reddit r/movies isn't doing too well

archive.ph/CNofz

Why is this subreddit now just askreddit for movies?

Some time in the last few months, r/movies has been entirely consumed by askreddit-style questions like “What’s your favorite hidden gem??” or “What actor fell off the map??”

[…]

What is now causing all these unique, seemingly-non-bot posters to suddenly start flooding this particular subreddit with their discussion posts, instead of going to askreddit? Did the whole reddit protest shit change the moderation rules? Has the subreddit been infiltrated by a secret Buzzfeed content farming cabal? I unsubscribed from r/askreddit because I got sick of this shit, but now it’s back on r/movies!

What is going on??

I think the comments are most interesting though

Because the audience for reddit has dwindled since July. Reddits offial site and app push controversial posts over just well yovkted ones. Most controversial posts asks inane questions. Then there’s bots reposting those questions for karma and then websites juicing social media for content to get crammed down your throat via SEO.

They should make a second internet just for people

This all started with the boycott.

[…]

I’d assumed things would go back to “normal” after the boycott, but it looks like a lot of power users really did take their ball and go home. (I wonder what they’re doing with their time instead? Hopefully some new hobbies? Time with friends?) Maybe reddit will regret removing the 3rd party apps, after all? Maybe we’ll just accept a future where niche subs become little more than BuzzFeed polls, but we get paid if our poll does well, so users won’t care?

It’s because Reddit is trying to drive engagement. I don’t know if you noticed, but since the purge of third-party apps, the comment sections have been kind of meager, and things don’t get as many upvotes as they used to. Heck, half the comments act like bots anyway. It seems like reddit has been distilled down to those most addicted to it and has taken a hard lean into all the most extreme views.

When Reddit killed third party apps, the quality fell off all over the place. It took me about a month to realize the timing and why r/all had so much AITA rage bait stories and celebrity gossip and stuff now. I think a lot of the quality posters and people who liked more high brow discussions just left Reddit.

kadu,
@kadu@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    AceBonobo,

    How much of that style of posts is bots?

    lvxferre,
    @lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yup. Fluff principle - TL;DR barely passable content will flood any vote-based community, unless you take measures against it.

    OpenStars,
    OpenStars avatar

    I got tired of holding the line against that long before the protests - that is why I believe what I heard said about the fact that most mods that cared about their communities only lasted a year, maybe two. I gave up modding one game community, and then along with the protests a second one, and each time I can barely stand to go back and read the posts there, bc they always trend more towards this, as you say bc it takes continual efforts to stop them!

    And like, on the one hand, if that is what the people there want...then power to them? Except even they complain about it too, bitterly - both "why can't I say whatever I want, when/however I want?" while also at the same time "why are others free to say what they want too, can't they be removed somehow?" (ignoring the obvious answer that yes they can be blocked, though that takes all of two whole clicks!:-P). Also, they seem pissed whenever they ask a question on the sub's main feed (ignoring the rules & things like a prominent Questions megathread pinned for precisely that purpose, or in some cases a "Questions" flair, instead putting something like a "Guide" flair, representing the exact opposite purpose of what that was designed to mean) but then nobody remains who wants to answer it. Like: "What phone should I purchase?" (ignoring the fact that the previous 10 posts all had an identical title, nor are there any details about what the person is looking for, plus again a megathread for precisely that)

    I would say that it's literal children taking over the internet, except some of the people complaining say they are retirees, others middle-age with kids, others in college, etc., so it is not a matter of mere physical age. Still, it is a childish mindset of wanting others to take care of them, while not being restricted from doing any of the things that they want to do. Nor is it selfishness, I believe, not precisely; although it may be more akin to self-centeredness. In this way then, it is like a public park or playground where people choosing not to abide by the rules destroy the experience for everyone, ironically also including themselves (when they come in wanting to play, and then everyone leaves rather than play with them, under those circumstances).

    lvxferre,
    @lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

    And like, on the one hand, if that is what the people there want…then power to them?

