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I used to love Reddit, but the astroturfing has become unbearable, especially by political groups. After this last election, I think political groups realized

I used to love Reddit, but the astroturfing has become unbearable, especially by political groups. After this last election, I think political groups realized local subreddits were underutilized and have regrouped accordingly. While I still trust some appended Reddit searches on Google, I'm losing faith there too. Product/service recommendation threads are really easy to manipulate.

beAbU 1y ago
Reddit is incredibly echo-chamber-y for me, the voting and karma system optimizes for the wrong type of content I feel. I've tried to engage with a few niche-interest subreddits (homebrewing, electronics, musical instruments) over the years and all of them left me generally dissapointed. My pet theory is that someone who claims reddit is a great place for niche hobbies were never part of an old-school forum with truly passionate and engaging members. The last 2-3 years this issue just became worse and worse. Reddit is fantastic for memes though. There are some hilarious subreddits out there. But I rarely engage, just consume.
- pupppet 1y ago
  Leading up to the election Reddit fed me stories about Kamala’s huge rally turnouts, Trump‘s tiny rally turnouts, and endless links to stories about positive signs she would win. It was a forgone conclusion to me it was going to be a blowout for her.
  - swores 1y ago
    Reddit's algorithm of what to show you is based in part on what you've chosen to follow and in part on what is most likely to get you to stay on the site and engage with the content. It's not designed to give you an accurate view of upcoming election outcomes, and is not at all surprising that it might show someone mostly content from one side's fans, regardless of whether they side is going to win or not.
    - 93po 1y ago
      there is no part of the reddit algo that ever promotes pro-trump stuff, ever
      - mvdtnz 1y ago
        There was a brief moment when pro-Trump content would occasionally surface on the algorithm, at which point the site operators hit the panic button and banned the offending subreddit.
        amiga386 1y ago
        By which you mean /r/The_Donald The reason for deliberately antagonizing them, and eventually banning them, was that /r/The_Donald's moderators were directly telling their membership to upvote specific posts so they'd rocket to the front page. "Inorganic results", "vote manipulation", "gaming the algorithm", whatever you'd like to call it. So the admins had a reason to ban it, even if no doubt they and most of Reddit's users saw Trump supporters as "the enemy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#Prominence_on_Reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#Prominence_on_Red... Also, as this article has reminded me... 'member that time Spez admitted that he invisibly edited users' comments? https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...
        Goronmon 1y ago
        The reason for deliberately antagonizing them, and eventually banning them, was that /r/The_Donald's moderators were directly telling their membership to upvote specific posts so they'd rocket to the front page. There would need to be extensive evidence to convince me that the subreddit wasn't just botted. Threads would get thousands of posts extremely quickly, and there would sometimes be only a handful of comments. I don't really believe organic users were spending their free time refreshing "new" just in case a new post was made that required an immediate upvote.
  - losvedir 1y ago
    As someone with a reddit account old enough to vote, it's always been like that. If you only browsed reddit it would have been a sure bet that Bernie Sanders would be the democratic candidate, and Ron Paul was going to win before that.
  - selfmodruntime 1y ago
    Same. And for about 12 to 24 hours after the election loss it was... quiet. A few people coming to terms that the illusion had disappeared, but not in any way comparable to the interactions beforehand. Then it returned with a vengeance.
    - scarab92 1y ago
      The default subs are filled with left-wing conspiracy theories these days. A consequence of years of reddit allowing its mods to shadow ban centrist voices. It’s hard to see how reddit escapes this mess. They need more normal people and less political zealots, but the site is already so far down the echo chamber path that its overt political partisanship scares off potential new normal users from participating.
      - selfmodruntime 1y ago
        > It’s hard to see how reddit escapes this mess I don't see why they would. Rage drives engagement, and they just got the number one rage inducing factor back into public office for the next 4 years. This form of engagement also works better on progressives I think.
      - firesteelrain 1y ago
        Honestly, the internet is killing us all slowly. It was better not to argue with our neighbors on the Internet or even social media. Or fellow citizens or even foreign ones CONSTANTLY
  - yyyyz 1y ago
    [dead]
  - jayd16 1y ago
    There was certainly a lot of optimism but I don't think you can really say the mood was a clear blow out. Anyone mentioning such a thing would get many replies of "doesn't matter...vote anyway!" I think Kamala actually did have the lead in Reddit's demographics.
  - hattmall 1y ago
    I would absolutely get that same feeling from reddit. But like do you not interact in the actual world? Trump would have a rally and areas 45 minutes away are backed up with traffic for 8 hours. Kamala had one and you can't even reliably figure out how to get tickets and other than motorcade closures traffic is nothing. So much anti-Kamala and pro-Trump stuff in the communities that are supposed to be strong for her. That Kamala did as well as she did was really shocking to me. I mean it wasn't close, but Kamala couldn't even make past the very first debate in 2020 and her list of accomplishments is basically nothing. I never met anyone in real life with an actual compelling or supportive argument for her. At best it was "she's not Trump". Taking Biden out and having no primary is probably the worst thing Democrats could have done.
    - parineum 1y ago
      > having no primary is probably the worst thing Democrats could have done. I'd argue the 15 years of identity politics that both led to Harris as VP and prevented them from being able to commit the faux paux of possibly passing her up by letting their constituents decide if they liked her was their worst decision.
    - Suppafly 1y ago
      Your entire post reads like a bot post on reddit. Not sure if you're trying to prove the point and forgot the /s or actually believe the nonsense you've posted.
- 93po 1y ago
  part of the echo chamber is also instant shadow bans on many of the major subs, and especially political ones, unless you consistently comment (shadow banned) comments and eventually get whitelisted by a mod or bot who's determined you to be the "right" sort of commenter. and again an instant shadow ban again the second you trigger any "bad" keywords
  - gruez 1y ago
    That's presumably an anti-bot/astroturfing measure. As bad as that is, I'm not sure what the alternative should be. Allowing anyone to post with a 1 minute old account? Implement real name verification?
