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>”if you just want to talk about knitting, you can avoid the people talking about politics.” I don’t find this to be the case at all. The amount of politics to

>”if you just want to talk about knitting, you can avoid the people talking about politics.” I don’t find this to be the case at all. The amount of politics tolerated in each subreddit is almost entirely dependent on the personalities of the mods who run it. And for whatever reason, most Reddit mods tend to be activist friendly or at least look the other way when it comes to obvious soapbox accounts breaking the rules. In my experience most subreddits choose to flair political posts rather than prohibit them.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
To be fair to the Reddit moderation staff, they’re also paid $0.00, so being strict about keeping the sub on-topic may not be high up on their list of daily priorities.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  Understandable, but I also suspect most of the moderators are at least somewhat sympathetic to the soapboxer’s political agendas.
- YinglingLight 5y ago
  also, by being paid $0.00, they're extremely easy and cheap to persuade/get on an entity's payroll.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  Other way around. They're not paid, so they want to keep the amount of unrelated contentious bullshit on their subreddit to a minimum. I've been a default sub mod and I know how much of a firehose that is. The simplest solution, and the smallest amount of work in total, is to nip unrelated discussions in the bud, delete entire comment trees, and lock the comment section entirely on a post that is (or is looking to) go south. Users quickly learn that "we don't do that here", and stop.
  - nkingsy 5y ago
    Yes, it works and it sort of scales. Why, then, does the outrage porn rise to the top of the Reddit home page? Because it measurably increases sales in a huge way right now. To use a baseball analogy, how do you tell a juiced to the gills superstar that steroids are actually hurting their long-term outlook? There’s no way to show Barry Bonds a future in which he’s shadow banned from the hall of fame and unmentionable even on his own teams broadcasts. The change will come either with regulation or when a new, better system comes along and steals their users.
    - CydeWeys 5y ago
      Outrage has always traveled faster than dry factual information. This isn't a new Internet phenomenon. You can see it in action all the way back in Greek and Roman history as well. It's an inmate feature of human psychology, not a new invention by reddit/Twitter.
      - nkingsy 5y ago
        Yes, and the fact that these platforms haven't taken steps to prevent abuse of the cheat code in our psychology means that they find the benefits of outrage to their bottom line outweigh the "unmeasurable" costs such as damage to society and the hollowing out of their platform.
    - intended 5y ago
      The front page of Reddit is not always outrage. Besides, if our brains are designed to zoom in on certain signals, is it rational to expect technology to somehow prevent this?
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Besides, if our brains are designed to zoom in on certain signals, is it rational to expect technology to somehow prevent this? Technology can mitigate it (by suppressing the signals, offsetting the effect) or exploit and exacerbate it. The former is often socially useful, but the latter is usually the path of least resistance to profits, and capitalism isn't a system whose incentives optimize for social utility.
Tainnor 5y ago
I'm not super active on reddit, but I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits. Of course, for other subreddits it might be different, but this is my experience.
- codesections 5y ago
  > I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits. I haven't spent any time there, so I'm genuinely curious: how does r/history avoid political arguments? Some people say that everything is inherently political, but history seems especially adjacent to politics
  - babyblueblanket 5y ago
    r/history is heavily moderated, and primarily political positions need to be backed up with actual historical facts and discussion (and not out-of-context common talking points) or it'll be called for what it is and deleted.
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    All of the "successful" subs are either small enough to self-govern effectively because they feel like actual communities or they have hardcore, uncompromising moderator teams that enforce the rules swiftly. askhistorians is the best example I can think of. askscience close behind.
- sigotirandolas 5y ago
  I do: https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/gwo4o7/in_solidarity_this_sub_is_going_offline_at_8pm_gmt/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/gwo4o7/in_so... https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gw4uca/rmath_will_be_closing_to_new_posts_from_12846pm/ https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gw4uca/rmath_will_be_... https://old.reddit.com/r/history/comments/gvsvq8/rhistory_is_closing_down_for_the_next_24_hours_in/ https://old.reddit.com/r/history/comments/gvsvq8/rhistory_is...
paulddraper 5y ago
That's true. But the solution is to find a subreddit that works the way you want it to. r/offmychest vs r/trueoffmychest r/gaming vs r/truegaming r/movies vs r/truefilm r/unpopularopinion vs r/trueunpopularopinion

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

To be fair to the Reddit moderation staff, they’re also paid $0.00, so being strict about keeping the sub on-topic may not be high up on their list of daily priorities.

