Now I understand why the rules are the way they are in order to prevent spam and low effort posts but there are only so many ways you can word a topic or question you can ask or picture you post if you are posting a publicly available one. A lot of times you have jump through so many hoops just to get involved. Then there's running afoul of rules that aren't listed or subs that have the exact same rules but are enforced wildly differently. You just have your fingers crossed the whole time.

People always say Reddit is always angry but I’ve noticed even when they’re happy about something they’re still angry. For example they’ll be enjoying content, but when they comment it’s like they’re not able to praise the thing they like without putting something they don’t like down. Or if a sub likes a particular hobby and they’re enjoying it, they praise it so aggressively using many”fucks” in their vocabulary where it’s hard to tell if they’re really happy or angry that it’s so good.

I don’t know if it’s the way Redditors type that just makes them sound angry or if they struggle at translating happiness into text.

Has anyone noticed this?

I've noticed a lot of threads where any comment by the OP is downvoted into oblivion even if their original post was well-liked, especially if they are defending or clarifying something.

It's not a definite thing but it happens occasionally.

I also experienced this myself a few times. I clarified something and kept getting downvoted, so I deleted my comment and commented a similar thing again under an alt account. The difference was day and night.

I can understand this happening to the OP if their original post was ill-recieved but in these cases they were well-recieved.

I guess that maybe people find the OP out of line by commenting or arguing their point again, after already doing so in the original post.

This is about no specific subreddit or moderation team, but is about the interaction of the role of moderator with the larger system of administration and ownership and also it is probably very stupid and not correct, but it is a thought I have about this site as a longtime user, but I have never posted here and have not visited in a long time, but I was not sure where else this would be proper. It is also a long post. But I want to kinda talk about how the design also shapes the website to promote a homogenization across all subreddits.

I've used reddit since 2009 and seen how subs are moderated change depending on the CEO, and also the importance of moderation is something I value all across the internet and thinks we needs it implemented in a much more thoughtful way than it is, creating a community online will have knockon effects in some way and even beyond the material itself, the culture of the community is just as if not more important than individual posts themselves. Of course this is not a blanket statement of all mods at all, like I said I value their function a lot and think it should probably be used more, or at least in a way where the sacrifice of time mods make is used to benefit users instead of owners.

So I am not under the illusions that reddit has ever really been a place for robust discussion, I mean some subreddits are and have maintained to stay that way, but many have not. The ways that moderators have begun functioning in a way where they can be disengaged from the subreddit by just setting up their rules and auto-mods to make them do as little as they need to keep it from burning down, and have to engage with as many requests as it does take time. So they often choose to enact rules that are in line with what the admin and owners want the content to be like, because it makes their moderation job easier. Some do it as a power trip, but many do like the community.

Many subreddits will only allow links from a white list of preapproved subreddits so they don't have to worry about all these sites they do not know, this however creates a funnel that functions as a attachment to a small amount of locations on the internet where a large amount of people with a specific interest will end up, the websites linked to like this because they sell advertising and such and the eyeballs are just what they want, the moderators like it because it is often a website that is well known in whatever interest or hobby it is and respected enough, but it would often be viewed as "the establishment" of whatever subject it could be, like official sport league websites, game websites etc. This helps reddit as a business in terms of finances, not user experience, as it establishes good relationships with the more established outside affiliates that are commonly linked too. It makes mods have to be less vigilant and spend less time interacting with the subreddit.

Karma Farming, oh everyone's favorite. Karma farming never was particularly respected at all, but it has always been very prevalent even to the point of being celebrated, despite people not even realizing they are doing it, im talking narwal bacon shit, arrow to the knee, that was comment karma farming way back when, and link farming is a bit different but they serve the same function and moderators very much want this to be the main mentality of a subreddit and administers and owners love this, because we have to remember that attention is the thing they need from users, not content generation, they need the attention of people and to hold it as long as possible. this is the function of karma, to gamify the experience of a place or topic creating a fictional hierarchy that users can feel they are a part of when the reality is the only hierarchy is that of owners,admin,mods then users. Users should have only one interest and that is their user experience being a good one, not one that seems good because you can get points, but a truly good experience that is worthwhile and engaging. Mods and up their only function is maintaining user attention regardless of quality to either direct traffic or for eyeballs on ads that are now integrated into subreddits as posts themselves. So in subreddits that are text only this leads to places like unpopular opinion and AITA being full of fantastical bullshit that is clearly not true, and often ragebait, a major aspect of text based subreddits is rage bait and validation, and these are driven by Karma. Karma has always been the addiction that reddit sells. Ragebait is perfect for the ownership because we know that people interact more with things that stimulate negativity in the brain or anger. The Karma system functions for validation posts in the way that it quantifies something and leads to people making shit up because in a weird sense they feel heard and as if there is a large quantity of people that truly understand them, but in reality they don't its reddit.

