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.
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 barrage of non-environmentally friendly comments. Not enough to change the overall makeup of the subreddit, but enough to make you wonder who is on the other side of the screen voting or down voting on stories.
Then there are places like /r/technology, which is almost intolerable to me at times.
People say I am paranoid, but like with anything, if you know a place well and visit it for years, you can sense when things change.
And yes my opinion is subjective, but this is a subjective topic.
Warning: once you see it, you can't un-see it.
Similar to another one in this thread saying "it's just the same as /r/politics", it's important to normalise the_donald in the eyes of potential subscribers and to imply that what goes on in there is no different than in any other political subreddit. The difference, of course, could not be starker.
No "these people are evil" is not an acceptable answer.
The people who voted for trump may be wrong, but they are still perfectly understandable humans, doing what they think is right. Or at least what they think they have to do.
It's understandable that people who post in the_donald are heavily biased and even think they are doing the right thing.
This American Life had a podcast where they interviewed these people at the DeploraBall, and one of them even said that he "Memed Donald Trump into the presidency". For some it seems this is part of their identity.
Even though they are generally heavily downvoted, I worry that their one-liner soundbites and gotchas will reach more people with weaker critical thinking skills.
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 did this to a new post pretty frequently. This let them
* Coordinate which posts got to the front page of reddit
and
* Exploited the reddit algorithm for determining "hotness"
For a while, 8 out of every 10 posts on the front page were from /r/the_donald.
It marks the first major incidence of the community engineering tools (that I believe were pioneered by subs like /r/shitRedditSays) being used by the right.
It used to be the front page while logged out was /r/all, but that was replaced with /r/popular a while back (which has a completely non-transparent filter applied to it)
Exactly -- and why I lasted only a week on Reddit. It's nothing but a collection of echo chambers. No matter how sincere and thorough I would try and make arguments, if they're weren't in line with the herd I'd get downvoted to oblivion (no counter argument except insults) if not outright banned (never had been banned before). It's no fun participating when the only accepted input is "me, too!"
They also game the reddit voting system so their stories and comments are constantly being featured in /r/all -- so much so reddit had to take action.
Their purpose is to troll, and they are damn good at it.
So, even though a massive amount of their userbase pushes for genocide against "Mdslimes" or "Kbabs", Reddit admins let them exist.
I still enjoy the smaller subreddits. Unfortunately anything political becomes brigaded, but things like /r/gamingsuggestions and local city subreddits still make the site worthwhile to me.
Local city subreddits are one of the best things about reddit. National politics sometimes leak in, which is when they're at their worst, but, overall, it's probably my favorite thing there.
I believe that some kind of accessible and open platform will eventually take the place of place in the local discovery field.
Good and bad people everywhere. It sucks.
/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.
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.
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".
Because Hillary had hired people to do exactly that:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolli...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-mill...
Remember someone leaked a private Slack chat of Reddit admins where one was boasting of receiving their CTR check.
If that is true, supported by the articles you referenced:
-- r/politics has over 3 million subscribers, with an average of 30 - 40 active users during the daytime. -- if every one of those users was a "shill" commenter then every single one would have earned $0.30 for their efforts. That's not counting other forms of social media.
I have to admit some skepticism toward the assertion that the entire subreddit is a controlled narrative. Instead, it seems that there will be those who adamantly support the people they're paid to support, and that those users are in the minimum. Instead I think it's just a general consensus what the popular ideals are in there vs. r/t_d. Besides, not sure if you've been around there much but I certainly don't see much love lost for HC.
so many people don't realize this. if you can tell it's propaganda on the face, it's shitty propaganda.
Point being liberal application of the banhammer should not be interpreted as proof of the mod's intent to run a "propaganda machine" as much as a necessity of holding a discussion within parameters that presume certain reddit-unfriendly positions.
Can you substantiate that? I went there a few times after election and didn't see any doxing or harassing. There were gays, trans, immigrants people of all walks of life all seemingly having fun with their frog image or whatever they call it, and don't remember seeing a lot of harassment. I didn't follow but maybe you're saying it is hidden somewhere or they are subversive and just pretend to be nice?
