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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’

#391

Post by naasking »

baby wrote: post #365
naasking wrote: post #355

> I had conversations with Jason [Citron] a year ago about the problem of white supremacy on his site, and he said, “I don’t want to invade their privacy by going into their channels and reading what they’re doing.” And I said, “They’re gonna cause deaths because you’re not doing that.” And he said, “You really think so?” And I said, “Yeah.” And sure enough they didn’t do anything, and sure enough deaths were caused…

Alright. I’ll reply to the troll. How are weapon manufacturers not responsible for the deaths caused by their toys? What baffles me is how intelligent people want to live in a society where everybody carries weapons.

> What baffles me is how intelligent people want to live in a society where everybody carries weapons.

Talk about a troll. Who said everyone should carry weapons?

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

#392

Post by komali2 »

feadog wrote: post #268
komali2 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is "right wing" and there is "far right nationalism." Reddit has an issue with the latter. I have talked with many conservatives lamenting the loss of their given subreddits to trolls and /r/t_d devotees. Furthermore, it is the internet - I've never been convinced by any argument that HN or reddit or even facebook has any obligation to give "fair time" to far-right nationalism. For as long as Fox News exists an…

sidenote, sometimes this does happen, and it almost always is full of the most comically hateful people: see voat I'd feel much better if reddit and twitter were even handed with their condemnation of comically hateful people. As someone on the Left, what I've seen is that Left-leaning media bias tends to give indirect license to the most extreme authoritarian and even toxic fringes of the Left. It also fuels a react…

I'm not sure I agree, based on the near universal mockery of /r/shitredditsays since well before even the Kotakugate/gamerghazi/zoe quinn clusterfuck.

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

#393

Post by Spooky23 »

belorn wrote: post #336
mizzack wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the popularity of a default sub to a NSFW sub using subscriber counts is a horrible argument. New accounts get subscribed to the defaults automatically -- hence the top ~50 subreddits by sub count are or were defaults. "User Activity" is probably more accurate. Even then, how are they determining activity? Views? Comments? Up/downvotes?

I think you can read a lot of intent and purpose of a website if the default is directing people to cat pictures. Regardless of defaults, I doubt there is a single metric that show that porn on reddit is more popular than cat pictures. There is doubt in any method that collect metrics, but if we define them as insignificant then the same metric can not later then be used to say that porn is significant on reddit. Unc…

Porn or nasty subcultures doesn't need to be "more popular" than cat pictures. And subscriptions is only one dimension of use.

Check out this marketing pitch for Reddit ads. https://www.slideshare.net/webjoe/reddit-26009093

Think of the dimensions of use here. I'm sure cat pictures get lots of hits, but I doubt cat pictures drive 20m average visit time.

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

#394

Post by youdontknowtho »

revnja wrote: post #369
baby wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright. I’ll reply to the troll. How are weapon manufacturers not responsible for the deaths caused by their toys? What baffles me is how intelligent people want to live in a society where everybody carries weapons.

>> What baffles me is how intelligent people want to live in a society where everybody carries weapons. One reasoning for that (at least in the US) is that we'd rather have everybody carrying a weapon instead of just the criminals.

If the world worked that way then I would agree. It doesn't.

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

#395

Post by naasking »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #370
naasking wrote: post #355

> I had conversations with Jason [Citron] a year ago about the problem of white supremacy on his site, and he said, “I don’t want to invade their privacy by going into their channels and reading what they’re doing.” And I said, “They’re gonna cause deaths because you’re not doing that.” And he said, “You really think so?” And I said, “Yeah.” And sure enough they didn’t do anything, and sure enough deaths were caused…

More than agreeing or not with this line of thinking, I find the bigger problem is how selectively it is applied. People will point out that if we ban guns, we wouldn't have to worry about school shootings. Even if we ignored the logistics of such a challenge and agreed on the conclusion, why is the same logic not applied to things like alcohol and all the harms that results (drunk driving, alcoholics ruining their l…

> Even if we ignored the logistics of such a challenge and agreed on the conclusion, why is the same logic not applied to things like alcohol and all the harms that results (drunk driving, alcoholics ruining their lives, etc).

Indeed, and we already tried that, and it led to the rise of organized crime. But I think it's important not to get sucked into "slippery slope" style reasoning. There can be good reasons why banning alcohol would be problematic, but banning guns would not. It depends on the surrounding culture. For instance, if enjoying a drink a few times a week was universal, but almost no one owned a gun.

> The overall argument has valid points and problem points, but the discrepancy of when it is applies makes discussing the validity harder when it seems people aren't being transparent about their motivations to begin with.

I think it's largely because people see symptoms, and look backwards in the causal chain to something they think they understand and can blame as "the" problem. People are pretty weak with nuance on tough and emotionally charged issues.

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

#396

Post by otoburb »

LordHumungous wrote: post #343

>Were there moments in which Reddit chose to double down on something and made it that much harder to work toward a solution? >> I don’t know. I’m trying to think about your question. >Is there something recent that you’re thinking of? >> I can’t remember the specific instances right now, but there was a bunch of press about things that were going on on Reddit and Discord, and they both reacted and banned the subredd…

>>Sounds like this guy has a lot of vague complaints but not much in the way of concrete solutions, other than "do the right thing" which in his mind is extremely obvious and yet undefined.

Maybe he's operating on the same principle espoused by Justice Potter Stewart's "I know it when I see it" threshold test[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

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

#397

Post by projektir »

naasking wrote: post #350
projektir wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It has nothing to do with opinions. It has never been about opinions, and you know it. It has to do with antisocial behavior . Antisocial behavior is inherently hostile and doesn't deserve a platform, which has b…

> It has to do with antisocial behavior. Antisocial behavior is inherently hostile and doesn't deserve a platform Can you define "antisocial behaviour"?

There's a wealth of literature on the topic that you could examine at your leisure.

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

#398

Post by naasking »

Joeri wrote: post #360
naasking wrote: post #355

> I had conversations with Jason [Citron] a year ago about the problem of white supremacy on his site, and he said, “I don’t want to invade their privacy by going into their channels and reading what they’re doing.” And I said, “They’re gonna cause deaths because you’re not doing that.” And he said, “You really think so?” And I said, “Yeah.” And sure enough they didn’t do anything, and sure enough deaths were caused…

Guns are a bad analogy because manufacturers have no control over their use post purchase. If gun manufacturers could take back their guns (ban users) when somebody threatened illegal violence the analogy would be closer, and it would be quite reasonable to expect them to do so.

> If gun manufacturers could take back their guns (ban users) when somebody threatened illegal violence the analogy would be closer, and it would be quite reasonable to expect them to do so.

Except creating a new profile on reddit is trivial, so "banning" is a weak threat at best.

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

#399

Post by youdontknowtho »

gottam wrote: post #256

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 sit…

To be fair, some of the "speech" on Reddit is actually dangerous. Like, get people hurt dangerous.

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

#400

Post by Analemma_ »

naasking wrote: post #391
baby wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright. I’ll reply to the troll. How are weapon manufacturers not responsible for the deaths caused by their toys? What baffles me is how intelligent people want to live in a society where everybody carries weapons.

> What baffles me is how intelligent people want to live in a society where everybody carries weapons. Talk about a troll. Who said everyone should carry weapons?

Every person who has ever repeated that stupid "an armed society is a polite society" mantra, for starters.
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