Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#191

Post by hfourm » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

WorkingDead wrote: post #121

staycoolboy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, /r/politics is an echo chamber. But there is an enormous difference between that and T_D. I don't ever recall seeing posts on /r/politics being stickied that called for violence, whereas that happened routinely on T_D. Your comment is not sarcastic, it is misleading, misiniformed and ultimately destructive.

BS. The only difference between the two discussion groups is that TD dropped all the pretense. I have seen the same kinds of things that are loosely defined as 'calls to violence' in both places.

People on the donald openly celebrated violence in top upvoted posts. Tons of open racism. Politics has turned into a bit of an echo chamber compared to 10 years ago, but it is in no way the same as T_D.

That "dropping pretense" you describe carries a LOT more weight than you are giving it, in who it attracts, and the behaviors it promotes.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#192

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

jedmeyers wrote: post #138

stronglikedan wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 24% of people killed by police are black > African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. [0] [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-natio…

> black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. If we are going into this statistics: using your terminology, how much less likely that a “black American” will commit a crime that causes arrest (or a police interaction) than a “white American“?

"Police interactions" are largely up to the discretion of the police, which is why almost all proposals for police reform include ending "broken windows" policies.

One example, with some more info: https://www.joincampaignzero.org/brokenwindows

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#193

Post by chrisco255 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

WorkingDead wrote: post #121

staycoolboy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, /r/politics is an echo chamber. But there is an enormous difference between that and T_D. I don't ever recall seeing posts on /r/politics being stickied that called for violence, whereas that happened routinely on T_D. Your comment is not sarcastic, it is misleading, misiniformed and ultimately destructive.

BS. The only difference between the two discussion groups is that TD dropped all the pretense. I have seen the same kinds of things that are loosely defined as 'calls to violence' in both places.

Free speech isn't hard to understand as a concept. If someone says something you disagree with, you debate them. Echo chambers radicalize us all. No one is immune to the effects of groupthink.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#194

Post by metalchianti » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

lksaar wrote: post #178

metalchianti wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This opinion bothers me. TD was always an explicitly pro-Trump subreddit. You expect anti-Trump content to be modded or removed. The modus operandi of /r/politics is much more nefarious. It is branded as a general politics-related subreddit but content that doesn't fit the left-leaning narrative is removed for ambiguous reasons.

You'd expect mods of t_d to not partake in smear campaigns against survivors of a school shooting, actually remove calls for death of various politicans, not telling people to harass journalist and maybe remove blatant fake news.

Straw-man. I never said TD was moral--just consistent with their ruleset.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#195

Post by hellomyguys » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

hart_russell wrote: post #24

minimaxir wrote: post #3

Relevant context: recently, former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao called out Reddit for their policies after Reddit did a statement on Black Lives Matter: > I am obligated to call you out: You should have shut down the_donald instead of amplifying it and its hate, racism, and violence. So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. You don't get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all da…

But that's why she was ousted: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-steps-dow... Turns out only allowing speech that you deem acceptable makes for a pretty boring internet forum.

Isn't that Hacker News? I'm assuming you aren't a regular user of Reddit as almost all of the subreddits I've used are heavily moderated?

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#196

Post by CM30 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

disposekinetics wrote: post #90

MarcellusDrum wrote: post #32

Reddit got too mainstream for its own good. The company desperately wants to become the new social media (think Facebook or Twitter), but many users are standing in the way, making the change from a discussion website to a social media website slow. What made me and many others use Reddit in the first place is that it didn't really matter who you are and what's your political and religious background, the only thing…

Do you know of any federated/distributed alternatives to reddit? Although, maybe the argument is we don't actually need a social media platform at all just RSS.

From what I can tell, Lemmy seems to be this:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

Littr seems to be federated too:

https://littr.me/

That's about it for federated Reddit alternatives, at least that I can find. And I don't think the federated aspect has caught on yet for either.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#197

Post by ethbro » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #153

kube-system wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is wildly influential. At this point, it is likely more influential than any other form of media. Reddit is the #2 social media platform by traffic in the US, after Facebook.

My feeling is that the world at large underestimates the impact of social media and Hacker news overestimates it. Not sure how to rate the infulential-ness of different media, but Fox News was HUGELY influential to the voters that decided the last presidential election: https://www.vox.com/2019/3/4/18249847/fox-news-effect-swing-...

I think "worldview media" is a more appropriate term for the phenomenon.

What form it takes isn't as important as the fact that it supplies enough content / entertainment / methods of consumption that one can subscribe to it and have 100% of their bandwidth filled, to the exclusion of competing narratives.

Talk radio was an imperfect expression of this, because radio isn't portable in the same way that app-based social media + mobile devices / Fox News are.

But it's entirely possible to prevent someone from ever being exposed to a contrary narrative, simply by filling all their available time.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#198

Post by hellomyguys » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

jungletime wrote: post #145

What's wrong with waiting a few months to vote out Trump fairly? If you believe in Democracy and majority rule. The other side has a right to organize and communicate online. Attempts at censorship seem to be backfiring, and people have a long memory of these things. Since Trump has been in office, there have been several attempts at getting rid of him which do not involve people voting him out in a direct democratic…

> 5. Try to change the rules of voting next election to mail in ballots. Which are less secure than voting in person. If people can wait in line in a grocery store, why can't they wait in line to vote. I don't get it.

Millions of people are not going to grocery stores.

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#199

Post by throwanem » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #193

WorkingDead wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS. The only difference between the two discussion groups is that TD dropped all the pretense. I have seen the same kinds of things that are loosely defined as 'calls to violence' in both places.

Free speech isn't hard to understand as a concept. If someone says something you disagree with, you debate them. Echo chambers radicalize us all. No one is immune to the effects of groupthink.

So, how do you feel about the fire-in-a-crowded-theater exception?

Re: Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian Resigns from the Board of Reddit

#200

Post by fernandotakai » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

z9e wrote: post #122

sevenf0ur wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I routinely see left leaning political ads on the front page. I really don't see what good could come from Alexis's resignation. The site is already a left leaning echo chamber and most of the controversial subs are quarantined or outright banned. Any new ones that crop up are routinely removed. The most controversial (the_donald) has been effectively shutdown for months and removed from r/all for years. What mo…

Funny how much this is being downvoted.

right? i never ever see right wing content on reddit's /r/all frontpage, but i ALWAYS see left-wing content (including there small subreddits with 10k+ upvotes).

see, i'm not conservative (i'm absurdly socially liberal and a bit fiscally conservative -- i prefer less taxes and less government spending in general) but it's baffling that people call reddit a "right-wing-cesspool".

if you look at unfiltered /r/all right now, most posts are related to the current protests.