    - mvdtnz 1y ago
      I can't speak to every local subreddit but I can tell you for sure that while it may have started as an anti-bot measure, on /r/newzealand it is absolutely used as a way to gatekeep the wrong opinions from being present on the subreddit.
    - ipaddr 1y ago
      Normal people signup to post not to hang around and scroll and like until the account is warmed
      - hangsi 1y ago
        This seems untrue, especially for reddit? Using the 1/9/90 split [0] for creators/commenters/readers, it seems farfetched to suggest that reddit accounts (which benefits readers making an account to curate subreddit subscriptions) can't follow this pattern where many legitimate human users do not comment often. [0] "The 1% Rule", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
        Suppafly 1y ago
        Plenty of people don't comment often, but the impetus to sign up for an account is often to comment, which subs then either disallow or delete because they don't want new accounts commenting.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > My pet theory is that someone who claims reddit is a great place for niche hobbies were never part of an old-school forum with truly passionate and engaging members. In my experience, Reddit can be an okay place for niche hobbies until the reddit becomes semi-popular. Then it's a lost cause for anyone but newbies posting the same question every day and old timers who take pleasure in yelling at them.
- MSFT_Edging 1y ago
  I'd say at least 70% of reddit "hobby" spaces are people buying something with little research, then posting the picture of the thing they bought. Any real discussion is drowned out so the average post now is "bought these, new to the hobby, what do I do with them?". The meshtastic sub is a good example of that. People buying hobbyist hardware, without doing any research. They probably saw some youtube video, hit the amazon "buy", then when it arrived, they're stumped.
  - whstl 1y ago
    Yeah, it's just consumption consumption consumption. Post a photo of your new gizmo: 300 upvotes. Video of you using your widget: 4 votes. And in subreddits dedicated to actually making things, it's just hustling hustling hustling. With a small percentage of self-help posts like "how I spent 4 years in my boring-ass generic video game and nobody wanted it".
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > I'd say at least 70% of reddit "hobby" spaces are people buying something with little research, then posting the picture of the thing they bought. This is exactly what happened to all of the hobby reddits I enjoyed. Any useful discussion was crowded out by 10 posts per week (or day) of people posting their newest purchase or asking a question that had been answered 1000 times already. The useful Subreddits have mods who come down hard on these posts. They don’t proliferate as much if people don’t see them everywhere. It’s a lot of work for mods though.
  - tinier_subsets 1y ago
    >I'd say at least 70% of reddit "hobby" spaces are people buying something with little research, then posting the picture of the thing they bought. A really great (awful) example of this that I saw was on the typewriters subreddit (which is already 90% people posting pictures of the same 5 or so overhyped machines): In the 1950s, Royal used to give out gold typewriters as part of a writing contest.[0] I saw one of these come up on Goodwill’s auction site, saved screenshots for my records and followed it closely, since I knew bids would get really stupid really fast. Sure enough, winning bid was around $1500. About two weeks after the auction ended (about the time Goodwill’s very slow shipping takes), I saw it pop up on the subreddit, exact machine, identical scratches, blemishes, and all to the one I had screenshots of. The post title? “Found this at my local thrift store for $50. How’d I do?” That was enough to finally make my delete my account and seriously question anyone who thinks Reddit is actually good for niche hobbies.[1] [0]https://www.antikeychop.com/gold-royal-quiet-de-luxe-typewriter https://www.antikeychop.com/gold-royal-quiet-de-luxe-typewri... [1] Well, that and the fact that and the fact that I was probably going to lose my mind if I earnestly gave detailed advice on repairing a machine I had personally stripped and reassembled, only for someone to get upvoted to the top for posting a confident pseudo answer about some mechanism—that may or may not even exist in that machine—that they only faintly understood from a general YouTube video that they only half watched.
- nitwit005 1y ago
  I think it's less "echo chamber" than under direct political influence. It takes a lot of effort to moderate a subreddit. People will post stuff all day, in large volumes. Who's going to be willing to do that? Sure, some will just be nice people with a ton of free time, but many will definitely be political activists (or even state actors at this point) who have something to promote.
  - wavewrangler 1y ago
    You know how certain professions are known for attracting certain pathologies? CEOs/narcissism, car salesman/ lmachiavellianidm and surgeons/God? Reddit moderator/d-bag is not exempt from that phenomenon and for reasons unknown to me, because it’s volunteer (Ok, I can’t say 100%, but mostly it’s volunteer) seems to be some kind of mental illness XP multiplier attractant for the role. Perhaps it empowers people because they’re giving so much of their lives to their own perceived cause, that no one asked for. But there are a lot of good, great even, mods out there. Surely. But anyhow, I’m going back to irc.
- VeninVidiaVicii 1y ago
  Niche content for sure is the best thing Reddit is for. I only go there for info on my favorite instruments, and a few other shitposting communities for games and shows I watch.
  - wavewrangler 1y ago
    [flagged]
- alexjplant 1y ago
  > My pet theory is that someone who claims reddit is a great place for niche hobbies were never part of an old-school forum with truly passionate and engaging members. This. On forums you recognize members by their funny avatars and the hyper specific advice that they have (useful or otherwise). Stickied posts like "timbit2's Guide to Vintage Frobulators" or "New to Frobs? Not Sure Where to Start? READ" abound. There are usually decades of easily-searchable posts accumulated. People reply to your threads helpfully. The marketplace forums are full of well-cared-for gear. On Reddit you get a lot of beauty shots and question posts with replies like "bro just get the new Vinculum x Chadbert420 frobber. Shit is [fire emojis]". There's usually a woefully out-of-date wiki or sticky that you can only access from one interface or another. There's no sense of community, just upvotes of pictures for clout. Of course these are contrived straw men versions of their respective communities but in my experience they're correct more often than not. I have been dipping my toe into various Discords that seem to have a better sense of community but Discord doesn't seem to lend itself to longer-form content as forums do... I wonder whether this is something the Discord platform could be augmented to facilitate.
  - layer8 1y ago
