>I still don't like that people get into their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and ideological differences

Leaving your comment moderation duties up to majoritarian voting is inevitably going to do that.

Also internet anonymity brings extremism out of people.

IRL, when debating another person, most people IMO wouldn't be at least half as extremist as they're on reddit or HN

The Facebook-based comment sections on some news sites make me question that.

Anonymity is part of it, but I think an understated part is just lack of community. The people are just names on a screen and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that they’re people.

The interface of reddit and HN kind of encourage this. Old PHP BBs used to have avatar pics and signature blocks and stuff that distinguished your post as yours. It sort of anchored your “content” to an identity, so over time a community develops and people start to develop reputations and stuff. That doesn’t happen as much when everything is visually indistinct from everything else.

Agree

The obvious way out of that is to join bubbles that are aligned with your interests rather than political views. If your interest is politics then find a better interest :)

Every now and then when I access Reddit not logged in from somewhere I get reminded of this. If you curate what you are subscribed to it will be much better. About a year ago I wrote a little Python script in about an hour or so that subscribed me to every single state-level or above location-based subreddit (there is a webpage that you can go to that lists them all, I simply scraped that). I have learned so much about different cultures just by reading posts from people around the world posting things about their area.

can you share the script ? I'd be very interested in trying it out.

Sadly it was wiped when I reformatted awhile back. But it’s rather trivial to implement if you know a little python. The website I scraped is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocationReddits/wiki/index

It took a bit of finagling to exclude the US college and city subreddits but otherwise I subscribed as-is to everything on that page. I think I only have unsubbed to a couple of them manually after, mostly because of excessive political posts by people who clearly don’t live in the area (Israel and Palestine subreddits come to mind)

You get some great content from doing it. Specifically Denmark and Sweden have amazing content in Danish and Swedish respectively that you wouldn’t ever see otherwise. Plus the former Yugoslavia countries and Eastern Europe and basically a lot of Europe generically has some sweet content you would not normally see if you weren’t subbed to their subreddits. Right click to google translate helps a lot. There are some truly dank European memes out there.

One of the other things I noticed that was really cool is that I now am tuned in to state politics outside of my home state in US. You really start to see the major issues other states have when you are subbed to their home subreddit.

100%. Having a "passion" for politics was abrasive to my relationships with friends throughout high-school and returned very little value to me (save the short-lived energy I got from stupid internet debates).

Some people don't have the ability to not be concerned with politics.

If you mean like a bad habbit i agree.

Pretty sure doublepg23 was referring to those of us who aren't straight, cis-gendered males. Politics directly affects us, sure the rich among us can run to lavender marriages and try to cover up their innate desires, but the rest of us will end up being fed to the wolves.

For us, going to a rural town or even many suburbs elicits the observation "It smells like dead gay people" as you've entered an area where you may get lynched for being yourself. Even here in Seattle, non-straight couples are getting violently assaulted for being out in public with their significant other. The state of affairs is rapidly getting worse for us!

> Not sure what violence in Seattle have to do with whether you need to get politically involved.

Because that violence, like most issues in life, is rooted in politics. You cannot escape politics no matter how much you dislike it. The fact that you want to escape, or even can escape politics is in itself political. The fact that HN for whatever reason discourages politics is also politically driven.

Politics is life. Either embrace it or get left out.

> virtue signaling

99.9% of the people who use this term are actually committing the "crime" of "virtue signaling". Pot. Kettle. Black.

> FB, Twitter and Reddit with actual political involvement leads to more disappointment than progress

I would say political involvement (and the manipulation of) FB, Twitter and Reddit are directly responsible for our current regime here in the US. If anything, the key to winning is FB, Twitter and Reddit. Ignore them and you won't win, politically.

You make your pathetic jeers at "virtue signaling", but the "virtue signalling" from the alt-right on FB, twitter and reddit is exactly how the 2016 election was won.

It's a nice conspiracy theory it just doesn't have much to do with reality. You don't win people over politically on the internet, especially not by force-feeding identity politics into everything.

If you are unwelcome in enough places, you run out of places to go. If you live in the internet era and know before you go that there's no place free of such, it can easily be a case that standing your ground here and now is the most sensible reaction.