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
Understandable, but I also suspect most of the moderators are at least somewhat sympathetic to the soapboxer’s political agendas.
YinglingLight 5y ago
also, by being paid $0.00, they're extremely easy and cheap to persuade/get on an entity's payroll.
CydeWeys 5y ago
Other way around. They're not paid, so they want to keep the amount of unrelated contentious bullshit on their subreddit to a minimum. I've been a default sub mod and I know how much of a firehose that is. The simplest solution, and the smallest amount of work in total, is to nip unrelated discussions in the bud, delete entire comment trees, and lock the comment section entirely on a post that is (or is looking to) go south. Users quickly learn that "we don't do that here", and stop.
- nkingsy 5y ago
  Yes, it works and it sort of scales. Why, then, does the outrage porn rise to the top of the Reddit home page? Because it measurably increases sales in a huge way right now. To use a baseball analogy, how do you tell a juiced to the gills superstar that steroids are actually hurting their long-term outlook? There’s no way to show Barry Bonds a future in which he’s shadow banned from the hall of fame and unmentionable even on his own teams broadcasts. The change will come either with regulation or when a new, better system comes along and steals their users.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    Outrage has always traveled faster than dry factual information. This isn't a new Internet phenomenon. You can see it in action all the way back in Greek and Roman history as well. It's an inmate feature of human psychology, not a new invention by reddit/Twitter.
    - nkingsy 5y ago
      Yes, and the fact that these platforms haven't taken steps to prevent abuse of the cheat code in our psychology means that they find the benefits of outrage to their bottom line outweigh the "unmeasurable" costs such as damage to society and the hollowing out of their platform.
  - intended 5y ago
    The front page of Reddit is not always outrage. Besides, if our brains are designed to zoom in on certain signals, is it rational to expect technology to somehow prevent this?
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Besides, if our brains are designed to zoom in on certain signals, is it rational to expect technology to somehow prevent this? Technology can mitigate it (by suppressing the signals, offsetting the effect) or exploit and exacerbate it. The former is often socially useful, but the latter is usually the path of least resistance to profits, and capitalism isn't a system whose incentives optimize for social utility.

Tainnor 5y ago

I'm not super active on reddit, but I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits. Of course, for other subreddits it might be different, but this is my experience.

codesections 5y ago
> I do frequent (mostly as a lurker) some subreddits from time to time, such as r/math, r/learnjapanese, r/history etc. I don't remember running into any sort of heated political argument in any of these subreddits. I haven't spent any time there, so I'm genuinely curious: how does r/history avoid political arguments? Some people say that everything is inherently political, but history seems especially adjacent to politics
- babyblueblanket 5y ago
  r/history is heavily moderated, and primarily political positions need to be backed up with actual historical facts and discussion (and not out-of-context common talking points) or it'll be called for what it is and deleted.
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  All of the "successful" subs are either small enough to self-govern effectively because they feel like actual communities or they have hardcore, uncompromising moderator teams that enforce the rules swiftly. askhistorians is the best example I can think of. askscience close behind.
sigotirandolas 5y ago
I do: https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/gwo4o7/in_solidarity_this_sub_is_going_offline_at_8pm_gmt/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/gwo4o7/in_so... https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gw4uca/rmath_will_be_closing_to_new_posts_from_12846pm/ https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gw4uca/rmath_will_be_... https://old.reddit.com/r/history/comments/gvsvq8/rhistory_is_closing_down_for_the_next_24_hours_in/ https://old.reddit.com/r/history/comments/gvsvq8/rhistory_is...

paulddraper 5y ago

That's true. But the solution is to find a subreddit that works the way you want it to. r/offmychest vs r/trueoffmychest r/gaming vs r/truegaming r/movies vs r/truefilm r/unpopularopinion vs r/trueunpopularopinion