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Wow Jessamyn's back and now owns it? Never thought I'd see the day. She was always fair and understandable. I got an account on Metafilter back in '08 and clos

Wow Jessamyn's back and now owns it? Never thought I'd see the day. She was always fair and understandable. I got an account on Metafilter back in '08 and closed it in '15 because it became devastatingly political. It was like a cliff face, it went from a generous and unrestrained community to total one-sided 'my way or no way' politics. I asked the mods to close my account in 2015 because of it and they did.. without the awkward twang of displeasure or faint remorse I was expecting. To this day, if I see that black and white attitude to politics, I ditch the site. It's not worth it. HN's tech focus really is a saving grace. When she says "A lot of people left because the site changed and they didn’t", it was definitely my outcome. BTW this was the best non-professional song I found on Mefi back in '08 (a million years ago?) https://music.metafilter.com/902/Miss-Me-in-the-Morning https://music.metafilter.com/902/Miss-Me-in-the-Morning

dnissley 4y ago
Metafilter was the place I learned to be civil online, and that just makes the current state of things all the more devastating.
nth_degree 4y ago
I only left (err, closed my always-open browser tab) a few months ago, after reading through the discussion about the user survey. The number of comments saying, basically, “anyone who thinks the site changed for the worse is just a [insert right wing caricature here]” horrified me yet, by that point, was completely unsurprising. But after reading a few comments from people who had left the site, I finally realized that I could do the same, and I’d probably be happier for it.
jefurii 4y ago
I know what you mean - for awhile after 2016 you couldn't say anything remotely progressive without having your comments flagged by overzealous Clinton-or-nobody Dems. I almost left but I stuck around and it's gotten better. The no-U.S.-politics option made things easier.
TMWNN 4y ago
>I got an account on Metafilter back in '08 and closed it in '15 because it became devastatingly political. It was like a cliff face, it went from a generous and unrestrained community to total one-sided 'my way or no way' politics. Yes. People who haven't heard of Metafilter don't get how, at one time, it was the best of Reddit and Hacker News in one place. It really destroyed itself because users (and, more importantly, the mods behind the scenes) developed a hivemind that exceeds anything out there other than the likes of /r/politics (no, kids, HN's "hivemind" is nothing of the sort in comparison) in its intensity to erase anyone who commits wrongthink. I hope Ms. West understands how catastrophic the consequences were.
- barrysteve 4y ago
  Yeah for sure. Reddit's hivemind is mostly based on automod bots and two or three mods manually scanning & banning everything. MeFi was open and a pleasing place to hang out and tease out new ideas. Then the politics hit and the open-and-friendly feedback loop turned into a recursive folding inwards into one political view, for owner, mods (except jessamyn who didn't get into it) and commenters. It wasn't just an automod bot banning keywords or your comments getting shadowbanned. You could say what you wanted and the people (entire user base and owners) would figure out the best way to reinforce their recursive implosion and completely destroy you and whatever point you were trying to say. Kind of impressive in a mechanical sense, and you know, horrible to participate in. Looks way better than that now.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    > Then the politics hit and the open-and-friendly feedback loop turned into a recursive folding inwards into one political view, for owner, mods (except jessamyn who didn't get into it) and commenters. The funny thing is that I vaguely thought Ms. West was the owner, or at least ran things, so to hear that she's only now taken over is surprising. Certainly she was for years the closest thing Metafilter had to a public face. >It wasn't just an automod bot banning keywords or your comments getting shadowbanned. You could say what you wanted and the people (entire user base and owners) would figure out the best way to reinforce their recursive implosion and completely destroy you and whatever point you were trying to say. Kind of impressive in a mechanical sense, and you know, horrible to participate in. Yes; the shunning was entirely people-driven. At least with Reddit, it's possible to find another subreddit if you don't like /r/politics. With MeFi, the only alternatives are off the site entirely. I never used my MeFi account much despite its age because I could see early on the trends that only accelerated as the years passed, so it's no surprise (but still sad, given the site's venerable history) to see that many, many others with much more participation decided to go off the site.
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
Yeah my interest in MeFi withered at that time as well. But not because I disagreed with those particular politics (because I don't) but because it suddenly started feeling like an annoyingly US-first type of community. As Americans argue between each other, they also have a way of making it all sound like it is all about themselves and their world.

dnissley 4y ago

Metafilter was the place I learned to be civil online, and that just makes the current state of things all the more devastating.

nth_degree 4y ago

I only left (err, closed my always-open browser tab) a few months ago, after reading through the discussion about the user survey. The number of comments saying, basically, “anyone who thinks the site changed for the worse is just a [insert right wing caricature here]” horrified me yet, by that point, was completely unsurprising. But after reading a few comments from people who had left the site, I finally realized that I could do the same, and I’d probably be happier for it.

jefurii 4y ago

I know what you mean - for awhile after 2016 you couldn't say anything remotely progressive without having your comments flagged by overzealous Clinton-or-nobody Dems. I almost left but I stuck around and it's gotten better. The no-U.S.-politics option made things easier.

TMWNN 4y ago

>I got an account on Metafilter back in '08 and closed it in '15 because it became devastatingly political. It was like a cliff face, it went from a generous and unrestrained community to total one-sided 'my way or no way' politics. Yes. People who haven't heard of Metafilter don't get how, at one time, it was the best of Reddit and Hacker News in one place. It really destroyed itself because users (and, more importantly, the mods behind the scenes) developed a hivemind that exceeds anything out there other than the likes of /r/politics (no, kids, HN's "hivemind" is nothing of the sort in comparison) in its intensity to erase anyone who commits wrongthink. I hope Ms. West understands how catastrophic the consequences were.

barrysteve 4y ago
Yeah for sure. Reddit's hivemind is mostly based on automod bots and two or three mods manually scanning & banning everything. MeFi was open and a pleasing place to hang out and tease out new ideas. Then the politics hit and the open-and-friendly feedback loop turned into a recursive folding inwards into one political view, for owner, mods (except jessamyn who didn't get into it) and commenters. It wasn't just an automod bot banning keywords or your comments getting shadowbanned. You could say what you wanted and the people (entire user base and owners) would figure out the best way to reinforce their recursive implosion and completely destroy you and whatever point you were trying to say. Kind of impressive in a mechanical sense, and you know, horrible to participate in. Looks way better than that now.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  > Then the politics hit and the open-and-friendly feedback loop turned into a recursive folding inwards into one political view, for owner, mods (except jessamyn who didn't get into it) and commenters. The funny thing is that I vaguely thought Ms. West was the owner, or at least ran things, so to hear that she's only now taken over is surprising. Certainly she was for years the closest thing Metafilter had to a public face. >It wasn't just an automod bot banning keywords or your comments getting shadowbanned. You could say what you wanted and the people (entire user base and owners) would figure out the best way to reinforce their recursive implosion and completely destroy you and whatever point you were trying to say. Kind of impressive in a mechanical sense, and you know, horrible to participate in. Yes; the shunning was entirely people-driven. At least with Reddit, it's possible to find another subreddit if you don't like /r/politics. With MeFi, the only alternatives are off the site entirely. I never used my MeFi account much despite its age because I could see early on the trends that only accelerated as the years passed, so it's no surprise (but still sad, given the site's venerable history) to see that many, many others with much more participation decided to go off the site.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

Yeah my interest in MeFi withered at that time as well. But not because I disagreed with those particular politics (because I don't) but because it suddenly started feeling like an annoyingly US-first type of community. As Americans argue between each other, they also have a way of making it all sound like it is all about themselves and their world.