Not if you do it like its done here in this thread. I made a general statement about politics now we are talking identity politics. I am as liberal as they come but this attemp to sneak it into every conversation is not getting you the support you need. It becomes noise no matter how well intended it is.

doublepg23 made a really mild general statement and it wasn't in reply to you. You have argued with every single reply beneath it.

Your replies here are the ones that look like noise, a bad habit, etc.

It's not really mild general statement it was very specific to being LGBTQ.

> Some people don't have the ability to not be concerned with politics.

This is doublepg23's comment, despite where the conversation may have wandered, it was a very mild, general statement.

I guessed at what particular group doublepg23 was referencing, but with just a little imagination one can easily think of many non-LGBTQ+ segments of society that do not have the freedom to bury their head in the sand with regard to politics.

Do you have any cited evidence to support your assertions about rising violence? And are you sure that "violence against minorities" is not just a general trend? Everything I've read by the way shows that overall violence is way down but it certainly seems like mass shootings are up (but that started with Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and has been on the rise since). I can't name a single demographic that hasn't been targeted by psychos in the past few years, including white people (like the Vegas shooter who killed 57 country music fans or the Sutherland Springs Baptist Church shooting last year (26 mostly white Christians dead). Psychos are fucking psychos and they get triggered by anything. There's little rhyme or reason to it.

By and large gays have equal rights under the law. The fear of lynching is greatly exaggerated. There's ignorant people in the world...but what can be done to prevent these people from being radicalized? I think that's not a political thing but a community thing.

> Do you have any cited evidence to support your assertions about rising violence?

https://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/bias-cri...

50% increase between Q1 and Q3 2018, looking at historical data we're seeing double the number of hate crimes as any quarter in 2016.

> By and large gays have equal rights under the law.

Please stop calling us gays, its disrespectful & dehumanizing. We are people just like you!

We do not have equal rights under the law, and there is a patchwork of laws in select states with varying degrees of protection that cover discrimination, nevermind how most of these protections are being rolled back or fought by the federal government right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...

> The fear of lynching is greatly exaggerated.

Tell that to the dead gay men in Orlando, or the multiple people who've been attacked and murdered this year for being non-straight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...

> There's ignorant people in the world...but what can be done to prevent these people from being radicalized? I think that's not a political thing but a community thing.

Seems you missed what I said in the last comment. This demographic feels emboldened to hate by the current political climate. To prevent things from getting worse, we can't completely block out politics.

That does not show what you want it to show and it certainly does not back up the idea that there are only few places for lgbtq people to go which is the base of your argument for why some have no choice but to be in politics.

Your comment is extremely vague, and I cited quite a bit of data in my prior comment. Please refine your comment so people besides yourself grasp what exactly you are referring to.

It's pretty simple. Your claim about LGBTQ not being able live places without fearing for their wellbeing is simply wrong and to the extent it's true it applies to most other people too.

So no you don't HAVE to be in politics just because there are horrible attacks on the LGBTQ community.

> Your claim about LGBTQ not being able live places without fearing for their wellbeing is simply wrong and to the extent it's true it applies to most other people too.

How do you know this? Please cite sources, as is you make assertions with no backing. Even a brief read of Mastodon or Twitter shows that many LGBTQ+ people like myself fear for our wellbeing even in supposedly "safe" cities, and justly so considering how we are targeted.

> So no you don't HAVE to be in politics just because there are horrible attacks on the LGBTQ community.

I never said you have to be politically active if your LGBTQ+, but unlike cis-gendered straight people, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and entirely ignore all political news. The results of doing so in the past have been disastrous.

That's a remarkably privileged and blasé take, denying the importance of civic engagement.

Civic engagement happens in the real world, not by commenting on reddit, fb or Twitter.

Civic engagement happens wherever people discuss politics

That would be quite an exaggeration. You can already see in this thread how fast the conversation deteriorate into completely meningless quibbles.

Posting in political subreddits is not "civic engagement."

Reddit is basically one giant forum. Old fashioned discussion boards and message fora will still be around.

>I still don't like that people get into their own bubbles and do little to bridge the gaps between political and ideological differences

I have never found any sites/forums/bbs that didn't eventually devolve into a echo chamber given enough time.

