401–410 of 593 posts
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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.
DMCA was already a thing 20 years ago?
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Agree on how the platform’s have changed. However, I don’t think Reddit is an exception. Popular is often filled with content that is driven by the feelings of fear and hate. Not something I’d like to continually expose kids or teens to.
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.
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Agree on how the platform’s have changed. However, I don’t think Reddit is an exception. Popular is often filled with content that is driven by the feelings of fear and hate. Not something I’d like to continually expose kids or teens to.
What I find particularly bad about Reddit is the platform is specifically designed to amplify group think and silence competing opinions. All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility. It can turn subreddits into little bubbles where like-minded people upvote each other and almost never have to see dissenting opinions. That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit, but it c…
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
Ranking might be deterministic but it’s never free from bias.
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Reddit has been a cesspit of recycled pablum, populist image macros and low effort reply comments for more than a decade. Enthusiast subreddits are astroturfed to hell and back by people with a Shopify storefront and a dream trying to growth hack their way to a hockey stick. The low barrier to entry to each community means that this vapid culture eventually diffuses itself across subreddits that might otherwise be go…
The craziest thing about Reddit for me is how most communities forbid "self-promotion." To me that sounds like a thing only admins would want because it keeps users on the site/app, but this is enforced by moderators for some reason and a lot of drama has occurred over banning creators over these silly rules. It's a place that originally was a link-sharing platform, where you literally can't share a link to your own…
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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…
Reddit recently announced a change that capped the number of large subreddits than any individual can moderate. It might reduce this problem.
"Citizens should be free to make their own choices for themselves and their children, especially benign ones about how to socialize and who to socialize with." It's interesting how few governments believe this. Your rulers know what's best for you, and it's not freedom.
We regularly restrict choices of vulnerable people in our society. That’s why kids can’t drive, drink, smoke, etc.
Driving involves danger to other. We restrict adults from doing things that are a danger to others, it has nothing to do with being "vulnerable."
I cannot overstate how sympathetic I am to this in theory but the only way this is enforceable is through ID laws that endanger privacy online for everyone.
Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…
Reddit has been a cesspit of recycled pablum, populist image macros and low effort reply comments for more than a decade. Enthusiast subreddits are astroturfed to hell and back by people with a Shopify storefront and a dream trying to growth hack their way to a hockey stick. The low barrier to entry to each community means that this vapid culture eventually diffuses itself across subreddits that might otherwise be go…