    Discord is a chat platform, not a forum, and its contents are closed-off, not discoverable via web search. It’s a modern form of IRC chats, not of web forums. The two serve different needs and audiences.
- NegativeK 1y ago
  I used to think that the up voting mechanic was the future of the internet. Now I think that it's a perverse incentive that requires very heavy handed moderation to not suck (AKA more free labor), and that time decaying posts can discourage quality, in-depth discussions. Corollary: necroing forum threads isn't necessarily bad.
  - Enginerrrd 1y ago
    >Corollary: necroing forum threads isn't necessarily bad. I've always agreed with this. It was usually considered bad etiquette at best on forums, but I never really understood why.
    - NegativeK 1y ago
      I'm sure it'd be content specific, but in a thread about technical discussions (_especially_ in fields with information that can be just as valuable a decade later) it seems totally fine. Those forums seem to be okay with it, though...
  - layer8 1y ago
    I fully agree, but still upvoted you.
- donnachangstein 1y ago
  What's ironic is this thread is full of comments agreeing that Reddit sucks because the voting/karma system is flawed and shadow banning is toxic and deranged yet all those very features and policies exist here. In fact, HN is mentioned in the Wikipedia article for shadow banning as an early adopter of the practice. (Yes I agree it sucks but that's not the point of my comment.) So what changed or what makes this place different? I would argue it's not the forum software but rather run differently, not placing in charge of every subreddit a cabal of unemployed fringe lunatics wielding power and waging war against their users because it's all they have. Or maybe the forum software does suck and some just naturally migrated to a text-only low-bandwidth version of Reddit?
  - d0gsg0w00f 1y ago
    > a cabal of unemployed fringe lunatics wielding power and waging war against their users because it's all they have. Speaking of which, does anyone know if there are any good articles/documentaries/exposés on reddit moderators? I really just want to know what one is like.
    - deleted 1y ago
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    - inquirerGeneral 1y ago
      [dead]
    - deleted 1y ago
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  - sepositus 1y ago
    > So what changed or what makes this place different? It's an interesting question. Primarily, I think it's because HN doesn't allow you to downvote instantly or even after a lengthy period of time. I think it's tied to total karma, but someone would have to provide more information there. Regardless, that single change probably makes a big difference. Compared to Reddit, I've had some comments go into the tens of negative karma points within five minutes of posting. It wasn't because it was low quality, but because it wasn't the "correct" view to have in whatever subreddit I was engaging in. The downvoting there is practically militant. However, as someone who usually holds a minority view on HN, I don't think the system here is perfect either. Usually an echo chamber forms because the dissidents don't last long and leave. If you reward the ones that stay the longest with downvote capabilities, it would explain my general experience quite well. But again, it's nothing compared to Reddit. Note: I recognize this is a conversation on karma, which has a rule associated with it, but I hope we can make an exception here given it's a good faith discussion between Reddit/HN :)
- hattmall 1y ago
  Reddit was definitely an amazing place for Niche hobbies. Forums were great too, but the layout and having an "orangered" beat out forums. Plus you could be on so many forums at essentially the same time. Prior to reddit I had basically the same setup with RSS feeds for like my top 10-15 forums. But reddit basically copied and eclipsed that and the forums pretty much all died. Forums were great too, but reddit made it really easy to get access to new niches quickly. Without having to join a new site, learn the forum slang and etiquette, etc. Reddit is awful now though. IDK what the alternative is either. I'm in a few discords and Facebook groups that cover most topics but they both offer a much poorer user experience imo.
- jval43 1y ago
  I was an active contributor to /r/espresso for a while, but in the process of the hobby I realized I disagree with some of their advice and best practices. Minor stuff really. I would not describe the sub as toxic or anything, but it's literally impossible to get a dissenting opinion across on Reddit. Other hobby subs were the same. Every single time I mentioned an opinion differing from the "hive-mind" consensus it was downvoted to hell, with no responses, counter arguments or anything resembling discussion. I would have liked to trade experiences but that's not possible. While at the same time some of the other posters giving advice freely admit they don't actually have experience with what is discussed and are just repeating older posts. There is no real value in that, and nowadays you can get mostly the same experience by just asking ChatGPT. Both have no clue and no real opinion of their own when it comes to details. I take part in a few forums now, and it's a breath of fresh air. Much better experience and a lot more personal as well.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Everywhere you let the masses upvote and/or downvote, you're going to have the hive-mind problem. We have it here, too. I'd propose having a separate UI for users to agree/disagree, vs. for users to flag rule breaking posts, like spam, flamebait, insults and so on. The agree/disagree count would just display a vanity number, but the rule-breaking UI would actually downweight the article or comment. You could audit occasionally and remove voting privileges from people abusing the rule-breaking UI as a "Mega-disagree."
- raxxorraxor 1y ago
  There are some niche forums still, but they have to be really small. Mostly related to very specific media as general topics are affected by astroturfing. These communities often don't live as long, but they can be active, helpful and interesting. But it isn't worth reading anything else anymore.
- fennecfoxy 1y ago
  Human beings are echo chambery tbf.
deleted 1y ago
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Aurornis 1y ago
> I used to love Reddit, but the astroturfing has become unbearable, especially by political groups. I really doubt most of it is astoturfing. You can find bot accounts, obviously. However, the Reddit hivemind has a very intense echo chamber. Everyone learns very quickly that if you write something that doesn't match the popular opinion of Reddit, you're going to get downvoted quickly. Strike a nerve and you'll even get angry private messages or people going through your post history and trying to extend their argument into old comments. Large forums have always been like this. You're at the mercy of a small number of users who have the most free time to post all day. Some times I'll get an unusually angry response on Reddit and click on their profile out of curiosity. It's often someone who has been commenting for the last 10 hours straight. You just can't compete with someone with infinite free time and a lot of anger to get out. Eventually they all sync up to drive away differing opinions
- lazystar 1y ago
