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Reddit is quickly becoming a tool for the majority on the site to suppress minority on the site's opinions. Until a viable solution is created to promote divers

Reddit is quickly becoming a tool for the majority on the site to suppress minority on the site's opinions. Until a viable solution is created to promote diversity of thought it will always suffer from this problem. Reddit is just as bad of an echo chamber as facebook. Please everyone who read stuff posted on reddit, engage in critical thinking after each article you read.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
When you say the majority vs the minority, what do you mean? edit: To Clarify, which groups are you labeling as such?
- cwperkins 8y ago
  It means different things in different contexts. For instance in r/southafrica there is a majority of Afrikaaners on the subreddit despite being a minority (10%) of the country. Any anti-Afrikaaner content is quickly dismissed and downvoted. In r/TwoXChromosome engaging in any discussion on the wage gap as a function of anything other than sexism is met with downvotes. In any majority US subreddit conservative posts may be dismissed and downvoted into oblivion. This tool of upvote/downvote is used to suppress non hive mind opinions on the site and I didn't necessarily mean this in the US specific context.
  - idoh 8y ago
    Well, there is quite a bit of free expression still. Anyone is empowered to make a subreddit and moderate how they please. What more do you want?
    - cwperkins 8y ago
      This lack of diversity of media/thought just propagates our current media landscape where people generally fall into 2 camps: Liberal sources (CNN/NBC/NYT) and then Fox viewers. With reddit there's a real opportunity to give readers a diversity of opinion, but in this upvote/downvote scheme usually the opposing opinion is buried so that it may never be seen. At least from my POV the thing reddit could improve from in this respect may be more of going into a HN type model by removing the downvote button.
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        Wouldn't removing the down button just end up with more trolling, and wouldn't the same stuff sink to the bottom anyways as it's passed over for the more upvoted material?
        cwperkins 8y ago
        The majority are more powerful here because they have a higher number to downvote posts they disagree with. It can only be postulated until reddit removes the downvote button, but I suspect that conservative posts wouldn't make the top but at least rise in the ranks as the majority would not be able to suppress them.
      - idoh 8y ago
        You are looking at reddit solely through the lens of politics. I do agree that it is not a great place for political debate. However, would you allow for the fact that setting aside USA national politics, there is a lot of value? I subscribe to subreddits about kombucha making, MTG, retirement saving, minimalism, and in those areas there is quite a lot of reasonable discussion.
        cwperkins 8y ago
        That's my primary use case for reddit. I joined more than 10 years ago during the big digg migration. I think there are many wonderful communities in the space and it is something to cherish. But when r/news is a default subreddit and the majority have power to sink opposing viewpoints I think it merits a discussion on the importance of diversity of thought.
  - oblio 8y ago
    Yeah, but that's how real societies work. Reddit is just the most recent approximation of those societies, on the internet.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I speak as someone whose largely the sites demographic (20-35, liberal leaning male), so I'm looking at this from a place where I don't feel threatened or marginalized, so bear with me. What's to stop other groups from starting more focused subreddits? I understand what you're saying /r/Politics has a clearly left lean to it, but /r/Conservative seems to be relatively healthy (from my occasional peek in). Even something like The_Donald still survives, and I'd dare to say it's not the content, but its constant attempt at stunts and controversy that's causing the most ill will towards it. I know we've seen hate subreddit's deleted, but I feel that's largely understandable when the very goal of the subreddit is toxicity toward a particular group. I guess the fun with this is that the biggest items on Reddit are going to be the ones that have the biggest population interested in them, but I don't know if it's necessarily hard to create a sub group, it just won't make it to the front page. I'm subbed to a ton of subreddits that meet that criteria.
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      > What's to stop other groups from starting more focused subreddits? Nothing, and as you point out, many do. At the same time, default is a powerful thing. I'm a mod for /r/cscareerquestions, and while we're ostensibly non-political, the fact that we try to keep a minimum bar of 'professionalism' means having norms that are somewhat left-leaning. As an example of what I mean, "it's less important for women to have strong careers than men" is a very common opinion among social conservatives, but we'll ban posters who say things like that because, well, it's sexist and unprofessional. This kind of thing isn't limited solely to right-leaning opinions, but it doesn't tend to be that way more than if it for left-leaning opinions, I think.
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        That's entirely true. If you want to be in the more popular areas you gotta walk and talk a certain way.
    - TheForumTroll 8y ago
      I find it quite amusing that you two see "reddit downvote conservative posts" and "/r/politics having a clearly left lean". I stopped using Reddit because of two things: Everything is extremely US-centric and everything is clearly right leaning. I guess it depends on your point of view. At least as a European I can't recognize the left-lean at all.
mFixman 8y ago
> Reddit is quickly becoming a toot for [...] Reddit was always a giant majority opinion circlejerk because of the nature of the voting system. As much as I dislike /r/the_donald, at least it's some working minority subreddit unlike what /r/romney similar subreddits were in the 2012 election.
LinuxBender 8y ago
This happens on all sites that use voting systems. For such topics, it may be worthwhile to create a blog or related website to keep the discussion points alive.
rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
Quickly? More like always. That’s precisely what upvote/downvote buttons are designed to do. It’s their job. Don’t like downvotes? Try a different subreddit. There is always a more welcoming and engaging subreddit just around the corner. Personally I use Reddit for amusing and funny subreddits and so the political bullshit is never my problem. And you can have the same today for the low, low cost of not giving a shit about echo chamber groupthink. Bad actors get punished. The gamergate and incel subreddits were taken down because they incited harassment. But to use your other example of r/southafrica, blame the 90% of the country that isnt on Reddit for allowing that subreddit to descend into groupthink. Their country, their subreddit, their responsibility. Not Reddit’s.
- TheForumTroll 8y ago
  You just proved his point of Tyranny of the majority.
  - rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
    If you want to avoid that, you need an entirely new set of site rules. Subreddit moderation won’t change that. I’m not saying tyranny of the majority/minority is good or bad, but simply how the site is designed, and that in many subreddits, it isn’t a problem at all.
jerf 8y ago
I laid out some ideas what appears to be 79 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16570017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16570017 In a nutshell, one of key aspects of the reddit system is that an upvote arrow affects everybody equally, so the majorities affect whether something is negative or positively rated. When you take that into account for where and whether you show a post, the net effect is that at scale you pretty much guarantee that the majority within a given community can suppress the minority. The majority may not even have to necessarily try; it's something built in to the system, even before we get into matters of people deliberately trying to game the system. Systems like Slashdot, HN, and Reddit try to fix that either with human moderation or a variety of heuristics to try to minimize the impact ("that looks like a voting ring, let's make its votes worth less", etc.), but another alternative is to make the upvotes not be universal anymore. Instead of an upvote meaning "I think everybody should see this more", it could be rewritten to mean "I think I want to see more of this poster". It's more math, but we have bigger computers now. As a side effect, it's robust against a lot more attacks, though I don't guarantee it wouldn't have other weaknesses.
- aldoushuxley001 8y ago
  That would be done much more effectively using a graph database, as it would simplify the calculations immensely. But I think the reason people aren't doing this is certainly the computation required.
glorkk 8y ago
Isn’t this just the byproduct of the karma/voting system? Content voted by the majority of users is going to have higher visibility, it’s pretty difficult to get around that without fundamentally changing the way the website works.
fhood 8y ago
Without benevolent tyranny (involved moderators with good intentions), every forum becomes an echo chamber once there are enough users.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

