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Reddit is awful, and has been for years. Like most HN folks, I have a few narrow interest subreddits I go to on non controversial subjects. The rest of the si
by JPKab 6y ago
Reddit is awful, and has been for years.
Like most HN folks, I have a few narrow interest subreddits I go to on non controversial subjects.
The rest of the site is just groupthink tribal warfare for bitter professional victims.
- guevara 6y agoSeriously, god forbid you have a different opinion otherwise you're instantly downvoted.
- fnord77 6y agooh it's worse now - if you get some number of downvotes, you get 9 minute timeouts between posts.
- holler 6y agothat has to be one of the worst features I've ever encountered.. truly despicable
- falcolas 6y agoWorse than your post becoming illegible due to css changes?
- holler 6y agolol... close call, I hate both.
- throwaway2048 6y agoHN has the same feature, except its like 2 hours
- rimliu 6y agoHN has it worse. You do not have even to be downoted to get "you are posting too fast" message. Not the most stupid thing on HN, but close.
- luckylion 6y agoHN does something similar, though I don't know the metrics, and it's more of a "you're allowed one post every 20 minutes on a 60 minutes rolling window".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- joemazerino 6y agoThe level of misinformation that is not only spread but amplified on Reddit is disappointing. It is one big cyber popularity contest.
- apatters 6y agoWhy do people use Reddit for political or controversial discussion? I think everyone knows by now that it's a circle jerk. There are plenty of other forums out there and you can set one up in 5 minutes.
- holler 6y agowhere do you go for serious political discussion?
- jseliger 6y agoLibraries, or marginalrevolution.com.
- uoaei 6y agoMarginal Revolution is run by Tyler Cowen who is an economist. He has largely libertarian views and uses economic theory to justify them over the span of about a blog post. I personally don't think that's enough time to make a point about the sorts of things he talks about.
- knzhou 6y agoBut Marginal Revolution is well known for having the worst comments on the internet. Literally nothing but edgy one-sentence snark. It’s just a step above caveman grunts.
- nn35 6y agoMarginal Revolution is more interesting than HN precisely because "X is widely believed, therefore X is true" doesn't fly as a line of argument over there. Although of course they do lack civility.
- xref 6y agoOnline in a forum format? I haven’t seen it exist, the medium simply isn’t conducive to it. It requires very heavy handed moderation, which in turn stifles political discussion. It’s why HN largely bans it all-together as simply not worth it.
- adtac 6y agoIf you haven't unsubbed from the default subs by now, you're missing out. Reddit is best experienced in subs with under 100k subs.
- redis_mlc 6y ago> The rest of the site is just groupthink tribal warfare for bitter professional victims. So ... just like HN?
- steve_adams_86 6y agoI know HN has some bad moments, but I actually still learn quite a bit here and get introduced to new ideas. That's a lot less common on Reddit, even though I'm only subscribed to niche, specific subreddits. Nothing is perfect but I feel more informed and otherwise safer having discussions here.
- luckylion 6y agoI agree regarding being exposed to new ideas, but turning on "show dead" has given me some doubt. Plenty of regular comments get flagged and killed, e.g. this [1] comment that I vouched for. I can only assume, but it feels like people are feeling attacked because they enjoy the circlejerk and feel they must censor this comment that call them out. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23175556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23175556
- pjc50 6y agoHN bans flamewars per se; anything controversial will have the article itself flagged into oblivion so the entire discussion is gone. You can have good discussions, but they must be at the margins, and stay away from the subjects that HN is known to fail at discussing.
- newsbinator 6y agoGenerally on HN the Principle of Charity shines through. People respond thoughtfully to the strongest version of a commenter's statement. Not always, but often. On Reddit, especially in large or political subs, it's the exact opposite. You're a racist, sexist, white, cis, male homophobic, transphobic monster until and unless you preface your thoughts with lip-service to all groups concerned, even if you're not discussing politics or social issues.
- 6y ago
- Moodles 6y agoIt becoming somewhat of an echo chamber might be an unfortunate natural phenomenon: if there’s even a slight lean to one political view, people with contrasting views will shy away from the abuse, leaving only people with the same view, which will make the problem worse and worse. Similar to how the rich get richer, big stars in the galaxy get bigger, etc. Definitely the upvoting/downvoting system and various corrupt mods make it worse.