(And I say astroturfing, not as a throwaway attack, but because the voting and usage patterns on those subreddits are very anomalous and smell of manipulation)
Meanwhile, the_donald is the one and only pro-Trump page on the site that has any kind of popularity.
I am not sure how the existence of these anti trump subs leads you to believe that views that r/the_donald is racist and hate filled are misinformed.
Also, I disagree with your last point since there are many altright subs, and r/conspiracy has become extremely pro Trump for some reason.
I'll ask the same thing I ask every time this topic comes up: Where's the hate? Link some. I see posts praising LGBTs, I see plenty of criticism of Islam (usually in relation to Islamists' poor treatment of LGBTs or worse),
but "hate"? Racism? No. That is hyperbole at best. Anytime I see overt racism, it's downvoted into the negatives. Given that my observation conflicts with the narrative, and that verifying it is trivial to check, I have to assume most people repeating it are just going on what they were told by friends or media, rather than their own observations.
is +73 positive enough? I wanted to give at least one example but its a bit hard since the work comp doesn't load reddit and my cell has terrible reception here.
However, this is mostly about me wondering if you're being honest about this. I have seen this rhetoric before (show me a link!) and it usually isn't long before someone does actually link something. Usually, excuses are made why they don't count.
I find it very doubtful someone never showed you the racism/hate straight from the source when demanded.
No, because that indicates the post didn't resonate with the user base there. Front page the_donald posts usually start at 5000 points and up. That tells me that the sentiment isn't really shared all that much. On much smaller communities with much lower average scores, this would be more significant.
On top of that, unless you install a third party addon or disable CSS (most users will not), you can't downvote posts there. That means the average user can't react to posts they dislike beyond reporting it if it breaks the rules.
On top of that, many the_donald users will chain-upvote everything on /new/ without even looking at it in an attempt to counter botting. I can't give you a link here, as this came up in a discord conversation.
I certainly hope you don't think these concrete problems are "an excuse". The score of a post is the only signal you have to determine what the community at large thinks about it.
Judging a community of 460K (with 13K online during off peak hours like right now) using a nine-day old post with a minuscule score isn't terribly honest. Your example post, if anything, is a counter example to the point you were trying to make.
So instead, How about +4614?
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/6o7qas/reminder_12_of_th...
While cousin marriages are a problem, they definitely aren't half in the middle east. 50% is only reached in Pakistan and one African country that I'm not sure why its included in the first place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6o7qas/reminder...
Deeper in the thread there's a link to https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2015/07/17/half-of-worlds-m... with some statistics as well as spitballing at a cause (Koran is okay with cousin marriage would seem to be a big one) - and if you're having babies with your cousin, that is objectively inbreeding.
At best, this is arguably a statement of fact, and not "bigoted" or "hateful". Neither is a general sentiment that Islam is negative or hateful.
Which is basically where your argument falls apart for BOTH links I posted. Because that's how The_Donald gets away with bigotry: it posts vague "factoids" that overblow a situation to let users make the desired conclusion but create plausible deniability once the users start posting them. You know it wasn't that long after before someone posted something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6p7do4/hard_fac...
Turns out, when your sub is constantly suggesting a whole demographic of people are retarded without literally saying it, the users eventually make the connection and start believing it. Ironically that may be breaking down soon when such a ridiculous post like that managed +710, probably due to recent events causing desperation. (Also before you say "buts that's only Somalis!" OP was kind enough to elaborate in the comments that he's talking about Arabian immigrants too).
Either way last post, feel free to have last comment. This thread is probably dead now and now I can definitely tell you're not honest. This conversation is basically pointless.
Off the top of my head:
* /whiterights * /uncensorednews * /justiceserved * /conspiracy * /hillaryforprison * /physicalremoval
Most of the time when you notice overt bigotry on reddit, the user frequents t_d or one of those subs, or the similar clones that are now all over reddit.
I would highlight https://reddit.com/r/europeannationalism/ as the very worst of it.