Moderators love these types of posts because they are formulaic and predictable, very rarely introduce new things that might need examining or looking into but keep a subreddit active at the same time, and active subs sell ads. The mods essentially create conditions and structure of a community that will appease the administration the most which is responsible to ownership who is about making profit. The downstream effect of all this is the same as many platforms, it creates hivemind and redundancy in content.

Reddit very much is the processed sugary food of the internet and functions where the only ones who really are taken advantage of are the users themselves. The moderators essentially choose to work for free for the interest of the administration and owners, building rules and structures that are 1) pleasing to the company 2) keep engagement (the sugar essentially) so there is a customer for the administration. 3) To have to engage with the subreddit as little as possible as it takes time and they are not paid. This is why you see subreddits go to shit that were once interesting. The relationship with the design of the website, how karma functions as a method of user self-regulation that takes advantage of users internal desires or needs, usually emotional in some way. Similar to how getting a gold star in elementary school was for being a quiet child who was not disruptive and very obedient. Karma is the gold star that your first grade teacher gave you that made you feel special. The reason this structure exists and these relationships can be seen other places and at other points in history is because we live in a society that values orderliness and obedience of the group instead of things like quality, or daringness, or curiosity to learn and try. Most places on this website are not meant for true engagement or to really benefit the person who is interacting with it, they wont often have actual discussions that are stimulating (as i said earlier im not under the impression reddit has ever been that or that it should be), but those are the things that should be the highest value to the users, getting to have true interactions with others about things you are passionate about. Often trying to bring up topics that you think are interesting or thoughts that might not be wildly known or accepted relating to the community are either met with little engagement or other users defaulting to the hivemind I mentioned earlier and in some form informing the poster they are indeed, a fucking idiot, and that they could not be more wrong (then the karma validates this, other uses see the karma, they absorb the belief) it becomes the culture itself of the community which over time become more and more restrictive and its members start to become less the member of an online community with a shared interest but merely a representation of the topic of the community, degrading varied conversation and communication and limiting their desire to have true engagement, as they know what response they will get despite what they are saying, based off of the behaviors that are observable in comment sections of posts by the karma number next to it. Karma is the instrument of behavioral modification of a community to be as self regulating as possible in the manner of orderliness and discipline. Users end up moderating other users through this system and it can create an intimidation factor to those who hold an opinion that is not beaten to death on a subreddit.

Sry for the long post, im not good with brevity when writing things like.

Noticed this interesting occurence recently, where sorting r/Art by all time high now compared to a year ago is yielding completely different posts.

Manually viewing the posts that I saved shows that many top posts have been deleted by the moderators, any idea what the end goal is?

These works were submitted clearly before the recent AI artwork trend. What do you think?

Examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/uleib6/girl_with_a_futuristic_steel_earring_me_digital/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/m9hqqp/woman_in_red_me_oil_on_panel_2021/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/g7u0f9/clipart_me_paperclips_on_paper_2020/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/g6473j/summer_gorl_me_digital_2020/

Hello!

I am a researcher working on the history and dynamics of online advice, with a focus on Reddit. I have rough draft available and welcome feedback. If you'd like to publicly comment, feel free to do so here. If I use any such comment, I would cite it. If you want to communicate to me privately or be interviewed, message me and I will share a consent form wherein you can choose how you wish to be identified.

