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What are your opinions on less personal social media sites like Hacker News and Reddit? My enjoyment with Facebook ceased the moment Edward Snowden became a ho
by rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
What are your opinions on less personal social media sites like Hacker News and Reddit?
My enjoyment with Facebook ceased the moment Edward Snowden became a household name. I realized then how naked my information was in a world of bad actors. I only use Facebook as a simple contacts list these days.
But it’s harder to wean myself off HN/Reddit, as I get more value of useful information from the former and entertainment from the latter, than I have ever received from Facebook, even though both sites can lend themselves to mindless consumption and propaganda/manipulation, like FB.
Is there a “right” way for social media to be? Or are we resigned to a muddy middle ground forever?
- mancerayder 9y agoDid you say Reddit? I'm really curious how to tolerate it, since the comments seem oriented more around feelings and me too or kneejerk anger than anything substantive. Also the comments are one-liners. Are there particular subreddits with intelligent people you'd recommend?
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoHonestly I just use Reddit for entertainment. I know there are substantive subreddits out there, somewhere, but most of the subjects I care about understanding and discussing come through HN anyway.
- MrJagil 9y ago/r/Neutralpolitics is great.
- Diederich 9y agoYes. /r/politicaldiscussion isn't quite as good, and certainly has a certain 'lean' to it, but it tolerates differing opinions pretty well.
- crankylinuxuser 9y agoIt really depends on what subs you choose. The defaults are cesspools. Just plan on nasty things being said back and forth to each other. In reality, the defaults are worse than 4chan, which is saying something. However, the moment you start getting into tech subs and narrow hobby subs, the SN ratio cleans right up. Yeah, there might be a single spam, or some rude person, but they are the exception. Reddit's like Usenet. The more people in a general group, the worse behaved they are. Go look up "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory" -- so true..
- watwut 9y agoYou must use much different reddit then I have.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoWhich is actually a real thing, since each person's subreddits really do create a different experience.
- dabber 9y agoNot the parent but every time this question gets asked here it usually gets a few responses along the lines of "the more specific the topic the better the content/community generally is" and I'd agree. A few I enjoy are r/homelab, r/programming, r/Economics, r/networking, r/AskHistorians, and r/ColorizedHistory.
- eanzenberg 9y agoI found some of the best stats/ml community out there on reddit. Try r/machinelearning and r/statistics.