They've also taken over the mod teams of extremely large and supposedly politically neutral subs like https://reddit.com/r/uncensorednews/ (every single mod there is also a mod of /r/europeannationalism).
Check https://reddit.com/r/againsthatesubreddits/ for a running log of much, much more.
And for every one open nazi, there's a dozen more concern-trolling, brigading, vote-manipulating, and quietly recruiting more people towards the fucking genocidal far-right.
It's getting so bad that at it will soon be hard to defend Reddit's admins from charges of complicity.
The problem with having something r/the_donald on reddit is that its posters don't stay in r/the_donald. They go out to other reddits, and post hateful shit.
It's like having a shared space for clubs, that also includes a local chapter of the KKK.
It'd be fine if they just played dungeon and wizard dressup and complained about black people in the confines of their club room every Tuesday.
The problem is that they spill out, and start burning crosses and handing out beatings to the other users of the shared space. Pretty soon, the entire community turns into a dumpster fire, and people who don't want to deal with that bullshit leave.
The owners of the space can then pat eachother on the back, and congratulate themselves for encouraging freedom of expression.
There are subreddits about everything. Most of them don't include conversations about police shootings or Islam.
(And the only reason it seems that they aren't a problem is because moderators of more specialized reddits have to delete their posts, and ban the posters.)
Some customers aren't worth keeping.
Someone wrote a script that would res tag the_donald posters in other subs, and it's very noticeable how they're the ones derailing discussions that just involve a keyword like immigration, Islam, Europe, race, healthcare, or other hot button issues for them.
Like it or not, Trump won, so there is obviously a large quantity of people who subscribe to the positions you've labeled "hateful". Why should your interpretation of their opinion override their ability to share their thoughts on the topic? Subreddit mods have the ability to constrain the discussion within their own parameters. What else is needed?
I particularly dislike the attitude of "Let's tag people who post in this sub". How are you supposed to know if you have common ground if you can't even post in that sub without getting labeled or banned?
Some notable ways they derail discussions are:
- Oppression Olympics: Saying the U.S. meddles with other countries' elections so it's not so bad that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. "Happens to everybody."
- Whataboutism: Deflecting or changing the subject to be about Hillary Clinton or President Obama.
- Oversensitivity: "They're just memes, lighten up snowflake." "Nobody takes this seriously haha."
As for res tagging, it's extremely apparent that their patterns of behavior they exhibit are fairly uniform. This is probably a side effect of the strict way with which mods of the subreddit ban anyone who doesn't conform to a certain mindset. It creates a strong signal about users who aren't interested in genuine discussion, but are incredibly biased and self serving.
Of course I read the comments. Two comments, here:
1) We don't have a lot of conversations about race or Islam or intersectional feminism (or whatever) over on the credit card churning sub (for example). Not everything is political.
2) Of course, we do have a lot of these conversations on /r/stlouis, some of which, I'm sure, include comments the Hacker News contingent would find obnoxious. But, you know what? They're fine. We get through it. It doesn't dominate every thread. People are downvoted when they're particularly vitriolic. And it's mostly names I recognize from other threads (not outsiders brigading). It's really not a big deal, like, at all.
For me, the crucial change of how I curate my subs happened when 2x became a default. I hated the sudden influx of bad posts, mansplaining, and terrible/abusive comments.
> Reddit is a net-negative to society in my opinion.
I did not agree with this before, but after /r/the_donald, I am re-considering my position.
Just because there exists a thing you do not agree with does not mean it should not exist. It seems like many people on HN are for free speech as long as it's speech they agree with. There will always be people who do not think like you and do not believe in same things as you, but you are not helping any situation by no platforming them. Join the debate and use your words, like adult human beings, don't use force (even if it's virtual and not physical)
Sounds exactly like Reddit
What would you call it?
The reason the posts hit front page is because people keep voting them up. You can disagree by downvoting. While they could very well be banning people who express opposite opinions so are plenty of other ideologically driven subreddits. You can join one of the dozen opposing subreddits for discussion about the topic(s) in hand. I still see no reason to take away their platform.