    Two important details on the fluff principle: it isn’t exclusive to Reddit (it was first noticed on Hacker News, and it’s probably here too) and it’s a bit independent on what users want. It’s mostly the result of good content being often hard to judge, so people often skip it while upvoting barely passable content.

    As you probably know, mods usually handle this by discouraging the barely passable content, either directly (“don’t post memes here”) or indirectly (random/small post requirements to cull out effortless posts). Or at least they did in Reddit.

    I would say that it’s literal children […] although it may be more akin to self-centeredness.

    I know which type of behaviour you’re talking about. I wouldn’t call it childishness, self-centredness, or even selfishness; it’s simply lack of reasoning and insight, as those users ruin the very subreddits that themselves would use, so I call it “stupidity”. And Reddit in special has an endemic stupidity problem. It’s a bunch of vicious cycles:

    • users ignore why rules exist →users post shit → mods take action → users whine → mods give up reasoning with users → nobody explains the rules → users ignore why rules exist
    • users post shit → mods create new rules → users rule-lawyer their way out → users post shit
    • users demand spoonfeeding → users are spoonfed → higher noise/info ratio → users give up looking for info due to high noise → users demand spoonfeeding
    • users assume words onto each others’ mouths → finger-pointing goes rampant → users feel the need to state things to avoid finger-pointing → assumptions get reinforced → users assume words onto each others’ mouths
    • etc.

    I’m saying this because this “endemicity” of stupidity in Reddit is one of the reasons why moderation there is so fucking shitty and laborious, even with comparatively better tools (even now!) than Lemmy.

    OpenStars,
    OpenStars avatar

    Okay I hear you - so self-centeredness may still be present, as is selfishness, purely short-term thinking, loads and loads and loads of toxicity, etc., but it is not only each one of those, but all of them combined that leads to that enshittification effect.

    I once had a guy beg me to block him. I was trying to train new mods and felt the need to literally screenshot his request (sent via DM) b/c it was barely believable otherwise - he simply could not stop himself from being toxic to others on the sub. Ofc such people exist in the world, but at some point, it becomes the fault of the systems themselves if they both allow all-comers yet cause the absolute best stuff to become buried amidst a flood of posts sorted by New, plus even Hot has such a heavy newness component, etc. i.e., requiring moderation in the first place + doing everything possible to "increase engagement" (for the sake of enshittification advertising profits, e.g. you get the privilege of watching moar ads by clicking on or scrolling through posts, not writing out meaningful responses), while also limiting pinned posts to strictly 2 slots, plus making megathreads super-complicated to try to set up in the first place without access to a 3rd party bot written for that purpose (then charging communities who already donated their programming time to make that + computing time & access to run that for the privilege of being able to use it) e.g. the latest megathread cannot simply include a link to the previous megathread that it replaces, + other things too like virtually hiding the sidebar/About section (on the official Android mobile app anyway) with tiny fonts and making it disappear as you scroll. => Everything basically feeds forward to reinforce the doomscrolling effect and toxic commenting - to turn Reddit into the next 4chan/Discord? - while taking Reddit away from its forum board origins.

    And all b/c the guy in charge worships at the feet of Elon, not even realizing that what at best would have worked for those circumstances (e.g. a public company transitioning into private, rather than a private one wanting to get an IPO to become public; and yes, highly debatable that Musk's efforts may work even for that other company:-D) will not necessarily work for Reddit.

    Though as you said, a lot of this is independent of the specific company & product itself, and relates more to trends that occur purely b/c of human nature. It reminds me of computers trying to fend off viruses: you can't just exist in a soup of code that you feel absolutely safe running without any protections, b/c it is too vulnerable to selfish, self-centered, short-sighted counter-purposes that can destroy you. And biological cells are an even better and more complex example, as they also fight off cancerous states of being - ones own cells that have been perverted, twisting the purpose to now grow in a selfish, self-centered, purely short-sighted manner rather than working for the health of the overall body. Our immune systems protect us from all of that and more, including literal dirt that we don't want floating in our bloodstreams, and that reinforces your point: fluff spreads unless you have a system in place to counteract it. It seems like that is literally a physical rule of the universe, that also applies in virtual as well.

