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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’

#431

Post by WhompingWindows »

Bartweiss wrote: post #74
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...

I'm not sure hiding vote counts is sufficient, since comments are still displayed based on them. The 'Theory of Reddit' sub did some pretty compelling analyses showing that the first 3-5 votes almost completely predict eventual vote direction, and that the top comments in a thread will consistently be the first handful of upvoted comments. Which also explains complaints of the shape "Reddit hates X one day, but loves…

I read about one strategy on my favorite subreddit. A user admitted to posting memes and cheap content there, then going into /new and downvoting every other post and upvoting his own with a couple alternate accounts.

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

#432

Post by UncleMeat »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #308
tomcam wrote: post #245

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…

I’ve seen absolute junk science on gun control posted in reddit science. Comments that questioned the “study” were flat out removed. Millions of subscribers on that sub, at the time it was a default. No one is implying that gonewild or programmerhumor are bad forces... but news censors, worldnews is manipulated, politics is beyond a joke. Those three particularly are almost certainly bought and paid for. Reddit is pr…

I used to be a mod of r/science. There is an incredible amount of garbage in the comment section. This makes precise moderation very very hard. In general, I think the sub is far too lenient about leaving up comments. Far too often the top comments are pointing out some "flaw" in the study that is either irrelevant to the paper or addressed in the paper body.

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

#433

Post by projektir »

naasking wrote: post #429
projektir wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You've asked me to define what is anti-social behavior. That is an existing term on which lots of study have been performed. Because people don't owe you answers to a question you could research yourself.

People also do not owe you solutions to hypotheticals they never suggested in the first place.

> I've been more than charitable to your claims so far, and you're just avoiding answering the question.

http://wondermark.com/1k62/

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

#434

Post by TomMckenny »

ctlby wrote: post #363
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…

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.

If words do not lead to actions or changes in behavior then why are people bothering to post here?

And if words never contribute to actions then there are allot of correlations to explain from the American revolutionary pamphleteers to the Zimmerman telegram to Jihadist Imams to Coca Cola commercials.

Now maybe this is a price we're wiling to pay for unlimited free speech, I dunno. But we mustn't convince ourselves there is absolutely zero causation between words and deeds.

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

#435

Post by ameister14 »

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…

You could argue that, but there's no real evidence for it and it's been studied with music, television and video games. All have been blamed, using the argument that you'd have to be naive to assume that killing people in a video game doesn't have an effect on someone's likelihood of killing people in real life, or listening to angry music makes you more likely to hurt people.

The list of murderers who've listened to 2Pac is quite long, for example.

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

#436

Post by moomin »

naasking wrote: post #395
PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

The thing is, you don’t really need to theorise about how to stop school shootings. It’s been done. It just required people to prioritise children’s lives over a minority hobby.

(I’m from a country where owning a gun is legal, but controlled, and has no school shootings. We used to have less control, and school shootings happened.)

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

#437

Post by InitialLastName »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #368
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.

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 have a function to society other than killing things (and the threat thereof).

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

#438

Post by staplers »

eanzenberg wrote: post #322
staplers wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This line of logic is so so so dangerous. I hope you understand what you're suggesting. "People deciding what people should watch / read / consume."

As you comment on a moderated, curated fucking news feed...

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

#439

Post by posterboy »

remir wrote: post #210
Gargoyle wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both reddit and hacker news would be much better off with no voting at all. Strong moderators are the only thing I've ever seen keep online forums at a high quality level. Voting is the weakest kind of moderation.

The problem with the upvote/downvote system is that it's too simplistic. If you have an opinion that goes against the status quo, a lot of people will downvote your comment simply because they disagree with what you said on some emotional level. Of course, past a certain number of downvotes, you post will be buried, so you have basically an echo chamber.

That might have it's use, too.

Echochamber sounds bad, resonant frequency response sounds neutral, and it's needed for harmony. The real problem then is kakophonie, noise, and choosing the instrument to play on with a nice timbre, noise floor, etc. The internet is large and finding the right venue and audience is difficult.

There is value in being told to have hit the wrong tone.

This is why shorter messages and twitter are important, it allows a finer grained ... censorship? (Zensur in German also means grade, shool mark). That's why many people, I at least, discuss online, looking for light conversation, so emotional feedback should be welcome as ''the basic unit of exchange in communication''.

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

#440

Post by pathseeker »

naasking wrote: post #395
PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

>For instance, if enjoying a drink a few times a week was universal, but almost no one owned a gun.

1 in 3 own a gun in the US. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-three-americans-own...

1 in 2 had a drink in the last month: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co...

From that same source, 88,000 people die annually from alcohol-related diseases, making it the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.

Culturally, guns and drinking are the same order of magnitude in the US. From a death count though, alcohol dominates.

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