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Hate to be that guy, but while people being somewhat shittier anonymously is a real thing, there are whole cadres of incredibly horrible people that will post horrible stuff under their real names and be proud of it. Losing anonymity means losing protections for actually vulnerable people. The shittiest people are often the ones with the most secure positions in society.

I think our online personas are just a reflection of our culture. Our culture sucks, so our online personas suck.

> Losing anonymity means losing protections for actually vulnerable people. The shittiest people are often the ones with the most secure positions in society.

Case in point - Google forcibly merging Google+ comments into Youtube comments.

It didn't end trolling or harassment on the platform at all... people were are are perfectly willing to be vile under their real names, but it did expose a lot of people's personal information and real names to that cesspool against their will.

Also, Usenet. A lot of people posted with headers including their real name or an email containing their real name, yet it wasn't exactly a bastion of civility because of it.

must be liberating how easy it is to be racist/troll etc under your real name in Youtube, because everybody else is doing it. Real name, fake name, pseudonymous or completely anonymous, it seems it doesn't matter - herd behaviour washes away everything.

The way I see it, the web being primarily text based makes empathy difficult, which makes irate and rude behavior easier. It's easy to forget that there are real people on the other side of these text boxes.

i guess text has always been harsher thats why books are so interesting

Not just text, but temporal and geographic distance as well. There's plenty of Youtube reaction videos going back and forth of people just bashing each other, like any other flame war.

Also, let's not discount the effect an audience has. I would hazard that most negative public comments are actually crafted more for the benefit the author gets from the public reading it than the purported target. What's a little hurt feelings of one or a few when you get that buzz of doing something that shocks or amuses 20,000 people?

This information does not have to be made visible to other posters - just to verify that you're a unique human at account creation.

You could still call yourself KatDude420.

I hate to be that guy, but each subreddit is different. This is arguably the main selling point of reddit vs other link aggregators like facebook. Grouping all into the same toxic culture is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Yea, the reddit I visit is wonderful. Full of helpful, technical people. I guess because I have zero interest in politics or anything even slightly political - I can't even describe what left wing vs right wing actually means, or which I am (I must be one, I suppose) I post/hangout in all technical forums (pfsense/proxmox/vim/android) and pretty much without exception people are lovely. Android gets a bit catty because people are very aligned to their favourite thing (Samsung etc) but I'd never call it a vile place.

> I have zero interest in politics or anything even slightly political - I can't even describe what left wing vs right wing actually means

Political apathy is toxic. You don't have to be obsessed with politics but it's everyone's civic duty to understand the basic principles and players of our political system. Low voter turnout and low-information voters were major factors in Trump's win. You may think you don't care about politics but it's practically guaranteed you are or will be affected in some way (probably negative) as a result of his election - even if you don't live in the US.

That's a bad way to put things. You can disagree with the outcome of the 2016 election, but it was a _feature_ not a _bug_ of the system the US has in place. The voters who got their way are equal in their right to their preference as you are to yours.

The feature/bug metaphor fails to take into account tradeoffs. Every political system has pros and cons, and which one you choose to describe the system reveals your politics.

For instance: the voters are not equal in their right to preference. Delegates are equal in their right to preference. This means the person with the popular vote lost. So, do you value the republican vote or the democratic vote (government, not party)? There’s no objectively better option; it’s a pick-your-poison type deal.

Sure, and I'm equally in my right to encourage people to take action to effect a different outcome. And, independent of the outcome, I feel quite comfortable in asserting the universal truth that people have a moral obligation to be involved in political processes that are tangibly in their direct self-interest and society's interest to participate in.

I focus on being a good person (as best as I can) and I care about being happy. Worrying about what a bunch of quarreling children are doing, with very limited scope to impact or change any of it, is detrimental to being happy. I am under no illusion that the changes driven by Government affect me, in many ways. There's a decent chance ol' trumpy might let off a bomb, ruining hundreds of thousands of lives. Maybe, if it hits New Zealand, that of mine and my children too. But I still chose not to care/worry about it. I focus on enjoying the time I have with my family, trying to teach them to be happy. If they find an interest on politics makes them happy and excited, that's great! I'll encourage that 100%. But I don't care.

That's a convenient attitude to have until you don't have the privilege of being so carefree about the potential consequences. That's exactly how Trump got elected - people who were politically apathetic or ill-informed took the bait of a loud 'charismatic' celeb with a message that was perfectly tailored to appeal to those who couldn't be bothered to learn the basic facts.

I totally agree. But where do I draw the line. How heavily invested do I have to get into politics to get over this line you're alluding to, but haven't defined.

What about global warming? Space junk? Plant and Animal species becoming extinct etc. I expect you'll say those all tie back to politics and yes, they do to a degree. But having a strong political opinion doesn't suddenly change the world. We have limited time on this earth, I chose to invest my time into local things I can have some influence over. I agree I am extremely lucky to be in a privileged position to take this stance.

Here are my suggestions for a line:

1. One should participate in representational political processes as a matter of self-interest and civic obligation, even if it's just the absolute bare minimum of voting

2. Pursuant to that obligation, one should take the time to develop at least a basic understanding of the differences between the major political factions so that one's vote is not a completely random choice. Every adult should be able to write 2 gradeschool-level paragraphs comparing and contrasting the general principles and policies thereof.

3. Even if one does neither of the above, one should recognize that normalizing and rationalizing political non-participation is damaging to society if it influences others to do the same, and should thus be avoided.

Sound fair?

Most online discussion sites (reddit and HN, for example) focus overwhelmingly on US politics. This is significantly less relevant for the billion-odd people who use the English language internet but do not live in the USA.

