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Redditor of 11 years here. I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). I want to see what other peopl

Redditor of 11 years here. I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). I want to see what other people are seeing, and not just like-minded people either. For that I can find subreddits and subscribe to them.

pfarnsworth 10y ago
Exactly this. That's what I love about the front page, it's the front page of the Internet, not my front page. Of course, reddit has its own bubbles to deal with, but in general I like the different perspectives I'm given.
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  > it's the front page of the Internet, not my front page It's your front page, but the method of filtering is a little different. It's gradually turned into an echo chamber filled with like-minded people, and everyone else has been driven off the site or forced to post in "fringe" subreddits that you'll never see unless you make a concerted effort to seek them out. And that's one of the biggest problems with filter bubbles: You're so insulated from reality that you don't even realize you're in one. Reddit is one of the worst filter bubbles on the internet. All of the top "informative" subreddits are (or have been) heavily censored by cliques of moderators who rule by opinion: Politics, News, WorldNews, etc. Even /r/Videos and gaming subreddits are heavily censored. Try talking about legacy WoW in /r/WoW and watch how fast all your posts are deleted. Most of them will be automatically filtered by AutoModerator keywords. Or look at how much coverage all the WikiLeaks releases received during the election. Arguably one of the most important stories of the election cycle, yet without /r/The_Donald (which Reddit is now trying to suffocate and ban), there would've been zero sign of them on Reddit. That's what happens when you let unpaid volunteers rule without rules.
  - colmvp 10y ago
    I couldn't agree more. In theory, Reddit is a balanced website because of having upvotes/downvotes, yet it couldn't be more obvious on a lot of subreddits that there are slants towards certain ideologies. /r/politics for example swayed heavily between certain candidates during the primaries and election in way that was at times largely hyperbolic. On sports subreddit, heaven forbid something social or political gets submitted. Often, I learn more from watching two people from opposing sides debate a controversial topic via a podcast than reading debates on Reddit whereby it's usually a popular opinion that is defended by a majority of subredditors vs. one dissenting voice that may have a legitimate argument (e.g. asking for proof of allegations towards a certain President-Elect). Also strangely, questions that elicit excellent discussion can often even get downvoted. I think that even if you ask a question based on a faulty premise, you shouldn't get downvoted if you have the openness to admit your ignorance and help others understand a point of view. By downvoting those questions or opinions, it only pushes that potentially popular viewpoint down to the bottom, whereby instead of helping others who may have the same POV understand the counterargument and enable true discussion between two viewpoint, it can make one side feel ostracized and unwelcome. I'll even give a specific example: On the topic of encryption and privacy, I'm sure some people believe that "Well, I have nothing to hide, so why should I care about a government who wants to expand their surveillance capacity if I know I'm not a terrorist?" I feel like on /r/technology or /r/politics you'd get downvoted for that question, despite the fact that I'm sure a lot of readers have that particular point of view and could benefit from having someone gently articulate counterarguments.
    - gthtjtkt 10y ago
      All good points. The voting system just isn't conducive to balanced discussion. It's a perfect recipe for group-think, especially when overseen by self-selecting moderators. And to make matters worse, many subreddits rate-limit your account if you receive too many downvotes. You are literally silenced for posting unpopular opinions. They also usually block new accounts, so you can't even participate in the discussion via throwaway. "Only posts that agree with us" isn't an official rule, but it might as well be.
thinkloop 10y ago
Algorithms that are optimized to show more of what a user is interested in, shouldn't be equated to creating an echo chamber. A good algorithm could include variety and conflicting positions, if that's what the user shows affinity to. I don't think the concept should be discounted because of weak implementations.
- TrevorJ 10y ago
  Because by definition that's what it is? There's a place for tailored and filtered feeds but there's also utility in seeing what the rest of the public finds interesting.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I think it's kind of like CG in movies. Most people don't notice good CG, they only notice bad CG, so they tend to think "all CG is bad". I've found that I only notice "echo-chamber inducing" algorithms, while I'm sure I don't even notice good algorithms.
- treebeard901 10y ago
  > A good algorithm could include variety and conflicting positions, if that's what the user shows affinity to. Most users will not show an affinity to conflicting positions. It is confirmation bias in action.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - abraae 10y ago
    Maybe the algorithm should be guided somehow by an indication that you like to be challenged. Replying to a post would be a good indicator you had some affinity to it, even if only to debate it.
rm999 10y ago
That usually comes down to product and business decisions, not the algorithms. Facebook (like Pandora and many others) falls into the same trap of optimizing too much on top of their algorithms. Instead, some gentle prodding in an interesting direction is usually enough to prevent a bubble while guiding exploration. I'd argue that without some guided exploration it's much easier to fall into your self-made bubble. For example unfriending people on facebook, or listening to the same 5 artists on Pandora.
djsumdog 10y ago
