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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’

#251

Post by TangoTrotFox »

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…

As a thought experiment - would slavery in the US have ended sooner or later if we had anonymous internet from the 18th century on? I'm not implying there is any clear answer, but I think it is a simple way of immediately seeing much of the nuance of this issue that you might miss at a cursory consideration.

Self censorship due to social pressure certainly keeps some people (as has been mentioned Facebook shows clearly enough that lots of people simply don't care) from discussing things that they would not feel comfortable discussing under their real name. And those things that they might not feel comfortable discussing can be negative, but they can also be positive. In either case, I think it's probably a net positive for society when people can discuss things they actually feel instead of things that they think others think they should feel, even though those others might not even feel that way! Shouldn't society operate in a way that we think it should operate instead of the way that we collectively think everybody else thinks we think it should operate?

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

#252

Post by pjc50 »

wvenable wrote: post #142
UncleEntity wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself. Wouldn't squashing the voices of the "right-wing contingent" just lead to an (already implied) echo chamber of leftist thought? Your one single comment sums up the problem I have with user-moderation systems like reddit (and HN).

What ever happened to neutrality? Moderators shouldn't be promoting an ideology left or right. I understand that Reddit admins themselves don't want to promote an ideology either -- they want to remain neutral -- but they are sacrificing their platform to people who don't hold he same ideals. The biggest change I've noticed is just how political the city/country subreddits have become. A few years ago, they used to b…

Neutrality is impossible. Either you ban people for racism or you don't.

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

#253

Post by post_break »

fibbery wrote: post #203
post_break wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's bs. Hardwareswap for example is still there. Thinkpads for sale, GoPro Market...

I don't believe a Thinkpad ever killed anyone, though.

That's not the point of my comment. OP said all p2p sales was banned, when that's not the case. In fact I think pot sales subreddits are still there.

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

#254

Post by eanzenberg »

sandov wrote: post #202
psychometry wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel that leftist movements are leaking much more than T_D. Comments which — without being racist or sexist — go against the popular & politically correct leftist stance are downvoted to oblivion. Meanwhile, extremely statist stances are tolerated and celebrated by users.

Reddit's hive-mind is ultra-liberal.

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

#255

Post by ryanmerket »

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…

Reddit user for 10 years. I have never seen a random skinhead pop into the comments. And if they were to do so, they would get downvoted to oblivion...

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

#256

Post by gottam »

The comments here have this mentality of "there are people with different opinions from me, why don't these websites deal with these opinions". It's dangerous thinking that can be applied to your opinions.

The internet always worked this way. There are the cesspools, maybe things you don't like, but if you don't feel like engaging with these communities you simply keep going. Problem with these social media forum sites is that as much as you don't want to engage/debate with these communities they still use the same website as you so its unavoidable.

This is why centralizing these forums onto one website was a bad idea, blame that. Because now, there's too much money involved and excluding people of certain political ideas or whatever means you lose a substantial chunk of userbase, which means users would depart to another website.

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

#257

Post by btilly »

raquo wrote: post #192
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…

I definitely think that dumb content makes the consumer dumber with repeated exposure just like smart/educational content makes them smarter (well, in simple terms). I don't think there is a baseline intelligence level for each person below which they can't possibly fall regardless of what they do. So yes, platforms making dumb content more available do make people dumber long term. I don't know what to do about it,…

There is actually research showing that exposure to a series of fake headlines - even though you are told that they are fake - makes similar fake headlines more believable to you.

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

#258

Post by jessaustin »

abritinthebay wrote: post #172
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...

Vote counts on HN are hidden - doesn't stop a lot of toxic behavior on here. The problem is down votes are not a good comment tool . Especially combined with hiding and such. Upvote only systems are much more resilient to the kind of gaming mechanics you see here and on reddit.

What is meant by "gaming mechanics you see here"? Could you be more specific? Of course, voting does affect what gets posted, but that's the point. If your authentic voice doesn't appeal to HN voters, then develop another voice that does appeal to us!

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

#259

Post by staplers »

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…

  People like to blame FB/Twitter
I am not blaming anyone. Simply stating that those places are expressly made for sharing low-quality content.

Just because there is a demand for something, doesn't mean we shouldn't fight the urge.

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

#260

Post by fudged71 »

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…

I think the idea of reddit collapsing entirely is much harder than a single news site for instance. It's not one product, it is hundreds of strong communities that have gathered from different places on the web. There are discussions and communities that I would not know how to find elsewhere on the web.
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