Comment by whyenot

Comment by whyenot 11 hours ago

16 replies

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What I find particularly bad about Reddit is the platform is specifically designed to amplify group think and silence competing opinions. All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility. It can turn subreddits into little bubbles where like-minded people upvote each other and almost never have to see dissenting opinions. That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit, but it can be a big problem or even dangerous elsewhere.

Aurornis 11 hours ago

> That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit,

I had to abandon my last few hobby subreddits because there were a few chronically online people who had to control the conversation in every single post with their opinions. If anyone didn't agree, their comments would mysteriously go to -3 or below within 30 minutes of posting.

It's all little fiefdoms for chronically online people now.

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  • Imustaskforhelp 11 hours ago

    What are your thoughts on lemmy, maybe the hobby can be extremely niche but you can even be the moderator yourself on a lemmy instance and I think that a federated reddit alternative would be nice too!

    If I may ask, what are the hobbies that you are talking about?

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    • Semaphor 2 hours ago

      > What are your thoughts on lemmy

      I was big on it during the reddit excursion. Eventually I figured out that because it’s so small, that many/most people read the equivalent of /r/all, where many, many posts would end up. So even your small niche community would get "genpop" users. That’s what made me return to reddit instead and delete my instance (that, and the politics of the creators infesting some major instances).

      The only halfway sane community I found was beehaw.org, which defederated aggressively, but that came with being very small, and I always cared most about the discussion over the links themselves. So eventually I left that as well.

      ETA: I would probably summarize it that Lemmy is (or was, been a while now) better than big subreddits, but worse for small niche communities which imo are by far the best part of reddit, and the only part I care about.

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    • NoMoreNicksLeft 7 hours ago

      >What are your thoughts on lemmy,

      I was hopeful when I found out about it...

      The trouble I think, going forward, is that no matter how good the technology of a new forum might be, everyone is primed and ready to flock to it. How could anything be good if the same 500,000 redditors that turned it into shit show up the first week? Worse, even if they don't, there are all sorts of crackpots who try to preempt by colonizing new ones early hoping that they can sway the thing once it gets big (Lemmy and the commies).

      This is Eternal September.

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      • Imustaskforhelp 6 hours ago

        I completely understand your comment and found the reference to eternal september fascinating and how it happened 35 years ago and people were talking about internet being too crowded. thanks for reference, learnt something new.

        > there are all sorts of crackpots who try to preempt by colonizing new ones early hoping that they can sway the thing once it gets big

        I do wonder if software can be used to prevent this tho. I mean Hackernews came after reddit and its community doesn't have crackpots (well ahem, maybe sometimes but definitely fewer than reddit maybe)

        I do think about hackernews from time to time and think about how the ethos around it is Curiosity >> everything. I mean sometimes small comments/low value comments can be rewarded but usually its the well thought out comments which get value. (Well, this explains why my comments don't get +1 haha, self roasts are fun!)

        I do think that in HN this intentional change plus the fact that pg spearheaded the project personally as a personal project for the first few years set the mood around it here to be like this (which is usually civil, even in disagreements)

        I think that even in HN guidelines or in some important place, there is this thing called HN is not reddit and such comparison. I find it funny right now but I think that they wrote this to specifically prevent some aspects of what you are talking about right now.

        I do wonder if this can be replicated with the communities that you mention tho. It would be interesting to hear what dang comments about it maybe if dang's here about such moderation.

        Also out of curiosity but when you mention shit show, do you mean the discussing turning into something (un-civil?) or lacking etiquettes as in say, the community turning into gifs posting as such or similar with low quality comments?

        Or what exactly would you classify as "shit show"?

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FeteCommuniste 11 hours ago

Hot take: a voting system (and generally any move toward ranking content rather than displaying it chronologically) will inevitably rot any social media platform. Just a question of time.

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  • holly01 10 hours ago

    When I used 4chan the lack of voting made engaging with the actual substance of a post much easier. This was something observed by many other posters I talked to. This is going to sound wishy-washy, but my theory is that the brain is so attuned to socially trying to figure out the in-group or who is in the wrong that putting a number that signals social agreement on a statement will immediately stimulate the more primal social pathways in your brain before you can even think.

    Of course 4chan isn’t a great system for meaningful discussions, the system skews conversations towards outrage and shock. But reddits short, quippy, in-group signaling post style that is encouraged by their voting system seems to be absolute worst way to interact with other people. HN also has this problem to an extent, but it’s properly modded and most people here seem to be not be living through their phones so it isn’t nearly as extreme as reddit (or twitter, I never use twitter but people seem miserable in a similar way to reddit users).

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    • FeteCommuniste 10 hours ago

      In the first decade of the 2000s my only "social" platforms were traditional (chronological) forums and the average level of discussion and effort to contribute was way higher than what I usually see now on social media.

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bityard 6 hours ago

It depends on lot on the sub and how their moderators police the community, but yeah, I've seen lots of that.

I've been aggressively downvoted before for pointing out facts that people don't want to be true. (And these were not even political discussions!) I don't even bother with putting my opinions online at any rate, both because they don't actually matter to anyone but me, and because I don't get any joy out of defending them against internet randos.

Edit: It depends on the size of the sub as well. I'm a member of a few subs that I can stand because the moderators are good at moderating, and there are enough regular users coming through to counter a small number of very active cranks.

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SilverElfin 11 hours ago

> All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility.

That is true here too. And Twitter is the least transparent, with people regularly reporting that posts critical of musk or trump have reduced reach compared to their other posts.

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  • whyenot 11 hours ago

    Yes, but HN still has a strong culture of considering both sides, excellent moderation, and some measures to help nudge people in the right direction. For example, right now I can only upvote your comment. I am not given an option to downvote it. That's a good thing!

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    • snigsnog 7 hours ago

      It's because you're new. Powerusers can downvote and even flag comments. A couple flags and the comment is (by default) invisible. Enough flagged comments and your comments are flagged by default. There's a reason this place is called orange reddit

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      • whyenot 5 hours ago

        I created this account in November 2009 and am fully aware of what "power users" can and can not do ;)

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    • bityard 5 hours ago

      > a strong culture of considering both sides

      Ah, no, the HN commentorship is quite highly biased toward a particular demographic and set of political beliefs, which is a thing that needs to be acknowledged. "Considering both sides" is not something I've ever seen as common practice in any organic online community I've been a part of, full stop.

      HN's redeeming quality over much of the rest of the web is that low-effort hot-takes and aggressive content are actively discouraged by the mods and community. (These are things that other communities devolve towards, because they tend to drive engagement faster and easier than quality.)

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