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I still prefer reddit most of the time. Front page (default) subs are highly manipulated (especially anything news, politics, current things etc.) but for hobbi

• UberFly 3y ago
  Good take and I agree totally. I visit reddit daily and avoid the front page like the plague. I'm sure I miss a lot of interesting stuff but the time-killing rabbit holes and concentrated venomous vitriol I don't miss.
  • spacemadness 3y ago
    The front page reads to me like a tabloid written by teenagers. Absolute trash.
    • abstrusemoose 3y ago
      Communist teenagers detached from reality.
• Solvency 3y ago
  every single sub no matter how niche is infested with bots or spam/schill accounts. every single parenting/mom sub is inundated by formula companies. every fan niche like comicbooks is full of bot accounts in training (building up karma with low effort posts and repeat copy posts from previous days from other posters). everything, everywhere.
  • owlninja 3y ago
    People always say this but no one ever proves it.
    • adamomada 3y ago
      At this point especially considering the article we’re commenting on, it would be amazing if there weren’t spam shills and bots - they go where eyeballs go There is an enormous vested interest to not let this become public and should make you question the concept that conspiracy can’t exist somehow
      • xboxnolifes 3y ago
        Nobody is saying bot/shill accounts don't exist. Just that they aren't literally everywhere and in insane numbers. Also, it's about the distribution of the bots between the subs: are they mostly on the huge main subs, or do they also expand to the 10,000 person niche subs? If 1 formula company has 1 reddit bot that posts 1 post every month in every parenting subreddit, is that considered a bot infestation? How many bot posts is necessary to be considered endemic?
        • owlninja 3y ago
          Thank you, this is what I meant. I am well aware they exist but anytime I mention maybe I use reddit to do research before a purchase - everyone acts like not a single human even exists on there.
          • TulliusCicero 3y ago
            If there's a better source for general purpose product recommendations than Reddit, I haven't found it. I'd say the only real weakness is that sometimes the recommendations lean too hard on being for enthusiasts, and don't always fit what a casual user of a thing cares about. But other than that they're pretty great.
    • astura 3y ago
• bun_terminator 3y ago
  I don't understand how they still have mods. Reddits boss hates them. Everyone else, too. They have 100% a negative impact. The site would be wonderful without moderation as that's already covered by the voting mechanism.
  • CryptoBanker 3y ago
    What are you talking about? The mods are the only thing letting Reddit get away without employing or contracting content teams of their own. Reddit would lose so much more money than it already does if it had no mods
  • tayo42 3y ago
    I would say mods are a little to heavy handed. But I think they handle spam? And also some community stuff like mega threads and weekly stuff? Idk I feel like there's a better middle ground then what we experience now with reddit mods and having it be a total free for all
    • TulliusCicero 3y ago
      > I would say mods are a little to heavy handed. Some mods are, but the only reason people really think this is because the heavy-handed aspects are the visible ones. Nobody really sees mods removing random spam threads and comments, that's the whole point. Good modding is mostly invisible.
      • tayo42 3y ago
        Maybe, I think it seems like that. I felt similar until I had some posts moderated away or banned, which made me realize there is probably a lot more of those going on then I realized. There isn't a big notification when things get removed. There is also trying to post and dealing with automoderator. There's subreddits I don't read or participate in anymore becasue of how annoying it is to get a post through. I get their necessary, at least for now, because of spam. But like I'm said I think there's a better middle ground and we can rely on the community users more.
• CryptoBanker 3y ago
  Who are you proposing pays for content moderation then? Reddit clearly can’t afford it
  • isthatafact 3y ago
    Reddit has demonstrated that its moderation system is not stable and results in garbage. Try some different systems, for example: 1 -- The moderators pay for the privilege of moderating. or 2 -- No moderators at all. Let me decide what I want to see via some kind of interface to an "AI thingie".
    • LordKeren 3y ago
      While the market valuation isn’t what it used to be, let’s not be too quick to brush off the fact that Reddit has a market cap of 6 billion dollars. I’m not sure you’re going to convince many stakeholders that completely uprooting the golden-goose of free moderation for the site is a worthwhile venture.