  its astroturfing by for profit companies. after the election, they realized: a) that folks were filtering out the astroturfed subreddits in /r/all, and b) that r/all's filter list has a hard limit of 100 subreddits. so, they switched tactics - by astroturfing >100 subreddits, they can guarantee to their clients that their posts will make the front of r/all for everyone.
- ack_complete 1y ago
  Back when Pushshift was publicly available, I used to check the mod actions on some subreddits. What I found was that the subreddits that I thought had biased moderators were simply undermoderated. Pretty much every mod action I saw was fair and there were also a lot more than expected, but clearly the issue was that total comment volume was far more than the mod team could handle. > You're at the mercy of a small number of users who have the most free time to post all day. Some times I'll get an unusually angry response on Reddit and click on their profile out of curiosity. It's often someone who has been commenting for the last 10 hours straight. These people are also masters at toeing the line of forum or subreddit rules when trashing others, constantly baiting people to cross the line in replies and get themselves moderated. It's worse in forums where downvoting isn't available.
- 1y ago
thegrim33 1y ago
After the last election, one smaller local subreddit that has had the same overall culture for many, many years, seemingly overnight, at the snap of some fingers, lurched completely to the extreme opposite direction. If you dare to share any of the same ideas that were once widely accepted there for many years on end, now you instead get absolutely pummeled, ridiculed, downvoted out of existence. It's just so blatantly, demonstrably, obvious the level of manipulation which was targeted at the sub. Somebody, somewhere, added it to a list of subreddits to be manipulated. But you can't even discuss it there, because how are you going to use a compromised communication channel to communicate about how it's compromised? The majority of the population seemingly can't even notice that sort of communication manipulation, it's gotten so sophisticated. Bot accounts used to be much easier to detect, now they all have very cleverly built-up account history and posts that are near indistinguishable from humans. And of course not all manipulation is bots/AI, there's coordinated shill/sockpuppet/astroturf campaigns with real people being tasked with doing the manipulation. The smart people have already left and gone on to the next place, which will never be allowed to grow large enough or significant enough without the propaganda fire hose eventually being turned on it too. The only way to fix things is a radically different framework for communication.
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  > The only way to fix things is a radically different framework for communication. What do you think that might look like?
  - selfmodruntime 1y ago
    Getting rid of anonymous powermoderation.
    - degrees57 1y ago
      Yes, and in my opinion, this was what killed Slashdot.
      - selfmodruntime 1y ago
lazystar 1y ago
> After this last election, I think political groups realized local subreddits were underutilized and have regrouped accordingly. its not that. they realized: a) that folks were filtering out the astroturfed subreddits in /r/all, and b) that r/all's filter list has a hard limit of 100 subreddits. so, by astroturfing >100 subreddits, they can guarantee to their clients that their posts will make the front of r/all for everyone.
- Numerlor 1y ago
  Ha, I got them beat with RES and filtering out every generic subreddit that touches politics
ok123456 1y ago
I'm amused by how over the top it always is. A high-scoring submission on my local Reddit gets maybe +70 votes. Then, some random political-related submission —and it's only ever political-related—will have +2000 votes. They're so overt that they don't even care.
- hackyhacky 1y ago
  Why is that a sign of astroturfing? More likely, there are more people who read (and upvote) posts on the default subs, than niche local subs.
  - parineum 1y ago
    He's talking about a politics related post in a niche sub.
    - therealdrag0 1y ago
      Why is it a sign of astroturfing and not just hyper political climate?
      - ok123456 1y ago
        Well, if broadly popular organic posts net about 100, I would expect organic partisan posts to have a ceiling of +50. Still, more realistically, the net would be about zero because half the people would downvote them. But, somehow, partisan posts in one direction always seem to net over 1000 or 2000, yet partisan posts in the other direction net about zero. Even with a skewed distribution, I would only expect maybe +20 to be the ceiling.
        hackyhacky 1y ago
        > the net would be about zero because half the people would downvote them. Why would you assume that? It's a fallacy to assume that political opinions are evenly distributed. People seem to agree that different sites attract people of different political persuasions. A post that gets highly upvoted on Truth Social might get highly downvoted on Reddit, and vice versa. That's not astroturfing, that's just self-selecting communities. > partisan posts in one direction always seem to net over 1000 or 2000, yet partisan posts in the other direction net about zero. Again, it depends on the audience. This is not a new phenomenon. 50 years ago, you would get a different response to certain political statements depending on whether you made them at a Grateful Dead Concert or at a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police. Why should today be different? > I would only expect maybe +20 to be the ceiling. Why? People feel strongly about their political believes. It's polarizing and engaging in a way that a post about crockpots or guitar strings isn't.
_qua 1y ago
There was a recent panic/hysteria there about banning Twitter from many subreddits because of hate speech. It was incredible how quickly people were begging to have a website banned when they could either choose not to visit it or down vote posts they didn't like. Really soured things for me by illustration how much the median values changed from when I started using the site.
- clown_strike 1y ago
  This was about Elon's "Nazi salute" and both so incorrect and blatantly astroturfed I haven't returned to Reddit out of disgust. A ton of near-dead subreddits with no activity and no reason to link to x.com for any reason suddenly had thousands of people show up demanding links to x.com be blocked like it's an everyday problem for the sub. The quiet beneficiary of this campaign are those who benefit from Reddit's groomed narrative and their competing platform Bluesky.
unethical_ban 1y ago
The Texas subreddit recently got "taken back" by normal, older mods. It had been run by an account "annatrashpanda", who banned anyone critical of the Democrats, who let generic copy/paste national memes take over the board, and so on. I see they have now deleted their account. This all happened about two weeks ago. I say this as a liberal, the artificially partisan takeovers of local subs is a real thing. It's one thing to ban trolls and consistent shit-talkers from a community. And frankly it's one thing to have some bias. But it was just so obviously hostile, and I was happy to see the sub get back some authenticity.