—Joseph Reagle, Northeastern University, https://reagle.org/

================

https://reagle.org/joseph/2024/rah/advice-subs.html

ABSTRACT: Though there is a robust literature on the history of the advice genre, Reddit is an unrecognized but significant medium for advice, including the domains of relationships, law, health, and gender. Noting the challenges of Reddit historiography, I trace the development of this genre on the platform, using the metaphors of evolutionary and family trees. For example, some subreddits have relationships akin to the interpersonal dynamics of the columnists behind "Ask Ann Landers" and "Dear Abby": inseparable twin sisters who became acrimonious competitors, as did their daughters. I reveal the development of advice subreddits through the periods of the "Cambrian Explosion" (2009-2010), the rise of judgment (2011--2013; 2019-2021), and meta subreddits (2020--2023).

It seems like there's two types of subs:

One where the mods are completely hands off, and only intervene to remove illegal posts. An example of this would be r/AITAH.

The other one is where mods use strict AI filters and automod, and remove posts which are not liked even if they fit the theme. An example of this would be r/AmItheAsshole.

Which kind of sub do you personally like? Have you noticed any differences in the community and dynamics between these two different type of subs?

Is it a low subscriber count? Is it moderation? Is it the community? Is it the topic? Or is it some combination of all of them?

I don't know what the answer is but here's what I've observed across some of my favourite subs:

/r/askhistorians is famously heavily moderated but has the engagement and community to justify it. Actual historians are happy to contribute because they know they won't have to deal with the usual misinformation and bullshit you see on the rest of Reddit. Whilst it's frustrating to open a thread that apparently has loads of replies only to see that they've all been deleted, the mods produce a weekly roundup of all answered questions which I feel more than makes up for it.

/r/patientgamers enforces a rule where you have to comment a certain number of times before you're allowed to make a post (which itself has to be over a certain length). This prevents low effort posts and seems to have engendered a more mature, thoughtful community that is actually open to discussion without resorting to flinging shit all over the place.

/r/therestispolitics is a relatively new sub based around a popular British political podcast. The engagement is still fairly low but what I like about it so far is that it's one of the few subs where you can discuss UK politics in a more thoughtful manner. Partly this is because of the low subscriber count but it's also because the podcast itself tries to be balanced between centre-left and centre-right and so centering the discussion around each episode almost automatically results in a better discussion than you get just from random outrage-bait twitter screenshots or misleading, biased headlines.

Reddit has obviously gotten younger as can be seen with the rise of subs like r/teenagers for example, however it seems like reddit is getting older too. Think back to 10 years ago. It seemed like older adults were relatively rare, most users were firmly late teens or early to mid 20s. Nowadays, its very common to see older adults in their late twenties or even mid thirties. References to kids and partners is now frequent. It's interesting to me, as it has shown that while new young users continue to flood reddit, the core legacy base remains and is slowly getting older. I feel like there was always an assumption these users would move on and fade away, but many stayed it seems.

It reminds of video games in the late 90s and early 2000s, where people assumed video games will always be the exclusive domain of the very young, but that generation grew up and many continue to game. It'd be interesting to see how this changes not only reddit, but the internet as whole in the 15 years. By that point there will be adults in their mid 40s and older who grew up with and shaped much of internet culture of the 2000s and 2010s. As I've said, many don't move on, they stay. I guess the question is: does anyone else see this? And how do you feel this will affect the culture of the internet? I personally feel that sheer number of young people on sites like reddit still shape the culture and in many cases result in adults, even those in their mid 30s, acting a little juvenile both in mentality and sometimes even humour and use of language. I've notcied some of this in myself. But that's just my view though.

I suppose its something that happens as communities grow, they get swamped with noob questions. I just keep unsubscribing from all kinds of places because its like people use reddit like its chatgpt or google. They ask really basic stuff thats been answered a million times over and are often annoyed if the correct answer is given without elaboration/citations.

I think internet users are increasingly hard wired for 'asking the chat' whereas I grew up on a pre social media internet where searching was foundational. I probably need to just stop checking in, I guess this is my problem not reddits.

I guess this is coming across as a circlejerk thread but I am wondering if anyone else sees this.

I often feel that people will argue in an effort to dominate you rather than search for truth or insight. I recall a comment on an old Reddit account. The argument was about the symbiotic nature of AI. Someone argued that AI was destroying lives, stating it had never done good for anyone. AI is a complex topic; it has the potential to be both an enabler and a detriment. There are grey areas; it's really hard to say how any new technology will unfold. Moreover, it's hard for anyone to predict the future, including experts. There also seems to be very pervasive anti-ai sentiment on Reddit.

