Unsubscribe from /r/politics. Unsubscribe from /r/worldnews. Find the handful of subreddits that are bothering you and unsubcribe from them. The discussions I read on Reddit are overall nicer than those on HN, not because the userbase as a whole is better, but because it has sewers where the crap is concentrated -- and you can easily avoid them. That's one of their most important features.

I would go a step further and say the first thing a new Reddit account should do is unsubscribe from everything, then selectively subscribe to your interests. Every default subreddit is horrible.

In my experience, the academic subreddits found in the defaults are pretty civil (i.e. science, philosophy, space, history). But they all have well-defined mission statements and heavy-handed moderation (e.g. no memes or any other kind of offtopic discussion).

That said, starting from zero is still a good idea.

I would extend that further to _unsubscribe from all default subreddits_.

Start from a blank slate and search for subreddits that actually interest you and seem reasonable. Yeah, you're also creating an "echo chamber" if you participate in polarizing topics, but hopefully you're aware that you're doing that to yourself.

If you try to create a new account there is a signup flow where you pick subs from categories. Defaults are not a thing anymore.

The default/popular subreddits are toxic. The smaller, niche subreddits are rarely toxic and usually good communities.

As for the Russiagate stuff, the front page is riddled with it because it's a very important subject in the US, Reddit's user base is primarily people from the US, and there are bombshells dropping every day.

Still a nothing burger, it's paid political propaganda on those default reddits, paid teams pushing bs and noise.

Share blue for example was given a budget of 40+ million a year to do just that. (Over 100k a day)

The other paid campaign is 'deplatforming' (their term). They do your best to silence opinions which don't match the paid script.

I'm sure it's being brigaded by both sides for political points/fire control.

But you'd have to be willfully blind to describe the events up to now as a "nothing burger."

There is nothing, except a large paid hoax propaganda campaign. With the same team we could make mother Teresa seem like an imperialist religious nut. But anyway, let's agree to disagree. Because the world is nicer that way.

Your attitude of batching everything not matching the "side" you happened to pick and calling it a "large paid propaganda campaign" is dangerous and the world is certainy not "nicer that way".

This attitude is something you find everywhere because it's simpler for people who believe something strongly, to also believe that anyone who disagrees has been paid to do so. So it's attractive to dismiss anti-trump articles as "paid propaganda", and dismiss people like you as russian bots.

But you're going to have to wake up from that attitude at one point or another because it's going to catch up with you. As others have said, arrests and indictments aren't a "nothing burger". You won't get to the truth by dismissing sources you've been told not to like.

> As others have said, arrests and indictments aren't a "nothing burger"

Arrests and indictments for things unrelated to illegal dealings with Russia, except for maybe failing to renew registration as a foreign agent but that's a stretch.

>With the same team we could make mother Teresa seem like an imperialist religious nut.

Wouldn't be too hard considering the amount of valid concerns regarding her practices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa

Over a dozen indictments say otherwise.

How so? None of those seem to imply anything about a Trump/Russia connection so far.

If you start a fishing expedition for the Loch Ness monster, you're bound to find some fish but that doesn't prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster.

Why does Trump keep hiring people who are implicated with Russia? Why did his son meet with a Russian agent @ Trump Tower? What is the deal with Trump "special" relationship with Putin and why did he secretly meet with Putin for hours without a translator? Why do we often learn of US policy from Russian media before the White House? Canceled sanctions on Monday is the latest example.

These questions are not nothing.

I think you need to consult some neutral coverage and apply Occam's razor.

There was also Correct the Record - CTR.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record

>As for the Russiagate stuff, the front page is riddled with it because it's a very important subject in the US,

Not really. Describe how each news articles has impacted your day-to-day life. It's only important in that it keeps readers coming back who are excited about a big conspiracy taking down the president they don't like.

The most recent example? It was revealed in a court testimony that Cohen has Sean Hannity as a client (after Hannity explicitly denied being a client on twitter) which raises a ton of questions regarding Fox News and Hannity as a source of "news" and not just state-run propaganda. It's probably the other way around (media-run state) considering how much Trump watches Fox and Friends, but it's still a pretty big bombshell.

If you go onto subreddits that mostly focus on non-US news whenever Trump comes up it's pretty obvious that the majority of the world views Trump's White House in a negative light.

City specific subreddits are really hit or miss. Often it's people complaining about newcomers and how the drivers "here" are the worst drivers anywhere ever. Sometimes a good news story comes through. Some are better than others but that kind of discussion/complaining bores me.

I personally go to Reddit to relax and not fret about the state of the world. So, I unsubscribed to all of the serious or semi-serious subreddits (all news, politics, etc.).

Turns out if you unsubscribe from all of those types of subs, Reddit becomes a really funny and interesting time killer where the community actively tries to come up with ways to make you laugh.

> the atmosphere is incredibly toxic

People say that a lot, but, although there are a lot of people I don't agree with on there, I don't know about the applicability of the analogy "toxic". Most times, when people say reddit is "toxic", they're referring to a specific subreddit that I won't name here, but it's mostly just full of innocuous posts like "we have the greatest president, don't we?" - clearly designed to ruffle some feathers, which I suppose is in itself counterproductive, but "toxic" as in, leaches out into the surrounding area and makes it unusable? Seems a bit of an overstatement to me.

