5 ms·

there’s extremists on every platform

by foolfoolz 6y ago

MattGaiser 6y ago
There is poo on every surface. The key question is the amount of poo relative to the other stuff.
- edw 6y ago
  Here’s another question: Would any of our lives be any worse — or would they be better? — if we simply chose to walk away and not be a part of any of these platforms, HN included? How much of our lives is made up of karma whoring, level grinding, and falling into the <https://xkcd.com/386/> https://xkcd.com/386/> trap?
  - beervirus 6y ago
    I learn stuff on HN every time I visit. Reddit is (somewhat) entertaining, but I don’t usually learn anything important there.
    - the_af 6y ago
      Doesn't this depend on the subreddit? Some are "chatty" or full of memes, but others are very informative for some niches. If you want a subreddit for enthusiasts of $NICHE, you're likely to find it, and it's likely to be useful.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    I do it as I would otherwise be playing video games. If I have a big project going on, I’ll ignore Reddit and Hacker News for weeks. I also learn a lot of new stuff.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    I think you could credibly ask that question for nearly anything outside of human basic needs. But the answer is simple: people are entertained and enriched by different things. I certainly spend some amount of time on HN replying to things I shouldn't bother with, but the majority of my time on HN is filled with learning new things and hearing interesting perspectives on those things. I consider it a net positive in my life, and over the years I've gotten better at avoiding the negative parts.
  - gpm 6y ago
    I made 40 dollars last weekend by falling into the https://xkcd.com/386 https://xkcd.com/386 "trap". Thursday before last weekend someone released a starlink coverage map that was wrong, specifically it made arbitrary circles on a globe and pretended they were coverage. In order to fix this mistake I made https://droid.cafe/starlink https://droid.cafe/starlink. A reddit user was kind enough to spontaneously donate 40 dollar (in btc) to me despite the fact that I didn't solicit donations. It's also been a pretty productive endeavor for learning about front end development, listening to feedback and giving users what they're asking for, learning to use cloudflare/gcp, and now learning to optimize glsl shaders to enable a fancier renderer while still getting reasonable performance on cheap hardware. I feel like I often learn a lot about one random topic or another when I research so I can accurately correct someone who is being wrong on the internet. The above is an interesting example because there was a concrete deliverable at the end of the process, but I don't feel the fact that I learned from the process is particularly unique.
  - rhizome 6y ago
    > Would any of our lives be any worse — or would they be better? — if we simply chose to walk away and not be a part of any of these platforms Monks walk away from pretty much everything, and have been doing so for a long time now. They continue living. Does the result of that qualify as either better or worse than what you have now?
  - glenstein 6y ago
    I dislike this framing because I think the important thing here -- the need to resist false equivalences between different platfroms -- gets papered over, when it's a really practical and important question with real implications. I don't think 'all platforms are bad' represents forward motion in a conversation about what platforms are able to do differently to make them better than others.
as1mov 6y ago
Agreed, but at least reddit is unique in that it seems to get accused of being accused of both kinds of extremism, Tumble/Twitter/HN seem to think it's a right wing shithole, while the 4chan/Imageboard ilk thinks it's a leftie propaganda machine. That's not the case with the alternatives, most tend to go really hard on one side of the extremism scale (right: voat, left: raddle).
- strombofulous 6y ago
  I can't imagine thinking reddit is right-wing in any way whatsoever. Just looking at the front page (/r/all) I counted five explicitly left-leaning posts (on subreddits like /r/whitepeopletwitter), three that alluded to left-leaning subjects in a positive way (such as a post on /r/atheism), and 0 posts that even came close to kind of sounding like it might have been right-leaning. And this doesn't even consider the comments which is where the real hivemind exists. Yes it hosts /r/the_donald or whatever but reddit as a whole is very left-leaning. Edit: Hey ya'll instead of downvoting me how about providing some evidence of widespread right-leaning thoughts that aren't isolated to individual subreddits and shamed throughout the rest of reddit? Spoiler: You can't
  - sampo 6y ago
    > /r/the_donald They shut it down. 0 new posts for past 3 months.
    - evan_ 6y ago
      Reddit didn't shut them down, the mods of r/t_d set it to only approved posters and nobody is approved.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - encom 6y ago
      Yes, they moved to https://thedonald.win/ https://thedonald.win/
hcal 6y ago
I think the problem is that because reddit banned a lot of extremist communities there is pent up demand within those groups for a new host platform. If you start a new reddit competitor, users with those extemist views are looking for a home and will be the first to find and adopt it. A large well formed community can survive a portion of its users with negative comments and posts, but I doubt you can build a community on the back of those users. Instead that negative group poisons the the platform for a more mainstream crowd. People won't join a plateform if the first thing they are exposed to supports extremist views.

