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Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

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Re: Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

#171

Post by TeMPOraL »

nailer wrote: post #137
theWheez wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, you get out of reddit what you put in. With an account you can unsubscribe from specific subreddits, which I have done to clean up my feed from angry/creepy/violent stuff and I get posts that I am very interested in, primarily from smaller subreddits about hobbies, sports, cool technology, etc.

I have an account, and am unsubscribed from subreddits I do not like. There's no way to visit /r/all without seeing all the political hate, creepypasta, and violence.

Rule #1: don't visit /r/all.

Also, you say you're interested in what's popular. And this is exactly the source of your problem. What's generally popular is what appeals to the widest audience in general population. And that is exactly what you see - "political hate, creepypasta and violence". It's the same in YouTube comments, it's the same in all general-purpose discussion boards. Lowest common denominator.

If you seek sanity, you have to start frequenting domain-specific boards, especially those with actual moderation. Be it Hacker News, topical subreddits, or communities around particular bloggers. People there are still regular human beings, but community focus does wonders to the quality of discourse.

Is all of that sad? Yes. Welcome to the human fucking race.

Re: Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

#173

Post by pavel_lishin »

nailer wrote: post #133
pavel_lishin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The community there is simply too toxic and I've had to quit it. Which community? There are thousands of subreddits. Are you talking about the people who use the default front-page subreddits?

I use the front page because I'm interested in what's popular. But someone's angry "f--k (politician here)" rant isn't my idea of entertainment, even if I don't like the politician, likewise various violence/creepy stuff that makes the front page. Reddit doesn't let me block subs.

How does Voten purport to solve those problems? It sounds like less of a Reddit problem, and more of a Gabriel's Theory† problem.

And given that currently you cannot create your own channels on Voten (subreddits), it sounds like the moderation problem is going to be an even bigger nightmare than on Reddit.

† https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Re: Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

#174

Post by TeMPOraL »

ehsankia wrote: post #124
pavel_lishin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The community there is simply too toxic and I've had to quit it. Which community? There are thousands of subreddits. Are you talking about the people who use the default front-page subreddits?

All of 4chan is one community. All of Twitch is one community. All of reddit is one community. Youtube sucks because it has videos that pander to kids. Twitter sucks because it because it's because talking about their mundane life. Facebook sucks because it's people sharing fake news. In social media, whenever you're having a bad time, it's most like your fault. When you say X sucks, You're really saying that your fr…

That's like saying a nation is one community. It's not. It (usually) shares a language and some common values, but otherwise there's greater diversity within a nation than between nations.

Still, there's a lot of truth in "When you say X sucks, You're really saying that your friends / the people you're following / the communities you visit suck". It literally takes seconds to join or leave an on-line community. On the Internet it's more true than anywhere else that you get the communities you deserve.

Re: Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

#175

Post by pavel_lishin »

I wonder what their moderation is going to be like; it looks like you can't create your own channels (subreddits) yet, so the admins are on the hook for moderating the entire site, yes?

Or are they going to take on a complete hands-off approach?

Re: Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

#176

Post by TeMPOraL »

sf_rob wrote: post #147
djsumdog wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voat has a couple of issues. First, it took in a lot of people from banned subreddits (/r/coontown, fatpeoplehate, etc.) Unlike the great Digg 4.0 to Reddit migration, they didn't a huge chunk of Reddit. They just got the most controversial. Second, It tried to be a full Reddit clone with tons of subverses. Reddit started out with just a few categories and slowly expanded out to user generated subreddits. That has to…

The problem is a "Reddit alternative" will naturally attract the groups that no longer feel at home on Reddit. It seems inevitable that any alternative will be more toxic and/or hyper-moderated.

Scott Alexander recently covered this phenomenon here:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative...

(see in particular section III of the article)

Re: Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

#178

Post by jerf »

danso wrote: post #151
nailer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an account, and am unsubscribed from subreddits I do not like. There's no way to visit /r/all without seeing all the political hate, creepypasta, and violence.

I've been a frequent Reddit user for 7+ years. I honestly don't remember the last time I've ever been to r/all except when some massive drama hits and I want to see what the fuss is about. I'm subscribed to dozens of subreddits so my default homepage is never wanting for interesting content. Because I've unsubscribed from r/news, r/worldnews, r/politics, I never see Reddit discussions on the news of the day. On the o…

/r/programming's virtue has definitely faded, but you can almost make up for it by subscribing to the dominant subreddit for all your languages of interest. Reddit's big enough that most of those are pretty active on a day-by-day basis, or hour-by-hour in the biggest cases.

Re: Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta

#180

Post by aphextron »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #115
aphextron wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's not perfect but we seriously need a reddit alternative. The community there is simply too toxic and I've had to quit it. If there were a HN like community centered around regular news aggregation I would be sooo happy. As is, it's impossible to find a news feed I trust anymore. Google news is infiltrated with fake clickbait nonsense, and I wont even get started on Facebook.

> The community there is simply too toxic and I've had to quit it. Which community? There are thousands of subreddits. Are you talking about the people who use the default front-page subreddits?

>Which community? There are thousands of subreddits. Are you talking about the people who use the default front-page subreddits?

It's less about the specific communities, and more about the overall "board culture" in my opinion. Every subreddit may have their own niche, but by and large people still ascribe to the same circle-jerk meme culture across boards that annoys the hell out of me. It's very similar to 4chan in that regard.

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