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Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

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Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#11

Post by [deleted] »

keyle wrote: post #7
ralusek wrote: post #2

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it. Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

The barrier of entry for someone to go and write counter-productive / aggressive / abrasive comments online is very low now. In the past you had to have half a brain to even be online. I don't mean internet connection wise, I mean to set it up and find stuff. What scares me the most is "justice by social media". People felt wrong doing against them burning torches and calling for pitchforks online, instead of getting…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#12

Post by AmericanChopper »

thecatspaw wrote: post #9
axaxs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a broader sense, sure. But I've witnessed very little of that here, which is mostly self moderated with a nudge from the admins. I've noticed this also in other smallish niche communities. Reddit has become so mainstream that everyone has a place. I think the big problems arise in the more general subs where all the miscreants from the web intersect. Same with YouTube, or any large community really. No amount of c…

> In a broader sense, sure. But I've witnessed very little of that here, which is mostly self moderated with a nudge from the admins. I've noticed this also in other smallish niche communities. hn also seems to be more accepting of opinions which people disagree with. Here it seems to lead more to a civil debate about why you are wrong, whereas on reddit you would more often than not get downvoted and called names.

> hn also seems to be more accepting of opinions which people disagree with.

More than reddit. But HN is much more homogeneous than reddit is. There’s plenty of perspectives that generally aren’t welcome for discussion here. HN also makes an effort to moderate against political flaming. You could argue that the moderation isn’t entirely unbiased, but it does keep the comment threads more civilized.

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#13

Post by sdan »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #12
thecatspaw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a broader sense, sure. But I've witnessed very little of that here, which is mostly self moderated with a nudge from the admins. I've noticed this also in other smallish niche communities. hn also seems to be more accepting of opinions which people disagree with. Here it seems to lead more to a civil debate about why you are wrong, whereas on reddit you would more often than not get downvoted and called names.

> hn also seems to be more accepting of opinions which people disagree with. More than reddit. But HN is much more homogeneous than reddit is. There’s plenty of perspectives that generally aren’t welcome for discussion here. HN also makes an effort to moderate against political flaming. You could argue that the moderation isn’t entirely unbiased, but it does keep the comment threads more civilized.

Yeah, HN is definitely a lot more homogeneous. Even CS centered subreddits have somewhat toxic cultures because of what anonymity sustains. I think HN has a lot fewer visitors than Reddit but has a lot more conscious, thoughtful, experienced, and extremely intelligent minds to think and discuss about topics in the tech field.

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#14

Post by 0xADEADBEE »

keyle wrote: post #7
ralusek wrote: post #2

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it. Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

The barrier of entry for someone to go and write counter-productive / aggressive / abrasive comments online is very low now. In the past you had to have half a brain to even be online. I don't mean internet connection wise, I mean to set it up and find stuff. What scares me the most is "justice by social media". People felt wrong doing against them burning torches and calling for pitchforks online, instead of getting…

I agree with the second point emphatically. I enjoy that the barrier to entry with places like IRC are higher because it's directly correlated with the quality of discussion, in my experience at least.

Regarding the other points, we may well look back at things like Myspace as Halcyon days of somewhat pure Social Media usage. It's a pity we can't still have a social media platform that isn't mined to hell for analytics, ads and GPS stalking but it seems that the tide is turning and people in the Western world are getting over the hype cycle and caring less about being a part of it. Tellingly I had cause to listen to a focus group this week that had privacy concerns about Facebook; before then I assumed it was only the HN crowd who thought that! I look forward to the next 5 years in tech but if I were to lay odds, I wouldn't bet on Facebook weathering well.

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#15

Post by AmericanChopper »

sdan wrote: post #13
AmericanChopper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hn also seems to be more accepting of opinions which people disagree with. More than reddit. But HN is much more homogeneous than reddit is. There’s plenty of perspectives that generally aren’t welcome for discussion here. HN also makes an effort to moderate against political flaming. You could argue that the moderation isn’t entirely unbiased, but it does keep the comment threads more civilized.

Yeah, HN is definitely a lot more homogeneous. Even CS centered subreddits have somewhat toxic cultures because of what anonymity sustains. I think HN has a lot fewer visitors than Reddit but has a lot more conscious, thoughtful, experienced, and extremely intelligent minds to think and discuss about topics in the tech field.

That’s probably true (though I’m not sure we’re any more intelligent than any other internet community). My point was just that we shouldn’t mistake homogeny for tolerance of opposing views.

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#16

Post by fastball »

axaxs wrote: post #6
ralusek wrote: post #2

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it. Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

In a broader sense, sure. But I've witnessed very little of that here, which is mostly self moderated with a nudge from the admins. I've noticed this also in other smallish niche communities. Reddit has become so mainstream that everyone has a place. I think the big problems arise in the more general subs where all the miscreants from the web intersect. Same with YouTube, or any large community really. No amount of c…

The moderation here goes far beyond "nudges".

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#17

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

ralusek wrote: post #2

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it. Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

I don't know I agree with you there.

The platform used for discussion certainly has a large impact on the way people interact, and the culture that grows around it.

I'm open to arguments that Reddit is better or worse than most, but for my own view, I think the majority of subreddits are not a good place to be interacting with and in general have poor discussion quality and a fair bit of bullying - which I think is largely because of the nature of the downvote/upvote system and comment chains/weighting reddit has in place.

I personally think that reducing his particular gripe down to saying it's "a broader issue" isn't useful for narrowing down specific problems with particular methods of discourse.

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#18

Post by fastball »

krtkush wrote: post #10
ralusek wrote: post #2

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it. Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

Which is true. But when I discovered reddit about 7 years back it was nothing like this. Now the website leaves me feeling absolutely crap, angry and frustrated. Plus, it is addictive.

I started using Reddit around the same time (actually 9 years ago!) and I feel the same way about it now.

Recently, I've gone totally cold-turkey on the platform. Where as previously I had been posting daily for 9 years!

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#19

Post by fastball »

ralusek wrote: post #2

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it. Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

Eh, a big part of it is the karma system and upvotes / downvotes.

They work great for things like "how do I fix this problem" or "recommend X", but it is a terrible format for political discussion / anything remotely controversial.

It has a very noticeable polarizing effect in those cases.

Re: Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down

#20

Post by flukus »

ralusek wrote: post #2

> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it. Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

> Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with each other online, in general.

Having spent some (great) time in more traditional forums recently I think the algorithmic driven nature of reddit (and HN for that matter) along with it's centralization are the biggest contributors. The scoring systems have gamified online discussions to the point that you can't really have worthwhile discussions, most people with anything interesting to say (anything not mostly accepted by the group as a whole) will be punished by the algorithms, people with the most agreeable opinions will "win".

Being centralized and gamified is also the ideal environment for astroturfing, you can have a big effect for minimal investment. If someone clicks on a topic you can easily control what the first comment they see is, with more traditional forums it's first in best dressed and a lot of people will skip straight to the latest entries.

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