    So I guess in this analogy, Huffman is like HIV then (!?:-P), in that greatly diminishing the capabilities of the "immune system" (moderation) - not just recently here with the protests but for the past several years worth of changes to Reddit that continually pushed towards "engagement" but at the expense of thinking/reading before speaking - has lead to the result of modern-day Reddit as it is now compared to what it used to be. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step after all, and it should be no surprise that after taking a bunch of steps towards a particular goal, that we they have now reached it.

    CaptainAniki,

    the real cycling community hung out at the circlejerk sub because the regular sub was full of the most boring, trite, entry level shit imaginable.

    can,

    Just like guitar lol.

    Ilovethebomb,

    The cycling circle jerk sub seemed to be embraced and accepted by the main community far more than any other circle jerk sub.

    Far more so than, for example, fuckcarscirclejerk

    Manteiga,

    The other day I found myself thinking that reddit was transforming itself into a Yahoo Answers, specially r/brasil

    mindbleach,

    Every subreddit without sufficient moderation becomes /r/Funny with different CSS.

    Default_Defect,
    @Default_Defect@midwest.social avatar

    Three brazilian subreddits? Thats a lot.

    SpeedLimit55,

    Reddit has been going downhill for years, this year was just accelerated. Current movies are also pretty bad lately. I haven’t been to a theater in years.

    gullible,

    Foreign films have been getting better and better, by contrast. Improvements in tech have led to a second digital renaissance.

    PP_BOY_,
    @PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

    Foreign films have always been great, they’re just now getting a foothold in the US market. Probably on account of how shit our domestic movie production has been in the past few decades.

    gwildors_gill_slits,

    /r/movies has always had tons of those generic hidden/underrated gem/actor threads about huge blockbuster films that everyone has seen. It’s in no way a new phenomenon. The /r/moviescirclejerk subreddit has existed for years, and lives off those posts.

    Stabbitha,

    I’ve seen it happen in a lot of smaller communities since July. /r/Subnautica, for example, used to be primarily memes and gameplay questions and was fairly low-traffic. Since July it’s been a steady stream of polls and “what’s your favorite” questions - low-effort posts that drive easy engagement.

    Paradox,
    @Paradox@lemdro.id avatar

    Reddit has been dying for a decade or longer, it’s just now the people who saw it through all the previous crap, and tried to make it have some semblance of the site it once was, have up and left, leaving it to the brainless hordes.

    RubberElectrons,
    @RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

    I’d been a lurker for almost a decade, and had noticed the quiet variation in post/community “quality” over that time… I’d kinda wondered where everyone else went too.

    Corgana,
    @Corgana@startrek.website avatar

    If I had to name a year when Reddit turned sharply for the worse, it would be 2015 when Gamergate-style ““discussion”” tactics took over everything. It’s not entirely Reddit Inc’s fault, but they also did nothing to stop it or slow it from devouring the platform. Good moderatrors who didn’t tolerate fools could only do so much to preserve their communities when the Admins openly embraced engagement at the cost of everything else.

    Gsus4,
    @Gsus4@feddit.nl avatar

    Oh, was it gamergate that started the trend of calling each other a bot/paid shill?

    porksoda,

    Idk if it was gamergate that started that, but it was around that time when the 2016 election was happening.

    Corgana,
    @Corgana@startrek.website avatar

    tbf that election brought a lot of awareness to mis/disinformation, propaganda, and secretive advertising. It could have been going on long before to a lesser degree.

    SamC,

    I think that goes back to the start of the internet. Maybe has become more common over time

    elbarto777,

    Start of the internet? Is this hyperbole?

