6 ms·

As someone who's blind I never looked at Reddit because it was not particularly easy to use with a screen reader. Now's a heck of a time to discover there are

by jareds 3y ago

As someone who's blind I never looked at Reddit because it was not particularly easy to use with a screen reader. Now's a heck of a time to discover there are accessible ways of accessing it for the next two months.

jahsome 3y ago
Outside of some niche communities, it's been a real crap shoot for many years though. I think you may have been spared a lot of garbage. I can't really put a finger on when or what changed but feel it definitely lost the sheen.
- tarboreus 3y ago
  r/blind is a great community, however.
  - jahsome 3y ago
    That's a great counter point. I wouldn't know from first hand experience in that case but there are some GREAT communities. I feel overall though, the tone of discussions and echo chamber sentiment just feels different now. Especially on say, r/all. I usually only browsed occasionally in anon mode when seeking a respite from "reality", and overall it seemed to go from lighthearted discussions and a lot of really cool, "check this out"-style posts to a sea of outrage baiting, word for word reposts, and outright flamewars. Eventually that seeped in to a number of subreddits in my meticulously tailored logged-in experience. I was so disappointed by the erosion of something that once filled me with immense joy and from which I have gleaned a wealth of valuable information, I just wrote off the entire thing. I'm not even sure if it's manufactured in my own mind. A while after I found reddit went through some things that have substantially reformed my general outlook; I am a lot softer now. I'm probably just too sensitive but in my experience, most people there just don't treat each other well. I can certainly understand how those in a community like r/blind would be predisposed to kindness. I'm not sure if there's any factual basis in my reasoning, but I feel in general groups facing greater than average adversity tend to value treating others well. On the other hand, those in more advantageous positions seem to lean in to entitlement, and are disproportionately enraged when they feel taken advantage of... It's funny/sad how that happens.
- pawelduda 3y ago
  What are better alternatives to Reddit? Yeah, a lot of subs are echo chambers, circlejerks and struggle with quality in general but if I counted how many times I found it useful compared to the rest of Internet on average, I'd be pretty rich. I often default my searches to site:old.reddit.com <query>, the new UI and app are garbage though.
  - asdff 3y ago
    What worries me is that this isn't a sustainable position. Already the googling for reddit posts sometimes backfires, says hey here's a recent comment from two weeks ago but then you open it and its the same 5 year old post you've already read somehow. Then you have a general decline of the quality of the community, more people posting in a biased manner than an unbiased one, among other issues. Not to mention, advertisers know about reddit too, and are probably shilling the crap out of their products to respective subreddits who link their offerings in the sidebar or the subreddit faq or wiki page. Eventually it's going to be no different than any other enshittified corner of the internet, which is scary because where do you go then? I'd be hunting for actual books again for information. Pretty sad that the world wide web is reaching a point where the old brick and mortar library is the better source of information again, given all the promise it had at the start as being a step forward from that.
    - pawelduda 3y ago
      similar thoughts here but I think there will always be a successor to a good community, and if you experienced it before, you'll be able to find the next one
      - asdff 3y ago
        I feel like that's not even a sure thing going forward. Consider the present generation of adults. They might have grown up on early reddit, or forums, or even usenet. They have an expectation of how these things operate. Meanwhile, take the new generation. Some of them might go on old.reddit.com, some of them might only get exposed to the new version of reddit, some of them might not go there at all. As a whole, I'd say a higher percent of online discussion users in newer generations are on a platform like a walled garden, than a self hosted forum or niche subreddit today. This affects their expections and what they understand the internet to be going forward. It affects what sorts of websites or services are able to exist going forward as well. Our concept of the internet will likely die out along with our generation.
