4 ms·

> Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing It's been

> Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing It's been interesting to watch the steady decline of Reddit and Twitter since they launched. They've always had a significant amount of doom-and-gloom clickbait headlines, but in the past it was far easier to filter out the bad and follow subreddits or Twitter people with high signal to noise ratios. Now, Reddit feels like a lost cause for anything other than consuming endless outrage headlines. r/popular is full of blatant misinformation that could be disproved with a simple Google search or outrage-bait headlines that make every event sound like the end of the world. Even the previously useful subreddits I subscribed to have been inundated with angry, angry people who manage to turn everything into an argument or relate it back to politics somehow. I have to wonder if TikTok is simply enjoying the early days where the fun, light-hearted content still outweighs the intentionally rage-baity content. There does appear to be vast amounts of misinformation and angry content on TikTok, but it hasn't yet flooded the platform to a degree that it's unavoidable. I feel like we watched a similar rise and fall of Clubhouse during the pandemic. The early days were full of people with genuine curiosity and good intentions about socializing, but it quickly devolved into lowest common denominator content. I haven't opened Clubhouse for months, but the last time I opened it I remember scrolling through endless "how to get rich" rooms that were keyword stuffing popular terms until I just gave up on the platform altogether. Maybe TikTok's algorithm and model can stave off the Eternal September problem, but I feel like it's only a matter of time until the signal to noise ratio drops below most people's thresholds for decent content.

slownews45 5y ago
Agreed - HN as well has been trending towards the outrage / doom model. The coverage of Apple just rips the worst articles (ie, apple committing child porn felonies), and the headlines are often wildly overboard (imply all Google workers going on strike etc). TikTok has avoided that somehow - def more fun and interesting there - I do keep on getting exposed at times to somewhat weird idea, but a bit less of the yell in your face while clapping kind of stuff you see elsewhere so they are doing something interesting with their algorithm.
rjh29 5y ago
Reddit is still good, you're likely subscribing to popular subreddits. Don't subscribe to anything that appears in r/popular or r/all. Try subreddits that intentionally ban politics or have <100k subscribers, it's a totally different website, full of wholesome niche communities. Part of what keeps Reddit free of such nastiness (in my experience at least) is the downvote button. Sure, it creates an echo chamber that ruins the popular subreddits, but on the smaller subreddits, it means that anything toxic, inflammatory or misleading is nuked into invisibility. After getting used to this, I find it really hard to participate in places like youtube, Discord or old-style forums where conversations can be derailed or turned toxic by only a few bad actors.
- cgb223 5y ago
  I tried that approach and found that even in my niche interest subreddits that I subscribe too that somehow politics always found a way in, and became a top post for some cheeky reason. Moderators also often selectively enforce the “no politics” rule either by only removing political things that conflict with their personal political views or by defining things that are political as not political so they can continue or vice versa. I think a big part of the problem of Reddit is that there’s a handful of mods who just moderate everything I wish there was a Reddit without all that crap, I’d pay money to use it
- trts 5y ago
  This has been my experience as well. There are countless amazing, small communities on Reddit, and being able to kick the popular subreddits out of my feed makes it feel like one of the last places that embodies the spirit of the early internet. Namely -- small quasi-anonymous communities where people can sincerely discuss niche interests and discover new ones through the serendipity of interaction. Once old.reddit.com gets turned off, I worry about how long this can persist. The iOS app has tons of clickbait hooks, useless notifications, invitations to join "similar" large, emotional subreddits full of toxicity and extremism.
  - dharmab 5y ago
    The non-default niche subreddits are what replaced the BB forums of old. Interestingly some of the niche subs I'm on also have Discord servers which are lively and interesting, like the days of IRC.
excitom 5y ago
Interesting, no one seems to be talking about SnapChat any more.
narrator 5y ago
The value of social networks to manipulate politics is way more valuable than any ads. The ads are there to just cover the bills. Reddit is going downhill because it's a radicalization factory filled to the brim with bots. Anyone who presents an unpopular opinion is banned on most subs. This is why the whole social media world is easy to disrupt. It's not listening to the consumer and focused on influence. I mean the whole reason Gab.com exists is not because it's a good site with cool features. Nope. The reason it exists is nobody can host that stuff without building their whole infrastructure from scratch because of the political controversy. TikTok on the other hand is just focused on user engagement right now and not politics, so whatever. There will come a day though when it become too powerful for just that.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I don't think doom and gloom made reddit less interesting. I think it is the opposite that some power users feel appointed to clean up anything they do not like or classify as misinformation. Although these "hot to get rich" posts certainly are nothing but. TikTok is certainly not solving the Eternal September problem, it is accelerating it if it doesn't keep some groups separated at least. There is really good content, but there has been on Twitter and reddit too at first. But only light-hearted content and artificial positivity can also be worse than doom and gloom in some cases. Political incorrect jokes are sometimes enjoyable. Not everything needs to be a message with the latest hot takes in pedagogy that don't even make too much sense. I think healthy communities still don't take internet comments too seriously.
ffiirree 5y ago
I'm still very much a fan of reddit. But then again I never ever ever go to r/all. I don't go to r/politics. So maybe it is a shitshow. But yeah the subreddits I like to visit are still high quality and give me good information. I also feel like reddit has become legitimized as a source of new information. Especially ever since Obama did an AMA. I seem to find up to date information there that news outlets/journals haven't caught up with yet. And it's been good that they've taken down some really messed up racism subreddits. It's bad that they for some reason let anti-white hate subreddits thrive and develop. Still not cool with that one. But all in all, I'll take it.