People like to repeat the same opinion as others and those who don't like these opinions tend to be the first to leave for other pastures.

The biggest problem with reddit is that subreddits tend to get turned into little personal domains, ruled by a supreme dictator for life, turning the community experience sour for anyone who doesn't toe the party line.

When it's gone, the "old internet" will be gone

Well, it might not be "normie compatible", but there still is 4chan, which is a lot "old internet". I can understand that people do not like it and why it is that way though. But the point is: There are still sites out there which are like the old internet. They are obviously just not mainstream. They never were really (except reddit maybe). You just gotta find your little niche place and maybe look around every now and then, but they still exist.

Edit: No, i don't talk about /pol/. No one likes the right-wing /pol/-scum. That's not 4chan.

And Usenet still exists.

/pol/ may be the most salient and influential political forum on the internet (a recent study showed /pol/ produces the most reposted content seen elsewhere online). To describe it as “right wing” is like saying YouTube comments are right wing. It’s unmoderated, not right wing, there’s a big difference (see /r/the_donald if you want right wing). That said, these days it’s full of shills shilling shills. I prefer to hang out on the other, more apolitical and better moderated 4chan forums like g, tv, and o.

Addendum: to say /pol/ isn’t 4chan is both true and false but it’s kind of weird and unfortunate you felt obligated to apologize for using 4chan because /pol/ exists. Just because /pol/ tolerates witches doesn’t mean 4chan’s a witch site for witches populated entirely by witches.

the_donald is mostly shitposting. If you want an example of right wing you'd be better off with https://www.reddit.com/r/conservative.

There are still some of us that are trying to keep the old internet alive.

(Shameless plug: https://beta.getaether.net)

One of the cool thing, basically THE cool thing about the old internet was the exposure to a giant wide world with all different kinds of people and interests from all walks of life. It skewed technical, because you had to be technical to figure out how to work it. But once people got over an initial barrier it was cool, and it's not like there was anywhere else they could go if they wanted to reach whatever community they were into.

One of the problems with attempts to keep the "old internet" alive is that they still skew technical (because most of the people who are nostalgic for it are comfortable enough with those technical things), but now regular Joes have other options. They're not going to bother learning the technical stuff if everything else is set up to make it brainless and easy.

Moreover, since you HAVE to be technically inclined to build such a thing, the initial word of mouth and distribution winds up being constrained to the technical crowds. This makes the communities one-note and boring, so people just don't feel very compelled to stay.

Why would the technical bubble of the old internet be so interesting and diverse, but the technical bubble if today is so "one-note"?

The suggestion is that the old internet wasn't a pure technical bubble: although the barrier to entry made it more technical than average, it was still fairly diverse because the alternative to passing that barrier was staying off the internet entirely. Now, getting online is easy, and there are millions of alternatives to the techy corners of the internet. So nobody who isn't specifically interested in that stuff has any motivation to join in.

OTOH, today's "technical bubble" isn't really pure technical either - technology went from being nerds-only to full mainstream popularity, and there's plenty of both technologists with other side interests, and people from other walks of life with technology as their side interest.

I feel like you can have good UX and still preserve aspects of the freedom of expression, interest-based discussion, two-way dialogue, and the feeling of community and openness that the 90s internet had. But I agree that you do have to have these platforms compete with the giants and that's harder to do these days.

All I see is big "Download" links everywhere, that just go to a JS alert popup saying it's not out yet.

It looks interesting but with no way to preview the current communities or content before downloading, I'm hesitant to go through downloading, installing, and signing up to a new service, only to find out it's another Voat.

I’m trying to build something I like, beyond anything - so I’d rather have it not be Voat.

Hey rolleiflex, I would like to sign up for the newsletter, per the popup, but I cannot see how to.

Could you direct me to that page?

I feel like that happened to some extent when the SomethingAwful forums lost their dominance.

Every platform has its Eternal September.

Some of the first comments on Reddit were complaints about the site going downhill in almost exactly the same terms people use today: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/17913/reddit_no...

Nostalgia is powerful! The key has always been to unsubscribe all the “front page” (once “default”) subreddits.

That's true. But also every platform eventually gets bad and dies... probably?