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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’

#451
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree with this. I find that customized Reddit leads to the same feedback loop/conveyer belt feeling that made me quit Facebook out of annoyance with always seeing the same ideas propagated out again and again. Browsing Reddit without an account lets you avoid the urge to comment on things and also turns you on to loads of new things that you otherwise might not've found on customized Reddit. Granted, I…

Isn't there still a way to see that particular front page when you're not logged in? Either /r/popular or /r/all?

/r/popular will come close to it, and includes a level of customization based on your general location (as the default front page does).

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

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You still can't grasp that "an armed society" != "everyone carrying weapons everywhere".

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A subreddit solely dedicated to auditing the quality of moderation on various subs would go a long way to give reddit the tools to remove problematic moderators. Ultimately the quality of the mod makes the quality of sub.

This exists, but in a really basic and incomplete-looking form.

http://reddit.com/r/dsmr/wiki

http://reddit.com/r/blueribbon/wiki

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen an active threat on Reddit, what do you define as dangerous? Can you give an example? I've been on Reddit almost since the beginning and I've never come across a post that I felt posed any danger. Maybe I'm in the wrong subreddits.

You are in the wrong subreddits. EDIT: AND your anecdotal experience isn't conclusive.

So you have no examples? Bare assertions don't make for very good discussion.

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s a more effective deterrent than doing nothing at all.

> It’s a more effective deterrent than doing nothing at all.

Is it? You seem pretty certain of this, so how can you be sure banning just wouldn't galvanize them further? Your line of reasoning is exactly why Fox news was created, and now look where the US is.

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

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

The concentration of gun ownership varies markedly across regions though. Not sure that's true of drinking, which I expect would be pretty universal.

In any case, at worst your data suggests that banning guns in the US would be just as impossible as banning alcohol turned out to be, which very well could be true.

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

#457
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Shows posts that have been flagged from mods, users, or shadowbanning and hidden from the normal display.

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

#458

> 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…

>...blames gun manufacturers for school shootings...

If a new item today entered the market and was misused to the tune of 30,000 deaths per year. Misused far more often than legitimately like stopping an intruder. And the manufacturer knew in advance this would be the outcome, I think we would be right to blame them.

There are many extremely dangerous substances with legitimate uses that would instantly be widely abused that we wisely restrict. I can see no metric that puts most personal weapons outside that category.

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

#459

>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…

That's an uncharitable interpretation of what are, I think, pretty clear words on his part.

He says he doesn't know how to fix existing broken entrenched sites like Reddit and Twitter but does have suggestions for sites that are just getting started.

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

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://wonderma…

> You've asked me to define what is anti-social behavior. That is an existing term on which lots of study have been performed.

So you're still not defining it or referencing it. I asked you specifically in a previous question if you're talking about the DSM-V criteria, or perhaps the DSM-IV. There are many more definitions of anti-social behaviour than you seem to be aware of.

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

Except policing antisocial behaviour is exactly what you suggested, and that's specifically what I'm asking you about. So answer the question, or you have no idea what you're talking about.

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