When you say the majority vs the minority, what do you mean? edit: To Clarify, which groups are you labeling as such?

cwperkins 8y ago
It means different things in different contexts. For instance in r/southafrica there is a majority of Afrikaaners on the subreddit despite being a minority (10%) of the country. Any anti-Afrikaaner content is quickly dismissed and downvoted. In r/TwoXChromosome engaging in any discussion on the wage gap as a function of anything other than sexism is met with downvotes. In any majority US subreddit conservative posts may be dismissed and downvoted into oblivion. This tool of upvote/downvote is used to suppress non hive mind opinions on the site and I didn't necessarily mean this in the US specific context.
- idoh 8y ago
  Well, there is quite a bit of free expression still. Anyone is empowered to make a subreddit and moderate how they please. What more do you want?
  - cwperkins 8y ago
    This lack of diversity of media/thought just propagates our current media landscape where people generally fall into 2 camps: Liberal sources (CNN/NBC/NYT) and then Fox viewers. With reddit there's a real opportunity to give readers a diversity of opinion, but in this upvote/downvote scheme usually the opposing opinion is buried so that it may never be seen. At least from my POV the thing reddit could improve from in this respect may be more of going into a HN type model by removing the downvote button.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      Wouldn't removing the down button just end up with more trolling, and wouldn't the same stuff sink to the bottom anyways as it's passed over for the more upvoted material?
      - cwperkins 8y ago
        The majority are more powerful here because they have a higher number to downvote posts they disagree with. It can only be postulated until reddit removes the downvote button, but I suspect that conservative posts wouldn't make the top but at least rise in the ranks as the majority would not be able to suppress them.
    - idoh 8y ago
      You are looking at reddit solely through the lens of politics. I do agree that it is not a great place for political debate. However, would you allow for the fact that setting aside USA national politics, there is a lot of value? I subscribe to subreddits about kombucha making, MTG, retirement saving, minimalism, and in those areas there is quite a lot of reasonable discussion.
      - cwperkins 8y ago
        That's my primary use case for reddit. I joined more than 10 years ago during the big digg migration. I think there are many wonderful communities in the space and it is something to cherish. But when r/news is a default subreddit and the majority have power to sink opposing viewpoints I think it merits a discussion on the importance of diversity of thought.
- oblio 8y ago
  Yeah, but that's how real societies work. Reddit is just the most recent approximation of those societies, on the internet.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I speak as someone whose largely the sites demographic (20-35, liberal leaning male), so I'm looking at this from a place where I don't feel threatened or marginalized, so bear with me. What's to stop other groups from starting more focused subreddits? I understand what you're saying /r/Politics has a clearly left lean to it, but /r/Conservative seems to be relatively healthy (from my occasional peek in). Even something like The_Donald still survives, and I'd dare to say it's not the content, but its constant attempt at stunts and controversy that's causing the most ill will towards it. I know we've seen hate subreddit's deleted, but I feel that's largely understandable when the very goal of the subreddit is toxicity toward a particular group. I guess the fun with this is that the biggest items on Reddit are going to be the ones that have the biggest population interested in them, but I don't know if it's necessarily hard to create a sub group, it just won't make it to the front page. I'm subbed to a ton of subreddits that meet that criteria.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    > What's to stop other groups from starting more focused subreddits? Nothing, and as you point out, many do. At the same time, default is a powerful thing. I'm a mod for /r/cscareerquestions, and while we're ostensibly non-political, the fact that we try to keep a minimum bar of 'professionalism' means having norms that are somewhat left-leaning. As an example of what I mean, "it's less important for women to have strong careers than men" is a very common opinion among social conservatives, but we'll ban posters who say things like that because, well, it's sexist and unprofessional. This kind of thing isn't limited solely to right-leaning opinions, but it doesn't tend to be that way more than if it for left-leaning opinions, I think.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      That's entirely true. If you want to be in the more popular areas you gotta walk and talk a certain way.
  - TheForumTroll 8y ago
    I find it quite amusing that you two see "reddit downvote conservative posts" and "/r/politics having a clearly left lean". I stopped using Reddit because of two things: Everything is extremely US-centric and everything is clearly right leaning. I guess it depends on your point of view. At least as a European I can't recognize the left-lean at all.

