191–200 of 319 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a semantic difference with "X virus" and "Y variant". "X virus" denotes the virus was caused by country X and is behind it all, whereas "Y variant" denotes it was mutated in there but is not the root cause of it all.
But yet “Havana Syndrome” is freely used everywhere.
Even if you took away all controversy and politics, I hate Reddit. The search function sucks. They shoved their own harebrained video player down everyone’s throats and it constantly plays by itself without opening. And when you do open it it doesn’t fucking play half the time. They also foisted their eye-bleeding updated user interface upon our innocent souls and forever corrupted us. It can only be described as Fis…
I like to think of reddit as a "glorious" mess - one which will violently offend the sensibilities of people who like order and sensible product design. If it helps, its worth considering reddit as a template for what can be improved. I have no idea why the redesign was introduced, especially since there are now apps as well. However, there is an increasing amount of study on how reddit operates, and how users move t…
The worst echo/bot chambers are the Cryptocurrency subs, including the exchange subs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
not really, but the account did become inactive right around the time she was imprisoned
I wish reddit and others would archive and preserve accounts of people convicted of various crimes. It would be extremely enlightening to follow radicalisation and communication of, say, an incel terrorist.
https://pushshift.io/api-parameters/
A weakness for the specific application you are interested in is that I don't think it works with banned or quarantined subreddits - the archived dumps probably have that, but not the main API feed
A real problem is that I don't think that the process of becoming a mod is particularly exclusionary, and anyone with ambition can eventually work their way into any cartel they want through flattery and constant online presence. This sounds democratic, so the opposite of a problem, right? But it's not actually democratic, there's no votes, it's appointments all the way down. The only way you can vote on reddit is to leave a sub as a group of users, and move to another sub together, hopefully with enough posting force and shady knowledge of mod tricks to attract more incoming readers/posters than the sub you've left (by "incoming" I mean people encountering that group of related subs for the first time, either through search or through chance.)
Again, why is that bad?
Because it's so easy to game. The people who mod subs are not exceptional at modding subs in terms of fairness and cultivation of interesting dialogues, they're exceptional in their degree of motivation to be mods. An easy way to create exceptional motivation is through paying people. Another way to be exceptionally motivated is to be irrationally motivated, e.g. mental illness.
The motivation that we hope people have is the intrinsic motivation to facilitate/provide pleasure/information to others, but to also do that for free while Reddit gets rich. Not only do I think that borders on irrational, but I also think that in the fight between the intrinsic motivation to help and collaborate with others, and the simple economic utility headwinds, you 1) can't expect many people to be of the type we want, and we 2) certainly shouldn't expect them to remain for very long if they are.
And even worse, the interaction between the paid and the irrationally motivated will always benefit the paid. The paid have a mission, and if they see no means of accomplishing that mission, they leave. For the irrationally motivated, modding is the end, not the means, so if being an enabler of the paid gets them appointed or promoted, they're going to be the best enablers you could ask for.
Reddit, and most forums, need tools that facilitate real democracy (or some sort of open political process), and in certain cases the requirement to use them. This dictatorship of the appointed and the "people willing to do the work (for free)" is just M-L style vanguardism and results in rule by apparatchik.
There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages…
When the ban waves were happening and subs shut down, people tried going to voat. reddits favorite phrase was 'if you dont like it, leave' so we did.
But the mods followed us, especially the infamous mod 'She'. All the mods we tried to get away from bought their way into the voat subs and turned it into the cesspool you see today.
See, no one cares about the bans or shadowbans until it affects them, but by then it's too late.
What I really want is a big list of subs with actual useful stuff. No memes, no hate or soft-hate [1] but useful things like electronics or how to play the piano. [1] have you noticed that many of top subs are about either watching others humiliation or judging people? idiotsincar, iamatotalpieceofshit, maliciouscompliance, etc. Do I actually become a better person by following these?
It’s not just that there’s people who make these comments - of course there’s always going to be - but that fact that they’re typically so highly upvoted anywhere there’s a voting/likes system. Anything that attempts to reflect nuance or lower the temperature has no boosters, while anything that reflects the worst, most reductive or least honest take is what bubbles to the top.
(In)famously, the account widely believed to belong to Ghislaine Maxwell is a moderator of several major subs: https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill (moderator of r/worldnews, r/environment, r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, r/cyberlaws, r/enviroaction and r/greed)
Why is it even suspected to be her? Just because of the account name?
On the face of it seems strange why anyone would want to moderate popular subreddits, just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. Younger me might of been excited to do it from the perceived status perhaps. I do wonder how many off-site deals are done with moderators and third parties. There’s a lot of traffic these people are able to steward and influence I imagine.
The kind answer is that some people like to host parties, not just attend them.
A real answer for many subs is they enjoy the power of getting to decide who gets to say what.
What I really want is a big list of subs with actual useful stuff. No memes, no hate or soft-hate [1] but useful things like electronics or how to play the piano. [1] have you noticed that many of top subs are about either watching others humiliation or judging people? idiotsincar, iamatotalpieceofshit, maliciouscompliance, etc. Do I actually become a better person by following these?
The level of hateful, spiteful, and bitter disdain I see in comments across all of Reddit have led me to believe it’s not just popular subs and it’s not even just Reddit: this is where the younger generations in America are right now, emotionally. People are looking for someone or something to judge and hate. It’s not limited to any particular political cohort or socioeconomic strata either. I see it here on HN quite…