Anyhow, I got so exhausted from arguing that I decided to turn it into an experiment.I wanted to see the limits of this guy's resolve in arguing.

Every time he made an argument, I had ChatGPT generate a counterargument. The reply thread had gone thirty-five levels deep. He would not give up. His arguments got more vague and accusatory. It was clear he just wanted me to say I was wrong and he was right, and he was the intellectual master.

I came to a realisation that responding to arguments just leads to a downward spiral. No matter what proof I provided it would never be enough. There was always some anecdotal story or unwarranted assertion.

In the end, nothing really gets resolved. I walked away from that discussion bereft of any insight or wisdom about the topic from an opposing view.

People don't win arguments; they exhaust you into giving up.

So I have been a regular user of both Reddit and Twitter for quite some while now (ca. 2 years or so). I noticed that Twitter and Reddit have kind of a "friendly" (ok, sometimes unfriendly) rivalry going on. Now, obviously there are many reason for that, as both Reddit and Twitter are important social networks/discussion websites that are quite different from each other. There are of course many ways in which Reddit and Twitter are different, but what it boils down to essentially is this (my thesis basically):

Twitter is individualistic while Reddit is communitarian.

Of course, I am generalizing a bit, but the main locus of focus on Twitter is the individual account - usually individual persons but it can be other types of entities (e.g. organisations or institutions). On Reddit on the other hand the main organizing entities are the Subreddits - communities of different individual accounts that are usually anonymous (mostly individual people). This leads Twitter to become focused on individuals - i.e. one follows an individual accounts and the most important "goal" on Twitter for most users seems to be to gain as many followers as possible. On Reddit, on the other hand, the main "goal" for individual users is a bit more unclear, but it seems that garnering "karma" seems to be important for quite a lot of Redditors, and the main way to do this is by being popular in individual Subreddits - thus, being popular among a community of people. This leads to different communication styles on Twitter and Reddit, respectively. On Twitter, individual accounts are encouraged to give "hot takes" as well as to promote themselves in various different ways (e.g. through videos and pictures). On Reddit, meanwhile , individual accounts tend to be less noticeable and thus they tend to post stuff that is generally popular in their respective communities/Subs. This can also explain why the political leanings of Twitter and Reddit tend to be different, with Twitter leaning more Right-libertarian and Reddit more Leftist/Social Democratic, as individualism favours the former and communitarianism the latter.

Anyway, I am not 100% confident in this theory, but I think it gets to the point of why Twitter and Reddit are so different and why they have this rivalry going on. Also, I am not claiming that one is better then the other, just dotting down a few observations I've made on both Networks.

I noticed that Reddit, as of a few months ago, has become really good at filtering shitposts. This is done through the "Sorry, your post has been removed by Reddit's automated filters" message.

I noticed that if a post gets heavily downvoted, then it will be automatically removed by this filter, usually within an hour of it being posted. Beforehand, I remember downvoted posts staying up for hours until a moderator removed it.

I also noticed that posts with controversial themes like immigration being automatically removed by this filter. It seems like Reddit has started to use some sort of AI that can analyze entire sentences and classify it's meaning. I noticed this filter being particularly aggresive in certain subs like r/LeopardsAteMyFace.

It's definitely not my IP. I noticed this with the alts created on my phone too. Reddit, IMHO, has a pretty good filter now. It's like they upped their game. I barely see shitposts on this site anymore.

All of my shitposts were harmless PG-rated material.

I have recently unsubscribed from a few subreddits because it seemed like all of the content I was seeing from them on my front page was just so negative. I was about to do it again just now, but decided to go to the subreddit first to see if I was missing anything and boy was I!

I would say that out of the top 20 posts in the sub, I was only shown the 3 most controversial ones. The rest were funny or light hearted, but still popular. Same story for most of the other subs I left. I know the reddit algo is trash, but I never suspected it of such obvious rage baiting.