- asdff 3y ago
  Eternal september happened. The original crop of users was generally pretty good about following reddiquete and not downvoting. Today, the average user seems a lot more hostile in their replies, more willing to downvote your post in disagreement even if it is relevant to the topic, less able to see sarcasm or nuance, more willing to die on ideological hills.
  - arjonagelhout 3y ago
    I tried to find the meaning of eternal summer, but it appears to be a movie. I think you mean Eternal September [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
    - asdff 3y ago
      Very true good catch
  - yarg 3y ago
    The down-voters are the good faith players - people are getting permabanned for political disagreements.
  - mustacheemperor 3y ago
    The community zeitgeist across the board just seems so much more argumentative, contrarian, and angry than it was years ago. Even on the niche subs. On /r/academicbiblical people get banned for spitting nasty stuff at each other in comments. The AnalogCommunity subreddit has a frequent drumbeat of negativity about new film stocks and is enraged about "shilling" if anyone who as much as includes a logo on their gear in a post - as if we, the analog film community, don't want new companies to succeed in analog film? The outrage isn't logical, it's strictly emotional, and it seems like people are drawn literally to the emotion of rage, not an emotional reaction to anything specific and tangible. It reminds me of trying to find value in YouTube comments around 2008 and realizing there's some kind of community-wide attitude problem completely destroying any chance of it. It's not a discussion forum, it's one of those rooms where people pay $20 to smash stuff up with a sledgehammer and yell.
akiselev 3y ago
I feel like we need a new XKCD for this situation like the “today’s lucky 10,000” [1] one. Congratulations! You’re one of today’s lucky million! You discovered a feature that’s useful instead of anti-user just in time for a tech company to shut it down in the name of ~~user~~ shareholder experience! [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  I think this has happened to me a few dozen times on Hacker News when I've seen "X is shutting down" where this is the first I've heard of X and it seems useful to me.
  - Marsymars 3y ago
    For me this week, it was Blaseball: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/3/23744507/blaseball-shutdown-fantasy-baseball-horror-simulation https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/3/23744507/blaseball-shutdow...
    - onionisafruit 3y ago
      That’s one more for me. IDK if I would have actually played Blaseball, but it looks pretty fun.
- ulrikrasmussen 3y ago
  Since the GP stated they were blind, here's a textual description of the comic: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousand https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousan...
baggachipz 3y ago
Correction, the next 3 weeks. :)
squokko 3y ago
If it's any consolation, virtually every subreddit with more than 10,000 members is completely worthless
nerpderp82 3y ago
You can at least for now, download any page in json format by appending .json to the url. For instance https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json wget https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json -O hn.json jq -c '.data.children[] | {title: .data.title, domain: .data.domain, url: .data.url, upvotes: .data.ups }' hn.json Results in {"title":"Service Rents Email Addresses for Account Signups","domain":"krebsonsecurity.com","url":"https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/06/service-rents-email-addresses-for-account-signups/","upvotes":8} {"title":"Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted","domain":"arstechnica.com","url":"https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/dell-in-hot-water-for-making-shoppers-think-overpriced-monitors-were-discounted/","upvotes":12}
getmeinrn 3y ago
If you've gone without Reddit for this long, you're fine. The odds of Reddit having a net positive impact on your life are pretty low.
- jareds 3y ago
  That's the way I feel. I saw an update about providing API access to accessibility specific apps but even with that I'm still not interested. Why would I want to use a site that makes limited efforts at accessibility and could revoke the ability for people to perform free labor to fix issues they have chosen to ignore?