beAbU 1y ago

Reddit is incredibly echo-chamber-y for me, the voting and karma system optimizes for the wrong type of content I feel. I've tried to engage with a few niche-interest subreddits (homebrewing, electronics, musical instruments) over the years and all of them left me generally dissapointed. My pet theory is that someone who claims reddit is a great place for niche hobbies were never part of an old-school forum with truly passionate and engaging members. The last 2-3 years this issue just became worse and worse. Reddit is fantastic for memes though. There are some hilarious subreddits out there. But I rarely engage, just consume.

pupppet 1y ago
Leading up to the election Reddit fed me stories about Kamala’s huge rally turnouts, Trump‘s tiny rally turnouts, and endless links to stories about positive signs she would win. It was a forgone conclusion to me it was going to be a blowout for her.
- swores 1y ago
  Reddit's algorithm of what to show you is based in part on what you've chosen to follow and in part on what is most likely to get you to stay on the site and engage with the content. It's not designed to give you an accurate view of upcoming election outcomes, and is not at all surprising that it might show someone mostly content from one side's fans, regardless of whether they side is going to win or not.
  - 93po 1y ago
    there is no part of the reddit algo that ever promotes pro-trump stuff, ever
    - mvdtnz 1y ago
      There was a brief moment when pro-Trump content would occasionally surface on the algorithm, at which point the site operators hit the panic button and banned the offending subreddit.
      - amiga386 1y ago
        By which you mean /r/The_Donald The reason for deliberately antagonizing them, and eventually banning them, was that /r/The_Donald's moderators were directly telling their membership to upvote specific posts so they'd rocket to the front page. "Inorganic results", "vote manipulation", "gaming the algorithm", whatever you'd like to call it. So the admins had a reason to ban it, even if no doubt they and most of Reddit's users saw Trump supporters as "the enemy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#Prominence_on_Reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/The_Donald#Prominence_on_Red... Also, as this article has reminded me... 'member that time Spez admitted that he invisibly edited users' comments? https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...
        Goronmon 1y ago
        The reason for deliberately antagonizing them, and eventually banning them, was that /r/The_Donald's moderators were directly telling their membership to upvote specific posts so they'd rocket to the front page. There would need to be extensive evidence to convince me that the subreddit wasn't just botted. Threads would get thousands of posts extremely quickly, and there would sometimes be only a handful of comments. I don't really believe organic users were spending their free time refreshing "new" just in case a new post was made that required an immediate upvote.
- losvedir 1y ago
  As someone with a reddit account old enough to vote, it's always been like that. If you only browsed reddit it would have been a sure bet that Bernie Sanders would be the democratic candidate, and Ron Paul was going to win before that.
- selfmodruntime 1y ago
  Same. And for about 12 to 24 hours after the election loss it was... quiet. A few people coming to terms that the illusion had disappeared, but not in any way comparable to the interactions beforehand. Then it returned with a vengeance.
  - scarab92 1y ago
    The default subs are filled with left-wing conspiracy theories these days. A consequence of years of reddit allowing its mods to shadow ban centrist voices. It’s hard to see how reddit escapes this mess. They need more normal people and less political zealots, but the site is already so far down the echo chamber path that its overt political partisanship scares off potential new normal users from participating.
    - selfmodruntime 1y ago
      > It’s hard to see how reddit escapes this mess I don't see why they would. Rage drives engagement, and they just got the number one rage inducing factor back into public office for the next 4 years. This form of engagement also works better on progressives I think.
    - firesteelrain 1y ago
      Honestly, the internet is killing us all slowly. It was better not to argue with our neighbors on the Internet or even social media. Or fellow citizens or even foreign ones CONSTANTLY
- yyyyz 1y ago
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- jayd16 1y ago
  There was certainly a lot of optimism but I don't think you can really say the mood was a clear blow out. Anyone mentioning such a thing would get many replies of "doesn't matter...vote anyway!" I think Kamala actually did have the lead in Reddit's demographics.
- hattmall 1y ago
  I would absolutely get that same feeling from reddit. But like do you not interact in the actual world? Trump would have a rally and areas 45 minutes away are backed up with traffic for 8 hours. Kamala had one and you can't even reliably figure out how to get tickets and other than motorcade closures traffic is nothing. So much anti-Kamala and pro-Trump stuff in the communities that are supposed to be strong for her. That Kamala did as well as she did was really shocking to me. I mean it wasn't close, but Kamala couldn't even make past the very first debate in 2020 and her list of accomplishments is basically nothing. I never met anyone in real life with an actual compelling or supportive argument for her. At best it was "she's not Trump". Taking Biden out and having no primary is probably the worst thing Democrats could have done.
  - parineum 1y ago
    > having no primary is probably the worst thing Democrats could have done. I'd argue the 15 years of identity politics that both led to Harris as VP and prevented them from being able to commit the faux paux of possibly passing her up by letting their constituents decide if they liked her was their worst decision.
  - Suppafly 1y ago
    Your entire post reads like a bot post on reddit. Not sure if you're trying to prove the point and forgot the /s or actually believe the nonsense you've posted.
93po 1y ago
part of the echo chamber is also instant shadow bans on many of the major subs, and especially political ones, unless you consistently comment (shadow banned) comments and eventually get whitelisted by a mod or bot who's determined you to be the "right" sort of commenter. and again an instant shadow ban again the second you trigger any "bad" keywords
- gruez 1y ago