But it's already like that. They removed the API that allowed RES to show you individual up/down votes per-post. They've banned tons of subs for varying levels of controversy. They removed their warranty canary. Their CEO was caught changing comments and they weren't asked to resign; got away with just an apology? I realize that Voat is a cesspool, but anonymity -- real anonymity -- tends to let you see peoples' real dark opinions (hence all the chans .. and why Google requires real profiles for YouTube comments now). I think Reddit filters a lot more than people realize; more than just the banned subreddits and edited comments. It's been a filter bubble for quite some time. In anycase, I've given up on Reddit .. and Voat. I guess my big addiction now is Hackernews. :-P
- komali2 10y ago
  I like Hackernews because I actually learn things here and have genuinely interesting conversations with relatively polite people, but we only seem to talk about tech stuff. Cryptography, web dev, programming, etc. Nobody here wants to talk about like, motorcycles or raising pet rats or other things I'm interested in outside of technology, so it can't replace reddit for me.
  - themoat 10y ago
    Yeah that's kind of where I'm at with Reddit as well. It's not a place where I can browse anymore. I just can't bring myself to wade through /r/all, but there are certain subreddits where they just really have the community size that can't be found outside reddit.
  - HCIdivision17 10y ago
    And not even all tech! I've actually started spending more time on Reddit because it's more interesting in general. When a post percolates up here about motorcycles or manufacturing or some cool analytics on an obscure topic, I have a great time. But they're not common, and there's always some StackOverflow-style "this doesn't belong on HackerNews". (But they also seem to pull people out of the woodwork like gangbusters - HN loves the occasional off-topic interesting post! But not constantly :) Which is fine, I guess. That's why we have things like Reddit! Perhaps it's a variant of the Unix Way: have sites that provide a specific style of service, either in content management or filtering or whatnot. And appreciate them for that!
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). Some of the most interesting commentary on reddit are buried at -5 votes because almost all voting is an emotional reaction or treated as a "disagree/agree" button. I think its bad enough as-is. I don't want to see reddit build out a 'safe space' for me by analyzing my views and what subs I visit. If anything, I really want to see the threshold for when comments are collapsed to be much higher than -5, which seems easily gamed and way too quickly drowned out by knee-jerk disagree voters. I wish these sites would move towards a slashdot-style moderation where your vote needs to be justified. Like "funny," "controversial," "insightful," "well sourced," or "poorly sourced," etc. Then you can adjust your algorithm as needed to promote quality comments, even if they go against the grain. Or users can tweak their own prefences like having a tick box or drag-n-drop to prefer 'insightful' over 'funny', for example. Or 'well sourced' over 'insightful.' Sadly, social networks, forums, etc probably are highly disincentivized to do this as they assume we all just want tailored content. Or that if there isn't enough tailoring then users will just jump to the competition. I think most people can be okay with contradicting or some low effort, but still, insightful commentary. Perhaps we're overly coddling each other.
- bpchaps 10y ago
  I once had to raise a huge security risk to Comcast and resorted to a reddit post after very little luck raising it through official channels. It was a pretty sobering experience to how reddit users use downvotes for things they didn't understand or disagreed with. A lot of the downvotes came from folks who angrily commented that I was too vague. Giving specifics is just reckless, and if anything, I probably gave way too much information. Any less vague and it would have been out in the open. Some official folk from Comcast eventually showed up and almost immediately got it fixed (!). Afterwords, there were posts about how "reddit saved the day again". The customer rep who helped out ended up getting more upvotes than any of my posts. I really don't get it.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    I'm near expert level in one or two categories. Its difficult to post about my views because they're academic and involve history, the debate, popular consensus, etc. My comments just get downvoted because the hivemind just wants simple answers. Those simple answers are easier to digest, easy to know if you agree or disagree, etc. This is also why /r/askhistorians is so heavily moderated. If you just let it run itself the top comments would be low-effort junk like "Tesla god; Edison devil" and other nonsense with almost no discussions that go counter to the grain or discussion of the many shades of gray between "good and bad" and "right and wrong." >Afterwords, there were posts about how "reddit saved the day again". I feel sorry for the people who post incredible things, especially some of the short story writers, but the press narrative becomes "Reddit did it again!" It wasn't "reddit" it was a single author. I really wish there was more of an emphasis on individual contributions there and the people behind the usernames.
rmc 10y ago
But surely you want some kind of filter bubble? Otherwise half (?) your webpages/content would be in Chinese, right? So surely you want an "English-language" filter bubble?
VLM 10y ago
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your observations of news filter bubbling... BUT... I just thought of the analogy of music filter bubbling. Only a couple years ago when there was a big push for awhile for music streaming there was plenty of debate to observe along the lines of some people seemed rather horrified at the stress of having to select their own musical playlist where others were ready to go nuclear because they wanted to rock out to Pantera and some human or algo DJ insists on flooding them with Taylor Swift. I don't even care which argument won in the marketplace for "music filter bubble" or even "news filter bubble" but it is interesting that very strong, perhaps equally strong, arguments exist for both.
gedrap 10y ago
Personalized content discovery is not only about filter bubble and I believe the key word here is discovery, not shoving to your face in homepage. It can also mean discovering small subreddits that you might like. Or some old super popular posts that you might have missed. Some of this would be forming a bubble (e.g. similarly minded subreddits to the ones you're following), and some not (e.g. somewhat random thing that you might like to binge read). You might find small subreddits on your own, that's great, but that might help other users. No need to paint algorithmic stuff only in such dim light.

pfarnsworth 10y ago

Exactly this. That's what I love about the front page, it's the front page of the Internet, not my front page. Of course, reddit has its own bubbles to deal with, but in general I like the different perspectives I'm given.

gthtjtkt 10y ago
> it's the front page of the Internet, not my front page It's your front page, but the method of filtering is a little different. It's gradually turned into an echo chamber filled with like-minded people, and everyone else has been driven off the site or forced to post in "fringe" subreddits that you'll never see unless you make a concerted effort to seek them out. And that's one of the biggest problems with filter bubbles: You're so insulated from reality that you don't even realize you're in one. Reddit is one of the worst filter bubbles on the internet. All of the top "informative" subreddits are (or have been) heavily censored by cliques of moderators who rule by opinion: Politics, News, WorldNews, etc. Even /r/Videos and gaming subreddits are heavily censored. Try talking about legacy WoW in /r/WoW and watch how fast all your posts are deleted. Most of them will be automatically filtered by AutoModerator keywords. Or look at how much coverage all the WikiLeaks releases received during the election. Arguably one of the most important stories of the election cycle, yet without /r/The_Donald (which Reddit is now trying to suffocate and ban), there would've been zero sign of them on Reddit. That's what happens when you let unpaid volunteers rule without rules.
- colmvp 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more. In theory, Reddit is a balanced website because of having upvotes/downvotes, yet it couldn't be more obvious on a lot of subreddits that there are slants towards certain ideologies. /r/politics for example swayed heavily between certain candidates during the primaries and election in way that was at times largely hyperbolic. On sports subreddit, heaven forbid something social or political gets submitted. Often, I learn more from watching two people from opposing sides debate a controversial topic via a podcast than reading debates on Reddit whereby it's usually a popular opinion that is defended by a majority of subredditors vs. one dissenting voice that may have a legitimate argument (e.g. asking for proof of allegations towards a certain President-Elect). Also strangely, questions that elicit excellent discussion can often even get downvoted. I think that even if you ask a question based on a faulty premise, you shouldn't get downvoted if you have the openness to admit your ignorance and help others understand a point of view. By downvoting those questions or opinions, it only pushes that potentially popular viewpoint down to the bottom, whereby instead of helping others who may have the same POV understand the counterargument and enable true discussion between two viewpoint, it can make one side feel ostracized and unwelcome. I'll even give a specific example: On the topic of encryption and privacy, I'm sure some people believe that "Well, I have nothing to hide, so why should I care about a government who wants to expand their surveillance capacity if I know I'm not a terrorist?" I feel like on /r/technology or /r/politics you'd get downvoted for that question, despite the fact that I'm sure a lot of readers have that particular point of view and could benefit from having someone gently articulate counterarguments.
  - gthtjtkt 10y ago
    All good points. The voting system just isn't conducive to balanced discussion. It's a perfect recipe for group-think, especially when overseen by self-selecting moderators. And to make matters worse, many subreddits rate-limit your account if you receive too many downvotes. You are literally silenced for posting unpopular opinions. They also usually block new accounts, so you can't even participate in the discussion via throwaway. "Only posts that agree with us" isn't an official rule, but it might as well be.

thinkloop 10y ago

Algorithms that are optimized to show more of what a user is interested in, shouldn't be equated to creating an echo chamber. A good algorithm could include variety and conflicting positions, if that's what the user shows affinity to. I don't think the concept should be discounted because of weak implementations.

TrevorJ 10y ago
Because by definition that's what it is? There's a place for tailored and filtered feeds but there's also utility in seeing what the rest of the public finds interesting.
CaptSpify 10y ago
I think it's kind of like CG in movies. Most people don't notice good CG, they only notice bad CG, so they tend to think "all CG is bad". I've found that I only notice "echo-chamber inducing" algorithms, while I'm sure I don't even notice good algorithms.
treebeard901 10y ago
> A good algorithm could include variety and conflicting positions, if that's what the user shows affinity to. Most users will not show an affinity to conflicting positions. It is confirmation bias in action.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- abraae 10y ago
  Maybe the algorithm should be guided somehow by an indication that you like to be challenged. Replying to a post would be a good indicator you had some affinity to it, even if only to debate it.

rm999 10y ago

That usually comes down to product and business decisions, not the algorithms. Facebook (like Pandora and many others) falls into the same trap of optimizing too much on top of their algorithms. Instead, some gentle prodding in an interesting direction is usually enough to prevent a bubble while guiding exploration. I'd argue that without some guided exploration it's much easier to fall into your self-made bubble. For example unfriending people on facebook, or listening to the same 5 artists on Pandora.

djsumdog 10y ago

But it's already like that. They removed the API that allowed RES to show you individual up/down votes per-post. They've banned tons of subs for varying levels of controversy. They removed their warranty canary. Their CEO was caught changing comments and they weren't asked to resign; got away with just an apology? I realize that Voat is a cesspool, but anonymity -- real anonymity -- tends to let you see peoples' real dark opinions (hence all the chans .. and why Google requires real profiles for YouTube comments now). I think Reddit filters a lot more than people realize; more than just the banned subreddits and edited comments. It's been a filter bubble for quite some time. In anycase, I've given up on Reddit .. and Voat. I guess my big addiction now is Hackernews. :-P

komali2 10y ago
I like Hackernews because I actually learn things here and have genuinely interesting conversations with relatively polite people, but we only seem to talk about tech stuff. Cryptography, web dev, programming, etc. Nobody here wants to talk about like, motorcycles or raising pet rats or other things I'm interested in outside of technology, so it can't replace reddit for me.
- themoat 10y ago
  Yeah that's kind of where I'm at with Reddit as well. It's not a place where I can browse anymore. I just can't bring myself to wade through /r/all, but there are certain subreddits where they just really have the community size that can't be found outside reddit.
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  And not even all tech! I've actually started spending more time on Reddit because it's more interesting in general. When a post percolates up here about motorcycles or manufacturing or some cool analytics on an obscure topic, I have a great time. But they're not common, and there's always some StackOverflow-style "this doesn't belong on HackerNews". (But they also seem to pull people out of the woodwork like gangbusters - HN loves the occasional off-topic interesting post! But not constantly :) Which is fine, I guess. That's why we have things like Reddit! Perhaps it's a variant of the Unix Way: have sites that provide a specific style of service, either in content management or filtering or whatnot. And appreciate them for that!

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

>I don't want another filter bubble that only shows me what it thinks I want to read (like Facebook). Some of the most interesting commentary on reddit are buried at -5 votes because almost all voting is an emotional reaction or treated as a "disagree/agree" button. I think its bad enough as-is. I don't want to see reddit build out a 'safe space' for me by analyzing my views and what subs I visit. If anything, I really want to see the threshold for when comments are collapsed to be much higher than -5, which seems easily gamed and way too quickly drowned out by knee-jerk disagree voters. I wish these sites would move towards a slashdot-style moderation where your vote needs to be justified. Like "funny," "controversial," "insightful," "well sourced," or "poorly sourced," etc. Then you can adjust your algorithm as needed to promote quality comments, even if they go against the grain. Or users can tweak their own prefences like having a tick box or drag-n-drop to prefer 'insightful' over 'funny', for example. Or 'well sourced' over 'insightful.' Sadly, social networks, forums, etc probably are highly disincentivized to do this as they assume we all just want tailored content. Or that if there isn't enough tailoring then users will just jump to the competition. I think most people can be okay with contradicting or some low effort, but still, insightful commentary. Perhaps we're overly coddling each other.

bpchaps 10y ago
I once had to raise a huge security risk to Comcast and resorted to a reddit post after very little luck raising it through official channels. It was a pretty sobering experience to how reddit users use downvotes for things they didn't understand or disagreed with. A lot of the downvotes came from folks who angrily commented that I was too vague. Giving specifics is just reckless, and if anything, I probably gave way too much information. Any less vague and it would have been out in the open. Some official folk from Comcast eventually showed up and almost immediately got it fixed (!). Afterwords, there were posts about how "reddit saved the day again". The customer rep who helped out ended up getting more upvotes than any of my posts. I really don't get it.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  I'm near expert level in one or two categories. Its difficult to post about my views because they're academic and involve history, the debate, popular consensus, etc. My comments just get downvoted because the hivemind just wants simple answers. Those simple answers are easier to digest, easy to know if you agree or disagree, etc. This is also why /r/askhistorians is so heavily moderated. If you just let it run itself the top comments would be low-effort junk like "Tesla god; Edison devil" and other nonsense with almost no discussions that go counter to the grain or discussion of the many shades of gray between "good and bad" and "right and wrong." >Afterwords, there were posts about how "reddit saved the day again". I feel sorry for the people who post incredible things, especially some of the short story writers, but the press narrative becomes "Reddit did it again!" It wasn't "reddit" it was a single author. I really wish there was more of an emphasis on individual contributions there and the people behind the usernames.

rmc 10y ago

But surely you want some kind of filter bubble? Otherwise half (?) your webpages/content would be in Chinese, right? So surely you want an "English-language" filter bubble?

VLM 10y ago

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your observations of news filter bubbling... BUT... I just thought of the analogy of music filter bubbling. Only a couple years ago when there was a big push for awhile for music streaming there was plenty of debate to observe along the lines of some people seemed rather horrified at the stress of having to select their own musical playlist where others were ready to go nuclear because they wanted to rock out to Pantera and some human or algo DJ insists on flooding them with Taylor Swift. I don't even care which argument won in the marketplace for "music filter bubble" or even "news filter bubble" but it is interesting that very strong, perhaps equally strong, arguments exist for both.

gedrap 10y ago

Personalized content discovery is not only about filter bubble and I believe the key word here is discovery, not shoving to your face in homepage. It can also mean discovering small subreddits that you might like. Or some old super popular posts that you might have missed. Some of this would be forming a bubble (e.g. similarly minded subreddits to the ones you're following), and some not (e.g. somewhat random thing that you might like to binge read). You might find small subreddits on your own, that's great, but that might help other users. No need to paint algorithmic stuff only in such dim light.