I do not subscribe to their opinions completely, but I can also see merit in some of the opinions from that camp just as I can see the flaws. Same goes for more left leaning opinions. Bad thing is that everyone gets so emotional and rallied over their own opinions they completely refuse to listen to the other side and budge even an inch. This just creates bunch of echo chambers on either side where no real discussion can be had.
Not anymore. Since reddit made numerous changes, I don't think I've ever seen one of theirs make the front page. Pretty funny that the site had to change the core of their operation to target them.
Can you clarify why the actions of shill accounts are inherently anti-democratic? I don't really see the connection between the concept of Democracy and paid posters on a social media website.
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 seen serious political commentary anywhere on it, even during the worst of the recent election.
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.
Perhaps we thought our little islands of posh culture would stay on their own when reality is taking a dive ?
That's not a good software recipe for a community to become empowered or build their own space at all.
Keywords: become empowered or build their own space
The argument was not "that's not a good software recipe to cause high traffic."
This leads to conflict when one person feels their identity as a "redditor" is under attack by the success of a sub that is diametrically opposed to their political or religious perspective, which leads to invasions, trolling, doxxing, harassment, and lots of other types of nastiness.
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.
I wonder if there's space for forums with purposefully limited membership where people could get to know each other on that more intimate level. I know you could always set up your own private forum for your friends, but maybe as a service.
Unlike a traditional forum with long-running threads that get bumped to the top, many subreddits suffer from newcomers asking the same questions every other week (there's only two stickied threads, and people usually don't bother with the wiki). In addition, the notion of karma encourages unwanted behavior like recycling content.
The ease of use of Reddit can't be emphasized enough, though. Before, you'd need to find a host for your forum, then set up phpbb. And users would need to sign up for a bunch of different forums. Now, one can set up a new subreddit in seconds, and users can join without going through a new account flow each time.
Imageboards also suffer from newcomers asking the same questions, though this is mitigated by third party archive sites and encouragement to use them, to the point in which a common reply to a newbie question will be "search the archive". There are only about 15 pages of threads (with about 10 threads on each page) active at a time, which is significantly less than on a subreddit. You cannot reply to deleted threads, but individual threads can reach around 350 replies if they're baity/good.
Imageboards have no notion of karma, except social. You usually (save for boards with in-thread IDs) can be an expert on one topic in a thread, then ask a newbie question later on, letting you also play devil's advocate. This is because you can be anonymous. But if you want to attach your name to your posts, you can do so securely using a code which nobody can replicate unless they also know the password to generate it that you know (a tripcode). People who use tripcodes are frequently derided (such as by being called "tripfags").
Imageboards are relatively easy to use. You post a thread using a form at the top of each board page, and reply to a thread using the same form at the top of the thread page, which is accessed by clicking "Reply" displayed next to an individual thread on the board pages.
Imageboards usually host multiple boards. 4chan for example has a board for most topics people are interested in, from anime, technology and toys to papercraft, transportation and the paranormal. Within these boards, it is common to have "general" threads in which they act like miniature boards, threads created for just one topic, however they are not moderated, as they are set up by regualar users, so they can go off-topic. For example, /g/ (the Tech board) has a frequent general thread called "/tpg/ - Thinkpad general" in which people can talk about IBM Thinkpad laptops. Multiple people can create topical threads with the same subject line.
Other imageboards let you create your own board, the most prominent example of which is 8chan; by creating a board you become its moderator and administrator, subject to the global rules of the website, of course.
Imageboards, like Reddit, have a feedback loop in which commenting in a thread will bump it to the top of the board, so people viewing the first page of the board will see that thread. Unpopular threads tend to fall in ranking until they are eventually bumped off the board by a new thread. To avoid participating in the feedback loop, you can "sage" a thread, which is to post in it, but not bump it to the top.
But most importantly I will reiterate - imageboards are anonymous, there are no accounts, and there is no barrier to participation except maybe feeling bad because you haven't lurked enough.
