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

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

#431

Post by tomjen3 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #89

buttersbrian wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So much of what is happening now lies at your feet. I just don't know how much of a responsibility reddit has in strong-arming sub-reddits that are communities, whether we like them or not. So I struggle with Ellen's indictment. It makes it seem like Reddit is a root level cause for where we are at today -- It's not, and is only a symptom. I believe it is unfair to say reddit, and their (somewhat) hands off approac…

Reddit, among other social media websites, has been used as an avenue for the radicalization of, particularly, young males.

As a (former) young male on reddit (and I started out on reddit when it had about 4 subs), I am not seeing much over radicalization done to people. Reddit is big enough that there are many radicals on there.

I am definitely seeing opinions that aren't mainstream, and I have seen some subs self-radicalize. Self-radicalization seems mostly a consequence of more egregious things being upvoted more (e.g I don't even dare think what r/badcopnodonut looks like now) and a refusal to discuss things people see as issues. There is no reason on earth that gamegate went right wing, but the mainstream media sent hate their way and so they shifted away from those.

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

#432

Post by tomjen3 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 10:54 AM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #424

koheripbal wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In such a polarized emotionally charged environment, some people are unable to emotionally segregate world news from their personal and professional lives. These people have become paralyzed and unable to function normally. They allow world events to bleed into every conversation, and feel obligated to support their side and ostracizing anyone that disagrees - further isolating them in their bubble. I think that soci…

Quite right! In this case, the mailing list writer has built a dichotomy into all their communications: either you say black lives matter or you say "all lives matter" and therefore you are his enemy. Whereas the third option, "I'm just here for Javascript tips", wasn't even under consideration. So unless you engage with and echo their politics, you fall into the enemy camp by default.

What a world it has come to where you are the enemy if you say all lives matters.

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

#433

Post by tomjen3 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 11:02 AM UTC

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #328

disposekinetics wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem I run into too.

Wait, you're looking for a federated alternative to Reddit, but people exercising free speech on other platforms is a problem for you? Why not just stay with Reddit?

Just because I think it was wrong to ban jailbait doesn't mean I want to browse it.

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

#434

Post by thu2111 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 11:28 AM UTC

ohgodplsno wrote: post #372

throwmehaweh wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> group of fascist white supremacists who fantasize about violently exterminating their perceived enemies Ummm, what? so people that support the President are all fascist white supremacists? Is that really where we're at in this country? What about the sizable number of blacks/latinos/and asians that support him, are they white supremacists too? "white supremacist" and "racist", two terms that have been watered down…

green user, only posts are in support of T_D, pretends it wasn't a hate filled shithole... Alright, I'll bite. t_d was a vile, hatred spewing, white nationalist, violence prone subreddit and its death made the world better. Let's link a few examples, not for you, but for the few people that might still doubt it. (NSFW links coming up, by the way.) Their mods regularly left up posts that advocated for violence against…

[flagged]

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

#435

Post by Veelox » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

sailingparrot wrote: post #246

nilkn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just scape-goating and finding something recent to blame for a situation that has been going on for 150+ years. Besides, it was effectively shut down, and all that did was lead to the creation of thedonald.win, which by all appearances seems to be thriving and growing rapidly, probably much faster than Reddit itself grew when it was founded. To blame the situation on a forum is to misunderstand that the count…

> Besides, it was effectively shut down, and all that did was lead to the creation of thedonald.win You don't end up on thedonald.win by chance, you go there purposefully. For a long time /r/t_d wasn't quarantined at all meaning anyone browsing /r/all would see their posts all day long (since they were pretty good at mass upvoting their own posts for that purpose). I don't think anyone advocates for entirely banning…

I might be late to the threat but you have a very insidious assumption left unstated. You seem to think certain ideas are to dangerous to be shared. That they could infect people and corrupt them. If we silence all the wrong think people will act better.

This is dangerous for many reasons but particularly, what happens if something is deemed wrong think when it is objectively more true than the "right think"?

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

#436

Post by newsbinator » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:06 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #432

newsbinator wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite right! In this case, the mailing list writer has built a dichotomy into all their communications: either you say black lives matter or you say "all lives matter" and therefore you are his enemy. Whereas the third option, "I'm just here for Javascript tips", wasn't even under consideration. So unless you engage with and echo their politics, you fall into the enemy camp by default.

