I have been on reddit for just about 12 years now. Something I’ve noticed over time is just how hateful the place has become. A complete outrage machine. Every single sub became filled with it. I’ve filtered so many subreddits over the last few years, it’s insane. I don’t know enough about this place to be sure, but I do hope it doesn’t become the same type of echo chamber of anger.
While this is true with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube I think reddit algorithm wasn't designed that way.
The three sites I mentioned don't have option to downvote (well, YouTube removed it recently) this is purposefully done so anything that is controversial will drive engagement. People like to show disapproval, since there's no downvote in case of Facebook they will likely use the laughing emoticon or write a nasty comment, in case of Twitter or YouTube they will do the same. There is activity, those posts will be promoted and engaging even more people.
In reddit you could downvote a comment or even report it to moderators. The comment it will make it go to the end of the list and even collapse it. If moderator gets involved the comment will be even removed and a nasty user possibly banned.
This actually moderates the community. I noticed that on reddit the most hateful communities actually need moderators to tip the scales in the other direction.
This is why I'm not fully convinced that beehaw.org and tildes.net made a good choice blocking downvotes, as this requires more work from the moderators and prevents community to moderate itself. Though at least tildes.net has labels, which maybe do this function.
Since they “fuzzed” their upvote and downvote algorithms, there’s no way to prove reddit upvotes and downvotes are accurate at all. They can easily artificially say “this post has 10000 upvotes” in their backend, and we would never know if they did that.
I suspect reddit actually just fakes votes on some posts.
It was a Dune joke about Spez getting eye surgery. Ill accept that it's not very funny but it wasn't meant to be anymore hateful than the general sentiment around the guy.
I’m hopeful Lemmy can avoid the hate/outrage/fear cycle. At the moment it feels very peaceful.
I often wondered if a need to sell advertising space and user data led to reddit pushing content that catered to anger, outrage and fear, as it drives engagement.
I often wondered if a need to sell advertising space and user data led to reddit pushing content that catered to anger, outrage and fear, as it drives engagement.
I suspect it did. There have been studies on the general phenomenon, although I don’t know of any that focused on reddit in particular.
There will always be obnoxious jerks, of course. With Lemmy, though, there’s no profit motive behind promoting them, and no algorithm that’s biased in their favor. Without a profit motive, there’s no reason to hand assholes a megaphone.
Plus, the admins basically run an employee operated co-op with eachother. They can foster and nurture the kinds of interactions they enjoy online without any need to attract more users, advertising dollars, or anything else. Their instance gets to be whatever version of the ideal online community they always imagined
Yep. I was more loyal to Apollo than to Reddit. I paid for Apollo premium but would not do that for Reddit. Also I hated the UX on Reddit’s website old or new. Now my issue with Lemmy and Kbin is to wait for an app that matches Apollo.
Exactly why I refuse to participate anymore among a dozen reasons.
My partner liked specific communities there but kept getting recommended upsetting stuff (got sucked into AmITheAsshole in a bad way, etc) so I uninstalled the official app and installed Apollo instead and their mental health greatly improved. But healthy satisfied people aren’t profitable for corporations.
I have mostly good things to say about Reddit and the more I read about it, the more I realize that that's just because I always connected to it through Boost for Reddit.
As a European, the increasing cynicism and apathy to American politics of many users has made me really bad mood, maybe I should have cured my feed better, but now it doesn't matter anymore as lemmy is my new home.
Same. Years ago when I first got on Reddit I was very politically active and my subs were a ton of political, economic, societal etc subs. But I just got sick of opening up Infinity and seeing nothing but doom and gloom as far as I could scroll. I transitioned away from that over time and at the end my subs were mostly cats, some specific TV show and game (meme) subs, and some niche hobby subs.
City subs were always some of the most contentious, full of trolls and hostility. My theory is it’s because rather than bringing people together purely from common interests, they gathered people purely based on geographic location.
I went to a sun for a local municipality recently. Someone made a post about something sort of silly. Responses were good natured like “uh… that’s silly” so OP was there “waiting for the next STUPID comment”. Yeah, great. I don’t really need to participate in that.
This is the way. Though despite all that I started to keep my Reddit browsing a secret as the average person considers a “redditor” a pretty negative thing to be.
Tbh kinda glad in that sense that the API fiasco revealed the true colors of the company and gave me a very clear reason to leave. It hadn’t felt “good” in a long time and now I know why.
the average person considers a “redditor” a pretty negative thing to be.
Redditors consider a redditor a negative thing to be. It works because no redditor believes they are one. It's everyone else who's a part of the gross hivemind, not me. Reddit thinks this and reddit does that, but not me. I'm different and special. Not one of them.
I read the post the same way. In the few times Reddit has come up IRL I just ask, “Have you heard of Reddit?” Then it’s either yes or no then we move on.
No one in the real world gives a shit about being a “redditor.” Which to your point, means nothing.
It’s also the case that several things can be true at once. Like, maybe you are part of the reddit mob-mentality, but on certain issues you have opinions that very much go against the grain.
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