It's one thing when bots impersonate real people to sell things and steal people's data, but I'm confused by the existence of bots that only repost old images and clog subs with irrelevant questions. Why are they so common? The obvious answer is to gain karma, but what's the goal beyond that? There's no monetary gain. The only practical thing karma is good for is allowing you to post on subs with a high threshold, but who would use an account that's already been outed as a bot? That's not to mention that these types of bots are the reason that karma thresholds even exist in the first place. Obviously people get satisfaction from seeing a number that represents internet clout go up (that's why social media is so addictive), but I find it hard to believe that people get enough satisfaction from a bot gaining karma with no real human input for that to be the main reason why bot spam is a growing issue. Also, why is it growing as much as it is? Less than a year ago, repost bots were nearly unheard of on r/questioning, but now they make up the majority of posts. Is there just one person or organization behind it, or is it multiple?

So lately I’ve been getting super thought out responses to really old threads. I’m talking 10 year old comments of mine with someone commenting acting like it’s real normal. Is this a bot farm thing? The accounts are relatively new, and they only have comments. The comments are really involved too, and lots are to old threads.

Why is this going on?

Hi. I notice this question came up a [few years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/fapz8m/what\_happened\_to\_rshitredditsays\). It's too old for me to comment on it now, so I'd thought I'd make a thread.

I was a moderator of SRS from 2011-13 when I was a young person. You can verify this by looking at this account's history. I forgot this account existed until tonight, when I tried to recover the password to what I thought was an even older account, and got the details for this one instead.

It's been ten years since I've used reddit (or any online community) as an active user, so my memory of the details are hazy if not totally evaporated. I barely remember any of the names of the people I used to speak to on a daily basis back then. To address the question, though, I think there's several factors as to why it extinguished:

1. The content of subreddit r/ShitRedditSays was, in itself, very boring. While there were some witty users in the early beginning, reading the same dreck ad infinitum was extremely tedious, and I believe the number of posts and users it accumulated merely represented a wide-spread frustration amongst users with how reactionary the user base of the main subreddits were. These users were predominately transient, and the size and activity of the main subreddit died off before its true notoriety even began. The real SRS community was much smaller and was not even truly on reddit at all, but on auxiliary IRC channels detached from the site.

2. It seems not to be remembered how, at some point, the strong and sincere hyperreaction to the subreddit catalyzed the leaders of SRS and anti-SRS, as trolls, to become collaborators in stoking the fire together for both of their mutual entertainment behind each respective communities' backs. I knew some of it was engineered at the time, but realize now that had probably always been the case well before I was aware.

My departure was ultimately a result of my choice to stick to my principles in internal disputes, despite being a troll myself, such that it caused enough friction between me and the heads of the community with different priorities that I eventually got the boot. I, and I think a lot of outside witnesses, didn't get the memo that this was supposed to be Jerry Springer, not CNN. You see iterations of this type of soi-disant "political" entertainment today in Infowars, TrueAnon, and Chapo Trap House--the latter of whom I know is connected with the leader of SRS today. SRS and its controversy could be said to be prototypical of this genre of garbage.

3. This reason is most boring, but I don't see reddit as being constitutive of a wider community like it was 10-15 years ago. I personally use reddit only when I append it as a search term in Google when I want to get real, human answers from a niche and knowledge source. It's hard for me to believe that there now could be individual users who could gain enough clout to be recognizable to the majority of people who use it like before (e.g. violentacrez). The atomization of this site, then, means that there just isn't flint to spark large-scale controversy between subreddits anymore. Who would even care.

Like I said, I have no substantial recollection of what went down, but feel free to ask me any question that you'd like. I'll tell you anything, it doesn't matter any more.

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/disqus-icwsm14.pdf

The basic conclusion of the study is that negative votes on reddit posts made users post worse posts and more often. They also found that upvoted users do not improve the quality of their posts very much if at all. They repeated the results with both blind observers (who couldn't see the voting score) and they also evaluated the tendency of communities to be biased againstpeople who get downvotes, and biased positively towards those who get upvotes.It seems like they did some pretty valid and intensive research here, and to me it would make sense that users who get negative feedback would want to troll, or wouldn't see that feedback as helpful to them. Also, it would seem to me that a lot of positive feedback would not encourage users to improve their posts. However, I am still skeptical of the results for the fallowing reasons:

-is there really any un-biased way to analyze posts as "getting better" or "getting worse"?

-i would be lying if i actually understood the complex statistical methods they used to prove their points, which to me is part of the problem with laypeople citing statistics as"evidence" in their political discussions.

In reddit, a decade is a pretty long time, especially since the site is almost 20 years old.

Have redditors already discussed this study? Have different researchers disputed the quality of this study?

