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whyenot | 29 days ago

What I find particularly bad about Reddit is the platform is specifically designed to amplify group think and silence competing opinions. All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility. It can turn subreddits into little bubbles where like-minded people upvote each other and almost never have to see dissenting opinions. That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit, but it can be a big problem or even dangerous elsewhere.

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Aurornis|29 days ago

> That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit,

I had to abandon my last few hobby subreddits because there were a few chronically online people who had to control the conversation in every single post with their opinions. If anyone didn't agree, their comments would mysteriously go to -3 or below within 30 minutes of posting.

It's all little fiefdoms for chronically online people now.

Imustaskforhelp|29 days ago

What are your thoughts on lemmy, maybe the hobby can be extremely niche but you can even be the moderator yourself on a lemmy instance and I think that a federated reddit alternative would be nice too!

If I may ask, what are the hobbies that you are talking about?

FeteCommuniste|29 days ago

Hot take: a voting system (and generally any move toward ranking content rather than displaying it chronologically) will inevitably rot any social media platform. Just a question of time.

holly01|29 days ago

When I used 4chan the lack of voting made engaging with the actual substance of a post much easier. This was something observed by many other posters I talked to. This is going to sound wishy-washy, but my theory is that the brain is so attuned to socially trying to figure out the in-group or who is in the wrong that putting a number that signals social agreement on a statement will immediately stimulate the more primal social pathways in your brain before you can even think.

Of course 4chan isn’t a great system for meaningful discussions, the system skews conversations towards outrage and shock. But reddits short, quippy, in-group signaling post style that is encouraged by their voting system seems to be absolute worst way to interact with other people. HN also has this problem to an extent, but it’s properly modded and most people here seem to be not be living through their phones so it isn’t nearly as extreme as reddit (or twitter, I never use twitter but people seem miserable in a similar way to reddit users).

olyjohn|28 days ago

I'm going to say that the rot starts to occur whenever the amount of users gets too big. Too many people seems to ruin everything.

HK-NC|28 days ago

Yeah I used to enjoy forum discussions. Reddit is agree or stfu. It got worse a few years ago (probably longer than that) with a new rule change and something about chibese ownership?

bityard|29 days ago

It depends on lot on the sub and how their moderators police the community, but yeah, I've seen lots of that.

I've been aggressively downvoted before for pointing out facts that people don't want to be true. (And these were not even political discussions!) I don't even bother with putting my opinions online at any rate, both because they don't actually matter to anyone but me, and because I don't get any joy out of defending them against internet randos.

Edit: It depends on the size of the sub as well. I'm a member of a few subs that I can stand because the moderators are good at moderating, and there are enough regular users coming through to counter a small number of very active cranks.

SilverElfin|29 days ago

> All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility.

That is true here too. And Twitter is the least transparent, with people regularly reporting that posts critical of musk or trump have reduced reach compared to their other posts.

whyenot|29 days ago

Yes, but HN still has a strong culture of considering both sides, excellent moderation, and some measures to help nudge people in the right direction. For example, right now I can only upvote your comment. I am not given an option to downvote it. That's a good thing!