Study and Interactive Visualization of Toxicity in Reddit Communities | Hacker News Reader

Study and Interactive Visualization of Toxicity in Reddit Communities

idibon.com

97 pointsBenjaminBell36 comments

This analysis ignores completely ignores another analysis posted in the referenced "most toxic communities" AskReddit thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2v39v2/what_popul...) which charts the positivity and negativity of submissions to the top 100 subreddits, which had similar conclusions: http://i.imgur.com/8MGbiBO.png

I'm a bit upset about it. :P

I wonder how the scores would be changed if the code could be updated to treat intruding outsiders differently from supported regulars?

I bet you'd see ShitRedditSays and TwoXChromosomes suddenly sink down the "bigoted" ratings, while climbing right to the top of the "under siege" rating.

For shitredditsays, there's also a lot of quoting and satire to account for.

Satire is common on two of the most toxic subreddits, shitredditsays and tumblrinaction. But in both, I think it's clear the sarcasm is sometimes used to hide hatred and bigotry.

It should be expected that a subreddit would get high ratings for bigotry and for being under siege when it is explicitly dedicated to singling out and insulting other people on the same site. So I suspect that if such a measurement were done, TwoXChromosomes would drop and ShitRedditSays would stay put.

> It should be expected that a subreddit would get high ratings for bigotry and for being under siege when it is explicitly dedicated to singling out and insulting other people on the same site.

The fact you think TwoX is "dedicated to insulting other people on the site" says a lot more about you than it does about that subreddit. None of it especially complimentary.

I don't think that, I was contrasting it with SRS which is why I said twox would go down on that metric. Sorry if I was unclear.

Please try to read all the words before making implications about the author's character.

Would be interesting if there was also some way to also get moderated comments in the analysis. I was surprised to see 2xc nowhere near 'top' for toxicity, but the mod team moderates a _ton_ of terrible comments on a daily basis. Seeing a comparison of all the default subreddits vs like the next x biggest non-defaults would be interesting too, wonder if that influx of new users changes anything..

This kind of objective analysis of subjective feelings makes me feel 69% angry and 42% sad. And 3.14159% baffled.

ShitRedditSays, and the "most toxic" subreddit in that result, is actually a joke subreddit. It's a "circle jerk" where everyone flips around the standard racism and sexism (so sexism jokes against men) etc. "breaking the jerk", actually taking it seriously, is a bankable offense.

I think this makes their analysis flawed. If you were to look at spelling and grammar, you might conclude that people on polandball are the worst sellers, but the bad spelling is part of the style. Likewise shitredditsays for insults.

With srs and As with other older joke subreddits - new subscribers can't make out the difference between seriousness, sarcasm and humor. SRS has evolved into a sub that takes itself seriously from what I've witnessed.

But how would you know if it has changed? For all you know everyone is continuing to play along? The moderators of SRS are well known for being incredibly strict. Which is mocked with the image in the footer of the SRS subredit, where angles are throwing dildos a grave marked "free speech".

I can't point you to a post or series of comments at the moment. Theory of Reddit may have some posts specifically discussing this, but I know of scattered comments and discussions by victims, as well as grey beards who've left the forum. I've also visited the subreddit.

SRS subscribers have long since past the stage where they just made fun of comments, and actively brigade and/or ally with other subreddits to punish various kinds of speech/thought.

Subreddits/Forums can easily develop a shared culture different from the initial founders. SRS is one such case.

There is plenty of obvious hatred and mocking under the guise of sarcasm in that sub.

This is 100% the case for newcomers to the subreddit, which is already enough of a reason for it to be considered toxic. But it is also true if you are not new to the concept. There is plenty of hatred and anger in the SRS network of subreddits - read the other SRS* subreddits to see - and shitredditsays is where they are allowed to vent it, under the guise of sarcasm.

Sarcasm and satire can be valid and honest. But when an entire community like shitredditsays does nothing but that all day, every day, then it's an convenient place for actual hatred to be expressed.

Sometimes - rarely - there is something egregious enough that it makes sense to mock it and be sarcastic about it, even harshly so. But if that's all you do all the time, like shitredditsays - and tumblrinaction, and others - then you quickly become toxic. A community dedicated to hatred of other groups can't avoid becoming toxic.

Yes, they hate racism, sexism, and racists and sexists (etc).

There are pleanty of newbie friendly SRS subs, like /r/socialjustice101, or /r/SRSQuestions.

The bigotry scores are especially interesting.

Would be interesting to see the level of support with the levels of bigotry. Are bigots more supportive or less supportive of each other? Is there coherence or division?

Some sub-reddits deemed "toxic" I've never encountered much toxicity. I beg to question what qualifies at toxic for this specific research.

Their proprietary sentiment analysis product picks out 10,000 comments for crowd-sourced reviewers to label. So, the modern version of a telephone survey performed by mechanical turks. Probably context-free, so it's possible some of the tone or idiom might get lost.

If the result of this study is A, toxicity function is T(/r/foo), will the answers on /r/Askreddit follow A = T(/r/Askreddit)?

Edit:I'm sorry. They won't. But it will affect the value.

Very interesting! I'd absolutely love to see an analysis like this run against a forum I admin. Guess I have yet another side project to look into.

This is rather hilariously slanted. "Bigotry by subreddit". Really?

"[TumblrInAction], a subreddit dedicated to mocking Tumblr – where marginalized groups, particularly LGBTQ, post about their experiences"

Here they neatly imply r/TumblrInAction mocks LGBTQ issues when in fact, it mocks people who use identities as tools to divide and hit people over the head with. Which is incidentally what this report does:

"Overt bigotry: the use of bigoted (racist/sexist/homophobic etc.) language, whether targeting any particular individual or more generally, which would make members of the referenced group feel highly uncomfortable" In other words: assuming everyone in group X feels the same way about what the authors consider offensive language. This ignores e.g. the vast amount of gay people on chan boards who say "faggot" for fun to each other.

This so-called bigotry is contrasted with "supportiveness", apparently a desirable trait. Yet you can easily find people's horrible behavior being supported in more hugbox-style forums, when they get into an in/out-group fight and all the niceties go out the window for the sake of victimhood. We saw this with Atheism+, with r/GamerGhazi, and the "women in tech" activists.

Speaking of, notice how they explicitly contrast r/TheRedPill with a companion "Women in Tech" link in the footnote/popup for no stated reason. TheRedPill is supposedly "dedicated to male chauvinism", where "bigoted comments received approval". Well, if you define the entire subreddit's subject matter as bigoted, are you surprised the community appears to support bigotry by your own count? I have read TheRedPill, it is the male equivalent of Jezebel, nothing more, nothing less.

Really, this is just spreading fear about certain reddits, as the summary practically admits: which communities you should avoid, according to data. Yet the most toxic subreddit of all by their own data, ShitRedditSays, is nicely euphemized as home to "unproductive conversations". Also if the authors think they "delved deep into the darkest recesses of the inter webs," by analyzing reddit comments, they are naive beyond belief.

I am surprised that subreddits like coontown and other subreddits that are a part of the "nigger network" aren't given as much attention.

where does someone gain the knowledge and skills to use tools for machine learning and gaining data insights?

TIL /r/neckbeards harbor bigotry.

/r/canada has zero bigotry! YES!

Would be interesting if they conducted the same study here - personally find the coercive hivemind and ever-so-right-on-i-love-political-correctness-too automatons here far too much sometimes.

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