Reddit slowly became filled with hate
Reddit slowly became filled with hate
I have been on reddit for just about 12 years now. Something I've noticed over time is just how hateful the place has become. A complete outrage machine. Every single sub became filled with it. I've filtered so many subreddits over the last few years, it's insane. I don't know enough about this place to be sure, but I do hope it doesn't become the same type of echo chamber of anger.
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They did this to themselves.
Part of it was corporate greed and incompetence by the Reddit team where they were trying to drum up numbers for their upcoming IPO. For a social media platform, member numbers is pretty much the only thing that matters, so connected with the other 2 issues, it probably was encouraged for them to ban users knowing full well that most of them would just create a new account - which of course that would let them say they have even more registered accounts when they would go to advertisers.
Part of it was various misinformation campaigns run by political parties and foreign governments to spread hate and instability. The "Smarter Everyday" YouTube channel specifically did a video about Reddit and "bad actors" a few years back on the phenomenon which I recommend everyone watch, but not sure how linking to videos is accepted on Lemmy, so I'll let you find it. The FBI keeps on warning us about "bad actors" trying to spread lies and it is only going to get more intense as we get close to the upcoming US elections.
Part of it was an echo chamber where no alternative views could be expressed without mods getting all uppity and banning users. Mods have ultimate say and there were no checks-and-balances to what mods could do. No real way to question a ban and no real way to question a mod. And the lack of alternative views is especially egregious because Reddit was obviously a very left leaning site. They were doing the exact same thing that they would make fun of right-wing media would do, namely create this echo chamber where only like-minded people were really allowed to speak. Now to be clear, I lean left on the vast majority of issues, but for fucks sakes, some of the nonsense that was accepted on Reddit would make even me cringe.
In the end, Reddit got too big for it's own good because most of these problems could be solved on a much smaller site, but Reddit got so big with so much money at stake and then it's size made it such a large target for people. It became just a toxic mess.
(sorry for the diatribe, I was going to write 3 bullet points and leave it at that, and then just kept on expanding it more and more)
Yup, that's the video. 3 years ago and almost 1M views and people still don't really take the threat of "bad actors" seriously enough.
Surprised to read this and think back to my own experience with reddit.
You’re terrifyingly correct by my experience.
I was account banned on two accounts, but freely able to use other alts I had created.
Post a comment in disagreement about something that showed up on r/all feed? Easy ban.
The last account ban I got (which I appealed and lost) was over a comment in r/gamingcirclejerk - when that was on the front page a lot around the launch of Harry Potter video game - about how
“woman have worked hard to carve out their own spaces and they deserve to have them, away from men”
Now you can disagree with this, if you think men and women are interchangable (I do not, I believe in biology) but to account ban me?
Ya that’s … not a place I need to be. And obviously not a place I’m wanted anyway
I find it difficult to take your complaints seriously when you - by your own admission - were posting anti-trans dog whistles.
Nobody is obliged to host your shitty views - even on Lemmy.
This is the problem.
I’m not anti-trans. Be whoever you want to be, I don’t care.
But people like you, online, think any sort of questioning about what spaces non trans women (oh god why do I have to even qualify that. They’re women ffs) deserve to have is somehow transphobic.
Women have been terrorized by men trying to invade their space for generations. What are their rights?
r/gamingcirclejerk sounds like a unlikely place to find mods who are open to opinions. I'm at the point where I've conditioned myself not to comment on big subreddits because if I know not enough people will side with me about something it's pointless to say it. That I feel like a lot of people sense in intellectual debates. They think you're all on camera and this is for the front page of a newspaper or something and you have to have full time editors proof reading it. It never was meant to be like that though, and it creates an information suppressed community.
I’ve conditioned myself not to comment on big subreddits...
Doesn't that defy the whole point of having free expression?? Having to always walk on eggshells is total bullshit. If you get downvoted, that's one thing, I am more than fine with taking the hit if others don't agree with my comment, but getting banned for something that is simply an alternative viewpoint is nonsense. And I obviously get why banning people is needed sometimes (spam, totally hateful comments, sexual links, etc), but bans should be for a limited time (like say a 24 HR ban) so as not to force a user to needlessly create a new account every other week because of some out of control mod.
Yep, I was talking more about downvote hivemind and getting hidden/shadow banned. Not the same conversation I guess... But it is a symptom of the behaviour reddit has turned into. I remember I used to not feel so judged online when I was in highschool for expression, but Reddit now adays is an angry place to be in sometimes.
But if it’s on r/all, shouldn’t that be an expectation to have a differing view point expressed on a controversial topic?
Also, the mods didn’t ban me from the sun, the admins account banned me completely from the entire site.
“Banned by reddit”
Not
“Banned by moderator”
Except for egregious issues (endless spamming, posting onlyfans links, and just totally hateful posts all the time) there should almost never be a total and complete permanent ban.
Someone's first offense should be a 24 hr ban. Basically a cooling-off period. No big deal. Go outside for a bit. If you get banned again, maybe it is then 48 hrs. And there should be some stipulations where the same mod can't ban you again (to keep them from abusing the rules). And then it goes up from there by a day with every new ban. The whole permanent ban thing needs to go away except for extreme cases.
I have no idea how Lemmy works, but I really hope they are open to a system like this.
I know a streamer who also got banned for a personal message he sent to a fan. He had the word bastard in it but it was in jest. On his own subreddit... He talked to the fan on a stream and he even denied reporting him, which means Reddit watches your messages and you can be banned for a week for saying "bad words". Reddit is dead lol.
What a shithole