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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’

#421

Post by haberman »

projektir wrote: post #390
haberman wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has never been about opinions, and you know it. It has to do with antisocial behavior. It is my genuine belief that presuming bad faith (as you have done here) is one of the most common antisocial behaviors that people don't even admit is antisocial. It is toxic to the civil exchange of ideas. It's even mentioned in the Hacker News Guidelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ): "Assume good fai…

> It is my genuine belief that presuming bad faith (as you have done here) is one of the most common antisocial behaviors that people don't even admit is antisocial. The bad faith is on the person responding. The post literally starts with "The comments here have this mentality", how is that not bad faith? Then they construct a strawman. You want to give that power by acknowledging it with a response? It's the same p…

"Bad faith" doesn't mean "I think this person is being unfair." It means "I think this person is being intentionally deceitful."

If a person genuinely believes what they are saying, it is not bad faith, no matter how wrong or misguided you think they are. You may disagree with the way this person characterized the other comments. But that's not the same as your accusation, which is that the poster is making an argument that they know is wrong.

> There's no way people do not realize, at this point, in such large numbers, who is being kept out, or meant to be kept out. It was never unique, special opinions. It was always trolls, sexist and homophobic language, etc.

I think this statement is at least as unfair as the one that originally offended you ("The comments here have this mentality...."). But I can tell that you genuinely believe this so I wouldn't accuse you of bad faith for saying this.

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

#422

Post by youdontknowtho »

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…

That's a great point. In the end it's an identity problem. This is one place where I think that blockchain technology might actually help. (Jesus, now I'm one of them.)

There has to be pseudonymous/anonymous channels for information, but the bile has been so intense lately that it makes me think that the majority of communications need to be positively identified.

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

#423

Post by bhandziuk »

md224 wrote: post #265
crazygringo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you have the mobile app, you can see for yourself. Here's an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOuija/comments/89rukm/hey_vsauce... If you're not by a desktop, you can verify the missing comments by viewing the link in mobile Safari (in an ironic twist, Reddit's mobile web view is actually more functional than their native app). I wonder how many people are out there, like you, who have no idea this is going on.…

> mobile web view is actually more functional than their native app

Thank goodness for that! Reddit isn't so complicated that I need a special app for it. It's a website and it works well as a website. It could be better but there's nothing happening on the site that a browser can't natively handle just fine.

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

#424

Post by scrollaway »

notMick wrote: post #307
streb-lo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's being brigaded by both sides for political points/fire control. But you'd have to be willfully blind to describe the events up to now as a "nothing burger."

There is nothing, except a large paid hoax propaganda campaign. With the same team we could make mother Teresa seem like an imperialist religious nut. But anyway, let's agree to disagree. Because the world is nicer that way.

Your attitude of batching everything not matching the "side" you happened to pick and calling it a "large paid propaganda campaign" is dangerous and the world is certainy not "nicer that way".

This attitude is something you find everywhere because it's simpler for people who believe something strongly, to also believe that anyone who disagrees has been paid to do so. So it's attractive to dismiss anti-trump articles as "paid propaganda", and dismiss people like you as russian bots.

But you're going to have to wake up from that attitude at one point or another because it's going to catch up with you. As others have said, arrests and indictments aren't a "nothing burger". You won't get to the truth by dismissing sources you've been told not to like.

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

#425

Post by pdonis »

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.

> I’ll reply to the troll.

By trolling yourself?

> How are weapon manufacturers not responsible for the deaths caused by their toys?

Guns are not toys. They are potentially lethal devices that should be used responsibly. So are many other things, like cars. We don't ban everyone from using cars because some people can't use them responsibly. Nor do we blame the car manufacturer every time someone has an accident. (If the accident turns out to be due to a defect in the vehicle, then yes, we blame the manufacturer. But most accidents do not fall into that category.)

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

Straw man. In a society where guns are legal and regulated, not everybody will carry them. But responsible people will be able to exercise responsible judgment about whether their personal circumstances merit them having a gun.

What baffles me is how intelligent people want to live in a society where the only people who have a choice about having a gun are lawbreakers and law enforcement, thereby putting themselves at the mercy of criminals and the response time of the police.

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

#426

Post by bhandziuk »

paulmd wrote: post #114
stochastic_monk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

what does showdead do?

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

#427

Post by naasking »

DavidVoid wrote: post #415
ctlby wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that these "hate speech" venues have caused deaths is thrown around quite often, but I wonder if a connection has been found in even a single case. Gaping chasm between rhetoric and reality.

>I wonder if a connection has been found in even a single case. I'd argue that the psychopaths who're attracted to such forums have their hateful beliefs reinforced and amplified by them. Whether or not they would've ended up killing people even if they'd never started hanging out on those forums is hard to say, but it seems pretty naïve to me to assume that those "hate speech" venues didn't have an effect on them. S…

> I'd argue that the psychopaths who're attracted to such forums have their hateful beliefs reinforced and amplified by them

I agree. I think the echo chamber effect is well documented at this point, and it's something that's happening even in mainstream media.

I would still hesitate to say that we should lay the blame on these forums though, or undeniably conclude that that's where we should be making changes to prevent such problems. If we hold free speech as a principle in high regard, we shouldn't so easily sacrifice it.

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

#428

Post by kbenson »

uhtred wrote: post #384
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not responsible in the same that car manufacturers are not responsible when one of their toys gets driven into a crowd of people.

Cars are not designed with the sole purpose of killing people though are they?

Many guns are not designed with the "sole purpose" of killing people. Plenty are designed with the purpose of hunting, or protection (which may or may not be used to kill someone, but might be useful in a way that doesn't even require firing).

If you disagree with that assessment, then I think you'll most likely have to agree that some automobiles are designed with the purpose of killing people. Military vehicles with attached guns or cannons, for example.

There's a direct parallel to swords and knives. Swords may not be appropriate for being in public, but I think few people object to a pocket knife. That said, we don't often get people saying "blades are designed with the sole purpose of hurting/killing people".

I think that people use absolutist terminology and statements with regard to guns is more indicative of the poor communication and polarization of the topic than anything else, and is also why it's very hard to make any headway on the issue. Gun advocates are afraid to cede any ground on the issue as they see it as a slippery slope to more and more constraints on what they see as a constitutional right. It's hard to say they're wrong in that when people jump in with stuff like "the sole purpose of a gun is killing people".

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

#429

Post by naasking »

projektir wrote: post #411
naasking wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're suggesting reddit admins, mods or some algorithm should diagnose antisocial behaviour using the DSM-V based only on a user's written words? This is genuinely what you believe?

I think I genuinely believe only things I claim to genuinely believe, not things someone's attempting to put into my mouth.

Then point to this copious literature of which you speak, and describe how you would employ it impartially in a forum setting to diagnose antisocial behaviour. Frankly, I think I've been more than charitable to your claims so far, and you're just avoiding answering the question.

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

#430

Post by WhompingWindows »

tootie wrote: post #224
lazycouchpotato wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their mobile website is equally bad. A gigantic pop-up takes up half of the screen to tell you to use their app. Third party apps make Reddit so much more usable.

I always use https://i.reddit.com . It's their years-old mobile site and it's super fast and reliable.

Wow, thanks for that link. I was having the same problem as the parent comment, I definitely don't want their app but I also don't want a giant pop-up in my face every time I load the mobile site.
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