    • StressedDev 3y ago
      Requiring moderators to pay for the right to moderate would backfire. The groups which would pay the most are political parties, foreign governments, PR firms, and corporate surrogates. All, would pretend they are “neutral” but in fact would slant things in their favor. For example, a cars sub-reddit would talk about how Brand X is “awesome” while Brand Y is “terrible”.
  • MikePlacid 3y ago
    Allow each reader to have his own moderation. Basically, I want to be able to enforce 3 rules: 1. There are people I want to read always. 2. There are people I want to read never. 3. I want some random sample from all other people, in proportion from 1:1 to 1:1000, depending on my current mood. The server should keep my list and serve me text according to it. Also it should allow readers to exchange such lists. If I trust some guy - he could serve as my personal moderator, but a mild one compared to the current regime - my list #1 will never be interfered with. Cheap?
• AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  It's the last bastion of original content before the AI storm overruns search entirely. And likely puts reddit firmly in the the AI farm crosshairs as well, so reddit will be overrun. I think the only good content will be in archived discord channels, or obscure boards that aren't worth aiming AI farms at, but even then, it will probably get scanned and targeted. The only thing that might work is identifying AI information vacuums by their distinct behavior and serving them counter-fake AI content, while user access patterns (as referenced in the above comments about Google-specific reddit robots infrastruction) get the "real stuff". I almost wonder if intentional misspelling and curse words will start to be used to "scare off" AIs and bots from content, and that will become the new codewords for actual information. Like people online in China these days.
  • unclebucknasty 3y ago
    >intentional misspelling and curse words will start to be used to "scare off" AIs and bots If they deem the content valuable enough, I suspect they'd instead just correct for it (e.g. auto-correct mispellings; replace and/or omit curse words). It may get to the point wherein the only way to secure content from AI ingestion is to hide it behind a paywall or otherwise make it non-public, then forbid via the TOS. There'd probably need to be court challenges even then. I also wonder if the LinkedIn case involving scraping (wherein the ruling was essentially that public data was fair game), will be re-tested in the age of AI.
    • StressedDev 3y ago
      Criminals, SPAMers, foreign governments, PR firms, unethical corporations, etc. are not going to be stopped by a terms of service document. This will ignore it and keep on spreading disinformation. If AI helps them do this, they will use AI to do it.
      • unclebucknasty 3y ago
        I'm referring to protecting content from ingestion for AI model training.
• piafraus 3y ago
  > I can't ready my city's sub because it's always the same tired politics posts instead of "what are some good restaurants" or "here is a photo of a building I've never seen before". I find it funny, that I am completely opposite. I would very much prefer the local news/politics/crime, as this directly affects me and my life - e.g. don't go to the highway today, because protestors block it. Vs. the boring similar photos I've probably already saw like 100 times from a slightly different angle or they are not interesting at all and author highly overestimates their photography skill.
  • xhevahir 3y ago
    That's probably not the kind of political post OP is talking about. They probably mean ones like "Mayor Quimby continues his war on the unhoused," or "City council are determined to drive out small business."
    • piafraus 3y ago
      Both of those are important to me, as I am the one who would need to remember stuff like this when I vote in my local elections.
  • asdff 3y ago
    Usually the local news/politics/crime data slants a certain way you could probably guess. E.g. I used to argue with redditors about how they assume the local metro is nothing but homeless people and you will get mugged, citing my years and years of use with no issue and seeing plenty of seemingly sober and straight arrow people on my commute, but no. It goes against the prevailing narrative that everything is irredeemable and shitty. I lost my energy to engage with these people before long, I wish I lost it even sooner.
    • StressedDev 3y ago
      One of the biggest problems with forums, reddit, X (Twitter), etc. is you don’t know which users know what they are talking about. In your case, you knew about the local metro because you used it. People who claimed it was a disaster obviously never used it and yet there was no easy way to determine which person was knowledgable and which person was making things up or repeating what they had read else where.
• nox101 3y ago
  I hate reddit because the way close threads for topics that need an update or a follow up. The auto closing seems pointless Further, People keep telling me the communities are great but I've yet to find one of these mythical great communities. Or maybe my definition of great community is different than others. For me a great community was a forum I was on in 2004-5 where people stuck around and actually responded. on reddit I rare find useful responses
  • yurishimo 3y ago
    Auto closing is a sub-by-sub decision.
