391–400 of 593 posts
We should ban dynamic feeds that aren't based on explicit user action. E.g., Youtube should only be able to show search results based on search term, not search context. The recommendations should only be videos from channels you have subscribed to. The dangers of algorithmic content are so obvious, and the only way to stop companies from doing this stuff is to legislate against it
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Teens can still talk online. Social media is an obvious poison and we shouldn't give kids access to it.
OP writes a thoughtful, evidence-based comment. The mob responds with a 1-sentence emotional meme. Classic moral panic 101. It's impossible to fight feelings with logic unfortunately, which is why many western countries are going to fall into this trap and ultimately kill the idea of digital privacy and the open web forever. This particular moral panic is reaching peak trendiness, and the baptists and the bootleggers…
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I use old.reddit.com but I feel like I have complete control over what I see. It's new posts, I check them and then I leave. That's what I've lost on Facebook. It forces me to see things its algorithm thinks I like, but more often than not, it's things that make me want to argue. I don't have that on Reddit. Long may it last.
Lately the algorithm for the front page sorted by hot or best has been changed. You'd see mostly threads from subreddit you recently visited. So you no longer have control over what you don't get to see.
Same account, same behaviour, but the new site is really pushing "gross" stuff at me.
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None. Almost by definition, the folks who satisfy themselves waxing online drive complacency away from real action. That doesn’t, however, mean they aren’t self-importantly organized to later support an organized movement.
Do you think the current anti-ICE movement would have happened without social media? Or Jan 6th, or all the Palestine protests, or even the election of Trump? The US has it's first amendment protections, but other countries seem rather more willing to crack down on online speech.
Yes. There is a reason Minnesota is effectively resisting in a way Los Angeles failed to.
Once you have a movement, social media mobilizes. But if you’re building a movement, you need footwork and commitment. Not profiteers turning your cause into clicks.
> Or Jan 6th, or all the Palestine protests
Case in point. Support for each of their underlying causes dipped with notoriety around their online activity.
If you want to drain a movement of effective energy, distract it online from its streets.
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Agreed. I wish they would consider charging a small fee (~$1) to create an account. That alone would cut down on all the AI spam and give subreddit moderators a fighting chance.
> give subreddit moderators a fighting chance Moderators are part of the problem really, there are a handful of moderators holding the reins over all the popular subreddits, and "smaller" (even big ones) subreddits suffer from the same problem. As an example, r/MistralAI, r/LocalLLaMA, r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI and r/grok are all run by the same person. The only survivable places on reddit left are the subreddits with smal…
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> give subreddit moderators a fighting chance Moderators are part of the problem really, there are a handful of moderators holding the reins over all the popular subreddits, and "smaller" (even big ones) subreddits suffer from the same problem. As an example, r/MistralAI, r/LocalLLaMA, r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI and r/grok are all run by the same person. The only survivable places on reddit left are the subreddits with smal…
There are two problems in computer science, accepting payments and naming things. Reddit's principal problem is that the first person to take r/foo is often a BDFL for foo for life, and no other subreddit about foo will ever be quite as recognizable. If we instead had subreddits with a numeric ID and a non-unique display name, that problem would be solved. Payments would also solve the spam problem, but many users wh…
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Agreed. I wish they would consider charging a small fee (~$1) to create an account. That alone would cut down on all the AI spam and give subreddit moderators a fighting chance.
> give subreddit moderators a fighting chance Moderators are part of the problem really, there are a handful of moderators holding the reins over all the popular subreddits, and "smaller" (even big ones) subreddits suffer from the same problem. As an example, r/MistralAI, r/LocalLLaMA, r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI and r/grok are all run by the same person. The only survivable places on reddit left are the subreddits with smal…
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phpBB was quite nice, but you must remember that people used phpBB less and less over the years. Many phpBB style webforums are dead, and died before discourse etc... came about. People's habits changed. I do agree that things got worse in the last ~16 years or so.
The legal landscape has also changed. 20 years ago I helped run a web forum, but with today's legal landscape - DMCA in the US, various different laws in the EU and other countries - I would never do so. The amount of liability on the host for user-created content is far too high.
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The part where social media goes completely unchanged except for banning some kids from communicating with their friends
Which just begs the question, how much can you really change social media? How much are you really in control of your feed? This is where the "pubic square" analogy breaks down. Besides, there are a lot of communication mediums/messaging apps that are not social media. Even back in the early 2010s I've been trying to consume social media mindfully. I made sure to follow pages with meaningful content (e.g., The Dalai…