    IRC bots were common, but they were seen as admin tools, not drivers of participation.

    dan,

    Reddit has long paid mods to be “Community Builders”. Ostensibly they’re there to help other mods build their subreddits, but actually what seems to happen is they spam low effort posts like the ones described (the “question style” post is very popular) in lots of subreddits.

    I’ve posted this before but here’s more info:

    Have a look at this user’s posts prior to the blackouts: old.reddit.com/user/WelshCai/ Lots and lots of low-effort posts in various UK subreddits.

    And read this (which was posted after he got accused of being a karma farming bot), note the admin comment confirming it: old.reddit.com/…/i_am_a_community_builder_for_red…

    This link confirms that Community Builders are “vetted and paid by Reddit for their time”: …reddithelp.com/…/4418715794324-What-is-the-Commu…

    Despite claiming they work with mods, the mods of those subreddits don’t seem to be aware of this, as evidenced by this post: reddit.com/…/reddit_community_builders_please_rea…

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

    lvxferre,
    @lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

    Discussion quality in the whole platform went down. It isn’t just r/movies, or large subs - it’s everywhere. Specially jarring if you stopped going to reddit since the revolts, and then checked it “randomly”.

    Corgana,
    @Corgana@startrek.website avatar

    While I don’t think Reddit is going to collapse anytime soon or anything, any moderators that chose to stay after seeing how little Reddit cares about them, are not going to be the sorts of people with a bold vision on what they want to see in a community. What remains of the culture is just going to get more and more generic as evidenced here.

    SineSwiper,
    @SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Brain drain.

    EssentialCoffee,

    I think the main community that I was in wouldn’t mind jumping ship, but there’s no where for them to jump to yet.

    Lemmy’s mod tools don’t seem to be rolled out yet and I haven’t found anywhere on Lemmy that has a wiki built into their community yet.

    Corgana,
    @Corgana@startrek.website avatar

    I agree mod tools are the largest hurdle right now. Startrek.website has a wiki but I understand it’s not built into Lemmy.

    Gestrid,

    !Piracy has a wiki of sorts, too.

    Adkml,

    It’s not going to collapse its just going to turn into Facebook.

    Right wing memes and every post is gonna be the “did you know there aren’t any words in the English language with two o’s next to each” level posts where dozens of people leave the same comment to prove how clever and unique they are.

    Basically it’ll be full of people with nothing better to do because everybody else went to a site that wasn’t a charicturature of a robber barron wringing pennies out of people.

    wowwoweowza,

    My question is this: Does Spez know? And how? Do they have analytics tracking the same decline we are aware of via anecdotal evidence but they are looking at in in a graph that resembles the Hindenburg’s last landing?

    TheBlue22,

    It never was about the quantity of users leaving reddit, but the quality. Those that didn’t care about the changes were not those who were posting the most. They weren’t the moderators, the power users, people making original shit. Those all cared about the site and about the changes.

    And they all left.

    DJDarren,

    I definitely noticed in the immediate aftermath of the Great Enshittening, how the quality of the discourse on subs fell through the floor. The people who left seemed to be the ones that had some level of empathy, leaving shithouses behind to snipe and gripe everywhere.

    ComradeKhoumrag,
    @ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub avatar

    Empathy would make sense, given the tendency of empathic people willing to actually protest instead of being indifferent

    phillaholic,

    Where did they go? They sure as hell aren’t here.

    londos,

    I don’t understand. I was told in no uncertain terms from many news outlets that “Reddit won.”

    what_is_a_name,

    Reddit’s bottom line in the short term is unimpaired that is how they won.

    But in the long term- they are dead. I mused on this before.

    Social network need monopoly - otherwise the business model struggles. One Facebook. One Reddit, one Instagram. Facebook, Insta, Snap, and TikTok however are struggling because they are now the same thing in different packages.