slownews45 5y ago

Agreed - HN as well has been trending towards the outrage / doom model. The coverage of Apple just rips the worst articles (ie, apple committing child porn felonies), and the headlines are often wildly overboard (imply all Google workers going on strike etc). TikTok has avoided that somehow - def more fun and interesting there - I do keep on getting exposed at times to somewhat weird idea, but a bit less of the yell in your face while clapping kind of stuff you see elsewhere so they are doing something interesting with their algorithm.

rjh29 5y ago

Reddit is still good, you're likely subscribing to popular subreddits. Don't subscribe to anything that appears in r/popular or r/all. Try subreddits that intentionally ban politics or have <100k subscribers, it's a totally different website, full of wholesome niche communities. Part of what keeps Reddit free of such nastiness (in my experience at least) is the downvote button. Sure, it creates an echo chamber that ruins the popular subreddits, but on the smaller subreddits, it means that anything toxic, inflammatory or misleading is nuked into invisibility. After getting used to this, I find it really hard to participate in places like youtube, Discord or old-style forums where conversations can be derailed or turned toxic by only a few bad actors.

cgb223 5y ago
I tried that approach and found that even in my niche interest subreddits that I subscribe too that somehow politics always found a way in, and became a top post for some cheeky reason. Moderators also often selectively enforce the “no politics” rule either by only removing political things that conflict with their personal political views or by defining things that are political as not political so they can continue or vice versa. I think a big part of the problem of Reddit is that there’s a handful of mods who just moderate everything I wish there was a Reddit without all that crap, I’d pay money to use it
trts 5y ago
This has been my experience as well. There are countless amazing, small communities on Reddit, and being able to kick the popular subreddits out of my feed makes it feel like one of the last places that embodies the spirit of the early internet. Namely -- small quasi-anonymous communities where people can sincerely discuss niche interests and discover new ones through the serendipity of interaction. Once old.reddit.com gets turned off, I worry about how long this can persist. The iOS app has tons of clickbait hooks, useless notifications, invitations to join "similar" large, emotional subreddits full of toxicity and extremism.
- dharmab 5y ago
  The non-default niche subreddits are what replaced the BB forums of old. Interestingly some of the niche subs I'm on also have Discord servers which are lively and interesting, like the days of IRC.

excitom 5y ago

Interesting, no one seems to be talking about SnapChat any more.

narrator 5y ago

The value of social networks to manipulate politics is way more valuable than any ads. The ads are there to just cover the bills. Reddit is going downhill because it's a radicalization factory filled to the brim with bots. Anyone who presents an unpopular opinion is banned on most subs. This is why the whole social media world is easy to disrupt. It's not listening to the consumer and focused on influence. I mean the whole reason Gab.com exists is not because it's a good site with cool features. Nope. The reason it exists is nobody can host that stuff without building their whole infrastructure from scratch because of the political controversy. TikTok on the other hand is just focused on user engagement right now and not politics, so whatever. There will come a day though when it become too powerful for just that.

raxxorrax 5y ago

I don't think doom and gloom made reddit less interesting. I think it is the opposite that some power users feel appointed to clean up anything they do not like or classify as misinformation. Although these "hot to get rich" posts certainly are nothing but. TikTok is certainly not solving the Eternal September problem, it is accelerating it if it doesn't keep some groups separated at least. There is really good content, but there has been on Twitter and reddit too at first. But only light-hearted content and artificial positivity can also be worse than doom and gloom in some cases. Political incorrect jokes are sometimes enjoyable. Not everything needs to be a message with the latest hot takes in pedagogy that don't even make too much sense. I think healthy communities still don't take internet comments too seriously.

ffiirree 5y ago

I'm still very much a fan of reddit. But then again I never ever ever go to r/all. I don't go to r/politics. So maybe it is a shitshow. But yeah the subreddits I like to visit are still high quality and give me good information. I also feel like reddit has become legitimized as a source of new information. Especially ever since Obama did an AMA. I seem to find up to date information there that news outlets/journals haven't caught up with yet. And it's been good that they've taken down some really messed up racism subreddits. It's bad that they for some reason let anti-white hate subreddits thrive and develop. Still not cool with that one. But all in all, I'll take it.