What a world it has come to where you are the enemy if you say all lives matters.

That's not what I meant. I'm saying the absence of any political statement at all makes one the enemy to the writer of this javascript mailing list.

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

#437

Post by op03 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:17 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #407

op03 wrote: post #92

Social media will get much better when the reward/punishment mechanisms change and evolves. It's happening too slowly and at high cost to everyone.

How, specifically? Information- and systems-dynamics suggest to me strongly otherwise. Mencken and Barnum seem validated.

You can see it happening already with Trump's recent flagged tweet having its likes, replies and retweets Disabled.

That's how society has evolved when a Norm is violated specifically in the public square you get thrown in the Drunk Tank for a night to sober up.

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

#438

Post by cwhiz » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

sailingparrot wrote: post #349

cwhiz wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>freedom of speech is still important > just not have it in a place where it might get surfaced and advertised to people that weren't looking for it. You're going to have to pick one of these two statements. If freedom of speech is important then let the audience determine what makes it to the front page. If freedom of speech isn't important than hide content you don't like and continue building your own bubble.

> You're going to have to pick one of these two statements. Absolutly not. Repeating myself from a bit further down: It's basically the same issue with all social platform, yes everyone should have the right to express their views, but mass amplification via the platform's algorithm shouldn't be a right. Also, > let the audience determine what makes it to the front page /r/t_d was gaming the upvote system to have way…

Do you think the alt right is gaming the first amendment by holding rallies that get mass coverage?

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

#439

Post by derefr » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

sailingparrot wrote: post #346

derefr wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone browsing /r/all would see their posts all day long I feel like that's only right and correct; in a sufficiently-large community (i.e. a society), anyone intentionally exposing themselves to "everything" should be prepared to view the worst of the worst (of the worst) of "everything." That's what "everything" means! Honestly, I don't get why /r/all even exists, if it's not there for the people who want to vol…

> anyone intentionally exposing themselves to "everything" should be prepared to view the worst of the worst (of the worst) of "everything." That's what "everything" means! That would be ok if you saw that in propotion. The issue is when you have a group of people intentionally gaming the upvote system, making /r/all inundated with alt-right content (tbf, /r/t_d weren't the only one doing that), completly skewing wha…

“In proportion” to what, though? We get the same problem here that one gets with many voting systems: if voting is voluntary, then some groups are more politically active (i.e. vote more) than others, and so some voting blocs (here, subreddits) are over- or under-represented compared to their user-base size.

That’s not a problem with the way the algorithm counts votes. That’s just a mathematical voting-theory problem with comparing votes between disparate populations that are each motivated-to-vote for different reasons, and thus using “one vote” to mean something different within each community.

Or, to put that more simply: “karma” is non-fungible. It works fine to rank posts within a subreddit, but it’s entirely meaningless for ranking posts between different subreddits.

———

But that still ignores the greater issue. Things wouldn’t be “fine” even if some ideal inter-subreddit karma exchange-rate was reached. Keep in mind that some subreddits are “quarantined”, which essentially means that their weighting for appearing in /r/all is forced to 0.

In other words, /r/all isn’t just sorting badly; it also requires a bunch of manual overrides to its computed weights, in order to function.

IMHO, that’s not really a satisfactory algorithm. Maybe it’s practical for serving some purpose (e.g. making money), but that kludge-factor means that it isn’t actually doing what it claims to do: telling you about the activity happening across “all of Reddit.”

A “real” /r/all wouldn’t take quarantines into account. It’d just be the view that any third party would compute by scraping every subreddit, throwing all the posts into a table, and ordering by score descending. And that view is the one I mean when I say “soul-destroying.”

Let me restate my premise: a proper /r/all—one that truly delivers on the use-case it claims to deliver on—is just... not something anyone wants.

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

#440

Post by mst » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #275

mst wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what relevance an "exception" a judge made up to justify censoring protest against WW2 japanese internment camps has to this conversation.

Schenck was WWI (1919) and concerned anti-draft literature distribution. You've got the wrong case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

Damnit. Thank you.

Right spirit, completely wrong details. Story of my debugging life :D