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‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

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Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#41

Post by closeparen »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #12

> The incentive structure is simply growth at all costs. There was never, in any board meeting that I have ever attended, a conversation about the users, about things that were going on that were bad, about potential dangers, about decisions that might affect potential dangers. There was never a conversation about that stuff. This externality-disregarding culture was idolized in SV for the last decade or so. It's nic…

You would really prefer to see Ajit Pai’s FCC in charge standards for internet discourse?

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#42

Post by Lionsion »

Reedx wrote: post #6
austincheney wrote: post #4

Reddit wouldn't be so toxic if the vote counts were hidden, but echo chamber validation is the ultimate badge of honor there. There is so much in this document that applies to all things Reddit (please note that I wrote it inspired by my time on Reddit) : https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...

There are some subreddits where they are hidden for a period of time (not sure how long, but it's quite a while). I wonder if anyone has analyzed those?

> There are some subreddits where they are hidden for a period of time (not sure how long, but it's quite a while)

I think there's a subreddit-level setting for that, but the max is only something like a couple of days.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#43

Post by paulie_a »

abnry wrote: post #17

I think there is a very important distinction that needs to be made. The popular reddit experience is vastly worse than the customized reddit. It took me a while to realize that my reddit experience was vastly improved once I was very picky about which subreddits I follow.

I completely agree. There are some fantastic engaging subreddits with great people. I personally don't use it as much but I highly recommend finding those cult following subs.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#44

Post by rockostrich »

lechiffre10 wrote: post #18

I've significantly reduced my time on Reddit. Used to pull up the website out of curiosity every day but the atmosphere is incredibly toxic. My front page was riddled with Russiagate stuff too for some reason and every time you'd bring up an argument that isn't the norm you get a mob after you.

The default/popular subreddits are toxic. The smaller, niche subreddits are rarely toxic and usually good communities.

As for the Russiagate stuff, the front page is riddled with it because it's a very important subject in the US, Reddit's user base is primarily people from the US, and there are bombshells dropping every day.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#45

Post by lainga »

Synroc wrote: post #9
darepublic wrote: post #5

What I can never reconcile with is that when mainstream media means 'toxic' they are never referring to the /r/latestagecapitalism plastered all over the front page of reddit. They protest the fact that somewhere, hidden from popular view a minority of people hold a different view from the extreme leftist one.

What’s wrong with r/latestagecapitalism?

It should really be named r/socialism, as the mods do not accept the validity of any other alternatives to late-stage capitalism.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#46

Post by rightos »

adamsea wrote: post #38
rightos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admins do nothing to prevent extreme moderation as occurs on there from deleting any comment with an alternative viewpoint. Yet it appears quite consistently on the front page with only agreement in its comments section.

Without specific circumstances extreme moderation is in the eye of the beholder.

They literally delete anything that questions straight up communist views.

Read their sidebar. I don't think that's exactly "in the eye of the beholder".

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#47

Post by stochastic_monk »

Reedx wrote: post #6
austincheney wrote: post #4

Reddit wouldn't be so toxic if the vote counts were hidden, but echo chamber validation is the ultimate badge of honor there. There is so much in this document that applies to all things Reddit (please note that I wrote it inspired by my time on Reddit) : https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Avoiding_Tr...

There are some subreddits where they are hidden for a period of time (not sure how long, but it's quite a while). I wonder if anyone has analyzed those?

r/politics said it didn’t make much difference, but they left it that way anyhow. The feedback based ranking implicitly supports echo chambering, but there’s not much of a way around that.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#48

Post by ggregoire »

wyldfire wrote: post #22
abnry wrote: post #17

I think there is a very important distinction that needs to be made. The popular reddit experience is vastly worse than the customized reddit. It took me a while to realize that my reddit experience was vastly improved once I was very picky about which subreddits I follow.

I think this is an important distinction. I could never quite understand what all the hub-bub was until I realized that. I've used my account to comment since before they added subreddits. And I never stumble across one of the "toxic" ones except for the rare occasions when one of the other subreddits links to those ones.

Wait, how did it work before adding the subs? A single board like HN, but without any specific topics?

It seems crazy. I can't imagine Reddit without subs.

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#49

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

douglaswlance wrote: post #23

Reddit is the only popular website where rational discourse can actually happen, thanks to the infinitely threaded conversations and complete markdown. While there is objective rude comments on there, this is why some people call it, "toxic," because their ideas are challenged, and they'd rather preserve their ideological bubble than seek to understand reality.

>Reddit is the only popular website where rational discourse can actually happen, thanks to the infinitely threaded conversations and complete markdown.

Except comments people don't like can be downvoted to oblivion, causing no one to see them (unless they purposely sort by controversial).

Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

#50

Post by md224 »

I still can't get over the fact that their official mobile app stops rendering comments past a certain level of nesting. There's no indication that anything is missing, no "continue this thread" link, nothing... the comments just aren't there. I don't understand how one of the world's largest social media platforms could have a mobile app that silently hides content from the user. Just blows my mind.
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