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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’

#81

Post by chaostheory »

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.

This is a valid complaint for non-technical users, but I don't understand why HN users don't customize reddit to suit their tastes instead of complaining. Signing up doesn't even require an email. Is there a better alternative? It's arguably the best feature that reddit brings. Don't like a sub-reddit? Remove it and add something else. You can even create your own and moderate to your taste. You can even grab someone else's reddit customization under multi-reddits. Here are some examples:

https://www.reddit.com/user/A_UPRIGHT_BASS/m/uplifting/

https://www.reddit.com/user/DrPropulsion/m/science/

https://www.reddit.com/user/bodaciousbecca/m/motivation/

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

#82

Post by theguppydream »

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.

That's important from a product point of view. I see redditors unhappy about a specific community, I'm always confused why they're visiting that community.

It's a good distinction, but it doesn't solve the issue that problematic subreddits will continue to exist, even if I've customised Reddit to avoid them. I understood that was more Dan McComas's issue with Reddit, and with Twitter.

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

#83

Post by opportune »

wvenable wrote: post #71
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.

It's toxic because a relatively small number of mentally ill people can effectively overrun any conversation. These people are not interested in rational discourse. You can't spin that as "the challenging of ideas". Reddit has been fully gamed at this point and engaging in the most popular areas is just frustrating.

Also because those same mentally ill people are the exact same people with the time and desire to become internet moderators (no offense to dang or anyone else here, the moderation here is good!). Reddit needs to take control of subreddits back from moderators; too many subreddits are curated echo chambers, moderators are always trying to make money through bullshit like referral links, there's no transparency, etc.

Keep in mind that reddit skews younger than here, and probably considerably less educated as well. It's just too big to have the kinds of discussion you can have here

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

#84

Post by opencl »

rightos wrote: post #15
Synroc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with r/latestagecapitalism?

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.

It's not like it's the only subreddit with this kind of moderation. See r/thedonald for a right wing example or r/spacex for a not-really-political example. The things that end up on the front page reflect the userbase, not the admins.

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

#85

Post by Guvante »

rustlerpride wrote: post #34
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.

I did the same and no longer login or use the front page. I found that just going to a few subreddits on topics of personal interest that I can browse through for new ideas, user stories, etc. results in a much more positive experience. Smaller communities for specific hobbies/videogames/etc (in most cases) seem to be less polarized on the platform.

I hate the default experience since it is purely low effort posts. The cute gifs are entertaining but I feel I am wasting my time compared to discussions on interesting topics.

By logging in you can select your subreddits which lets you filter out subreddits you don't care about and add ones you do care about.

Browsing subreddits is the best way to check out a particular topic but I do find their algorithm is okay at pulling up an okay overview of your subreddits if you login. (assuming you remove all the noisy defaults)

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

#87

Post by cookiecaper »

minimaxir wrote: post #19

As many on Hacker News know, I've been an avid fan of Reddit and believe that their data and community, and there's still a lot more that can be done that can be derived from that data that can't be found anywhere else. That said, from an administrative perspective, the intense hands-free policies are baffling. You'd expect a company based off the nature of community would engage with their community and their needs.…

Yeah, reddit is contradictory here. They have strong open-source ideals that they're trying to tie to a for-profit hosted platform model. They should accept their role as one or the other.

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

#88

Post by dspillett »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #47
Reedx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but they left it that way anyhow

If it makes little difference either way, perhaps they left it on to quiet those who would keep suggesting they try it even though they already have.

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

#89

Post by joeyaiello »

Only just getting started reading this, but I had to jump into comments to give a shout-out on how amazing 924 Gilman was for me as a kid growing up in the East Bay. I wasn't there for the glory days of the 80s/90s, and I have no idea to what extent Dan played a role in its founding, but as a space for playing and watching music, I've never found a venue in my life that comes even close to what they were able to achieve. We actually had a great scene in the East Bay, with a decent number of spots for young, local punk/hardcore/metal bands to play. But as a teenager, it was frustrating when an overzealous security guard would go off on a 15 year old kid for moshing, or when a skating rink would flip the lights on and kill the power an hour and a half before the bands had agreed earlier.

924 Gilman had none of that. I remember the first time I saw this sign[1] and then realizing that there were no security guards to enforce those rules. And yet, the punk ethos was strong enough that folks were just generally good to each other.

Or the graffiti all over the walls with a graffiti code of conduct posted every so often: don't tag over color with black and white, don't put doodles over real art, that sort of thing. Sure, it wasn't 100% followed, but people really respected it for the most part.

Or the 25 cent bottles of water and cans of soda. No profit, just kids handing out there zines and making sure no one goes thirsty.

Anyway, I'm going to go finish the article now, but if this guy got 924 Gilman, and wants to take that ethos into the internet, I couldn't be more supportive. Godspeed.

[1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/61992100@N03/23226226149/in/al...

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

#90

Post by wvenable »

psychometry wrote: post #72
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.

True, but The_Donald is always leaking. I've seen plenty of sexist/racist content on subreddits for cities, sports teams, memes, etc. Reddit has allowed itself to be a platform used in part for really despicable content, and the despicable people who generate that content regularly venture outside their cesspools.

It seems like a right-wing contingent has taken over the moderation of a lot of smaller subreddits, specifically city/country subreddits, and both the content posted and the commentary reflects that.

It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself.

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