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How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

theguardian.com

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Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#61

Post by 24gttghh »

traverseda wrote: post #32
quchen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s /r/the_donald, and how did it »then happen«?

/r/the_donald is a subreddit devoted to donald trump. Reddit didn't ban it. It follows the "safe-space" "you're not allowed to dissent" model pioneered by some "leftist" subs, and will ban people for having perfectly legitimate dissent. It managed to exploit some loopholes in how reddit works to take-over the front page. The most interesting one was "stickying" new posts so they were shown on their front page. They d…

Wouldn't the solution be to un-follow /r/all? I've never seen a post from the subreddits-which-shall-not-be-named...

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#62

Post by gooseus »

What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues.

Billions of dollars of private research being poured into self-driving cars by our greatest minds and millions of dollars in lobbying against gun laws all in the name of preventing unnecessary human deaths... yet according to Ben Bernanke (and his references), opioid overdose killed more people in 2015 than automobile accidents and firearms related crimes combined [1].

I'm curious whether the disproportionate concern has more to do with the perception of drug addicts as weak and deserving of their fate or because they're not a group that can be profited from politically or commercially or is overdosing just not as easy to solve as gun crime or automobile deaths?

Personally, I find all those excuses to be sad and bullshit so I'm hoping it's something else entirely.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/es_2017...

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#63

Post by fav_collector »

icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

It's organized well for finding information but it lacks the "human" element in a social community. You're just anonymous person #4214 who's interested in cars or football.

In the good old days with forums, people were recognizable with avatars and signatures. People chatted about everything, not just the topic at hand, so the personality of each person had a large spectrum. The communities were small enough where people formed an identity and reputation. Many times they even connected their real life identity in "post your picture" threads.

Reddit has effectively killed many forums without replacing that human community aspect and it's kind of sad.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#64

Post by discodave »

clamprecht wrote: post #52
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

You basically justified the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. You have to take the bad with the good, because we don't all agree on what's good.

First amendment only applies to what the government can do. Private companies like Reddit, Facebook and Google have no responsibility to let you speak on their platform.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment

The key word is "congress" which can be broadly interpreted to mean the government, but not private corporations or individuals.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#65

Post by 52-6F-62 »

weirdstuff wrote: post #49
vinhboy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. This exactly the kinda of propaganda you should be aware of. /r/the_donald specifically exists to spread false information, and to dox and harass people. /r/politics is opinionated because of it's user base. It's not intentionally a propaganda machine.

And /r/the_donald would say just the opposite. The thing about propaganda – why it works so well – is that it's presented as authentic civil discourse. There's no clear cut demarcation between the two types of speech. One could argue that /r/the_donald uses the banhammer to maintain order (the narrative), and /r/politics uses shill comments+downvoting to do the same.

What you just described sounds to me like an authoritarian court versus a democratic forum.

That is, excepting the "shill" name-calling -- it leads me to believe that you are in fact speaking on behalf of r/the_donald. If that's true, then I know why the term was used. If not, what leads you to believe that anybody involved in discussion in r/politics are "shills".

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#66

Post by hrktb »

lsmarigo wrote: post #24
icpmacdo wrote: post #2

I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.

Reddit has some fantastic and fascinating communities and really interesting cult-like ones (/r/nofap) However I'd like to point out the admin policy towards hate groups and speech on reddit is in my opinion incredibly dangerous and damaging to our society. They will take action against subreddits like FPH (fat people hate) because of "real life" actions, meawhile there are thousands of highly upvoted calls to violen…

You seem to recognize reddit is mostly a set of somewhat independent community, yet view it as a problematic site for ‘minorities’. Did you face significant hurdles when only participating to subreddits that had decently behaved users ?

I think at this point reddit is almost a good representation of the internet, and getting out of reddit because of shitty subs feels like taking distance from internet because of 4chan and YouTube comments.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#67

Post by danlindley »

Chardok wrote: post #15
vinhboy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…

The core of Reddit has become rotten not from the_donald; the site admins are 100% at fault. Trying to make their site 100% advertiser friendly has subsequently killed all transparency in what votes do, how subreddits are ranked, and killed a lot of discourse that was not corporate palatable. I still enjoy the smaller subreddits. Unfortunately anything political becomes brigaded, but things like /r/gamingsuggestions…

> Unfortunately anything political becomes brigaded, but things like /r/gamingsuggestions and local city subreddits still make the site worthwhile to me.

I believe that some kind of accessible and open platform will eventually take the place of place in the local discovery field.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#68

Post by vinhboy »

spike021 wrote: post #46
vinhboy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…

>If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. This is a pretty broad claim. While I don't disagree that toxicity can spread to different subreddits, that doesn't automatically mean it will spread to all of them, especially if the subreddits have solid rules and moderators to enforce them. Take /r/baseball, for instance, it's a great, topical subreddit and I've pretty much never see…

Ok sure... I can see how /r/baseball is immune from politics. But what about the example I gave, like /r/environment, or even more niche /r/CampingandHiking -- The other day there was story about federal recreation land on there and it was overrun with negative comments for a brief while.

So yes, places like /r/programming and /r/netsec is still pretty insular. But it's like asking me to visit a bad neighborhood, because there is a good restaurant there. At some point it's just not worth the risk.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#69

Post by rtx »

bri3d wrote: post #42
pat_space wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think of Reddit as a single entity, but as a platform for communities(subreddits). The differences between subreddit communities are vast, ranging from 100% toxic to 100% positive.

I started thinking of Reddit that way, but once you start thinking about it that way, it's a pretty crappy software solution. A platform for diverse communities with a single SSO solution and frictionless cross-community posting combined with limited moderation features, poor ban capabilities, and easy discovery? That's not a good software recipe for a community to become empowered or build their own space at all.

User numbers don't agree with you.

Re: How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

#70

Post by mherdeg »

Not covered in this Guardian article: the somewhat scarier /r/opiaterollcall (recently banned) and /r/cripplingalcoholism (not scary, just a discussion forum).

I have been consuming reddit via the https://www.reddit.com/r/all/gilded/ feed and it is just WILD what kind of weird and worrying stuff is going on.

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