I have been reflecting on ways to fix it lately. I was imagining something like reddit, but...
1) not completely anonymous / pseudonymous. Maybe a profile photo with you holding a sign with your username for verification (like certain subreddits do), first name, and SMS / phone number verification or something. That's all - not strong firstname / lastname identity like facebook, but also no throwaway accounts.
2) allow people to have a different alias for different subreddits, in a way that they stay separate and can't be easily linked. maybe that means one verification photo per subreddit, and all you really share across subreddits is your username / password. the thing of people looking through post history across different, unrelated subreddits and beating them up in response to their latest post is pretty toxic, and goes against real life where people tend to have a different persona in different contexts.
I think our online personas are just a reflection of our culture. Our culture sucks, so our online personas suck.
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.
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?
You could still call yourself KatDude420.
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?
But sure, the best subreddits tend to be heavily moderated and/or very niche. Is this really a problem?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The difference was pretty stark. I could only find breadcrumbs:
https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs...
An example might be archived somewhere...
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.
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?
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.
Killing the community was one of the best moves they could have made.
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.
Sorry, not trying to be funny here, I want to understand why there are some people who seem passionate about consuming their Internet methodically and sort of like egalitarian, and other people are just content to delve deeper into their own idiosyncratic impulses. I kind of think of like polarization in consumption habits as like recursion, almost. Ya know, because like it seems like people who make that connection that they like to consume content they already agree with and they can consume from some source to get that stimulus, that they end up recycling those behaviors into all the different media they consume until some point where they reach like an island in what content they engage with.
Anyways, do you have any idea? I'm just curious
I'm now wondering how do I rescue my data from StumbleUpon, I don't see any way to download it. I looked through the settings and my profile page. I even tried this new mix.com website and it didn't transfer any of my data from StumbleUpon. Anyone know whether I can export my data somehow?
The app had some UX issues, and some of the content could have used better curation, but overall I think the core idea is still relevant.
StumbleUpon took me out of my "filter bubble" if you will and introduced me to corners of the web I would have possibly never discovered on my own. It will be missed.