    Not so Reddit. Reddit was a true monopoly. Nothing else compared. Well no longer. All their hiking have spawned a true credible alternative in Lemmy/Kbin. This will kill them. No matter of it’s Fediverse or something else - now there use than one place for Reddit. That means a third, fourth and fifth place is in the realm of possibility. And they WILL emerge. Others will try to enter the Reddit space.

    Reddit had a niche and it was so dominant. No one truly tried to enter my ya niche. But that was not good enough. The enshittified it over and over again. And now the. Have competition. As they will never have a monopoly again. They will struggle to get their ads money. They will struggle with the margins. They will struggle. Yahoo will buy them in 10 years and do the mercy blow.

    const_void,

    There’s also Tildes, Lobste.rs and Hacker News. Reddit has really shit the bed with their decisions.

    JohnnyEnzyme,

    There’s also Tildes, Lobste.rs and Hacker News. Reddit has really shit the bed with their decisions.

    Can those and similar sites federate with us? Seems like the more that happens, the deader Reddit becomes.

    @what_is_a_name

    dukk,

    Part of the appeal if Tildes has been the right-knit, invite-only community. So no, they probably wouldn’t federate with Lemmy(and shouldn’t).

    jackpot,
    @jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

    ‘via SEP’ whats that mean

    antisoupbarrier,

    ‘SEO’ stands for Search Engine Optimization.

    can,

    Search Engine Poptimization.

    tehfishman,

    Symantec Endpoint Protection

    ChickenLadyLovesLife,

    Reddits offial site

    I like that this is closer to “offal” than “official”.

    samus12345,
    @samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

    Reddit’s awful offal official site.

    remotedev,

    looks like a lot of power users really did take their ball and go home. (I wonder what they’re doing with their time instead? Hopefully some new hobbies? Time with friends?)

    Nah we’re doing the same shit just on Lemmy now

    viking,
    @viking@infosec.pub avatar

    That’s the home they talk about, no?

    trailing9,

    Are they not allowed to mention lemmy or do they not know?

    If people don’t know, how can they be reached?

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    Most predditors are centrists or righties that suck US government cock, and hate the fact that communist developers made Lemmy. They will prefer becoming slaves to touching “open source communist” software.

    Che_Donkey,
    @Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml avatar

    ooooooo…edgy!

    Every girl loves singleminded political personality!

    Rearsays,

    There’s more normal people on Lemmy than you think. I posted the other day that this place really needs to try to be less of an echo chamber if we want to grow it at all.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    Every place is an echo chamber of some kind, and there is no free speech. Reddit was a USA/Canada content only shithole, with some sprinkles of Western Europe. Many people are tired of it and do not want it.

    Rearsays,

    You are not wrong! I guess that we just have to accept that Social Media is as perverse as it is. Never in the history of my life I thought, oh hey you know what? I want to know all of the political views of all of my friends and associates. I think that actual pornography is less terrible for you than social media in most forms.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    That does not say much about porn, though. It grips people, but makes it more obvious. Social media is even more refined and vicious at that drip feeding of dopamine, as it has both a very subtle start and subtle drip, which is definitely worse psychologically. Its kind of like ganja (porn) versus LSD or ayahuasca (social media).

    You know, it is insane how social media is worse than porn, you are correct.

    Rearsays,

    I’m going to keep repeating that until it’s popular. I think we need to start to view social media like it’s a porn addiction

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    With you. I have already tried to voice against the psychological manipulation of human psyche using colours and slot machine effect, and even a place like Lemmy downvotes it and dismisses it as some conspiracy theory.

    lemmy.ml/comment/1713814

    lemmy.ml/comment/1759791

    lemmy.ml/comment/3127916

    lemmy.ml/comment/2340978

    Rearsays,

    Yeah it’s just always necessary to filter content in some way inevitably for user interest but when does interwar turn into evil whatever that Goldilocks zone I don’t know but finding it I hope doesn’t cost our humanity

    CancerMancer,

    it is insane how social media is worse than porn

    It’s sort of like how texting while driving is more dangerous than drinking and driving. It’s not the intuitive answer but after thinking it over it makes sense: at least the drunk is looking at the road.

