Some subreddits are/were highly toxic (e.g. the infamous r/incels). Some other are full of vulnerable life stories you won’t find anywhere else. People won’t post them on their public FB feeds; not everyone writes anonymous blogs. Any coverage of such topics by journalists (if the topic gets ever covered) is likely to focus on a handful of cases, be biased and heavily edited.
For an example from Reddit, see “Trans people of Reddit, what was something you weren’t expecting to be told, find out, or experience when going through your transition?” (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...).
Another subreddit with not so much majority view is CMV: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/. It is heart-warming (and mind-stimulating) to see people open to changing their minds. Compare and contrast with Twitter, where there are no enough characters to express a more nuanced argument. And views are usually pushed down one’s throat (if they ever leave a bubble).
I just love the idea that you can have a judgement free place to discuss things openly and get reasoned replies without being piled on.
Sometimes we hold views which are controversial, and it's great that we can had a non-adversarial discussion about those things.
The only downside is that the person asking to change their view might end up being right in the end, and that the view should not have been changed, but that's against the spirit of the subreddit.
It also has some minor problems of people asking to change their view but have no honest intention of doing so.
But regardless of that, I love that subreddit and I'm sure it wouldn't be possible without good moderation.
It would have been unclear and implicitly sound like I agree if I didn’t include that.
All the upvoted, visible views are the same trite repetition topics that have been done a thousand times before that are also about hot button political issues: more interesting apolitical C.M.V.'s are often downvoted for not being political enough. I've seen views about optiomality of certain cooking methods be downvoted there.
To make it clear, I know that the whole Reddit demographic is not representative.
However, each channel subreddit has a different demographic. Too much of a male perspective? Go to r/TwoXChromosomes/. Too libertarian or heteronormative? You can find your channels too.
I once posted my praise (and interactive exploration) of NSFW content (https://observablehq.com/@stared/tree-of-reddit-sex-life, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19640562). In short - I don't know any other place with that much openness to different body types, styles of grooming, etc.
I got into a real black hole of posting about politics on Reddit during lockdown, which as someone with fairly anti-authoritarian convictions couldn't have been timed more horrendously. Deleted all my accounts and it did wonders for my sanity.
I imagine you were fairly safe from death and rape threats, as happens frequently on Twitter, but you're right it's not a welcoming place for everyone, at least outside of certain subs.
Reddit is a particular demographic and mostly a particular philosophical lean.
And there are ways for users to be dicks without the extreme behaviour you get on Twitter. I'm sure it happens on Reddit too but it seems more managed.
That's what made me leave Reddit fundamentally, I wanted a debate rather than a conflict. I want people who'll tell me why I'm wrong, not people who'll call me an irredeemable piece of shit for not clicking my fingers and 100% agreeing with some philosophy neither of us really had an in-depth knowledge of. It's like internet debates (especially on Twitter) have adopted the old Calvinist notion of "total depravity" for the modern age. It's not even about being right, it's about other people being wrong and that'll make you an angry, bitter person if you're jumping headlong into that world for hours a day.
Different subreddits will have different majorities with different views, no?
> toxicity ... toxic towars other people
What does this mean? For example, if you are sitting inside your bubble and laughing at the outsiders, who don't even come to your bubble, is there any toxicity going on?
Different subreddits do have different majority views, yes, but the largest subreddits all pretty much have the same ones.
There have been some hard right subs, but most of the larger ones are banned now.
I find a lot of the mods of large subs are quite power hungry too, for example r/soccer. If someone breaks some news, linking good sources, correct post format etc. mods will regularly take the post down and repost it themselves or just leave their own posts up so they get the karma for it.
When I first joined that kind of thing bothered me, and I enjoyed getting internet points and actively tried to get karma. Now if I think something is funny or relevant I'll post it, but generally avoid big subs and stick to smaller niche ones about a certain topic, like a phone, programming language, football club, watch brand, cryptocurrency etc.
I can't even begin to express the emotion from the thought that someone may decide to erase a part of your life. This is what puts me off social networks in general.
For politics, I have no advice , probably try real life
Try telling any car sub that Toyotas can break or that Germany's automotive regulations are even slightly over-bearing and see where that gets you. No matter how narrowly you scope your dissent from the local norms the platform rewards everyone dog-piling onto the dissenter. There is simply no room for conversation on that platform and that drives out anyone who doesn't extremely align with whatever the local opinion on a given sub is so eventually all subs become filter bubbles almost completely dominated by one set of views and you basically can't have any meaningful exchange unless it's ten levels of comments deep where the masses won't see it and crap on it.
Still you need to find a subreddit with rules like:
- comments only on topic
- no personal attacks, only critique the content
- always provide sources when providing some information as a fact
- no lazy comments like me too, memes, jokes,
When you find such a subreddit then do a bit of work and report comments and threads that are breaking the rules and of-course respect the rules.
I wish HN would have such rules, you could have lazy comments, bad jokes, aggressive comments, information without a source removed.
On r/justrolledintotheshop, a fairly large mechanic and car enthusiast subreddit, those kind of discussions are commonplace. The mechanics will say "toyotas are usually reliable" and then also agree that they suffer from rust issues. You are being heavily hyperbolic or refusing to see counterexamples to your belief
I honestly think some people are just not used to get pushback on their ideas. Whether they are surrounded by like-minded individuals in real life or they just haven't ever shared their believes/thoughts much, I don't know. But I quite often see people shocked by encountering the concept that their ideas aren't perfect.
Couple that with the difficulty of reading intent and intensity in a written media and you get people that believe conversations are heavily skewed against them.
While reddit is actually left leaning in a more purely political view as well, I don’t find conservative viewpoints banned/discriminated against that are actually political, only those that are anti-people — which is welcome.
This is an almost natural consequence. The largest sub-groups start out with having most of the same people of the whole society. Then the minorities get turned off and leave to smaller sub-groups where they feel more welcome.
Then communities like r/AgainstHateSubreddits show up and try to get those subreddits banned for even the slightest infraction.
No, not really.
Ignoring standard left/right policy bickering points you are still going to catch a lot of hate on Reddit if you don't think people are fundamentally untrustworthy by default and that centralized authorities (be they governments, academia, professional organizations or BigCo) are fundamentally trustworthy and credible by default.
Offend upper middle class consumer sensibilities and you'll catch a whole lot of hate from that direction too.
It's hard for me to accept such a final "No" when there seems to be a sub for literally every viewpoint. However, I am willing to accept that those subs get brigaded and maybe that's what you're referring to?
This was the comment you were remarking on, and I have difficulty reconciling "No." with the reality of all the different subreddits available.
Yes.
These places are echo chambners too you just don't realize it because you agree with the echo.
Go on I am the asshole and give even the slightest hint of approval for a parent that's parenting in a traditional manner (e.g. approving of a "my house my rules" attitude toward an older teenager) and you'll get all sorts of hate.
Go on idiots in cars and talk about how people can't be expect widespread compliance for asinine road signage (like a 55mph speed limit on an interstate highway designed and marked for a much higher speed) and you'll be inundated with "hurr durr the law is the law" types.
"It's a useless echo chamber" is the number one complaint I see about aita.
In life you're the only judge, as long as you're not doing anything which hurts another person you can do whatever you want. Say you only want to live in a city with fresh chocolate almond croissants. This is not subject to Reddit approval. The opinions of others, particularly random people should have absolutely no bearing on your life. But if you're chasing fake Reddit status, you can quickly lose sight of this.
The internet king of pluriformity and aggressive dissent still remains 4chan. A lack of identity does seem a good way to facilitate dissent.
Thankfully, I didn't have the wrong opinions. Another mod did, and there were threads calling for his resignation, for a change of mods. Of course, no one actually volunteered their own effort.
I don't go there much anymore.
Arguably Reddit at least has niche communities which are small enough to avoid the problem of dogpiling and mass downvoting (except via brigading).
That's very much in the eye of the beholder. This isn't my first account (I abandoned my previous one a few years ago) and I chose the name for a good reason. The only good thing I can say is that my username does not seem to have had an effect on downvoting behavior.
There are plenty of communities on Reddit that are considerably smaller than HN and either have good moderation or are unknown enough to be able to do well without it. HN isn't special, or at least not any more special than the rest.
I used to post waaaaay too much, but lost all interest in it because there are only downsides nowadays.
For a good mental health is imperative to avoid reddit, or at least just take part in tech/thinvs you love, but even there the neagtive and frustrated people will bring their issue there.