Reddit feels very Soviet lately. Everything is heavily manipulated and it seems like users are aware of that fact but are powerless to change anything.
The amount of astroturfing (or just unchecked trolling) certainly seems to have gone up
Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
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Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#72Reddit as a whole is less useful since comment sections were demoted from first class citizens to something barely usable. I think they saw imgur as a threat and wanted to better replicate that experience.
www.reddit.com --> old.reddit.com
Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#73Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can. Reddit can simply remove all the mods from the subreddits and make them public again. Nobody should be under any illusion that they "own" their subreddits.
Eh. Reddit is very unlikely to do that. The subreddits would be overrun with trash pretty quickly.
There are legions of people who would be frothing at the mouth for the opportunity to be given mod on a popular subreddit.
Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#75Do we need scare quotes around "censorship" when reddit is telling them particular names are unmentionable in any context?
Some people would argue that "censorship" would not apply to a private company owned platform. That only governments and their agents are qualified to perform act of censorship.
So now we've reached the point where we're arguing over the semantic meaning of the word "censorship." While we're here, can you please inform us which word we are allowed to use to describe what reddit is doing?
Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can always just stop using Reddit. Digg went this way, too, and it ended badly for them.
Was digg as big as reddit is now? The issue for me is I don't know of other good places for long-form discussion and good link aggregation in general. Most of the time in smaller subreddits there aren't really any issues. What alternative is there to /r/AskHistorians? Etc.
Big as in #1? Yea.
Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#77Wait, doesnt reddit have control over it servers? It surely can revoke such rules. Looks like all this drama is to give an illusion of control and free speech. Am I missing some other dynamic at play?
Sure. Wikipedia can also stop anyone from editing anything. Good luck staying alive.
Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#78Reddit feels very Soviet lately. Everything is heavily manipulated and it seems like users are aware of that fact but are powerless to change anything.
The subreddits I frequent seem utterly unchanged. Reddit is a big place. I understand that people refer to some ambiguous cross-section of "Reddit" as a shared space we are all aware of and can generalize about. But I don't relate to that concept at all.
I don't know. From my big subs to the smallest ones, it seems like the signal to noise ratio is at all time lows. Bots and spam really do pollute the site a great deal.
Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#79Reddit feels very Soviet lately. Everything is heavily manipulated and it seems like users are aware of that fact but are powerless to change anything.
The subreddits I frequent seem utterly unchanged. Reddit is a big place. I understand that people refer to some ambiguous cross-section of "Reddit" as a shared space we are all aware of and can generalize about. But I don't relate to that concept at all.
I recently retired (before this drama) a 12-year-old Reddit account with close to a million combined karma. This line, that individual subreddits defy any concept of Reddit identity, needs to stop. The overlaps between moderator groups and users, as well as the impact to ALL subreddits from decisions by the administrators, mean it is completely fair game to talk about Reddit as a singular entity.
The notion that individual subreddits mean Reddit Is What You Make of It is useful only to distract just like you’re (unintentionally) doing here. It helps deflect some of these situations by having folks who unsub all defaults saying “looks great here!”
Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
#80Reddit as a whole is less useful since comment sections were demoted from first class citizens to something barely usable. I think they saw imgur as a threat and wanted to better replicate that experience.
The new UX on the site is unusable. I don't use anything except old.reddit.com and if they ever try to get rid of that, I'll surely stop visiting the site altogether. You have to wonder how long they'll continue to maintain two different web frontends for the site, though.
I'm exclusively on old.reddit.com too. The new interface was the start of the worst, and while we're not directly in the firing line in terms of viewing content and navigation on old.reddit.com we are at the mercy of the general winds of change over the site.