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

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

#241

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #73

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.

It’s not really relevant to what the author is trying to say at all. Actually, it’s the opposite. Because of the excess of disinterested capital that only values growth, a thing that could be a positive and productive thing is instead a cancer — it grows and grows without purpose. That’s why Reddit (and Tumblr) have massive porn sections that aren’t spoken about and Reddit is a watering hole for white supremacy and p…

> That’s why Reddit (and Tumblr) have massive porn sections that aren’t spoken about and Reddit is a watering hole for white supremacy and political propaganda.

That's the core of reddit, which was founded as a normie 4chan at the beginning of a time when many sites were trying to monetize the energy coming from that corner of the internet. The parts that you like are an outgrowth of that, and originally essentially subsidized by it. The fact that when you remove that element completely, you don't have a business (there have been many attempts at a "civil" reddit), shows that it still is.

There was already a metafilter. If part of you, at least part of the time, wasn't attracted to the id of reddit, you probably would have been on metafilter.

Tumblr is a different case - just a blogging site with social extensions - and there have always been porn blogs (and nazi blogs, but the social element of tumblr happened to pull it into a different direction.)

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

#242

Post by on_and_off » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

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.

This !

I am becoming more and more picky about which subreddits I follow.

I have even unsubscribed from some that are partially interesting to me like androiddev (I work as an Android engineer) because they were 10% interesting information, 90% circlejerk/toxic.

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

#243

Post by eip » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #167

staplers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said about the internet in general. Take a stroll away from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc and you can find some really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content. The problem is that a majority of people are just absolutely manipulated by their emotions and dive head first into the feedback loop designed by social media to provide an addictive stream of never-ending enga…

Are you assuming they would have sought out longer form or higher tier content otherwise? My dad was extremely happy using Stumbleupon for years. It was about as high-pace low-quality you could get on the internet. I showed him sites like Reddit and elsewhere but he was very content with just Stumbling. People like to blame FB/Twitter for low quality content without considering the huge market for that stuff. People…

> Stumbleupon

That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

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

#244

Post by tropo » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

AimHere wrote: post #60

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.

It's not as if there aren't meme-heavy right-wing subreddits who do something similar. r/the_donald was all over the front page for a long while, and has a notoriously strict moderation policy. It's just that the right wing subs just don't happen to be as popular right now - or they get banned for lack of moderation and for having their members advocating extreme violence (like r/physicalremoval). latestagecapitalism…

Reddit has special code to discriminate against /r/The_Donald. Without that special code, /r/The_Donald would still be all over the front page.

Sometimes the truth leaks out, for example in the interface that advertisers use. The number of subscribers listed there was over 6 million, far in excess of what a normal reddit user would see. In various ways, inconsistencies reveal that all the numbers are being manipulated to suppress /r/The_Donald.

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

#245

Post by tomcam » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

Reddit has been a completely positive force in my life. I subscribe to hundreds of subreddits and they all seem quite well-moderated. If I want to ask a question of doctors, engineers, lawyers, or manufacturers, I can. If I want to spend some time look at cute baby elephant pictures, I can. If I want to learn about a new GarageBand feature, it's easy. I literally didn't know about the things like jailbait until they became national controversies.

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

#246

Post by crazygringo » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

md224 wrote: post #50

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.

I don't understand what you mean... The official reddit app on iOS show comments as deep as you want, as far as I can tell. They default to collapsed the further you go deep/down in subcomments, but have buttons that say things like "6 more replies".

Beyond a certain level they stop indenting, so the actual hierarchy is no longer clear, but that's necessary because there wouldn't be enough horizontal space otherwise. But the content is still all there, as far as I can tell.

Do you have screenshots?

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

#247

Post by dmix » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

eip wrote: post #243

dmix wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you assuming they would have sought out longer form or higher tier content otherwise? My dad was extremely happy using Stumbleupon for years. It was about as high-pace low-quality you could get on the internet. I showed him sites like Reddit and elsewhere but he was very content with just Stumbling. People like to blame FB/Twitter for low quality content without considering the huge market for that stuff. People…

> Stumbleupon That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Yeah, he's seemed to have moved on to Facebook and individual news sites since then.

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

#248

Post by ryanmerket » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

Rotdhizon wrote: post #122

That confirms the actions of what Spez usually does. He remains silent on the rampant abusive subreddits UNTIL someone publishes a news article about it, then he steps in with the whole "We're dedicating ourselves to stepping up regulating these harmful subreddits, and other blanket PR statements". Like most, I enjoy the hobby specific subs(tech related for me) like sysadmin, networking, netsec, etc. Those communitie…

Dan wasn't there when Spez came back. Spez's first order of action after coming back was to create tools and systems for cleaning up the site. Dan never saw any of that. So take what Dan says about Spez and the site in the context of 2015.

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

#249

Post by coatmatter » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #217

staplers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said about the internet in general. Take a stroll away from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc and you can find some really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content. The problem is that a majority of people are just absolutely manipulated by their emotions and dive head first into the feedback loop designed by social media to provide an addictive stream of never-ending enga…

Last month I was kicked from twitter, since I was trying to be more productive I didn't trigger the reset process. I did spend less time refreshing some timeline. But 1) I did miss some of my "audience" (feels like an audience more than friends, but I'm twisted) 2) I'm now way less aware of lots of news. Two days ago was the first time in years that I thought to myself "what ? I didn't know that" about an event. Not…

> 2) I'm now way less aware of lots of news. Two days ago was the first time in years that I thought to myself "what ? I didn't know that" about an event. Not sure if this is bad or good, but it's an important difference.

I would suggest it's good. Most news in my view is "junknews", even from reputable outlets (including independent media). Why? Very rarely is any news actionable in any way. It's likely that very little of what you and I see each day fundamentally changes how we live our daily lives.

Most of it is entertainment and us humans just like to "know" things - there are more effective ways to be informed about the world if that is the honest objective. Spending an equivalent amount of time reading books or going outside into the streets/community is likely far more useful for nearly everyone. Outsource getting the most important updates to people you know; they'll enjoy knowing "stuff" and keeping you up-to-date.

Catching up on news can always come later anyway (e.g., if you need to cram for an "exam"; i.e., voting).

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

#250

Post by optimuspaul » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

spike021 wrote: post #194

staplers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said about the internet in general. Take a stroll away from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc and you can find some really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content. The problem is that a majority of people are just absolutely manipulated by their emotions and dive head first into the feedback loop designed by social media to provide an addictive stream of never-ending enga…

Really? I find "really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content" all the time. If not for Facebook or Twitter I likely would've never found The Athletic, a newer news media website for sports. I doubt they'd have just advertised on ESPN or some other sports broadcast channel website. Some of the content there has been incredibly insightful and meaningful. I even find articles from there on…

I might argue that you are in a minority there. I don't doubt that finding good content is possible on Facebook and Twitter, but to be fair it was outside those conclaves that the quality content was actually residing. Back in the day I definitely discovered new things on those platforms, but it has been some time. Most things I see there now are short attention span low quality memes and crap. Might have more to say about who I follow and friend compared to who you follow and friend than anything else. To that I say, good job, I wish I had the time and patience to curate my social graph better.