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Reddit has become very much the same as Tumbler and Twitter became. It's no longer a tool for expression and conversation. It's an echo chamber with separate fa

Reddit has become very much the same as Tumbler and Twitter became. It's no longer a tool for expression and conversation. It's an echo chamber with separate factions occupying separate areas... downvoting and banning every opinion that goes against the "reddit circle jerk". Hacker News has become the only place I can have reasoned conversations about science, politics, etc without so much of an issue. The requirement of quality comments eliminates the karma farming from memes and nonsense and the inability to downvote until you are somewhat established prevents mass downvoting of opinions. It's a quality model IMHO.

MrJagil 9y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics has an interesting take on moderation.
tyrust 9y ago
Reddit is fine if you subscribe to small [0] or heavily moderated [1]. Default and large subreddits have practically always been as you describe. >requirement of quality comments Ha. You won't have shitposts or rehashed jokes, but you also won't always have quality. I'll refer to a past comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16154688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16154688 [0] - Usually niche interest or specific geographic [1] - e.g. /r/askhistorians, /r/askscience, /r/neutralpolitics
- IgorPartola 9y ago
  Reddit is insta-community. Here's how I use Reddit: I pick up a new hobby, say knitting. I go to reddit.com/r/knitting and suddenly I have a bunch of experts there who I can ask questions, exchange ideas with, or brag to about my accomplishments. There is an instant community already existing on Reddit for pretty much every activity I can think of. Where this gets dicey is politics. If you are suddenly a black libretarian baptist who believes in evolution, but not gravity, there's probably a /r/blbwbiebng already waiting for you. And if any of those gravity believing scum show up, the mods will ban them. My ex used to study these little fish from Alaska who evolved in basically tiny separated ponds as the water level dropped and they all got separated. This is what's happening with Reddit. Silos where evolution happens completely independently of anything in the outside world.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I use Reddit the same way. Whenever I want to explore a new interest, I start with /r/[that interest] - almost always there's a high-quality community there, full of domain experts and often lots of useful resources collected in the sidebar. I stay away from general and political subreddits.
  - opportune 9y ago
    I don't think reddit does a good job of dealing with academic subjects or discussions either. Any /r/{academic_topic} is usually filled with undergraduate-level discussion. I think that is a direct consequence of reddit being an insta-community though - it prevents the development of actual-expert communities. There are some good expert communities like /r/askhistorians, and their model certainly works for something like history, but I don't think the same format would really work for something like machine learning or mathematics.
    - detuur 9y ago
      Only communities with expert-level moderators, who are capable of recognising layman speculation, can become expert communities. Unfortunately, unless you're a historian, most experts have better things to do than moderate online communities for free.
jandrese 9y ago
HN tends to avoid hot button political issues issues. I guarantee that if it started posting climate change/evolution/abortion/political articles on a regular basis the troll brigade would show up. Arstechnica is another tech oriented news aggregator/comment section and the ideological trolls on that board are a well oiled machine. They're on top of any relevant article before the bits are dry; pushing their agenda and gaming voting system until it finally falls off of the front page.
autokad 9y ago
i do notice that a lot of demographics in twitter is changing. its starting to become a place you can network yourself for careers and such. I'm not saying thats its primary purpose, but now its being used for that more oten
lopmotr 9y ago
I found HN aggravatingly hostile to freedom of thinking and open discussion. There are several hypocrisies/arbitrary taboos about what ideas you're allowed to mention on here. Even some anti-science taboos. Usually agreeing with everyone else is good and disagreeing with the majority will get you downvoted or shadowbanned. People are very afraid of specific political ideas so even getting accidentally misidentified as a member of some popular hateable group gets you penalised. People see hints of "bad-thought" hidden behind innocent or open-minded words.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  No community is perfect. HN has some groupthink too, but honestly, it's an order of magnitude better place than anything else I've seen on the entire Web[0], so myself, I'm sticking to it. -- [0] - except maybe LessWrong of old, but I was (and still am) too dumb to be able to contribute anything of value on that site.
- abraae 9y ago
  > Usually agreeing with everyone else is good and disagreeing with the majority will get you downvoted or shadowbanned. Isn't this the inherent nature of a fact-based platform? And most HN posters are probably quite rational and fact-based? I wouldn't come to HN if it was a place where people could air stupid, non-fact based opinions and have them treated without criticism or derision. people can hang out in their Facebook group if they want to assert the world is flat.
  - lopmotr 9y ago
    Surely fact-based and conforming to group belief are pretty opposite concepts aren't they? I'm not talking about false facts, but ideas that are outside the fairly clearly delineated (as I found by testing various boundaries and seeing others do so), but arbitrary scope of what's acceptable on HN.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    The thing is people can be very rational and fact based and still be out of their league in various topics or have strong biases that they do or don't realize. Here's a thread where someone is getting downvoted for asking a question because people don't like the implication of that question, it doesn't fit the biases of the audience. That's not rational and fact based, its suppressing views we don't like. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 There are many examples like that, and one of the dangers of "rational" communities is we assume we're rational and can't mess it up, when really we aren't any different.