    Maybe it’s worth trying to start a No Social September event for next year and get people to drop social media for a month. Make them see how much better it feels to limit consumption of this crap.

    can,

    English speaking countries?

    phillaholic,

    248 Million English Speaking Indians are under represented though.

    limelight79,

    I agree. I feel like Lemmy is the place I go to when I want to be angry. All the most active submissions are about some injustice that’s happening in the world - not that they aren’t legit issues, but it’s very tiring. Now I’m sure someone will tell me I should be raging all the time about all of these injustices, possibly by calling me a lib or whatever.

    What’s missing are the more niche subs. Risa’s memes have definitely been a lot of fun, but beyond that, the hobby subs are extremely slow and there’s just not enough content in them to keep it interesting.

    Rearsays,

    I really hate it when a tool makes me angry

    CancerMancer,

    They will prefer becoming slaves to touching “open source communist” software.

    That’s likely got nothing to do with it for most of them. Reddit still has people, and people go where people already are. Most people do not want to be a pioneer building a new community, they just want to go read shit and maybe throw a comment on it.

    Number1SummerJam,
    @Number1SummerJam@lemmy.world avatar

    I thought there would be a lot more discussion on reddit about the new privacy changes and migrating to Lemmy. Either people genuinely don’t care or Reddit is actively suppressing discussion about this to keep their user base.

    OpenStars,
    OpenStars avatar

    Or both:-)

    const_void,

    Suppression

    Astroturfed,

    You get shadowbanned for mentioning lemmy. The post likely wont even be visible either.

    Gestrid,

    Yep, it’s been removed.

    bermuda,

    Make a reddit account and tell them

    hansl,

    Where are the good movie communities on Lemmy? I searched a couple of times but couldn’t find one that matched the old Reddit one.

    can, (edited )

    lemmy.film

    !moviesandtv is fairly active.

    triprotic,

    Thank you!

    can,

    My pleasure

    phillaholic,

    This comment showcases a major problem I have with Lemmy. The latter loads correctly in the Instance I subscribe too. But there’s no way for me to view the former the same way is there?

    can, (edited )

    Browsing another instance’s local feed? No, that’s not presently part of the official lemmy front end. But many apps have added it on top.

    Airazz,

    They might not exist yet. You can create one if you wish.

    ParanoidFactoid, (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Justfollowingorders1, (edited )

    Gaming subs were similar.

    Starfield, despite having potential, feels very unfinished. Which is kinda expected for Bethesda, but the games also just boring and underwhelming in addition to the bugs. Yet, I’ve seen across reddit as there seems to be an open campaign to try and make the game not seems as bad as it is.

    I don’t know maybe I’m spoiled - I came off the incredible high of baldurs gate 3 into the slop that was starfield.

    trailing9,

    MS seems to have the infrastructure to manage public opinion. How do they manage it without anybody spilling the beans? Is it already entirely AI generated?

    Halosheep,

    I’ll offer a real and genuine human opinion. I think Starfield I great. I also just generally love the Bethesda gameplay loop, so I guess I’m a bit biased.

    It has its boring moments and I think it doesn’t respect your time with so much artificial time wasting (long walks to objectives, slow menus). It definitely isn’t the most polished game, but I have really enjoyed my time with it and I’m hoping the modding scene can clean up a lot of the issues people have with the game.

    CarlsIII,

    Well, some people actually do like the game.

    UlyssesT,

    Some time in the last few months, r/movies has been entirely consumed by askreddit-style questions like “What’s your favorite hidden gem??” or “What actor fell off the map??”

    That’s nonpolitical discussion and adheres to @Civility therefore it’s good. so-true

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