4 ms·

> Then people started posting pictures of cakes, political/religious discussions were everywhere, and it just felt weird. It wasn’t just random, I noticed a m

> Then people started posting pictures of cakes, political/religious discussions were everywhere, and it just felt weird. It wasn’t just random, I noticed a major shift leading up to the 2008 election. Reddit’s decision to lock some vocally awful subreddits (/r/politics /r/atheism /uspolitics etc) made the homepage a gaggle of Obama & anti-religious rhetoric rather than anything compelling.

gibspaulding 6y ago
> Reddit’s decision to lock some vocally awful subreddits (/r/politics /r/atheism /uspolitics etc) made the homepage a gaggle of Obama & anti-religious rhetoric rather than anything compelling. Now that's an interesting phenomenon I hadn't thought about before. There's been a lot of discussion recently about tech companies removing/blocking content they do not agree with. In most cases (racism, hate-speach, etc) this seems pretty well justified as it helps keep these people from rallying together, but I never thought about those boards being a sort of trap crop [1] for the internet, keeping the pests distracted and away from the areas the rest of us enjoy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_crop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_crop
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  It wasn't about agreement or disagreement. The pendulum swung HARD the other way in 2016, and /r/the_donald dominated the front page for the year leading up to the election. This is why is should be clear that Reddit makes a lot of money by manipulating the front page feed. Trump just simply outspent Clinton on Reddit. They just binned /r/t_d entirely, and, in my opinion, that IS an agree/disagree decision. The same folks will be back with the same content under a different sub, but I doubt they spend enough to punch through again this time. I think, given their success last time around, that the price will be much higher. Then again, what do I know? I was a pretty avid user at one time. Now I block the whole site and everything related. At this point, there's very little useful content left. It's basically just a giant portal for porn, and with 2 young boys in the house, and no way to filter it, I don't want it on my network. If they'd offer a DNS-based "safe" mode, like search engines, I'd open it back up.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The concept of a containment board dates back at least to the early days of 4chan, probably before that.
wl 6y ago
I created an account to remove /r/politics and /r/atheism from my front page. And I'm interested in both politics and skepticism.

gibspaulding 6y ago

> Reddit’s decision to lock some vocally awful subreddits (/r/politics /r/atheism /uspolitics etc) made the homepage a gaggle of Obama & anti-religious rhetoric rather than anything compelling. Now that's an interesting phenomenon I hadn't thought about before. There's been a lot of discussion recently about tech companies removing/blocking content they do not agree with. In most cases (racism, hate-speach, etc) this seems pretty well justified as it helps keep these people from rallying together, but I never thought about those boards being a sort of trap crop [1] for the internet, keeping the pests distracted and away from the areas the rest of us enjoy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_crop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_crop

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
It wasn't about agreement or disagreement. The pendulum swung HARD the other way in 2016, and /r/the_donald dominated the front page for the year leading up to the election. This is why is should be clear that Reddit makes a lot of money by manipulating the front page feed. Trump just simply outspent Clinton on Reddit. They just binned /r/t_d entirely, and, in my opinion, that IS an agree/disagree decision. The same folks will be back with the same content under a different sub, but I doubt they spend enough to punch through again this time. I think, given their success last time around, that the price will be much higher. Then again, what do I know? I was a pretty avid user at one time. Now I block the whole site and everything related. At this point, there's very little useful content left. It's basically just a giant portal for porn, and with 2 young boys in the house, and no way to filter it, I don't want it on my network. If they'd offer a DNS-based "safe" mode, like search engines, I'd open it back up.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The concept of a containment board dates back at least to the early days of 4chan, probably before that.

wl 6y ago

I created an account to remove /r/politics and /r/atheism from my front page. And I'm interested in both politics and skepticism.