I'm not the first to talk about the virtues of imageboards over traditional forum stoftware (phpBB, Reddit, etc.): https://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan
And this is of course ignoring that you can use an imageboard to host a personal blog, by only allowing a pre-defined administrator tripcode to post, and to set new replies to not bump threads. It's a real shame the flourish of earlier imageboards died, as they were often home to quality discussion.
Saying that it's just humanity is unfair to the people who used to like a forum and then left it behind when it was no longer worth fighting for.
Various subreddits are slowly being taken over by racist agitators who know how this works.
"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.
The First Amendment is just a law which prevents the US government from restricting Free Speech. Free Speech itself is a principle which can be applied anywhere.
I agree that free speech is a good thing, and I think that "You have to take the bad with the good, because we don't agree on what's good" is a broadly useful philosophy. But systems which take in both bad and good, and strengthen the bad more than the good, are themselves bad.
Cross-subrreddit trolling and genuine spills at least minimises echo chamber effect somewhat. If that was limited or non-centrist subreddits/users were banned, the centrist (or whatever was supposed to be OK) echo chamber level would go off the charts.
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 violence daily. Is this just a reflection of our society? Probably but I'm always interested to see which sites allow what. Here's what Jack Dorsey had to say about it regarding twitters ban on hate speech "Abuse is not part of civil discourse. It shuts down conversation and prevents us from understanding each other. Freedom of expression means little if we allow voices to be silenced because of fear of harassment if they speak up"
As a minority I've stopped using reddit and know many others like me, the ones that stay stick around to drop in "As a [insert minority group]...it's totally OK that this racist meme is highly upvoted with racist comments - because its a joke ha ha" posts
The obvious counter-argument is silencing them strengthens their argument and makes them a martyr. I don't buy that argument at all, it's far more dangerous to allow them to indoctrinate and appeal to all the fringe disenfranchised youth which they've become frighteningly effective at. In any case it's clear reddit can be used for good like in this article, I'm just not so sure it's a net positive to society as another poster argued.
Is it fair to say it's their responsibility to police society when they just run the platform? Probably not, but I do know there's a big problem here and it's causing immense damage daily, racism and xenophobia are on the rise.
That's kinda the problem. As a species, our entire communications spectrum can't be forced into either bucket. It has to exist in both.
The kind of things I wouldn't tolerate at all around my family I'm fine tolerating around my friends. And the kind of things I wouldn't tolerate from a friend I'm fine tolerating as part of the public discourse. In fact, the last thing we want to do is use either minority or majority power to silence what folks consider "intolerable" speech. That way lies dragons.
It's a difficult if not impossible spot for social networks to be in.
Reddit is among the most widely-used websites in the world -- 7th, by Alexa's rankings. Reddit lives up to its motto of being the front page of the internet.
Imagine one of the top-10 newspapers in the United States were occasionally publishing stuff from /r/The_Donald on its front page, and had content from various hateful sub-reddits a few pages back. You could argue that this imaginary publication harms society.
Of course, Reddit is not the New York Times. So different standards apply. But the argument that Reddit -- and thus its administrators policies -- may be harming society, seems to hold some weight.
CNN and Infowars have the same number of subscribers on Youtube. Now, I'm no fan of CNN, but Infowars is a unique kind of gross in my opinion. To the extent that subscribing to a youtube channel connotes social value, apparently the world has decided that Infowars is approximately equal in value to CNN.
Most people view CNN through TV or CNN.com; I suspect a much greater proportion of InfoWars's content is viewed through YouTube.
Its "real" freedom of information, without many of the mechanisms that larger society uses to fight back against it. Instead it is just ignored and left to fester and grow until it pops into the public forum at the point where huge efforts are required to fight it. I feel like the internet is a great way to get differing views out, but not a great way to build any cultural agreement.
Reddit is not like an ISP, who can (until recently) claim that they're not responsible for traffic passing through their network, as reddit has no reasonable claim to be a "dumb pipe".
After denying it, you just explained why it's a difficult spot.