MrJagil 9y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics has an interesting take on moderation.

tyrust 9y ago

Reddit is fine if you subscribe to small [0] or heavily moderated [1]. Default and large subreddits have practically always been as you describe. >requirement of quality comments Ha. You won't have shitposts or rehashed jokes, but you also won't always have quality. I'll refer to a past comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16154688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16154688 [0] - Usually niche interest or specific geographic [1] - e.g. /r/askhistorians, /r/askscience, /r/neutralpolitics

IgorPartola 9y ago
Reddit is insta-community. Here's how I use Reddit: I pick up a new hobby, say knitting. I go to reddit.com/r/knitting and suddenly I have a bunch of experts there who I can ask questions, exchange ideas with, or brag to about my accomplishments. There is an instant community already existing on Reddit for pretty much every activity I can think of. Where this gets dicey is politics. If you are suddenly a black libretarian baptist who believes in evolution, but not gravity, there's probably a /r/blbwbiebng already waiting for you. And if any of those gravity believing scum show up, the mods will ban them. My ex used to study these little fish from Alaska who evolved in basically tiny separated ponds as the water level dropped and they all got separated. This is what's happening with Reddit. Silos where evolution happens completely independently of anything in the outside world.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I use Reddit the same way. Whenever I want to explore a new interest, I start with /r/[that interest] - almost always there's a high-quality community there, full of domain experts and often lots of useful resources collected in the sidebar. I stay away from general and political subreddits.
- opportune 9y ago
  I don't think reddit does a good job of dealing with academic subjects or discussions either. Any /r/{academic_topic} is usually filled with undergraduate-level discussion. I think that is a direct consequence of reddit being an insta-community though - it prevents the development of actual-expert communities. There are some good expert communities like /r/askhistorians, and their model certainly works for something like history, but I don't think the same format would really work for something like machine learning or mathematics.
  - detuur 9y ago
    Only communities with expert-level moderators, who are capable of recognising layman speculation, can become expert communities. Unfortunately, unless you're a historian, most experts have better things to do than moderate online communities for free.

jandrese 9y ago

HN tends to avoid hot button political issues issues. I guarantee that if it started posting climate change/evolution/abortion/political articles on a regular basis the troll brigade would show up. Arstechnica is another tech oriented news aggregator/comment section and the ideological trolls on that board are a well oiled machine. They're on top of any relevant article before the bits are dry; pushing their agenda and gaming voting system until it finally falls off of the front page.

autokad 9y ago

i do notice that a lot of demographics in twitter is changing. its starting to become a place you can network yourself for careers and such. I'm not saying thats its primary purpose, but now its being used for that more oten

lopmotr 9y ago

I found HN aggravatingly hostile to freedom of thinking and open discussion. There are several hypocrisies/arbitrary taboos about what ideas you're allowed to mention on here. Even some anti-science taboos. Usually agreeing with everyone else is good and disagreeing with the majority will get you downvoted or shadowbanned. People are very afraid of specific political ideas so even getting accidentally misidentified as a member of some popular hateable group gets you penalised. People see hints of "bad-thought" hidden behind innocent or open-minded words.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
No community is perfect. HN has some groupthink too, but honestly, it's an order of magnitude better place than anything else I've seen on the entire Web[0], so myself, I'm sticking to it. -- [0] - except maybe LessWrong of old, but I was (and still am) too dumb to be able to contribute anything of value on that site.
abraae 9y ago
> Usually agreeing with everyone else is good and disagreeing with the majority will get you downvoted or shadowbanned. Isn't this the inherent nature of a fact-based platform? And most HN posters are probably quite rational and fact-based? I wouldn't come to HN if it was a place where people could air stupid, non-fact based opinions and have them treated without criticism or derision. people can hang out in their Facebook group if they want to assert the world is flat.
- lopmotr 9y ago
  Surely fact-based and conforming to group belief are pretty opposite concepts aren't they? I'm not talking about false facts, but ideas that are outside the fairly clearly delineated (as I found by testing various boundaries and seeing others do so), but arbitrary scope of what's acceptable on HN.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  The thing is people can be very rational and fact based and still be out of their league in various topics or have strong biases that they do or don't realize. Here's a thread where someone is getting downvoted for asking a question because people don't like the implication of that question, it doesn't fit the biases of the audience. That's not rational and fact based, its suppressing views we don't like. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 There are many examples like that, and one of the dangers of "rational" communities is we assume we're rational and can't mess it up, when really we aren't any different.