3 ms·

I think the author missed the actual special trick that Reddit allows over other subs/forum systems - subreddits. Look Reddit is transparently similar to many

I think the author missed the actual special trick that Reddit allows over other subs/forum systems - subreddits. Look Reddit is transparently similar to many forums that came before it, and most of the old farts from slash dot will know this. What major change Reddit enables is subreddit budding/splitting for forums. Forums had a terrible problem with the noise to signal ratio- sometimes the topic (say pictures) was too broad to deal with. How the heck do moderators of a forum on pictures deal with memes? Or just cute baby pics? Or nature pics- and so on. Well subreddits solves that - while giving you a single identity you can use to traverse all this stuff, with a relatively consistent set of functions over each subject domain. This is a pretty major function and any large scale forum will have to enable this functionality. Also subreddit creation is a snap. —- As for everyone who is bemoaning the state of Reddit - that’s the state of any forum after it starts attract the full attention of the internet populace. The truth is long since known. The net is generally an ugly place and assuming that the admins or mods are some how unusually responsible for this state of affairs is dismissive of reality. I Once modded at Reddit - I’ve gone from pro free speech to defining a whole new set of rules and conditionals for working with speech online. Free speech in the old net sense is long since gone, and it’s not implementable at scale. Trust me, we’ve tried. At best there’s networks of ideas and forums working with or against each other.

commandlinefan 9y ago
> Free speech in the old net sense is long since gone, and it’s not implementable at scale. This is the constant refrain from the pro-censorship crowd: "if we let people say distasteful things, they'll start thinking distasteful things!". Well, no - you have it backwards. They already think it, that's why they wrote it down. What you're trying to do instead is to make the people who believe X think that they're all alone in the world, being the only ones who believe X, which actually fails spectacularly - the people who believe X learn to speak and write in "dog whistles", and the fact that you're suppressing them in the first place helps convince them that they were actually right in the first place. Otherwise, why would you be so threatened by them?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- soared 9y ago
  I don't think that is OP's point or intention. I read that as saying in the good 'ol days on a small forum someone spewing nazi rhetoric would get reported/taken care of by the community. But now that the internet is so widespread, the few people who spew nazi rhetoric can find eachother and create a decent sized group which can't be stopped as effectively. Then trolls join in and it snowballs out of control.
- xr4ti 9y ago
  What is this "free speech" on the net people that speak of? Has it ever existed? With few exceptions the right to post in a forum has always been at the pleasure of the mods/sysop. In fact, the quality of discussion is usually proportional to how effectively the mods cull the off topic content and wield the ban hammer against the trolls. It has been this way since the days of the dial in BBS. If the people who believe in X are unwelcome in a particular forum, then no one is stopping them from building their own. Maybe they don't benefit from the network effects of a Reddit, but a Reddit derives zero or even negative benefits from hosting them, so fair deal.

commandlinefan 9y ago

> Free speech in the old net sense is long since gone, and it’s not implementable at scale. This is the constant refrain from the pro-censorship crowd: "if we let people say distasteful things, they'll start thinking distasteful things!". Well, no - you have it backwards. They already think it, that's why they wrote it down. What you're trying to do instead is to make the people who believe X think that they're all alone in the world, being the only ones who believe X, which actually fails spectacularly - the people who believe X learn to speak and write in "dog whistles", and the fact that you're suppressing them in the first place helps convince them that they were actually right in the first place. Otherwise, why would you be so threatened by them?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
soared 9y ago
I don't think that is OP's point or intention. I read that as saying in the good 'ol days on a small forum someone spewing nazi rhetoric would get reported/taken care of by the community. But now that the internet is so widespread, the few people who spew nazi rhetoric can find eachother and create a decent sized group which can't be stopped as effectively. Then trolls join in and it snowballs out of control.
xr4ti 9y ago
What is this "free speech" on the net people that speak of? Has it ever existed? With few exceptions the right to post in a forum has always been at the pleasure of the mods/sysop. In fact, the quality of discussion is usually proportional to how effectively the mods cull the off topic content and wield the ban hammer against the trolls. It has been this way since the days of the dial in BBS. If the people who believe in X are unwelcome in a particular forum, then no one is stopping them from building their own. Maybe they don't benefit from the network effects of a Reddit, but a Reddit derives zero or even negative benefits from hosting them, so fair deal.