  That's presumably an anti-bot/astroturfing measure. As bad as that is, I'm not sure what the alternative should be. Allowing anyone to post with a 1 minute old account? Implement real name verification?
  - mvdtnz 1y ago
    I can't speak to every local subreddit but I can tell you for sure that while it may have started as an anti-bot measure, on /r/newzealand it is absolutely used as a way to gatekeep the wrong opinions from being present on the subreddit.
  - ipaddr 1y ago
    Normal people signup to post not to hang around and scroll and like until the account is warmed
    - hangsi 1y ago
      This seems untrue, especially for reddit? Using the 1/9/90 split [0] for creators/commenters/readers, it seems farfetched to suggest that reddit accounts (which benefits readers making an account to curate subreddit subscriptions) can't follow this pattern where many legitimate human users do not comment often. [0] "The 1% Rule", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
      - Suppafly 1y ago
        Plenty of people don't comment often, but the impetus to sign up for an account is often to comment, which subs then either disallow or delete because they don't want new accounts commenting.
Aurornis 1y ago
> My pet theory is that someone who claims reddit is a great place for niche hobbies were never part of an old-school forum with truly passionate and engaging members. In my experience, Reddit can be an okay place for niche hobbies until the reddit becomes semi-popular. Then it's a lost cause for anyone but newbies posting the same question every day and old timers who take pleasure in yelling at them.
MSFT_Edging 1y ago
I'd say at least 70% of reddit "hobby" spaces are people buying something with little research, then posting the picture of the thing they bought. Any real discussion is drowned out so the average post now is "bought these, new to the hobby, what do I do with them?". The meshtastic sub is a good example of that. People buying hobbyist hardware, without doing any research. They probably saw some youtube video, hit the amazon "buy", then when it arrived, they're stumped.
- whstl 1y ago
  Yeah, it's just consumption consumption consumption. Post a photo of your new gizmo: 300 upvotes. Video of you using your widget: 4 votes. And in subreddits dedicated to actually making things, it's just hustling hustling hustling. With a small percentage of self-help posts like "how I spent 4 years in my boring-ass generic video game and nobody wanted it".
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > I'd say at least 70% of reddit "hobby" spaces are people buying something with little research, then posting the picture of the thing they bought. This is exactly what happened to all of the hobby reddits I enjoyed. Any useful discussion was crowded out by 10 posts per week (or day) of people posting their newest purchase or asking a question that had been answered 1000 times already. The useful Subreddits have mods who come down hard on these posts. They don’t proliferate as much if people don’t see them everywhere. It’s a lot of work for mods though.
- tinier_subsets 1y ago
  >I'd say at least 70% of reddit "hobby" spaces are people buying something with little research, then posting the picture of the thing they bought. A really great (awful) example of this that I saw was on the typewriters subreddit (which is already 90% people posting pictures of the same 5 or so overhyped machines): In the 1950s, Royal used to give out gold typewriters as part of a writing contest.[0] I saw one of these come up on Goodwill’s auction site, saved screenshots for my records and followed it closely, since I knew bids would get really stupid really fast. Sure enough, winning bid was around $1500. About two weeks after the auction ended (about the time Goodwill’s very slow shipping takes), I saw it pop up on the subreddit, exact machine, identical scratches, blemishes, and all to the one I had screenshots of. The post title? “Found this at my local thrift store for $50. How’d I do?” That was enough to finally make my delete my account and seriously question anyone who thinks Reddit is actually good for niche hobbies.[1] [0]https://www.antikeychop.com/gold-royal-quiet-de-luxe-typewriter https://www.antikeychop.com/gold-royal-quiet-de-luxe-typewri... [1] Well, that and the fact that and the fact that I was probably going to lose my mind if I earnestly gave detailed advice on repairing a machine I had personally stripped and reassembled, only for someone to get upvoted to the top for posting a confident pseudo answer about some mechanism—that may or may not even exist in that machine—that they only faintly understood from a general YouTube video that they only half watched.
nitwit005 1y ago
I think it's less "echo chamber" than under direct political influence. It takes a lot of effort to moderate a subreddit. People will post stuff all day, in large volumes. Who's going to be willing to do that? Sure, some will just be nice people with a ton of free time, but many will definitely be political activists (or even state actors at this point) who have something to promote.
- wavewrangler 1y ago
  You know how certain professions are known for attracting certain pathologies? CEOs/narcissism, car salesman/ lmachiavellianidm and surgeons/God? Reddit moderator/d-bag is not exempt from that phenomenon and for reasons unknown to me, because it’s volunteer (Ok, I can’t say 100%, but mostly it’s volunteer) seems to be some kind of mental illness XP multiplier attractant for the role. Perhaps it empowers people because they’re giving so much of their lives to their own perceived cause, that no one asked for. But there are a lot of good, great even, mods out there. Surely. But anyhow, I’m going back to irc.
VeninVidiaVicii 1y ago
Niche content for sure is the best thing Reddit is for. I only go there for info on my favorite instruments, and a few other shitposting communities for games and shows I watch.
- wavewrangler 1y ago
  [flagged]
alexjplant 1y ago
> My pet theory is that someone who claims reddit is a great place for niche hobbies were never part of an old-school forum with truly passionate and engaging members. This. On forums you recognize members by their funny avatars and the hyper specific advice that they have (useful or otherwise). Stickied posts like "timbit2's Guide to Vintage Frobulators" or "New to Frobs? Not Sure Where to Start? READ" abound. There are usually decades of easily-searchable posts accumulated. People reply to your threads helpfully. The marketplace forums are full of well-cared-for gear. On Reddit you get a lot of beauty shots and question posts with replies like "bro just get the new Vinculum x Chadbert420 frobber. Shit is [fire emojis]". There's usually a woefully out-of-date wiki or sticky that you can only access from one interface or another. There's no sense of community, just upvotes of pictures for clout. Of course these are contrived straw men versions of their respective communities but in my experience they're correct more often than not. I have been dipping my toe into various Discords that seem to have a better sense of community but Discord doesn't seem to lend itself to longer-form content as forums do... I wonder whether this is something the Discord platform could be augmented to facilitate.
