For example, try posting about Intel in pc building subs. Or try advocating for anything other than passive index investing in /investing. Or say you like PHP for making websites in /programming.
Any idea outside a sub's main approved-idea-space is rewarded with hate and downvotes.
Do you think that the removal of the downvote capability solves this problem? What solutions are available?
I think the main issue is that Reddit has become more mainstream. My theory is that when a new website like reddit is created, the early adopters are typically more open-minded people by their very nature. Later as the platform is recognized as successful, the mainstream population joins. These mainstream users, less likely on average to accept new ideas than the initial early-adopter user base, then begins to drag the discussion into group-think.
My most pronounced experience with this phenomenon was with r/wallstreetbets. In the early days, it was actually a very interesting and unique community with rapidly evolving conversations. With the mass influx of new users in 2018 and 2019, the comment sections slowly shifted into parroting of the subs common phrases and group think. Now in 2020, you can almost predict the comment sections before you open it up.
Perhaps due to its lack of promotion and UI, HN has been more resistant to this shift, but is not immune.
My personal solution to this problem is to keep jumping to new platforms if an old one becomes too bias. When my favorite subreddits start hitting r/all, I begin looking for new ones that follow the same topics.
It's a classic case of a variant of the WWW-Eternal-September virus that had been plaguing the interwebs since the dawn of forums. There is no solution other than quarantine and moving to unaffected places.
- A thing becomes possible. Some people enjoy the thing, get together and form a community doing the thing.
- the community quickly stratifies into "creators" - the people who actually do the thing and do it well, "community builders" - the people who don't actually do the thing very well, but are good at building the community around it, and "fans" - people who can't really do the thing, but enjoy the community and hang around in it.
- if the creator:fan ratio stays within reasonable limits, the community will continue to be enjoyable and fun
- if the community attracts more fans, though, the community is destroyed. Either the urge to monetise overwhelms and fans become customers, creators become rockstars and the community becomes an industry.
- Or it drowns in its own bile. Fans don't actually contribute to the community, they just soak up every else's contribution. If there are too many fans, they drain the energy and ability of the community to self-sustain. Community builders "burn out" and creators become reclusive, staying away from the community.
Anything that gets too popular gets either turned into an industry, or destroyed by its own popularity.
I really think that the problem is somewhat embedded in two things: human nature, and practical limits of our attention. For the former, what I mean is that essentially discussions tend to get driven towards extreme or biased views, because people with moderated, centrist, or less extreme views are less likely to say anything. As the community grows, eventually there are enough people with extreme views that the limit of how many comments you are willing to read through is saturated with them. Eventually one view becomes predominant. And I guess, the last factor would be that people enjoy seeing their beliefs echoed back to them, as a form of validation - aannd we've hit peak echo chamber.
I honestly have no real solution to this, other than trying to stay within smaller subreddits, where the middling opinions are not yet drowned out. And preferably ones that are well moderated, and have expectations of quality posts (you mention HN, and the self-moderation of the community here is a good example, jokes and other shitposts are regularly voted into oblivion, although this trend has been slowly diminishing over the years). As for specific subreddits that are great examples, it is hard to point out, because they are so specific.
You used to get downvoted for disagreement. Nowadays, you get banned from the sub altogether.
HN: "php sucks because of those technical reasons". Reddit: "php sucks, period, and you are a moron".
Companies/lobbyists/govs have realised a few years back that reddit was big enough/influential enough to shape some aspect of public opinion, it is now quite obviously that they are paying PR companies to defend their lobbies/brand/products on reddit.
The other day I commented on a european sub-reddit, where they were discussing the move away from coal power plants as an energy source. I pointed out that the move away from coal was great but that we should remain sceptical of the "green" "clean" energy marketing around bio-mass power plants and also natural-gas power plants.
Immediately the comment became controversial with wildly varying scores of up and downvotes. All the comments that followed where quite adversarial and flippant, mixed with bland marketing statements filled with buzzwords about how bio-mass is sustainable and 'renewable'. I doubt this situation would have occurred 6/7 years ago. In this case it was so obvious that I couldn't care less but probably for some users they would be intimidated to continue to comment on the topic after this.
It's not just Energy lobby, you could say the same thing about Pesticides, Pharma, <insert major lobby group>.
Also on the shills, I used to go to reddit as a source of legitimate product reviews and recommendations, now it's obviously that every marketing person uses the platform to name drop their product and do stealth marketing companies.
As so many others before it, reddit has become a victim of its own popularity.
To be fair, advocating for new PHP projects here on HN is met with ... scrutiny to put it lightly, too... same for going against the "groupthink" when it comes to libertarian capitalism, gig economy or the latest JS framework.
There is so much dystopian doublespeak in startup marketing, and people continue to believe it, because not doing so threatens their careers. Of course there are also many startups out there that actually do improve lives, but I wouldn't say it's the majority.
While group-think is real, the views that are allowed to be expressed on Reddit were not selected because a majority of users held them and pushed out those who disagreed. They were selected by the corporate owners of the site to promote their ideological beliefs, and to appease the very similar ideological beliefs of the major corporations who buy ads there.
Contrary opinions were driven off the site simply by repeatedly deleting the subreddits and users who expressed them. Down-voting or any other organic user interaction had nothing to do with it.
Placing corporate representatives as moderators is just a way of preventing the organic accrual of power to those with popular opinions that challenge the ideologies of the site owners.
> The delete posts about crime in case anyone notices any demographic patterns involved
Probably because, just as in every other country, demography is the confounding variable and poverty/inequality the actual predictor of blue collar crimes?
> corona gestapo
Because, after Belgium, Spain has the highest per capita Covid death rate in the world?
Now that the virus is out there, they are trying to make up for it retroactively with overly strict measures.
Is that a good reason to not be allowed to discuss the problem?
> Because, after Belgium, Spain has the highest per capita Covid death rate in the world?
We also had the strictest lock down in Europe. Children were allowed out for the first time with their parents on 5 weeks and were being shamed for standing too close by some reditors standard.
It's gone from "flatten the curve so the hospitals aren't overwhelmed" to some bizarre sort of virtue signalling where the more you complain about the actions of others the more virtuous you are. If you look at this study, outdoors doesn't seem such a problem. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v...
If you view social distancing as a left wing/right wing issue, you should reassess your approach to politics.
When the left says to smash capitalism Big Social suppresses it.
Go figure.
But are they really massive?
If you take a look at a lot of those "massive" subs you'll find that certain posts from certain accounts always get tens of thousands of upvotes, and all of the posts from their real users get tens of.... well... tens.
If a reputation system on the internet exists, it has been exploited / manipulated.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment