I saw dozens of death threats. Even an explicit death threat thread with over 40,000 upvotes before reddit stepped in and shut the whole subreddit down.
It reminded me of Ghostbusters 2 with all the aggressively angry people and the ooze pouring out of the sewers, all building upon itself.
It's all just driveby anger and reposts. Maybe some smaller subs with good communities here and there, but that often requires a mod team putting in substantial hours and remaining under the radar from All/Popular in any shape.
Forgot to mention, Reddit also started paying these accounts for posting. So a literal financial incentive to ragebait. It' called the "Contributor Program".
So what Reddit has morphed into, is an illegal content factory - there has already been a comment or two about it from the government and the Trump admin is not one that is likely to sit on my sidelines over this.
Whatever your politics may be, I'm just saying this is going to burn Reddit bad.
Under US first amendment rights, it's actually sometimes legal.
For example, "Watts v. United States" established that if an anti-draft speaker tells a crowd "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ" that's political hyperbole.
So if a crowd were to set up a guillotine outside congress and chant "hang mike pence" it's not necessarily illegal.
Saying “I think this person should be killed” is legally free speech.
> This community has been banned
> This subreddit has been temporarily banned due to a prevalence of violent content. Inciting and glorifying violence or doxing are against Reddit’s platform-wide Rules. It will reopen in 72 hours, during which Reddit will support moderators and provide resources to keep Reddit a healthy place for discussion and debate.
It's disheartening when the one-track politics infects every square inch. It's a good point about bots because 1) they can be sold or rented to advertisers, 2) they are more valuable with higher karma, and 3) the easiest way to get a bot to harvest karma is by agreeing with the hive. So they're amplifying "the message" without even intending to.
I will say, the subreddit system does a decent job of quarantining the dysfunction to that sub. The mod quality is everything and the mod drama is an absolute dumpster fire. (Extremely curiously, Ghislaine Maxwell seems to have been one of the most prolific of the mods, and one of her suspected accounts may be one of the most successful (karma-wise) posters of all reddit.) But on the flipside, /r/askhistorians is still one of the best resources on the internet. Many of the specialty subreddits I frequent (Aviation, UkraineRussiaReport, video game subs, several miscellaneous african subs) are still functioning fine.
Anyway, it's a war. Propaganda is essentially impossible to avoid without ignoring the topic entirely. Still, it's what we have to work with. And to be clear my sympathies lie with the ukrainian people.
Most subreddits gets formed by someone who's tired of the existing subs, gets into one too many arguments with a mod, and thinks they can do better. I don't know anything about these specific subs but I wouldn't see "this guy formed this sub after getting called out by a mod in another sub" as any kind of red flag.
It used to be a good site, but that was many years ago.
What do people think others will do, when they see that the_donald behavior gets rewarded by electoral and political support?
If its not clear, everyone is going to radicalize, because its getting success.
They believe people hate Americans and everyone should be ashamed traveling overseas. As someone who travels all the time to multiple continents not just Europe i have never encountered anyone who asked or even cared. Most people don’t live in a political bubble where they need to stop being friends with people over politics.
Anyway a lot people are choosing to live in an angry little bubble. It is really sad to see.
The same can be said for the supporters of many radical and terrible historical regimes. I'm not radical, I'm simply pushing this radical boulder along, and I can stop it whenever I wan tooo-oops."
Now, you want to stereotype all supporters by dismissing his counterpoint with innuendo, using a slippery slope fallacy.
Near as I can tell, the biggest failure of the left (and one that keeps getting repeated) is thinking words/knowledge matter in situations like this.
Good luck with that.
You're the one who's been making all the personal condemnations of evil intent, stop with the psychological projection.
Whose morals? What morals?
The online charicatures are just that. In both directions.
Real talk though: the US, via the current administration, is trashing its international reputation. With tariffs and lashing out at (former?) allies. Or with Musk demanding regime change in the UK, for instance. On a personal level people will still be chill no doubt, but you should be prepared for some negative attitudes towards the US if things continue unabated.
I’ve seen this sequence of events play out before.
In many was ‘go outside’ is dismissive of what many people feel is happening, that to within 15 days of this new presidency. This is a low key way of saying you don’t like people protesting.
While at the same time others are saying people aren’t protesting enough.
If you aren’t ok with all of this, I strongly suggest deleting all social media, including hacker news. Take your advice and go outside. Be good to your neighbors and your mental health.
There is zero space for passive consumption when one of the biggest cultural and economic forces in English speaking Internet land is dismantling itself.
There is going to be very little space for any tolerance of nuance - because Trump is going to continue to escalate. He is going to follow a plan which was known, and it aims at gutting the US, and justifying it with DEI or whatever the cassus belli of the month is.
This is eventually going to result in ‘riots.’
Which will feed the righteousness of the conservatives, which will result in a new round of “well you were so happy when the year started, where are you now.”
It will escalate into attacks on democrats as the devil. And HN will swing from left outrage to right outrage.
At that time the roles will be reversed, and the positions will switch.
Again - If you or anyone reading these comments is tired on Feb 6th - leave the internet right now. This is your tornado / natural disaster warning.
This isn’t meant to be hurtful to you, or to be any defense of anything.
I always assume I am wrong, and I hope I can look back at these comments with embarrassment over what looks like histrionics.
The problem I have is that i deal with social media and online safety as work and as research. Papers on this topic are my fun reading when my brain isn’t fogged up.
This is going to be worse than brexit. And that’s if we are all lucky.
I was asking bankers if there’s any slack in the financial system in November - and I asked this in multiple countries.
The answer was no. So when the trade shocks start hitting the system, expect a downturn.
This is aside from the walking dead syndrome which america will face after gutting multiple systems in-flight.
I wish you luck and the very best. Sorry.
It’s surely ten times worse now. Trump makes W look like a statesman, and we could at least plead that W didn’t win a majority and only became president because the system is stupid.
It seems to be mainly European neoliberals that are more upset about Trump.
Subreddits like r/pics are packed full of thinly veiled death threats towards the sitting president or Elon Musk. That is not okay, and Reddit on the whole is far more radical today than the_donald ever was.
This is just blatant misinformation. Since r/pics is the only example you've chosen to give us, let's evaluate it: I've scrolled through the current first 50 posts in Hot, and 0 of them are death threats, thinly veiled or otherwise. "Packed full", indeed.
And here, so it isn't simply my word vs. his; these are the current posts:
Protest, "Musk Stole Your Tax Data"
Picture of Nazi being punched after making a Nazi salute
Protest, "The Whole World is Watching"
Painting over values at the FBI
McConnell in a wheelchair
Flag upside down outside State Dept.
Kid covering ears with politician in foreground
"Buy Canadian Instead" sign in CA store
Protest, no visible message, flag with corp logos instead of stars
German anti-fascism protest
UFC fight match post KO [KO'd opponent is a neo-Nazi]
US Marine holding flag in distress position
Protestor, "No kings in America", dressed as Cap. America, mouth taped over
Protest "Nobody voted for Elon"
Protest "Stop Musk's Takeover"
Picture of Trudeau
Protest "Smells like Fascism"
- The nazi punching thread had several moderated comments ranked near the top which were presumably calls to violence.
- The Mitch McConnal thread has many people looking forward to his death, hoping he goes to hell, and a few deleted comments.
- A musk thread has "eat the rich" and storm the capitol. Not super highly ranked.
I didn't go through all of them but it certainly is a bit odious.
Also note though how there's only 1 non political thread and the remainder are anti trump. This is on a general interest sub and what is likely to be an unremarkable day in the administration!
If you stop your thought at just “people are losing their shit”, thats seeing half the world.
I’d say thats disingenuous, because it misses or dismisses the incredibly alarming actions that have precipitated them.
If you genuinely care about it, then you might be interested in knowing why people are responding like this. For example, people generally hate Nazis, and punching Nazis is a popular idea.
DO people expect themselves to be polite when the see a takeover and destruction of their government? “it looks like pre WW2 Germany out there, do pass the salt dear.”
As someone who tries to be non partisan, and isn't even american, I am fatigued by all of the claims that the world within the USA is ending. Whenever I take the time to examine any of the claims they tend to be fairly hollow or making slippery slope arguments.
As an international user of reddit, there are many of us I presume, I want the outrage to be saved for Trumps undeniable and worst offenses. In my eyes the memecoin was worse than anything which has happened since he became president and yet it has completely left the collective focus. Everything since then has just been a mix of people allowing trump to dictate the media cycle and the deep state deploying its immune system.
If we review democracies through history that have at some point become less democratic, I think describing the process of how that actually happens as being a slippery slope is quite apt. I’d say it’s more of a fallacy to assume that democracy is a secure default state of being rather than an ideal that we must collectively support or lose entirely—that we can safely “slip” a little without risking a slide further down the slope.
They also map to historical counter-examples.
You don't have to go far. Take hysterical false positives like #RussiaGate, which turned out to be a manufactured hoax.
Let's say I disagreed with you - I have no incentive or reason to discuss those disagreements. Off the bat, you've called everyone that disagrees with you a Nazi that needs to be violently attacked.
So both sides will just go back to their echo chamber, perpetuating the cycle of increasingly extreme and detached rhetoric.
They did not do this. Everyone can read the post that you’re responding to.
I also had trouble with all the far right wingers who kept talking about civil war.
Or you didn't experience, or don't know what they are, what they think and what they want ; neither the aftermath.
There is a reason people are angry and the truth is Musk/trump have gone too far. It's bizarre to say but we are watching the downfall of the USA in real time. The country has been captured by criminals who are working to destroy it–folks are going to be angry about that.
Are you for real? Is this seriously a good faith argument? My man, you may be a true believer, and that is no compliment. Course correct. Try to steelman a bit.
If you feel the need to defend the salute I would suggest digging into that.
No, as evidenced by the "Politics" flair. (But also no, the rules of the sub do not forbid political images.)
> Does it tend to feature current events and is that lineup just proportional to the magnitude of what's happening right now?
Yep.
No, I'm not. I'm making a statement about a particular claim: that Reddit is overwhelmed with leftist death threats.
I said nothing about r/pics being apolitical, and I'm not taking a stance in this comment chain about whether I think r/pics should or should not be apolitical. That's a different claim, and you're moving the goalposts.
> Bring back the guillotine
> violence is the answer
etc. The implication is clear.
In fact, Reddit itself has had to step in and remove hundreds of comments from some of the threads. r/WhitePeopleTwitter was just temp banned for a thread full of death threats and 40k upvotes as well.
Reddit has a problem. It is clearly radicalizing people.
Hacker News is radicalizing, and is very likely going to have to decide if it’s going to be pro MAGA or not.
What did people think the response was going to be once Trump did everything he said he would? People would lie back and let things happen?
In America? The land of the second amendment? I mean people should be happy, after this liberals are going to be proud members of the NRA.
- deported a few thousand illegal immigrants who are criminals and rapists
- reduced border encounters by 60-90%
- taken back Panama Canal from Chinese dictatorship
- attempted to shrink the size of the government and American tax burden
- put more tariffs on Chinese dictatorship
- increased foreign spending in US by a few hundred billion
- focused US on AI
- prevented biological men from beating up biological women in sports
- taken over Gaza to prevent another war between Israel and Hamas
- gotten Mexico and Canada to finally own up to protecting the border
- been taking fentanyls killing Americans very seriously
I've never seen so many good things accomplished from a government in such a short time. I'm sure many people around the world are jealous at the velocity of our government.
As well as thousands who are normal hard-working people.
> taken back Panama Canal from Chinese dictatorship
By using threats of force like a dictatorship.
> attempted to shrink the size of the government and American tax burden
In illegal, non-democratic ways.
> put more tariffs on Chinese dictatorship
As well as more democratic allies.
> focused US on AI
Without understanding the huge risks involved for all of humanity.
> taken over Gaza to prevent another war between Israel and Hamas
By doing ethnic cleansing.
> gotten Mexico and Canada to finally own up to protecting the border
And in the process lost the trust and respect of allies.
Do you have sources for that? Honestly trying to find out. Thanks!
Also, Biden has already addressed the numbers coming across the border [1]. So again, the people who are left are mostly hard working people trying to make a life.
I grew up an active NRA member, shooting since I was 6. I have long since disassociated myself with the group but want to make it clear - a lot of liberals have guns and regularly practice using them.
We don't need the NRA (a Putin funded organization) to do that!
Reddit has been basically unusable for anything concerning politics since, and nowadays with politics leaking out into every damn sub possible it definitely has a problem.
Then I realized that my kindergarten teacher was onto something when she told us we should be nice and share our toys, and I grew up.
The temperature is so high right now, and it's only continuing to rise because there seems to be zero accountability for what's happening whether it's pardons or Musk running unfettered through government accounts. Unfortunately, it's natural for people to keep escalating when they see no other avenue.
Reddit has in general got way worse since 2016. The amount of bloodthirst and hate is very unsettling.
I might have a different threshold for hateful on the internets or I didn't look closely enough.
Reddit has always had these elements, but they were previously isolated to certain subreddits.
I noticed the biggest change when the app and website became aggressive about getting people to join other subreddits and inserting posts from other subreddits into people's feeds. Suddenly the isolated subreddits I followed were full of low effort content and angry comments.
Reddit's front page is shockingly bad. The amount of misinformation and ragebait that gets upvoted to the front page is almost hard to believe.
It's also interesting that many subreddits have embraced the ragebait. Subreddits like /r/AITA have been clear about how they don't care if stories are real or not, but legions of Redditors engage with obvious ChatGPT spam as if it was a real situation they need to weigh in on.
Please be specific.
I used to waste so much time posting about cars on Reddit. I'd open my computer at 11pm, reply a few times to a single post on Reddit, and before long, I'd see 1:45am on the clock.
Not posting anything has been a massive time saver.
I'm always growing my "playlist" though. One room of the house is where I auditioning new music. Another room plays my entire music catalog on shuffle.
Fun fact: No one is impressed by your "sports" car, but I'll bet 100% don't want hear it and wish the worst upon you.
I know some places are testing sound ticketing, which I cannot wait to see implemented everywhere.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/technology/a39906304/californi...
I hope you get over your noise addiction sooner than later. Or, go broke in the process.
Outside of reddit/discord/hn, I haven't had any social media since roughly 2010, and I don't use reddit or discord for anything remotely "social media"-ish.
While I still get the occasional look as if I'm wearing a tinfoil hat when I say "I don't have FB. No, no insta either. No... not snapchat either", I find it's a lot less common now, thankfully. When I first left social media in ~2010, it was rough. Not only dating scene wise, but I lost out on a few job opportunities (at least a few, probably more than I know) as well.
Now you're just considered kind of weird/fringe, instead of being borderline insane. Moving (slowly) in the right direction, I think.
Very occasionally a potential client messages me through it but they are almost very low quality contacts.
Headhunters are trying to be influencers, they have games, news feeds are full of junk or agenda pushing (lots of anti-WFH pieces because the wealthy owners need to keep their commercial property prices up), etc.
I can only recommend it if you are independently wealthy, want to become an ascetic, or more broadly, your goal is to never be hired or really even evaluated for much in the business world again.
None of the rest of the social networks serve as a sanity check on your resume/application/meeting.
> People who avoid LinkedIn remind of those who scoff at the stock market. Yes, it sucks if you hold it wrong.
As for maintaining an up-to-date profile, I think its worth dialing-down the access unless you're actively looking for a new job.
But the bs that people post to try to get "engagement" makes my head hurt. I'm about to start a new job in a few weeks and it'll be a relief not to have to bother with linkedin again for a few (hopefully many) years.
Are there any women (in highly developed countries) under 40 who aren't on some form of social media? I never met any. I think it would be more difficult than men for social reasons.
I understand that some people find it reassuring to receive a constant stream of recruiter inquiries, but from what I hear these messages are mostly low-effort, shotgun-blast attempts to fill undesirable positions, so I don't feel like I am missing out.
On more than one occasion the direct feedback of why I didn't move further in the hiring process was a lack of internet presence.
But, again, keep in mind this was early 2010s. Social media hadn't had as much time to show the world how poisonous it is.
You can just add subs that are of interest that lack the torrent of bad news and only ever visit that custom feed. It doesn't ever algorithmically add posts from subs you don't manually include, as far as I've seen.
In fact NFL teams are specifically banned from having bluesky accounts as an official media channel, and r/nfl still banned X/Twitter.
sigh
https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/new...
Presumably there’s some money that needs to change hands between the NFL and a social media site.
I still use old.reddit and this is the only way I've ever used Reddit. My homepage only shows me posts from Reddits I follow and nothing else. I don't see all the craziness people here are talking about.
Cannot stand unsolicited content.
It's even possible the places that people then move to (such as HN) also get more radical if the leavers have higher levels of radicalism than the place they join.
I will be explicit in that I am not condoning doxxing Reddit mods. I just don’t think we’d be fine with this in normal day to day life.
Not personally, but their names are public, and if they were taking backhanders there would be a scandal. Remember the payola lawsuits?
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Banning the_donald was the beginning of the end for Reddit, at least as far as balanced discourse went. At that time, the r/all was relatively balanced and you'd see major news stories from both POVs.
Now it's a hysterical echo chamber full of thinly veiled death threats towards the sitting president.
Disclaimer: I have money invested in RDDT.
This can't be healthy, for two reasons:
(1) The health of the company. As an investor in RDDT, I am not a fan of the site's landing page alienating 50% of Americans right off the bat.
(2) The health of public discourse. We should all be against the creation of echo chambers and weaponization of headlines.
My politics are to the left of the American left, but I’d be crazy to believe that the mountains of the anti-Trump posts are organic & the spoonfuls of pro-Trump posts are paid, especially after an election where Trump won the popular vote.
I’ve never really understood doomscrolling on Twitter or Reddit. The only social media I find remotely useful out entertaining is actually TikTok. The comments are IME the least toxic and most entertaining. And I’ve gone down fascinating rabbit holes of things that have absolutely no relevance to my life like medical residency TikTok.
You can mute subreddits and not see them anymore
Funny you have to purge the algo on things like YouTube if you click on a thubmnail with some hot chick, boom your feed is nothing but click bait of hot women
Probably worth Googling something like [men who don't have social media] to think what women think about this, it's more positive than you might think :)
It's not about scoping you out. Asking for your Instagram is like what asking for your number was in the past. It's flirting, it's that they want to get in touch again, set up a date.
If you say "I don't have Instagram", the girl will assume that you don't like her, not that you don't have Instagram.
So just make an empty Instagram (with a normal profile photo) for connecting with people. And say so when sharing it with a girl. If it's somebody who wants to "scope you out", you're already dealing with a person who you don't want to deal with.
> So just make an empty Instagram
Why not, instead, say "I don't have Instagram, here's my [ bluesky handle / phone number / email address ]"?
Just tell her you are an Arch Linux admin and skip the flirting.
> phone number
Yes, in regions where people use phone numbers / WhatsApp numbers in that way.
> email address
Just tell her you wanna sell her a time share and skip the flirting.
Personal website is the way to go. Preferably a static site built with a home-made templating engine written in Ruby and running on a non-mainstream budget cloud provider. The chicks dig it man.
Even a hint of Wordpress is social death.
/s
I actually feel really good when people expect me to be on social media and I tell them Im not.
Kind of similar to the feeling when I say that I quit cigarettes. Im still surprised by it and talking about it makes me feel very blessed to be free of it.
I find myself reaching for something when I have YouTube/chilling at my desk at the end of the day, can't code anymore/make something just on till I sleep. Sometimes have the desire to play a video game (I have a gaming rig too funny how that works)
I've been trying to read HN or IEEE, TechCrunch stuff like that as my "lazy fun"
I will miss posting stuff like "what is this car" or being part of the car talk for a sporty car I drive but idk kind of want to just live too
It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one, I get it they can scope you out too for safety but when I tried using that stuff I felt this pressure to post about something
Anyway my main goal in life right now is getting out of debt/staying fit and work on projects