    • bpye 3y ago
      That is a semi recent change (last few years). It was universal before.
• verzali 3y ago
  Niche subreddits are still good, but above a certain size they all seem to become awful. Moderation is a major problem - not just the unpaid nature of it, but because so many of the moderators are terrible at their jobs or just sold out to some other cause. I've found myself drifting away from Reddit in the past year and now actually spend more time on dedicated forums (I was surprised by how many are still out there!)
  • some_random 3y ago
    The biggest problem with mods is that normal people do not have the interest nor energy to moderate a subreddit past a certain point, so they end up getting muscled out by weirdos as a sub grows.
    • robswc 3y ago
      This is 1000% the reason. It almost self-selects for the worst type of people. You not only have to have tons of free time, you have to be willing to be "paid" for your work in the small amounts of power you can wield in an online discussion board. In theory if you have a few people they could contribute a bit of time and have it covered... but like you say, the weirdos "out-spend" them on time and muscle their way in.
      • floxy 3y ago
        Worst of all, we probably have now immortalized this behavior in-the-before-AI-times archive, so that if you want to have an AI moderator, it will probably try to mimic the broken behavior.
    • SkyPuncher 3y ago
      I briefly modded a subreddit (before deleted my account in the blackout). It was neat at fist, but then it basically became people getting uptight about everything. “Your rules don’t say we can’t posted obvious spam”, “you need a transparent process for appealing things”, “mod suck here”. Like, I don’t care enough to provide a service for a multi-billion dollar company. If you don’t like it, start your own sub.
• beeboobaa3 3y ago
  The /r/Netherlands subreddit has been taken over by hostile expats years ago. They ban any discussion in Dutch, forcing everyone to speak English, and will delete everything that doesn't have "international appeal"
  • thinkling 3y ago
    You might want to have another look. I don't visit there often, but when I look right now it's all in Dutch.
    • beeboobaa3 3y ago
      You're likely confusing it with /r/TheNetherlands, which was created after this takeover. https://old.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/ is all foreigners.
      • thinkling 3y ago
        ah, yes, oops! Never seen r/Netherlands before so I didn't notice that you didn't write r/TheNetherlands.
  • StressedDev 3y ago
    What is a Karma farm?
  • philwelch 3y ago
    Shouldn’t the Dutch language subreddit for the Netherlands be /r/Nederland?
    • beeboobaa3 3y ago
      We have /r/nederlands but it's infested by the alt right that wanted to escape the censorship of /r/TheNetherlands and didn't care for the expat-run /r/netherlands. /r/nederland also exists, but is pretty much dead.
  • 3y ago
• DinoDad13 3y ago
  which ideologies?
• asdff 3y ago
  State subs are even worse. the /r/california subreddit is an open karma farm. Used to be posted by /u/BlankVerse, now looks like he changed his username to Randomlynumbered but still dominates the subbreddit of supposedly half a million users.
• deepspace 3y ago
  > I can't ready my city's sub Interestingly, my (smaller) city's sub has quite a cozy community. There are sometimes lively debates, and we do have a few complete idiots hanging around, but for the most part, it is a pleasant place to be. My county's main sub (r/Canada) on the other hand, is mostly moderated by foreigners with far-right connections. Yesterday's budget announcement was initially greeted by a flurry of positive posts. Less than 24 hours later, most of these had been removed by the mods, and replaced with a barrage of negative posts, obviously originating from Russian misinformation farms.
  • bpye 3y ago
    Then there is /r/canada_sub who’s sole purpose appears to be to be worse than /r/canada, and /r/onguardforthee which is probably the least bad Canada wide subreddit.
