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Part of the problem is that Reddit even more than Twitter is structured as a meta-community, and so any standards which are imposed will be external to a given

Part of the problem is that Reddit even more than Twitter is structured as a meta-community, and so any standards which are imposed will be external to a given sub-community. That means that they will be perceived as, and may sometimes be, social and political censorship.

bloaf 10y ago
I think this is a somewhat more recent (i.e. within the past 4 years) development on reddit. For a long time it seemed to me that the various sub-communities grew out of some shared sense of what it was to be a redditor (memes like the dumb "narwhal bacon" thing were expressions of that.) People were redditors first, and members of the various sub-communities second. But recently this has not been the case. People seem to want to be able to create their own gardens in which they can create their own "language of good and evil that their neighbor does not understand." People don't want to associate with reddit as a whole, only the parts they chose to incorporate into their little filter bubble.
- xemdetia 10y ago
  I find myself blaming the some of the default sub choices from within the past 4 years. The choices made there created a really frustrating global reddit user experience- it used to be that when you first logged in there was only a dozen subreddits people were looking at. In the last four years the default experience is now up to like 50 subreddits which in my opinion take a very curated and particular view of all that's available which just does not match up to everyone. You just didn't have worldnews, pics, science, gaming and then what you were interested in to be a redditor, it's 50 things + what you are interested in. So the 'identity' of what was a redditor changed dramatically from the start, and it's left us worse since the a lot of the default subs aren't exposing what was good and are mostly mindless/bandwagon-y in operation. Not to mention that some of the default subreddits that got chosen were poisonous and it changed the tone. Here is a list of what changed: https://www.reddit.com/r/defaults/ https://www.reddit.com/r/defaults/
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    reddit's failure to attract different types of people is largely because of the way they use default subreddits. Facebook and Twitter start users off with a blank page and ask about their interests first, and thus, both platforms attract all types of people. When your average person goes to reddit.com and see anti-religious stuff or pro-some-political-candidate first thing, they assume that it's not the place for them and move on without understanding that the experience can be customized by subscribing to specific subreddits, etc.
gaius 10y ago
It is perfectly possible for communities with different conventions to co-exist peacefully. The problems only come when you "cross the streams" and I think many people who do do it deliberately, precisely for the controversy (attention, clicks) it will generate.

bloaf 10y ago

I think this is a somewhat more recent (i.e. within the past 4 years) development on reddit. For a long time it seemed to me that the various sub-communities grew out of some shared sense of what it was to be a redditor (memes like the dumb "narwhal bacon" thing were expressions of that.) People were redditors first, and members of the various sub-communities second. But recently this has not been the case. People seem to want to be able to create their own gardens in which they can create their own "language of good and evil that their neighbor does not understand." People don't want to associate with reddit as a whole, only the parts they chose to incorporate into their little filter bubble.

xemdetia 10y ago
I find myself blaming the some of the default sub choices from within the past 4 years. The choices made there created a really frustrating global reddit user experience- it used to be that when you first logged in there was only a dozen subreddits people were looking at. In the last four years the default experience is now up to like 50 subreddits which in my opinion take a very curated and particular view of all that's available which just does not match up to everyone. You just didn't have worldnews, pics, science, gaming and then what you were interested in to be a redditor, it's 50 things + what you are interested in. So the 'identity' of what was a redditor changed dramatically from the start, and it's left us worse since the a lot of the default subs aren't exposing what was good and are mostly mindless/bandwagon-y in operation. Not to mention that some of the default subreddits that got chosen were poisonous and it changed the tone. Here is a list of what changed: https://www.reddit.com/r/defaults/ https://www.reddit.com/r/defaults/
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  reddit's failure to attract different types of people is largely because of the way they use default subreddits. Facebook and Twitter start users off with a blank page and ask about their interests first, and thus, both platforms attract all types of people. When your average person goes to reddit.com and see anti-religious stuff or pro-some-political-candidate first thing, they assume that it's not the place for them and move on without understanding that the experience can be customized by subscribing to specific subreddits, etc.

gaius 10y ago

It is perfectly possible for communities with different conventions to co-exist peacefully. The problems only come when you "cross the streams" and I think many people who do do it deliberately, precisely for the controversy (attention, clicks) it will generate.