometimes leak in, which is when they're at their worst, but, overall, it's probably my favorite thing there.

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

#35

Post by vinhboy »

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«?

A bunch of really hateful, and racist people came to reddit because of /r/the_donald. Unfortunately they did not keep to their subreddit. You can see influences of their hateful ideology in other subreddits.

They also game the reddit voting system so their stories and comments are constantly being featured in /r/all -- so much so reddit had to take action.

Their purpose is to troll, and they are damn good at it.

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

#36

Post by pat_space »

BoratObama wrote: post #28
pat_space wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think of Reddit as a single entity, but as a platform for communities(subreddits). The differences between subreddit communities are vast, ranging from 100% toxic to 100% positive.

My view of reddit has changed similarly. I think of it as something similar to vBulletin or bbPress with r/all or r/popular as a flagship gateway to subreddits. And recently I purged all my subreddits and started from scratch to build a better reddit experience geared towards self improvement and a more wholesome experience. No more toxic communities. I look for niche communities with civil discourse and common inter…

Good call - I've done the same myself. As someone who grew up heavily invested in niche forums, I've found subreddits becoming their replacement in my adult life.

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

#37

Post by wand3r »

ant6n wrote: post #22
52-6F-62 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(Lots of downvotes here but no comments, so I gotta ask. What do people who disagree actually think?)

I am guessing they hate the sub so much they are negatively responding to what could be a positive characterization "safe dwelling" or disputing that entirely.

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

#38

Post by danlindley »

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…

Reddit has been demonstrated time and time again that it is subject to, and vulnerable to, blatant manipulation and propganda. Whether it's a celebrity endoresement masquerading as an interview, threads defending corporations and/or their actions, the manufacturing of consent, the anti-democractic activities of shill accounts, or being subject to blanket disinformation, Reddit is a net-negative to society in my opinion.

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

#39

Post by et-al »

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.

Reddit does pretty well as a conversational medium, but not for a medium to retain information.

Unlike a traditional forum with long-running threads that get bumped to the top, many subreddits suffer from newcomers asking the same questions every other week (there's only two stickied threads, and people usually don't bother with the wiki). In addition, the notion of karma encourages unwanted behavior like recycling content.

The ease of use of Reddit can't be emphasized enough, though. Before, you'd need to find a host for your forum, then set up phpbb. And users would need to sign up for a bunch of different forums. Now, one can set up a new subreddit in seconds, and users can join without going through a new account flow each time.

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

#40

Post by untog »

wand3r wrote: post #37
ant6n wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Lots of downvotes here but no comments, so I gotta ask. What do people who disagree actually think?)

I am guessing they hate the sub so much they are negatively responding to what could be a positive characterization "safe dwelling" or disputing that entirely.

I doubt it - more likely they are only too aware of what it is, but seek to legitimise it, so downvote comments such as that.

Similar to another one in this thread saying "it's just the same as /r/politics", it's important to normalise the_donald in the eyes of potential subscribers and to imply that what goes on in there is no different than in any other political subreddit. The difference, of course, could not be starker.

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