It's hard to bring up without being attacked, even off of Reddit, but for long-time heavy users it's been obvious for a while that Reddit has purposefully undergone several changes to control the narrative at the behest of advertisers and the powers that be.

I think it's more that Reddit grew so much that the original community gets drowned out by everyone else. You can't have a community that big without it becoming filled with, for lack of a better word, normies.

What narrative supports The_Donald and the numerous left leaning subreddits both being there? Honestly I hear this a lot and am curious. I believe it is because they are focused on retention numbers which thrive off focused insular communities to be clear.

Extreme polarization is good for page views.

I’m not sure that is actually what is happening overall, but the narrative that you hear a lot (and that would explain fairly intolerant subreddits like T_D and worldnews) is about filter bubbles and more generally the idea that we now have the ability to ignore other people’s dissent, and become complacent of more one-sided, prejudiced ways of presenting information. To take examples outside of reddit: it’s fairly easy to watch several hours of television every day, entirely about news, think that you know very well what is happening and be completely flabbergasted that anyone (reasonable) supports President Trump or reciprocally, that anyone (reasonable) doesn’t. This feels fairly new, not entirely driven by internet (more by the increase in news sources, i.e. likely the drop in production costs, and ad technology).

I suspect that this is happening more than before, but that the opposite (people finding structured, intelligent opposing viewpoints) is also happening more --people spend a lot more time informing themselves overall-- but that the more constructive phenomena is less destructive therefore harder to notice.

This is a valid complaint for non-technical users, but I don't understand why HN users don't customize reddit to suit their tastes instead of complaining. Signing up doesn't even require an email. Is there a better alternative? It's arguably the best feature that reddit brings. Don't like a sub-reddit? Remove it and add something else. You can even create your own and moderate to your taste. You can even grab someone else's reddit customization under multi-reddits. Here are some examples:

https://www.reddit.com/user/A_UPRIGHT_BASS/m/uplifting/

https://www.reddit.com/user/DrPropulsion/m/science/

https://www.reddit.com/user/bodaciousbecca/m/motivation/

I did the same and no longer login or use the front page.

I found that just going to a few subreddits on topics of personal interest that I can browse through for new ideas, user stories, etc. results in a much more positive experience.

Smaller communities for specific hobbies/videogames/etc (in most cases) seem to be less polarized on the platform.

I hate the default experience since it is purely low effort posts. The cute gifs are entertaining but I feel I am wasting my time compared to discussions on interesting topics.

By logging in you can select your subreddits which lets you filter out subreddits you don't care about and add ones you do care about.

Browsing subreddits is the best way to check out a particular topic but I do find their algorithm is okay at pulling up an okay overview of your subreddits if you login. (assuming you remove all the noisy defaults)

Why is it toxic to share stories about an investigation of the US President?

It's the commentary that's toxic. Nobody is allowed to criticize anything about the investigations or tenuous connections to Russia without being labeled a russian propagandist and downvoted out of visibility.

Look at this commentary from just today: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8da2uu/trump_wel...

Do you think this is constructive? https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8da2uu/trump_wel...

What about this? https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8dga0r/trump_tol...

There is no intelligent discourse occurring in those comments. It's just a big echo chamber.

Don't see any problems with what you posted. It's commentary on a commentary site within the community guidelines of that site. There are good posts there, I am sure, just as I am sure there will always be noise.

Every time you see a post on the front page you don't like, filter that sub from your front page. So easy. Unfortunate that Reddit limits you to filtering 100 subs from your front page.

So you're subscribed to them but filter them out of your front page? Why not unsubscribe entirely?

I think I worded it poorly. Reddit.com/r/all will show you what's tops throughout the site. You can filter subs out of that view.

I see. That makes sense but also why not use your home page instead of /r/all? or are you not logged in?

When I tried this I hit the 100 sub filter limit in a few days.

Ha yeah, I meant to mention that. Every few months I'll go through and try to let a few back in to clear up some space.

I ended up blocking like every state subreddit when the front page was nothing but net neutrality posts.

I had a pretty well-curated list of subscribed subreddits but reddit decided some of my interests are problematic and I deleted my account. Posting links to licensed firearm dealers legally selling firearms is too taboo for a site that has subreddits organized around linking videos of people dying.

>Russiagate stuff too for some reason

Because its one of, if not, the biggest story in the world right now? I mean, of course its going to occasionally top /r/politics and /r/worldnews.

The president and the highest levels of the GOP are directly targeted in an investigation that has brought 20+ indictments with several guilty pleas with apparently more to come.

This is a bit like saying the news in 1974 was too focused on Watergate.

> I mean, of course its going to occasionally top /r/politics

Have you actually ventured over there? Saying Russiagate/Trump stories are "occasionally" at the top of /r/politics is a bit of an understatement. They're obsessed over there.

Yes, a lot of negative stories about the Republican party are posted on /r/politics but that is because negative things keep happening. Last week the deputy finance chair of the RNC was exposed as paying $1.6M to buy silence for an aborted lovechild with a playboy model and that wasn't even the biggest story of the day.

Honestly, no major scandal in the last few days is the exception now, not the norm.