- layer8 1y ago
  Discord is a chat platform, not a forum, and its contents are closed-off, not discoverable via web search. It’s a modern form of IRC chats, not of web forums. The two serve different needs and audiences.
NegativeK 1y ago
I used to think that the up voting mechanic was the future of the internet. Now I think that it's a perverse incentive that requires very heavy handed moderation to not suck (AKA more free labor), and that time decaying posts can discourage quality, in-depth discussions. Corollary: necroing forum threads isn't necessarily bad.
- Enginerrrd 1y ago
  >Corollary: necroing forum threads isn't necessarily bad. I've always agreed with this. It was usually considered bad etiquette at best on forums, but I never really understood why.
  - NegativeK 1y ago
    I'm sure it'd be content specific, but in a thread about technical discussions (_especially_ in fields with information that can be just as valuable a decade later) it seems totally fine. Those forums seem to be okay with it, though...
- layer8 1y ago
  I fully agree, but still upvoted you.
donnachangstein 1y ago
What's ironic is this thread is full of comments agreeing that Reddit sucks because the voting/karma system is flawed and shadow banning is toxic and deranged yet all those very features and policies exist here. In fact, HN is mentioned in the Wikipedia article for shadow banning as an early adopter of the practice. (Yes I agree it sucks but that's not the point of my comment.) So what changed or what makes this place different? I would argue it's not the forum software but rather run differently, not placing in charge of every subreddit a cabal of unemployed fringe lunatics wielding power and waging war against their users because it's all they have. Or maybe the forum software does suck and some just naturally migrated to a text-only low-bandwidth version of Reddit?
- d0gsg0w00f 1y ago
  > a cabal of unemployed fringe lunatics wielding power and waging war against their users because it's all they have. Speaking of which, does anyone know if there are any good articles/documentaries/exposés on reddit moderators? I really just want to know what one is like.
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- sepositus 1y ago
  > So what changed or what makes this place different? It's an interesting question. Primarily, I think it's because HN doesn't allow you to downvote instantly or even after a lengthy period of time. I think it's tied to total karma, but someone would have to provide more information there. Regardless, that single change probably makes a big difference. Compared to Reddit, I've had some comments go into the tens of negative karma points within five minutes of posting. It wasn't because it was low quality, but because it wasn't the "correct" view to have in whatever subreddit I was engaging in. The downvoting there is practically militant. However, as someone who usually holds a minority view on HN, I don't think the system here is perfect either. Usually an echo chamber forms because the dissidents don't last long and leave. If you reward the ones that stay the longest with downvote capabilities, it would explain my general experience quite well. But again, it's nothing compared to Reddit. Note: I recognize this is a conversation on karma, which has a rule associated with it, but I hope we can make an exception here given it's a good faith discussion between Reddit/HN :)
hattmall 1y ago
Reddit was definitely an amazing place for Niche hobbies. Forums were great too, but the layout and having an "orangered" beat out forums. Plus you could be on so many forums at essentially the same time. Prior to reddit I had basically the same setup with RSS feeds for like my top 10-15 forums. But reddit basically copied and eclipsed that and the forums pretty much all died. Forums were great too, but reddit made it really easy to get access to new niches quickly. Without having to join a new site, learn the forum slang and etiquette, etc. Reddit is awful now though. IDK what the alternative is either. I'm in a few discords and Facebook groups that cover most topics but they both offer a much poorer user experience imo.
jval43 1y ago
I was an active contributor to /r/espresso for a while, but in the process of the hobby I realized I disagree with some of their advice and best practices. Minor stuff really. I would not describe the sub as toxic or anything, but it's literally impossible to get a dissenting opinion across on Reddit. Other hobby subs were the same. Every single time I mentioned an opinion differing from the "hive-mind" consensus it was downvoted to hell, with no responses, counter arguments or anything resembling discussion. I would have liked to trade experiences but that's not possible. While at the same time some of the other posters giving advice freely admit they don't actually have experience with what is discussed and are just repeating older posts. There is no real value in that, and nowadays you can get mostly the same experience by just asking ChatGPT. Both have no clue and no real opinion of their own when it comes to details. I take part in a few forums now, and it's a breath of fresh air. Much better experience and a lot more personal as well.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Everywhere you let the masses upvote and/or downvote, you're going to have the hive-mind problem. We have it here, too. I'd propose having a separate UI for users to agree/disagree, vs. for users to flag rule breaking posts, like spam, flamebait, insults and so on. The agree/disagree count would just display a vanity number, but the rule-breaking UI would actually downweight the article or comment. You could audit occasionally and remove voting privileges from people abusing the rule-breaking UI as a "Mega-disagree."
raxxorraxor 1y ago
There are some niche forums still, but they have to be really small. Mostly related to very specific media as general topics are affected by astroturfing. These communities often don't live as long, but they can be active, helpful and interesting. But it isn't worth reading anything else anymore.
fennecfoxy 1y ago
Human beings are echo chambery tbf.