there’s extremists on every platform

MattGaiser 6y ago

There is poo on every surface. The key question is the amount of poo relative to the other stuff.

edw 6y ago
Here’s another question: Would any of our lives be any worse — or would they be better? — if we simply chose to walk away and not be a part of any of these platforms, HN included? How much of our lives is made up of karma whoring, level grinding, and falling into the <https://xkcd.com/386/> https://xkcd.com/386/> trap?
- beervirus 6y ago
  I learn stuff on HN every time I visit. Reddit is (somewhat) entertaining, but I don’t usually learn anything important there.
  - the_af 6y ago
    Doesn't this depend on the subreddit? Some are "chatty" or full of memes, but others are very informative for some niches. If you want a subreddit for enthusiasts of $NICHE, you're likely to find it, and it's likely to be useful.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I do it as I would otherwise be playing video games. If I have a big project going on, I’ll ignore Reddit and Hacker News for weeks. I also learn a lot of new stuff.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I think you could credibly ask that question for nearly anything outside of human basic needs. But the answer is simple: people are entertained and enriched by different things. I certainly spend some amount of time on HN replying to things I shouldn't bother with, but the majority of my time on HN is filled with learning new things and hearing interesting perspectives on those things. I consider it a net positive in my life, and over the years I've gotten better at avoiding the negative parts.
- gpm 6y ago
  I made 40 dollars last weekend by falling into the https://xkcd.com/386 https://xkcd.com/386 "trap". Thursday before last weekend someone released a starlink coverage map that was wrong, specifically it made arbitrary circles on a globe and pretended they were coverage. In order to fix this mistake I made https://droid.cafe/starlink https://droid.cafe/starlink. A reddit user was kind enough to spontaneously donate 40 dollar (in btc) to me despite the fact that I didn't solicit donations. It's also been a pretty productive endeavor for learning about front end development, listening to feedback and giving users what they're asking for, learning to use cloudflare/gcp, and now learning to optimize glsl shaders to enable a fancier renderer while still getting reasonable performance on cheap hardware. I feel like I often learn a lot about one random topic or another when I research so I can accurately correct someone who is being wrong on the internet. The above is an interesting example because there was a concrete deliverable at the end of the process, but I don't feel the fact that I learned from the process is particularly unique.
- rhizome 6y ago
  > Would any of our lives be any worse — or would they be better? — if we simply chose to walk away and not be a part of any of these platforms Monks walk away from pretty much everything, and have been doing so for a long time now. They continue living. Does the result of that qualify as either better or worse than what you have now?
- glenstein 6y ago
  I dislike this framing because I think the important thing here -- the need to resist false equivalences between different platfroms -- gets papered over, when it's a really practical and important question with real implications. I don't think 'all platforms are bad' represents forward motion in a conversation about what platforms are able to do differently to make them better than others.

as1mov 6y ago

Agreed, but at least reddit is unique in that it seems to get accused of being accused of both kinds of extremism, Tumble/Twitter/HN seem to think it's a right wing shithole, while the 4chan/Imageboard ilk thinks it's a leftie propaganda machine. That's not the case with the alternatives, most tend to go really hard on one side of the extremism scale (right: voat, left: raddle).

strombofulous 6y ago
I can't imagine thinking reddit is right-wing in any way whatsoever. Just looking at the front page (/r/all) I counted five explicitly left-leaning posts (on subreddits like /r/whitepeopletwitter), three that alluded to left-leaning subjects in a positive way (such as a post on /r/atheism), and 0 posts that even came close to kind of sounding like it might have been right-leaning. And this doesn't even consider the comments which is where the real hivemind exists. Yes it hosts /r/the_donald or whatever but reddit as a whole is very left-leaning. Edit: Hey ya'll instead of downvoting me how about providing some evidence of widespread right-leaning thoughts that aren't isolated to individual subreddits and shamed throughout the rest of reddit? Spoiler: You can't
- sampo 6y ago
  > /r/the_donald They shut it down. 0 new posts for past 3 months.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    Reddit didn't shut them down, the mods of r/t_d set it to only approved posters and nobody is approved.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - encom 6y ago
    Yes, they moved to https://thedonald.win/ https://thedonald.win/

hcal 6y ago

I think the problem is that because reddit banned a lot of extremist communities there is pent up demand within those groups for a new host platform. If you start a new reddit competitor, users with those extemist views are looking for a home and will be the first to find and adopt it. A large well formed community can survive a portion of its users with negative comments and posts, but I doubt you can build a community on the back of those users. Instead that negative group poisons the the platform for a more mainstream crowd. People won't join a plateform if the first thing they are exposed to supports extremist views.