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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’

#111

Post by jandrese »

pjscott wrote: post #77
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.

Unsubscribe from /r/politics. Unsubscribe from /r/worldnews. Find the handful of subreddits that are bothering you and unsubcribe from them . The discussions I read on Reddit are overall nicer than those on HN, not because the userbase as a whole is better, but because it has sewers where the crap is concentrated -- and you can easily avoid them. That's one of their most important features.

I would go a step further and say the first thing a new Reddit account should do is unsubscribe from everything, then selectively subscribe to your interests. Every default subreddit is horrible.

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

#112

Post by linker3000 »

Lionsion wrote: post #42
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?

> 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.

0-1440 mins

Just checked - Reddit mod /r/askelectronics

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

#113

Post by evilduck »

pjscott wrote: post #77
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.

Unsubscribe from /r/politics. Unsubscribe from /r/worldnews. Find the handful of subreddits that are bothering you and unsubcribe from them . The discussions I read on Reddit are overall nicer than those on HN, not because the userbase as a whole is better, but because it has sewers where the crap is concentrated -- and you can easily avoid them. That's one of their most important features.

I would extend that further to _unsubscribe from all default subreddits_.

Start from a blank slate and search for subreddits that actually interest you and seem reasonable. Yeah, you're also creating an "echo chamber" if you participate in polarizing topics, but hopefully you're aware that you're doing that to yourself.

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

#114

Post by paulmd »

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.

> The feedback based ranking implicitly supports echo chambering, but there’s not much of a way around that.

Traditional topic-based forums are better, because you can't suppress unpopular-but-correct opinions by downvoting. Even if you don't care about Fake Internet Points (and the reason they exist is because we do, gamification works), if you state something that goes against the prevailing hivemind your opinion will literally be hidden unless users go out of their way to find them.

(and yes, I browse HN with showdead=yes for the same reason)

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

#115

Post by bfuller »

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.

>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".

you know what is truly toxic? internet armchair psychologists.

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

#116

Post by cup-of-tea »

SeanLuke wrote: post #107
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...

Fundamentally the problem, I think is anonymity. On the Internet no one knows you're a dog. I have both pseudonymous handles on reddit and also I go by my own name. On Hacker News I only go by my own name. And I have found that it made me a much, MUCH better person when posting. So now I post on reddit about 95% of the time under my own name as well. When you have no skin in the game -- such as your reputation to uph…

I disagree. Anonymity allows you to express unpopular views that you wouldn't be able to in real life. But the existence of downvoting basically defeats that, except in unpopular echo chambers, of course.

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

#117

Post by irrational »

acdha wrote: post #54
irrational wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is just a reflection of the world. There is both good and bad there. It is very easy to avoid the bad. Only visit the subreddits that you know are good. For instance, I'm a boardgamer and r/boardgames is a very friendly place. Other subreddits I frequent like r/woodworking, r/bodyweightfitness, r/campingandhiking are likewise places that positively contribute to the world.

The problem is that the site leaks in a way which doesn’t have a real world analog. Your favorite coffee shop doesn’t have random skinheads show up as soon as someone starts talking about e.g. sexism or racism. If it did they’d be limited to who lives nearby and the manager could kick them out when they started bothering people. None of that happens on reddit and while intense moderation works (I love /r/AskHistorian…

Except, in the subreddits I frequent nobody brings up sexism, racism, politics, etc. so the skinheads (or whoever) don't have a toehold to start bothering people.

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

#118

Post by cookiecaper »

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.

reddit has been in an identity crisis since they sold out to Conde Nast. They've made themselves too much of a factor. They should move to a behind-the-scenes operation and let communities bear responsibility for themselves.

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

wvenable wrote: post #101

"They believe that if they have a billion unique visitors a month, that they have a property that is going to be worth a ton of money in some way eventually." This is stupid; users are fickle and visitors mean nothing if you can't monetize them. And usually attempting to monetize visitors causes them to leave to the next platform trying to reach a billion unique visitors. I can't believe intelligent people think this…

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by projektir »

SeanLuke wrote: post #107
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...

Fundamentally the problem, I think is anonymity. On the Internet no one knows you're a dog. I have both pseudonymous handles on reddit and also I go by my own name. On Hacker News I only go by my own name. And I have found that it made me a much, MUCH better person when posting. So now I post on reddit about 95% of the time under my own name as well. When you have no skin in the game -- such as your reputation to uph…

> Fundamentally the problem, I think is anonymity. On the Internet no one knows you're a dog.

No, anonymity is not new to the internet and is actually one of the beneficial aspects, since it makes people more likely to say what they think, and less likely to be a target for others. Lots of anonymous BBS are moderated just fine. Meanwhile, Facebook can be very vitriolic.

The fundamental problem is the assumption that moderation is not needed and free speech is everything. It seems to have gotten popularized by Reddit in particular.

Nobody who has spent lots of time on BBS, IRC, and other typically moderated spaces would think anonymity is even relevant.

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