Reddit slowly became filled with hate
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.
About 10 years here. That’s why I had Apollo. I filtered out all that shit. Everything you could imagine. Hundreds of things hidden.
Eventually I had a home feed of crafts, patientgamers, every cat sub you can imagine, bread, and a bunch of other peaceful things.
Before that I was just so angry all the time and arguing with redditors. I won’t go back to all that.
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.
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.
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.
Damn, it didn't always used to be like this. In the early 2010s, Reddit used to be a great conversation starter.
just wearing the wrong colored hat or having the wrong skin color
This is very much NOT unique to modern times.
The Blues vs the Greens is from ~500 CE. The Nika riots.
It was over chariot racing teams. We've been up in arms about everything since forever.
Uh you linked one of the times the blues and greens banded together against the emperor.
Also both those groups were funded by politicians, who had a vested interest in using them against their rivals. Hardly ever just sports.
just wearing the wrong colored hat or having the wrong skin color
the first thing is something what you can easily change and when wearing it, you're telling everyone who you really are, the second thing is something you get born with.
I was not talking about wearing a kind of clothing, but specific clothing showing your political and ideological of someone ways clothes with 1488 I will treat them like the Nazi he is.
Anyway OP said he was just wearing non MAGA red hat. So in that case I agree that was overreaction. In fact would prefer people did that so the association would disappear. I originally thought OP was taking about actual MAGA hat.
My dress communicates specific political and ideological beliefs. If I choose to open carry, that communicates specific beliefs. If I choose to wear a BLM T-shirt, that communicates beliefs.
It sounds like you’re perfectly happy to judge people by what they wear, so OP’s example is clearly apt.
Yes, if you wear BLM shirt you are telling everyone you care about racism and discrimination, if you wear Nazi shirt you telling everyone that you believe white race is superior to everyone else.
What's so hard to get? Why I can't assume your views when you are going out of your way making it obvious to everyone what your political stance is?
I was accused of being a Trump supporter and subsequently harrassed because I wore a red baseball cap, which had a baseball team logo on it, home from a baseball game that the team was playing in.
My point in mentioning both is that it such a stupid thing to get upset over (color of clothing), equally as stupid as being upset about someone else’s skin color. People that do either are clowns.
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.
Unfortunately that hasn’t been unique to Reddit. Outrage, hate, and conspiracies generate clicks and engagement on platforms. Recent events within the last decade gave rise to a lot of coordinated hate campaigns. User created subreddits were a double edge sword for this in both being able to filter out these groups but also giving them their own echo chambers to congregate and embolden one another. The transition from liberal freedom of speech to absolutionist right to hatred made social media companies millions simultaneously in accepting money to promote controversial topics and harvesting the resulting outrage on their platforms. Reddit and their staff effectively became one of many internet war profiteers giving all sides bases of operations.
To end on a semi-positive note, with the rise of federated services, instances may still give these extremists places to seethe but they can at least be ‘sanctioned’ or defederated from the rest of the larger fediverse very easily.
Unfortunately that hasn’t been unique to Reddit. Outrage, hate, and conspiracies generate clicks and engagement on platforms.
Yesterday I stumbled upon this post. Really sad.
I have serious issues with YouTube comments: they are used to spread so much misinformation and lies. For example, for my latest video, many people have said that I am lying about emergency vehicles being able to go through the knip. Even though I literally SHOW FOOTAGE of emergency vehicles going through the knip. This is a common lie being told about the project online. But here's the problem ... 🧵 #Amsterdam #knip #weesperstraat
Their mention of signal:noise struck a chord for me.
Ever since this gelled for me a few years ago, I have been on a miserable (and obviously impossible) mission to find places to see and discuss useful, HUMAN information with other useful HUMAN people on the internet.
Blocking whole forums on topics I really enjoy is mechanically easier than curating the contributors to those conversations on an individual basis. It hurts my heart to do it, but it is impossible to keep the noise out without wholly ignoring signal that I enjoy.