By the way, website are in fact not legally responsible for that traffic, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act[1], which the courts have upheld against sites like eBay, Google, Craigslist, Backpage and MySpace.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
I only know as much about Section 230 as I just read at that link, but it seems that this doesn't provide protection for things like calling for violence against a religious/sexual/race group. I concede that the exact boundary of what is a call for violence is hard to pin down, but I don't think that makes it OK to throw up your hands and say "Anything goes on my site!"
That's the job of the Constitution, as the SCOTUS made clear in Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which an actual KKK leader was being charged after participating in an armed rally and talked about getting revenge on various races and on those who supported them, like the President and Congress:
"(..) the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
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.
that said there are plenty of small communities that are pleasant, sure. But some people would rather go elsewhere than take the time and effort to curate their subs, and that's perfectly reasonable.
Brigading in reddit has always been an issue and it's likely not going away for a very long time. That's also a cause of inter-subreddit mixing that can lead to abuse.
You're mostly correct that if you stick to the smaller and more moderated communities, you'll avoid a lot of the crud.
Edit: and to be further on topic, the r/opiates subreddit also gets a lot of outsiders going in and flinging abuse at the users there.
If I weren't so politically burnt out right now I'd call for a Reddit boycott.
Either way this thread has reminded me to block it and delete my account because I'm done with that site after 10+ years.
To be clear I'm not trying to rail on the founders of these orgs, I can't say for sure that I'd do much better in their position, it's a business first after all.
I think your basic premise is wrong - that "racism and xenophobia" are on the rise. You can't measure the number of people who aren't racist because you don't hear them. And before you argue that "not saying anything is being complicit" it's just not true. As a "minority" I just don't care what someone on the internet posts. It doesn't have power over me.
Having been on reddit for a decade it's sad to see it go from a tech/intellectual community to what it is now. I want real discussion, not arguing with racists. Seems reddit offers less and less of the former each day.
Is this really an issue? Are they going to /r/programming and dominating the conversation? Because I'm just not seeing it.
I think that the quality of a community is inversely related to the size, which explains why reddit "used to be cool". But the reason I still use reddit is because you can subscribe to communities you want - and there are still many good ones.
That said, there is room for improvement on the moderation side. I think a "peer-moderated" community would be awesome. Say for example, when a comment is flagged - a random but deterministic set of peers will make a judgement call. A "deterministic peer-jury" could be a useful mechanism for communities to grant voting/commenting/moderation rights.
The bigger issue in my opinion is controlling the discussion via sock puppets and underhanded moderation.
It simply didn't used to be this way. The discussion used to be what I'd go to reddit for, now it's the part I avoid.
I am Micmac, Irish, and African American. I don't care if someone is racist. I don't care if they say racially charged things. I care only when it manifests physically.
I don't believe I've the right to control the thoughts or speech of others. I don't let them control my emotions. I do not cede that power over me.
Yeah but you have a President and his son, aides, etc. who use the subreddit and similar places on the internet to get their information from. The President himself has retweeted stuff a few hours after it became popular on 4chan, T_D, etc. and has posted completely fake stormfront/4chan/coontown infographics about black crime that he still essentially stands by.
The information sources of many of the most powerful people in the world comes from these sites, so they certainly have an impact.
Unfortunately, yes. Look at the comments for any news story about a protest. Half the commenters are shouting that the protest should be non-violent, while the other half are shouting that the police should beat and cripple the protestors. There is also intersection between these two groups.
Or the people posting copy-pasta about how violent the Religion of Peace is, all the while advocating for glassing the countries it is prevalent in.
Generally, calls to violence are taken quite seriously, but calls to the worst form of violence - war - are considered political.
I have health problems. Every single health "support group" (email list or forum) I have ever participated in has been a shit show. A recent attempt to post to a health Reddit reminded me of that. So, I started my own health related Reddit.
I participate very little. I am trying to figure out how to create things that I want to have for myself, basically.
I realize this is hard. I have been thrown out of a few different forums over the years and have simply walked away from others because of bullshit. But I am trying to find a path forward and not just throw in the towel and let the assholes have the internet because it is the path of least resistance. It may be the path of least resistance, but it impoverishes my life and I suspect it impoverishes the lives of a lot of other people as well.