He didn't say anything about US politics - he specifically said anything 'slightly political'. Trump is an example of what happens when a critical mass of people adopt that attitude, and it could just as well happen in any other country under the right circumstances (and indeed has many times in the past).

tbh it's the anti-trump crowd who can't help themselves from turning everything to politics.

Yeah because the Tea Party didn't exist under Pres. Obama. The Birth Certificate truthers exist, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Anti-Bush, and the No Blood For Oil crowds have existed forever across the spectrum. The only thing that's happened is that the internet has made everyone willing to turn everything into politics louder, less willing to listen, and easier to find an echo chamber. People talk about politics because it's the only thing that's literally relevant to everyone.

Unless a subreddit is heavily moderated, I've yet to see one that's gained popularity outside of its core users that didn't turn into a meme/clickbait/karma-motivated cesspool.

> Unless a subreddit is heavily moderated, I've yet to see one that's gained popularity outside of its core users that didn't turn into a meme/clickbait/karma-motivated cesspool.

Well that's a weird condition given that all the good subreddits I know owe this entirely to moderators. Why are you looking for lightly moderated content?

I'm very much in favor of heavy moderation. However, I realize that it's a difficult task when moderators aren't paid and users are joining exponentially.

There are also niche-topic subreddits, which don't face the overpopularity problem by definition.

But sure, the best subreddits tend to be heavily moderated and/or very niche. Is this really a problem?

To me it's the random jumping from site to site via browser extension that really made SU worth it. I can discover stuff through reddit, but the presence of a comment section kind of ruins it since I am not disciplined enough to ignore it.

As to fixing reddit, I agree with your changes, but you'd run into the same issue all candidates for remplacement ran into: reddit delivers value through the network effect. You need users to get value. You need value to get users. Basically unless you can kickstart the replacement with a shitton of existing data, or unless reddit fucks up as much as digg did before, it's hard to compete.

Oh, right, another radical thought of mine - something that users would pay for. Even if it were just $1/month, one account per credit card only, it would serve as another little barrier to all the right people, and prevent throwaways and constant account deletion.

Obviously for a commercial, advertiser-funded operation, it is all about more and more users and traffic and the quality of the content isn't a priority, but this eventually destroys everything. I'm imagining something much smaller, but potentially higher quality and self-sustaining. I guess I'm pretty much describing The Well, but hopefully cheaper and with more users, but not free and as many users as possible.

That's half of what makes the Metafilter discussions so good (the other half is aggressive behind-the-scenes moderation)

There used to be a mashup of random YouTube comments on one side, and random metafilter comments on the other testing, really validating, this theory.

The difference was pretty stark. I could only find breadcrumbs:

https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs...

An example might be archived somewhere...

Just unsubscribe all subreddits, and only opt-in to interesting, niche communities. My feed got 10000x less toxic after I unsubbed from /r/politics, /r/news, and the like

That's the opposite of solving the filter bubble problem though.

YouTube is as bad or worse as reddit. The more you look at one topic the more it is shown to you. You end up in a feedback loop the same thing.

It's worse than that (and, I think, mendaciously so). YouTube tries to steer you towards the highest-viewed, most popular stuff on whatever very narrow vertical you're in...or a vertical that their algorithms have decided is nearby. Which is why you see people--mostly kids--going from videos about video games to videos about how the feminisms are taking away our video games to the feminisms are destroying Western society to straight-up white-supremacist agitprop.

Reddit is by no means clean; they just don't care about, as opposed to actively facilitate, this stuff. But you're right in that there are deep problems on YouTube, too.

Hmm, maybe it's bad in different ways for different viewers.

For me, it seems so ruthlessly risk averse that if I watch one video, it fills my queue with every single thing that person ever made, to the detriment of other interests.

Does YouTube assume all humanity is completely obsessive, based on some subset of frequent users who probably behave that way?

Youtube's suggestion system filters you towards the most extremist videos. It's a big problem and one that they don't seem interested at all in solving.

> I have been reflecting on ways to fix it lately.

Don't worry. They are pulling a Stumbleupon/Digg right now. Taking something that isn't broken and trying to fix it. The redesign is corporate suicide.

This is actually great. The only way a potentially viable alternative will succeed is if there is a mass migration from the main site, so I welcome their corporate suicide.

Digg is actually pretty good now that it's 100% curated.

Killing the community was one of the best moves they could have made.

If their goal was to go from a top 50 website to a top 3000 website they certainly succeeded.

I wouldn't want to confuse popularity with quality.

Reality shows and daytime television are popular, that doesn't make them the best version of the art form.

HN flies a little under the radar. I don't think that's a failing.

If users are required to show their faces, it would be rather difficult to stop people connecting their various subreddit-specific accounts.

ugggh no way jose. no "real names" - "real people"- "let me shit all over you with my ego"-maniacs. rather keep reddit where even the trolls are anonymous

You know how there's a global NSFW tag that basically makes those posts not visible if you want? Would be cool if they had one for "memes".

Quite a few subreddits do have the 'shitpost' tag, but it would be nice if that could be applied in a global fashion instead of being per-sub styling.

how about a way to randomly visit Reddit/r/all links with the press of a button without having to deal with registration/participation/comments. or make comments optional. Similar to Stumbleupon iframe bar. Similar to Diggbar: http://blogoscoped.com/files/digg-bar-large.png

I live in a particular neighborhood in a particular large US city, and our subreddit is a really useful source of local info.

Yes! The subreddit for my large city is also pretty useful, by-and-large. It's things like that which are good about reddit, but could perhaps be improved upon - subreddits for cities, personalfinance, legaladvice, realestate, immigration - these serious topics could be even better by getting rid of the riff-raff.