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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

#101

Post by SippinLean »

smokeyj wrote: post #75
lsmarigo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has some fantastic and fascinating communities and really interesting cult-like ones (/r/nofap) However I'd like to point out the admin policy towards hate groups and speech on reddit is in my opinion incredibly dangerous and damaging to our society. They will take action against subreddits like FPH (fat people hate) because of "real life" actions, meawhile there are thousands of highly upvoted calls to violen…

Honest question. Why do you care what people post online? The great thing about reddit is that you get to choose which communities you subscribe to. Your mentality is the equivalent of "I can't go to bed. Someone on the internet is wrong". I think your basic premise is wrong - that "racism and xenophobia" are on the rise. You can't measure the number of people who aren't racist because you don't hear them. And before…

Because the hate has spilled over into the good communities as well. Hatred and bigotry used to be contained in places like /the_donald and /WhiteRights but those users eventually browse /popular and leave their vitriol there as well.

Having been on reddit for a decade it's sad to see it go from a tech/intellectual community to what it is now. I want real discussion, not arguing with racists. Seems reddit offers less and less of the former each day.

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

#102

Post by oh_sigh »

gooseus wrote: post #62

What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. Billions of dollars of private research being poured into self-driving cars by our greatest minds and millions of dollars in lobbying against gun laws all in the name of preventing unnecessary human deaths... yet according to Ben Bernanke (and his references), opioid ove…

Along those same lines, how about our modern day obsession with LGBT and racial issues. Yes, those are important, but I feel like the amount of time that is put into them is completely disproportionate relative to other very troubling issues(such as the opioid epidemic)

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

#103

Post by Karunamon »

deadmik3 wrote: post #81
pat_space wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doesn't interest you, just unfollow it. If you are browsing /r/all, you're probably procrastinating anyways!

ironically, the_donald is just one subreddit while there are literally dozens of specifically anti-the_donald subreddits that people complain about having to unfollow

This is what leads me to believe most of these complaints about the_donald are misinformed or worse. It is impossible to browse the site not logged in without seeing some kind of anti-Trump astroturfing on the front page.

(And I say astroturfing, not as a throwaway attack, but because the voting and usage patterns on those subreddits are very anomalous and smell of manipulation)

Meanwhile, the_donald is the one and only pro-Trump page on the site that has any kind of popularity.

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

#104

Post by EStudley »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #80
dionidium wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I take it you don't browse many comment threads, then. Anything vaguely related to black people or Islam and they are virtually guaranteed to show up, spreading their soundbites and gotcha's.

For anyone who doubts this: next time you see a vaguely or directly racist comment on Reddit, go check where that persons posts.. 75% of the time they're directly from /r/the_donald.

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

#105

Post by rhizome »

danans wrote: post #84
gooseus wrote: post #62

What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. Billions of dollars of private research being poured into self-driving cars by our greatest minds and millions of dollars in lobbying against gun laws all in the name of preventing unnecessary human deaths... yet according to Ben Bernanke (and his references), opioid ove…

While I agree that a lot more funds for treatment are needed to fight the opioid epidemic, it is really a fundamentally different problem that road fatalities. The only thing they really have in common are the fatalities. The opioid crisis seems like a symptom of our social problems (hopelessness in the rust belt, unscrupulous over-prescribing of pain meds) that has fatal consequences. Short of a drug that provided a…

Short of a drug that provided a permanent cure for opioid addiction itself, I'm not sure what sort of solutions can be pursued by scientific/tech research

Along with its therapeutic cousins Cannabis and MDMA, look what else we have on the list of substances for which federal research funds are banned (Schedule I):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine

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

#106

Post by komali2 »

danlindley wrote: post #38
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…

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 opini…

>anti-democratic activities of shill accounts

Can you clarify why the actions of shill accounts are inherently anti-democratic? I don't really see the connection between the concept of Democracy and paid posters on a social media website.

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

#107

Post by mantas »

untog wrote: post #40
wand3r wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

/r/politics is pretty sad though. Looking from across the pond, Sanders hype was just ridiculous. The hysteria wether to switch to HRC or keep bashing her was fun. Now it's just endless anti-Trump circlejerk which is getting boring. There's a huuuuuuge difference from niche subreddits that try to stay on.. "scientific"? side of politics and discuss it from a distance.

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

#108

Post by knowaveragejoe »

EStudley wrote: post #104
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you don't browse many comment threads, then. Anything vaguely related to black people or Islam and they are virtually guaranteed to show up, spreading their soundbites and gotcha's.

For anyone who doubts this: next time you see a vaguely or directly racist comment on Reddit, go check where that persons posts.. 75% of the time they're directly from /r/the_donald.

I'd venture that >90% of the time they post in T_D and the various other hate subs.

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

#109

Post by komali2 »

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.

I dislike Twitter because I don't fucking get it. I feel like everybody here in the Bay Area "gets it" but me. They're all telling eachother their twitter handles, posting announcements on twitter, asking questions and actually getting answers there, wtf, I don't understand! I probably should have taken the time to engage with it in the beginning so I could know the basics of how it works, how to speak to followers, etc. Now I'm somehow just an old techno-phobic fart at 26.

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

#110

Post by dionidium »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #80
dionidium wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I take it you don't browse many comment threads, then. Anything vaguely related to black people or Islam and they are virtually guaranteed to show up, spreading their soundbites and gotcha's.

"I take it you don't browse many comment threads, then. Anything vaguely related to black people or Islamd and they are virtually guaranteed to show up"

Of course I read the comments. Two comments, here:

1) We don't have a lot of conversations about race or Islam or intersectional feminism (or whatever) over on the credit card churning sub (for example). Not everything is political.

2) Of course, we do have a lot of these conversations on /r/stlouis, some of which, I'm sure, include comments the Hacker News contingent would find obnoxious. But, you know what? They're fine. We get through it. It doesn't dominate every thread. People are downvoted when they're particularly vitriolic. And it's mostly names I recognize from other threads (not outsiders brigading). It's really not a big deal, like, at all.

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