Even people I used to really enjoy talking to have had to be ignored. They stopped caring about nuance, and got intellectually lazier. They switched from reading to skimming, and the well thought out comments got shorter, and more hostile.
This is undoubtedly the snake eating it's own tail.
They filter their inputs so heavily, and have done battle with bad faith for so long that their outputs resemble the very thing they were trying to avoid.
Unsure what my point is other than commiseration with OP. It's utterly disheartening to realize that the technology that was created to connect us all has been co-opted and subverted - transforming it into a hideous monster of hate, and misery that forces us all to internally disconnect from entire parts of it.
That's not to say that it couldn't have been expected.. but I have no fucking idea how it could've been prevented.
You can. This is the admin of the server where I am.
EDIT: I forgot that you're on a Lemmy instance. My bad.
So much outrage and doom. The algorithm rewarded people being more and more extreme, even about real problems.
Like, yes I lean left like reddit, but not every issue is the biggest scandal that has ever existed.
If you get swept up in that stuff, you'd think the world was about to end. And you'd frequently encounter people who think just so.
I found a lot of Reddit was around "This person bad" for whatever of a million reasons.
And, of course I got downvoted for saying so on Reddit.
Their algorithm is designed to stoke hatred and conflict, so they get more user retention.
Which is probably the main reason they closed their source code.
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.
10 year user. I agree what used to be a place for discussion, jokes, fun comment chains, devolved into rage bait and vitriol. I definitely don’t miss it.
While at first I was upset at the destruction of Reddit and lamented my routine, I am now so happy it happened. We all needed a new place to reset and be human again.
Roughly 5 years, so I joined when things alredy went to shit. But I still did notice a decline into utter shit.
What kinda pissed me off the most was the constant know-it-ally behavior. People were wrong but they still defended their standpoint not because they believed in it, but just out of spite. “I don’t care about the truth, I only want to own the others big time!”
Reddit is a site fully of bratty children and adults acting like bratty children. The worst part about that is, it is toxic and before you know it you start acting that way yourself. Me included. This whole fuckening was a wakeup call and I am glad it happened.
I ended up losing a friend because of reddit. They found it and just morphed from cheerful to always in a bad mood. Occasionally picking arguments with me from stuff they had seen on that site. At one point I just told them to stop going there, that they were becoming a nasty person because of it. She said she did but I didn’t believe her.
Early march 2020 I am dealing with the lockdown and watching my entire life deathspiral. My toddler won’t wear a mask, her older sister is crying because she misses her friends at school, I have no idea if I will have a job next week, and my wife is a nurse going into NYC hospital every day. All this going on and my friend sends me an email demanding I get her pictures of the corona beer public burnings going on. That she knows for a fact are happening because she read it on reddit.
I called her and I won’t repeat what I said because I am highly confident it would get me in trouble with LEOs. Not a “hey I know you have small children and your wife works in a hospital in the hardest hit city in the US, are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?”. No, just an email trying to make fun of the people in my country.
Only if you used it in a very mainstream, surface level way
Sure, but it’s still remarkable and it does change the tenor of the overall site.
At one point a couple of years ago I peeked at /all and I’m gonna say 85% of the top posts were from subreddits that were basically themed variations of “hey look at this asshole”
That shit definitely filters into the culture, and you see it in comment threads all the time where sometimes idea of a worthwhile contribution is just tagging iamverysmart or whatever
The whole site just primed itself into getting annoyed, pissed off, or outraged about anything at the drop of a hat
The whole site just primed itself into getting annoyed, pissed off, or outraged about anything at the drop of a hat
So… like tumblr?
Just a point: don’t fall into the trap of thinking that high-intelligence or whatever you think is not “normie” is less prone to all of the very same emotion-driven bullshit as all others.
No matter how intelligent you are, you can’t out-smart your own subconscious because it’s just as “intelligent” as the rest of you.
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