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Comment by helloooooooo | Hacker News Reader

It probably has to do with the post incentives. On Reddit, if you get downvoted into oblivion, your post disappears even if you get thousands of comments. On 4Chan, the more active the post, the more it gets bumped to the top. So being inflammatory on one makes your post disappear, and on the other it sends it to the top of the feed.

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Reddit is grossly overmoderated. You have a vote system that enforces a hivemind by itself, on top of a normal moderation system that deletes an enormous amount of content, on top of automated moderation banning posts if you use this or that word, on top of a shadowban system on top of a global content policy system.

The result is that only stuff that the majority of users allow will get displayed.

> Reddit is grossly overmoderated

I think bigger problem is poor moderation. Most of the mods are driven by some agenda and even propaganda.

Instead of focusing on quality, they focus on how their subreddit content can be aligned to their agenda.

Any user who doesn't comply, gets banned. Since roughly only 1% user actively engage in a subreddit, update macha end with Eco chamber.

This explains Twitter too. Even before the infamous trend-boosting algorithms get involved, being more controversial gets you more retweets and more chances to be seen. Tumblr used to be the same way and its users had similarly controversial/aggressive politics.

That's why controversial and new are the only worthwhile comment sortings on Reddit.

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