by jareds 3y ago

jahsome 3y ago

Outside of some niche communities, it's been a real crap shoot for many years though. I think you may have been spared a lot of garbage. I can't really put a finger on when or what changed but feel it definitely lost the sheen.

tarboreus 3y ago
r/blind is a great community, however.
- jahsome 3y ago
  That's a great counter point. I wouldn't know from first hand experience in that case but there are some GREAT communities. I feel overall though, the tone of discussions and echo chamber sentiment just feels different now. Especially on say, r/all. I usually only browsed occasionally in anon mode when seeking a respite from "reality", and overall it seemed to go from lighthearted discussions and a lot of really cool, "check this out"-style posts to a sea of outrage baiting, word for word reposts, and outright flamewars. Eventually that seeped in to a number of subreddits in my meticulously tailored logged-in experience. I was so disappointed by the erosion of something that once filled me with immense joy and from which I have gleaned a wealth of valuable information, I just wrote off the entire thing. I'm not even sure if it's manufactured in my own mind. A while after I found reddit went through some things that have substantially reformed my general outlook; I am a lot softer now. I'm probably just too sensitive but in my experience, most people there just don't treat each other well. I can certainly understand how those in a community like r/blind would be predisposed to kindness. I'm not sure if there's any factual basis in my reasoning, but I feel in general groups facing greater than average adversity tend to value treating others well. On the other hand, those in more advantageous positions seem to lean in to entitlement, and are disproportionately enraged when they feel taken advantage of... It's funny/sad how that happens.
pawelduda 3y ago
What are better alternatives to Reddit? Yeah, a lot of subs are echo chambers, circlejerks and struggle with quality in general but if I counted how many times I found it useful compared to the rest of Internet on average, I'd be pretty rich. I often default my searches to site:old.reddit.com <query>, the new UI and app are garbage though.
- asdff 3y ago
  What worries me is that this isn't a sustainable position. Already the googling for reddit posts sometimes backfires, says hey here's a recent comment from two weeks ago but then you open it and its the same 5 year old post you've already read somehow. Then you have a general decline of the quality of the community, more people posting in a biased manner than an unbiased one, among other issues. Not to mention, advertisers know about reddit too, and are probably shilling the crap out of their products to respective subreddits who link their offerings in the sidebar or the subreddit faq or wiki page. Eventually it's going to be no different than any other enshittified corner of the internet, which is scary because where do you go then? I'd be hunting for actual books again for information. Pretty sad that the world wide web is reaching a point where the old brick and mortar library is the better source of information again, given all the promise it had at the start as being a step forward from that.
  - pawelduda 3y ago
    similar thoughts here but I think there will always be a successor to a good community, and if you experienced it before, you'll be able to find the next one
    - asdff 3y ago
      I feel like that's not even a sure thing going forward. Consider the present generation of adults. They might have grown up on early reddit, or forums, or even usenet. They have an expectation of how these things operate. Meanwhile, take the new generation. Some of them might go on old.reddit.com, some of them might only get exposed to the new version of reddit, some of them might not go there at all. As a whole, I'd say a higher percent of online discussion users in newer generations are on a platform like a walled garden, than a self hosted forum or niche subreddit today. This affects their expections and what they understand the internet to be going forward. It affects what sorts of websites or services are able to exist going forward as well. Our concept of the internet will likely die out along with our generation.
asdff 3y ago
Eternal september happened. The original crop of users was generally pretty good about following reddiquete and not downvoting. Today, the average user seems a lot more hostile in their replies, more willing to downvote your post in disagreement even if it is relevant to the topic, less able to see sarcasm or nuance, more willing to die on ideological hills.
- arjonagelhout 3y ago
  I tried to find the meaning of eternal summer, but it appears to be a movie. I think you mean Eternal September [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
  - asdff 3y ago
    Very true good catch
- yarg 3y ago
  The down-voters are the good faith players - people are getting permabanned for political disagreements.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  The community zeitgeist across the board just seems so much more argumentative, contrarian, and angry than it was years ago. Even on the niche subs. On /r/academicbiblical people get banned for spitting nasty stuff at each other in comments. The AnalogCommunity subreddit has a frequent drumbeat of negativity about new film stocks and is enraged about "shilling" if anyone who as much as includes a logo on their gear in a post - as if we, the analog film community, don't want new companies to succeed in analog film? The outrage isn't logical, it's strictly emotional, and it seems like people are drawn literally to the emotion of rage, not an emotional reaction to anything specific and tangible. It reminds me of trying to find value in YouTube comments around 2008 and realizing there's some kind of community-wide attitude problem completely destroying any chance of it. It's not a discussion forum, it's one of those rooms where people pay $20 to smash stuff up with a sledgehammer and yell.

akiselev 3y ago

I feel like we need a new XKCD for this situation like the “today’s lucky 10,000” [1] one. Congratulations! You’re one of today’s lucky million! You discovered a feature that’s useful instead of anti-user just in time for a tech company to shut it down in the name of ~~user~~ shareholder experience! [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

onionisafruit 3y ago
I think this has happened to me a few dozen times on Hacker News when I've seen "X is shutting down" where this is the first I've heard of X and it seems useful to me.
- Marsymars 3y ago
  For me this week, it was Blaseball: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/3/23744507/blaseball-shutdown-fantasy-baseball-horror-simulation https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/3/23744507/blaseball-shutdow...
  - onionisafruit 3y ago
    That’s one more for me. IDK if I would have actually played Blaseball, but it looks pretty fun.
ulrikrasmussen 3y ago
Since the GP stated they were blind, here's a textual description of the comic: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousand https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1053:_Ten_Thousan...

baggachipz 3y ago

Correction, the next 3 weeks. :)

squokko 3y ago

If it's any consolation, virtually every subreddit with more than 10,000 members is completely worthless

nerpderp82 3y ago

You can at least for now, download any page in json format by appending .json to the url. For instance https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json wget https://old.reddit.com/r/hackernews/.json -O hn.json jq -c '.data.children[] | {title: .data.title, domain: .data.domain, url: .data.url, upvotes: .data.ups }' hn.json Results in {"title":"Service Rents Email Addresses for Account Signups","domain":"krebsonsecurity.com","url":"https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/06/service-rents-email-addresses-for-account-signups/","upvotes":8} {"title":"Dell in hot water for making shoppers think overpriced monitors were discounted","domain":"arstechnica.com","url":"https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/dell-in-hot-water-for-making-shoppers-think-overpriced-monitors-were-discounted/","upvotes":12}

getmeinrn 3y ago

If you've gone without Reddit for this long, you're fine. The odds of Reddit having a net positive impact on your life are pretty low.

jareds 3y ago
That's the way I feel. I saw an update about providing API access to accessibility specific apps but even with that I'm still not interested. Why would I want to use a site that makes limited efforts at accessibility and could revoke the ability for people to perform free labor to fix issues they have chosen to ignore?