I think reddit has bigger issues than the look of their site. I stopped using it once all the hate subreddits started growing. Even the smaller more niche subreddits I frequented turned into meme filled echo chambers. What really did it in for me was just how much sponsored content made the homepage that wasn't labeled as such.
They also banned me from reddit gifts for pointing out their first sponsored exchange (before they said it was sponsored, they tried acting like it was "fan service").
Funnily enough: Reddit started declining for me around the time they started banning "hate" subreddits but leaving others in place (r/shitredditsays for example). It felt like the curators of the site really had some kind of agenda to push, and it really turned me off of using it as a news aggregator platform.
(I say this as a person who has never been a member of any of the banned subreddits)
Agree. Censorship beyond a sub's mods is largely uncalled for. Sometimes (fewer times than is the case now), banning of some subs could be necessary.
I believe that subs are isolated enough that if you don't want to engage with any particular sub's content you wouldn't have to. Otherwise the whole thing becomes somewhat skewed towards a certain set of opinions and could even be deemed to be totalitarian.
> I believe that subs are isolated enough that if you don't want to engage with any particular sub's content you wouldn't have to. Otherwise the whole thing becomes somewhat skewed towards a certain set of opinions and could even be deemed to be totalitarian.
But that's the thing, they are in theory, but in practice, you see subreddits leaking into others. Even with strict no-brigading rules, it's too easy to click on a link from /r/subredditdrama, for instance, and then start participating. And sometimes people with the same opinion just go to other subreddits to antagonize/troll people; you see this more with the more extremely-sided subreddits.
"Brigading" is the single most idiotic concept to come out of the site admins in Reddit's entire history. It's a value judgment that conveys nothing useful.
Do you know what someone following a link on Reddit and clicking around and participating where they end up is? Normal usage of Reddit! The idea that you're not allowed to participate just because you came through an on-site link reflects a kind of isolationism that has nothing in common with Reddit's philosophy, nor how real people ever used the site.
Oh I completely agree, I always found that silly for the exact same reason. I think I got banned on one of those subreddits because I had a comment in both the topic linked and the subreddit's own.
Okay, so I used the link aggregation and discussion site as designed? Cool, I'll take that ban.
Leading by example trickles down a lot more consistently than money. Reddit leads by arbitrary censorship. On niche subs you used to be able to fairly regularly have HN quality discussions with people you disagree with. In the past ~3yr it's become a lot more rare to happen. Disagreement gets silenced.
They’re not about targeting a particular demographic, but they prowl reddit to find comments - some appropriately quoted, some taken entirely out of context - with the express purpose of producing something that will get the mob howling and spitting in fury. Bonus points if they’re angry enough to go to the source post and rain vitriol on the original commenter.
It’s a sub dedicated to chasing people with torches and pitchforks, protected from their garbage behavior because, if you take them at face value, they’re chasing bigots of various types.
I've been subscribed to /r/canada for as long as I've been on Reddit but it's now it's become a right-wing hate fest over there. I'm surprised at the decline in the last year or so.
There's a concerted effort by right-wingers to overrun every "local" reddit. If you go to /r/seattle or /r/seattlewa half the comments in most posts are HEAVILY downvoted hate speech and trolling.
It's natural for /r/Canada to go against the government of the day. Just like they loathed Harper, so too will they loathe Trudeau. That's just the burden of governing.
or when you are reading interesting threads and people starts posting and up-voting stupid comments...
last time I was reading about an interesting machine painting manual signatures: excited commenters started talking how much they where expecting such machine painting penises... I mean, I feel so out from those communities and they leave me such depressing feelings.
So you're saying you don't like Reddit for being Reddit... because the whole trends towards the lowest common denominator seems to be all Reddit is now-a-days.
That sounds about right. Reddit just isn’t a fun place to be, and hasn’t been for years. I’m not sure what the value proposition is for Reddit anymore, other than for the owners of Reddit.
Just because it isn't fun for you doesn't mean it isn't fun for others. Fun, humour, and social interactions in general are very subjective. There's clearly people that do enjoy that kind of humour or else Reddit wouldn't be where it is today considering it's basically always been like what you described.
It's getting bad. I like guns and if you let that slip in almost any non-gun subreddit I immediately get messages that I'm basically a terrorist and have student blood on my hands as if I like school shootings.
Its true in the opposite direction too. I fled to some of the pro-gun subreddits, until I realized they were increasingly TheDonald_Lite. They really need to ban T_D
They also banned me from reddit gifts for pointing out their first sponsored exchange (before they said it was sponsored, they tried acting like it was "fan service").