• Havoc 3y ago
  Yup. Banned from my home countries sub because I dared posting to another sub. Literally bot based autobans by monitoring user for ANY participation in subs the mods don’t approve of. That’s what counts as moderation these days on Reddit. Parts of Reddit are still ok but others are utter trashfires presided over by power tripping lunatics that have taken over the asylum
  • yieldcrv 3y ago
    Throwaway accounts are the greatest I have an account all about some particular vice and honestly its been well received There are VERY FEW ad hominem attacks. Its like people treat you better when they know they cant hurt you in comparison to people that try to have a post history tip toeing around topics and subs. I think it’s symptomatic of what you see with other extreme personalities, they wind up getting so many followers that either agree with them or amplify them that they keep up that character. But this reddit version actually lets me navigate mainstream subs easier too, and ppl that try to suggest I cant have an intelligent opinion because of my post history get jumped on for being unprogressive or something. It’s amusing, and freeing.
    • Havoc 3y ago
      That makes sense. Though at that stage - needing throw always to participate - I do wonder whether it’s worth interacting at all.
      • yieldcrv 3y ago
        Its definitely worth interacting, the throwaway is more authentic and I do post in local subreddits, I’ve garnered sycophants and unsolicited interest from attractive women that are in to “bad boys” whom I’ve subsequently met in person Its been far better than whatever else I was doing, I kind of feel bad for everyone else
    • munksbeer 3y ago
      I wanted to post in a particular parenting sub, having difficulties with being a dad, and wanting to chat about it to others. I didn't want to use my main reddit account, but new accounts are banned from posting to that sub. So throwaways don't really work for all purposes.
• birracerveza 3y ago
  It’s incredible how the Reddit mod stereotype is not, in fact, a stereotype. I’ve been banned for some very asinine/trivial reasons, you could feel the fedora being tipped through the screen every time. My favourite was when I commented on a post on /r/art of a naked woman, replying to a guy who was complaining that only naked women got on the front page, to which I commented with “it’s very simple, naked woman = upvotes”. I was permabanned immediately after with no reason given, so when I asked what rule I broke, I was replied with - and I quote literally - “the one you didn’t read :)”. I still have no idea what rule I broke, if I even broke one. Now, I could honestly not care any less about it, it was just an interesting interaction because of how unprofessional it was. It is kind of understandable, given that these guys don’t even get paid to moderate a very considerable influx of content, but still, it’s a very mild example of a larger problem that spans across the whole website. You have power tripping moderators that just do whatever they feel, some of them even banning based on what subs you interacted prior, regardless of content, and some of them even moderate hundreds, if not thousands, of subs. It’s insane. And yeah, any sub that has even the slightest hint of anything political is FUBAR. It’s almost like the moderation never evolved past what I would expect from a niche joomla forum from the 2000 with hundreds of users… except now it’s one of the biggest sites on the internet. It’s quite bizarre.
• DarknessFalls 3y ago
  What strikes me about the popular feed now is how negative it's become. Almost every post is designed to provoke outrage in some way, which I suppose guarantees more participation. It's becoming a poison, so I spend more time on this site where the reactions to events are much more measured.
• veunes 3y ago
  Video games subs are the best. This reminds me of the video game magazines from my childhood
• faeriechangling 3y ago
  I've tried to use Reddit for walkthroughs and to get good at video games, but frankly, twitch VODs tend to objectively be better. What's become intolerable to me about Reddit is even if you use old.reddit, the entire site is last I checked in the moderation stats of one top 1000 sub I still have mod access to, is about 99% people on new reddit and it shows. People are linked to ragebait on the regular and you see chronically online but consistently misanthropic takes from people of all political afflictions on the regular. This is especially on the city subs but it's diffused to the entire website. The moderation got worse because in Reddit's latest move to kill 3rd party apps they alienated many users who had been there for more than a decade and I still think people underestimate how much those people served as glue and unpaid labour, who just got alienated by contributing to a website for free and for no real reward other than being able to power trip that fundamentally abuses its user base. So as bad as the moderation has always been it has gotten even worse. It's also clear that people have been brainwashed by one of the original sins of Reddit, the Karma system, where being fast and popular counts for more than being deliberate and correct. I know that I'm on a site that uses the same system but there is still a sense of what used to be called "reddiquette" and social stigma against abusing the system. It's not just that the worst posts are promoted, and they are, it's that people are so interested in playing the game just so their posts get seen that the average post quality is in the toilet.