- tryptophan 6y agoIts not just political views, it's everything. For example, try posting about Intel in pc building subs. Or try advocating for anything other than passive index investing in /investing. Or say you like PHP for making websites in /programming. Any idea outside a sub's main approved-idea-space is rewarded with hate and downvotes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Czarcasm 6y agoI have been on Reddit for 5+ years now, and agree that it seems to have gotten worse over this period. Do you think that the removal of the downvote capability solves this problem? What solutions are available? I think the main issue is that Reddit has become more mainstream. My theory is that when a new website like reddit is created, the early adopters are typically more open-minded people by their very nature. Later as the platform is recognized as successful, the mainstream population joins. These mainstream users, less likely on average to accept new ideas than the initial early-adopter user base, then begins to drag the discussion into group-think. My most pronounced experience with this phenomenon was with r/wallstreetbets. In the early days, it was actually a very interesting and unique community with rapidly evolving conversations. With the mass influx of new users in 2018 and 2019, the comment sections slowly shifted into parroting of the subs common phrases and group think. Now in 2020, you can almost predict the comment sections before you open it up. Perhaps due to its lack of promotion and UI, HN has been more resistant to this shift, but is not immune. My personal solution to this problem is to keep jumping to new platforms if an old one becomes too bias. When my favorite subreddits start hitting r/all, I begin looking for new ones that follow the same topics.
- apta 6y agoIt's unfortunate that it's now owned by China as well. There are some good communities there however.
- MagnumOpus 6y agoWell, it's owned by China, Peter Thiel, A18Z, Snoop Dogg and the Ohanian klan. So the bias is balanced, in that Bay Area industry gets to silence opposing voices just like the CCP does...
- lilSebastian 6y ago> Like most HN folks... What data do you have to support this claim?
- triyambakam 6y agoI find hn very groupthink as well
- Gibbon1 6y agoReddit at least has lots of normal people with a decent amount of life experience.
- MagnumOpus 6y agoYou have to know what to discuss and which holy grail to avoid. Reddit is overwhelmingly populated by left-wing teenagers and college students -- so politics or economics discussions are shallow and fruitless. HN is overwhelmingly populated by techies, heavily biased towards FAAMG and bay area, heavily biased towards web dev. Economics discussion here seems to be saner though with a massive US-centrism and anti-tax skew as people are 1%ers and many never experienced life outside the US, but if you dare criticise the big 5 companies or their products, prepare to be buried...
- stonedartist 6y agoI literally deleted Reddit app a week ago, and my mental health is in a better state. I can't imagine how much Reddit affected my mood. I usually used it for fun, and had subscribed to some innocent technical subreddits, and memes that had nothing to do with politics or relationships; but eventually got dragged into these spiteful, petty, sort of ugly side of Reddit full of bad takes, top posts awarded for repeating same things over and over, namecalling, bullying kids, censoring people, etc. The downvote button is used as a "The hivemind disagress with you, here is your -50 karma" and is never used for it's actual purpose which goes against the purpose of that feature. Worst subreddit you should never visit are amitheasshole, relationshipadvice, programmerhumour, cats (they only post their dead cats for karma), pewdiepiesubmissions, dankmemes, worldpolitics, to name a few. There are lots of popular karmawhores at the top of Reddit (like a shithead called u/gallowboob) that repost/steal posts from other subreddits to get karma shamelessly and he mods popular subs so he gets a pass, and he censors people that expose him. Really, the Reddit drama is never ending and I'm glad I decided to come out of the pettiness of it all.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoI love me some reddit drama and find it mostly hilarious. It helps not to take it too seriously. Did you see the one about the guy who ate 3 feet of a 6 foot sandwich? https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/ca7bdz/aita_because_i_ate_more_than_my_share_of_a_6_foot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/ca7bdz/aita_... I mean, where else are you going to find something like that? Not twitter. Dunno. I've sort of embraced the dumpster fire and am happy to warm myself with the flames. It smells pretty bad at times, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a more amusing circus.
- stonedartist 6y ago>Did you see the one about the guy who ate 3 feet of a 6 foot sandwich? What is that post?! Can't tell is it's satire or people are seriously buying that.
- tripzilch 6y ago
- swyx 6y agoyes, because we get our groupthink fill right here :)
- 101404 6y agoIt became awful around 2016. One of my interest areas is political and usually pretty controversial. I have a degree in the area and decades of practical experience. Reddit was one of the few places where I occasionally found people with similar background to discuss more than just superficially. That completely changed in 2016. Everybody with actual knowledge on the subject was banned from all related subs. Knowledge became a threat, only the "correct" ideology was allowed to remain. Tbh, I was pretty shocked how easily people are radicalized.