mFixman 8y ago

> Reddit is quickly becoming a toot for [...] Reddit was always a giant majority opinion circlejerk because of the nature of the voting system. As much as I dislike /r/the_donald, at least it's some working minority subreddit unlike what /r/romney similar subreddits were in the 2012 election.

LinuxBender 8y ago

This happens on all sites that use voting systems. For such topics, it may be worthwhile to create a blog or related website to keep the discussion points alive.

rm_-rf_slash 8y ago

Quickly? More like always. That’s precisely what upvote/downvote buttons are designed to do. It’s their job. Don’t like downvotes? Try a different subreddit. There is always a more welcoming and engaging subreddit just around the corner. Personally I use Reddit for amusing and funny subreddits and so the political bullshit is never my problem. And you can have the same today for the low, low cost of not giving a shit about echo chamber groupthink. Bad actors get punished. The gamergate and incel subreddits were taken down because they incited harassment. But to use your other example of r/southafrica, blame the 90% of the country that isnt on Reddit for allowing that subreddit to descend into groupthink. Their country, their subreddit, their responsibility. Not Reddit’s.

TheForumTroll 8y ago
You just proved his point of Tyranny of the majority.
- rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
  If you want to avoid that, you need an entirely new set of site rules. Subreddit moderation won’t change that. I’m not saying tyranny of the majority/minority is good or bad, but simply how the site is designed, and that in many subreddits, it isn’t a problem at all.

jerf 8y ago

I laid out some ideas what appears to be 79 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16570017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16570017 In a nutshell, one of key aspects of the reddit system is that an upvote arrow affects everybody equally, so the majorities affect whether something is negative or positively rated. When you take that into account for where and whether you show a post, the net effect is that at scale you pretty much guarantee that the majority within a given community can suppress the minority. The majority may not even have to necessarily try; it's something built in to the system, even before we get into matters of people deliberately trying to game the system. Systems like Slashdot, HN, and Reddit try to fix that either with human moderation or a variety of heuristics to try to minimize the impact ("that looks like a voting ring, let's make its votes worth less", etc.), but another alternative is to make the upvotes not be universal anymore. Instead of an upvote meaning "I think everybody should see this more", it could be rewritten to mean "I think I want to see more of this poster". It's more math, but we have bigger computers now. As a side effect, it's robust against a lot more attacks, though I don't guarantee it wouldn't have other weaknesses.

aldoushuxley001 8y ago
That would be done much more effectively using a graph database, as it would simplify the calculations immensely. But I think the reason people aren't doing this is certainly the computation required.

glorkk 8y ago

Isn’t this just the byproduct of the karma/voting system? Content voted by the majority of users is going to have higher visibility, it’s pretty difficult to get around that without fundamentally changing the way the website works.

fhood 8y ago

Without benevolent tyranny (involved moderators with good intentions), every forum becomes an echo chamber once there are enough users.