deleted 1y ago

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Aurornis 1y ago

> I used to love Reddit, but the astroturfing has become unbearable, especially by political groups. I really doubt most of it is astoturfing. You can find bot accounts, obviously. However, the Reddit hivemind has a very intense echo chamber. Everyone learns very quickly that if you write something that doesn't match the popular opinion of Reddit, you're going to get downvoted quickly. Strike a nerve and you'll even get angry private messages or people going through your post history and trying to extend their argument into old comments. Large forums have always been like this. You're at the mercy of a small number of users who have the most free time to post all day. Some times I'll get an unusually angry response on Reddit and click on their profile out of curiosity. It's often someone who has been commenting for the last 10 hours straight. You just can't compete with someone with infinite free time and a lot of anger to get out. Eventually they all sync up to drive away differing opinions

lazystar 1y ago
its astroturfing by for profit companies. after the election, they realized: a) that folks were filtering out the astroturfed subreddits in /r/all, and b) that r/all's filter list has a hard limit of 100 subreddits. so, they switched tactics - by astroturfing >100 subreddits, they can guarantee to their clients that their posts will make the front of r/all for everyone.
ack_complete 1y ago
Back when Pushshift was publicly available, I used to check the mod actions on some subreddits. What I found was that the subreddits that I thought had biased moderators were simply undermoderated. Pretty much every mod action I saw was fair and there were also a lot more than expected, but clearly the issue was that total comment volume was far more than the mod team could handle. > You're at the mercy of a small number of users who have the most free time to post all day. Some times I'll get an unusually angry response on Reddit and click on their profile out of curiosity. It's often someone who has been commenting for the last 10 hours straight. These people are also masters at toeing the line of forum or subreddit rules when trashing others, constantly baiting people to cross the line in replies and get themselves moderated. It's worse in forums where downvoting isn't available.
1y ago

thegrim33 1y ago

After the last election, one smaller local subreddit that has had the same overall culture for many, many years, seemingly overnight, at the snap of some fingers, lurched completely to the extreme opposite direction. If you dare to share any of the same ideas that were once widely accepted there for many years on end, now you instead get absolutely pummeled, ridiculed, downvoted out of existence. It's just so blatantly, demonstrably, obvious the level of manipulation which was targeted at the sub. Somebody, somewhere, added it to a list of subreddits to be manipulated. But you can't even discuss it there, because how are you going to use a compromised communication channel to communicate about how it's compromised? The majority of the population seemingly can't even notice that sort of communication manipulation, it's gotten so sophisticated. Bot accounts used to be much easier to detect, now they all have very cleverly built-up account history and posts that are near indistinguishable from humans. And of course not all manipulation is bots/AI, there's coordinated shill/sockpuppet/astroturf campaigns with real people being tasked with doing the manipulation. The smart people have already left and gone on to the next place, which will never be allowed to grow large enough or significant enough without the propaganda fire hose eventually being turned on it too. The only way to fix things is a radically different framework for communication.

BrenBarn 1y ago
> The only way to fix things is a radically different framework for communication. What do you think that might look like?
- selfmodruntime 1y ago
  Getting rid of anonymous powermoderation.
  - degrees57 1y ago
    Yes, and in my opinion, this was what killed Slashdot.
    - selfmodruntime 1y ago

lazystar 1y ago

> After this last election, I think political groups realized local subreddits were underutilized and have regrouped accordingly. its not that. they realized: a) that folks were filtering out the astroturfed subreddits in /r/all, and b) that r/all's filter list has a hard limit of 100 subreddits. so, by astroturfing >100 subreddits, they can guarantee to their clients that their posts will make the front of r/all for everyone.

Numerlor 1y ago
Ha, I got them beat with RES and filtering out every generic subreddit that touches politics

ok123456 1y ago

I'm amused by how over the top it always is. A high-scoring submission on my local Reddit gets maybe +70 votes. Then, some random political-related submission —and it's only ever political-related—will have +2000 votes. They're so overt that they don't even care.

hackyhacky 1y ago
Why is that a sign of astroturfing? More likely, there are more people who read (and upvote) posts on the default subs, than niche local subs.
- parineum 1y ago
  He's talking about a politics related post in a niche sub.
  - therealdrag0 1y ago
    Why is it a sign of astroturfing and not just hyper political climate?
    - ok123456 1y ago
      Well, if broadly popular organic posts net about 100, I would expect organic partisan posts to have a ceiling of +50. Still, more realistically, the net would be about zero because half the people would downvote them. But, somehow, partisan posts in one direction always seem to net over 1000 or 2000, yet partisan posts in the other direction net about zero. Even with a skewed distribution, I would only expect maybe +20 to be the ceiling.
      - hackyhacky 1y ago
        > the net would be about zero because half the people would downvote them. Why would you assume that? It's a fallacy to assume that political opinions are evenly distributed. People seem to agree that different sites attract people of different political persuasions. A post that gets highly upvoted on Truth Social might get highly downvoted on Reddit, and vice versa. That's not astroturfing, that's just self-selecting communities. > partisan posts in one direction always seem to net over 1000 or 2000, yet partisan posts in the other direction net about zero. Again, it depends on the audience. This is not a new phenomenon. 50 years ago, you would get a different response to certain political statements depending on whether you made them at a Grateful Dead Concert or at a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police. Why should today be different? > I would only expect maybe +20 to be the ceiling. Why? People feel strongly about their political believes. It's polarizing and engaging in a way that a post about crockpots or guitar strings isn't.

_qua 1y ago

There was a recent panic/hysteria there about banning Twitter from many subreddits because of hate speech. It was incredible how quickly people were begging to have a website banned when they could either choose not to visit it or down vote posts they didn't like. Really soured things for me by illustration how much the median values changed from when I started using the site.

clown_strike 1y ago
This was about Elon's "Nazi salute" and both so incorrect and blatantly astroturfed I haven't returned to Reddit out of disgust. A ton of near-dead subreddits with no activity and no reason to link to x.com for any reason suddenly had thousands of people show up demanding links to x.com be blocked like it's an everyday problem for the sub. The quiet beneficiary of this campaign are those who benefit from Reddit's groomed narrative and their competing platform Bluesky.

unethical_ban 1y ago

The Texas subreddit recently got "taken back" by normal, older mods. It had been run by an account "annatrashpanda", who banned anyone critical of the Democrats, who let generic copy/paste national memes take over the board, and so on. I see they have now deleted their account. This all happened about two weeks ago. I say this as a liberal, the artificially partisan takeovers of local subs is a real thing. It's one thing to ban trolls and consistent shit-talkers from a community. And frankly it's one thing to have some bias. But it was just so obviously hostile, and I was happy to see the sub get back some authenticity.