I am not one to care about upvotes, but it still feels good to see people like your content, which I do not get. I feel less motivated to post art content here now cause I get no engagement, no nothing. Am I doing something wrong? Or is my karma not high enough? Or is my art not good enough? I may get 3 ups..and if lucky (and i mean LUCKY) 10 to 13…

which makes me so happy and excited. (That sounds sad to excited about..huh?)

But other than that, i just don’t feel no point here anymore. If i am doing something wrong, let me know please <3

“Please seek help”; “See a therapist”; “Spend time with friends and family”; “Break up.”

What if someone can’t afford to seek help or therapy? I’m in the US and many Americans don’t have insurance. And even those that do can’t afford to regularly get therapy. This isn’t just poor people, but regular middle class people as well. Therapy is becoming a luxury for the rich by each passing day. More and more therapists and psychologists are starting to not take insurance and instead charge hundreds out of pocket because they need to make a living. And even if you can afford a therapist, the first one you see might not be the right fit. Or therapy just might not work for you. I’ve known multiple people who improved with therapy, but also know multiple people who didn’t get anything out of it or even got worse.

And not everyone has good friends and family. And even if you have a good relationship with them, you still may not feel comfortable telling them you’re deepest issues as to not burden them.

And I see Redditors replying to posts about the OP having issues with their friends or partners. Much of the time the comments are filled with suggestions to break up, when the situation described in the OP could be solved by simply talking it out with their partner and waiting for things to improve organically.

Here's a visual aid to help get you in the right mood to be able to tolerate all this gross positivity.

My last post here was very critical of some aspects of this site, and it's really easy to get totally caught up in some of the most exhausting aspects of internet discourse, so let’s do the reverse today!

It can really be anything you've experienced or read here that really stayed with you or affected you in some positive way. It could simply be reading a super insightful or hilarious and well-written post, a heart-warming exchange with another Redditor—maybe someone you had initially been arguing with turning around and being empathetic and understanding—or a comment on a post that helped you finally solve a very specific question or issue you had (this has happened so many times for me).

...or just whatever positive thing sticks out in your mind!

Hi 👋 I'm not a mod; just your typically curious Redditor here.

I've noticed that some subreddits have overhauled their rules after large swaths of new members became engaged. What's ensued can only be described, from my perspective, as "growing pains". Surely, some of this is political, which has got me thinking more generally-

What have experienced mods learned about human behavior in the mod space?

What we say is often disjointed from what we actually do (we're all a little delulu and sometimes Machiavellian), and I get the sense that maybe mods are in a unique position to see behind this veil a little bit.

So at the end of 2019 Tumblr banned all NSFW posts, resulting in a massive drop in user numbers and they escaped to many sites, primarily reddit and twitter. With Twitter going downhill there is a large amount of twitter users going to tumblr. Now if reddit were to go downhill where eould we go?

Twitter is currently dying so that's a no go, Redditors hate Tiktok and Instagram so those, no gos and I can't imagine redditors enjoying themselves on tumblr (as entertaining as that would be) and 4Chan is just no (even if it would be hilarous to watch)

So where would they go?

https://preview.redd.it/kk25ihsvjo4d1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=e84c52f386f6680ffdded4f990ec9a75a54d6090

Could just be a perception thing (Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon) but it really does seem like the prevalence of this has skyrocketed in recent years. It could also just be a society-at-large thing (with how polarized and quick to self-sort into “camps” we all seem to be nowadays) but it does at least feel heightened here.

When I first joined Reddit 9 years ago, it was really common to see tons of tongue-in-cheek, darkly ironic, and irreverent satirical takes. But nowadays whenever someone posts something that is very clearly over-the-top, hyperbolic satire, I see it immediately get inundated with a flood of comments trying to “rebut” an assertion which the OP was clearly not actually making. It just feels like the overall lightheartedness and, most importantly, charitability/willingness to hear people out first has all but evaporated.

Now, of course there are still tons of Redditors who are open-minded, amicable and savvy enough to recognize satire when they see it. I see some really amazing people post some really great things here. But it just makes me a little sad that now I have to really think twice before making a tongue-in-cheek post or comment, lest I spend the next few hours defending what I meant in the replies.

Even setting the misunderstood satire aside, it also just feels like overall people are a lot quicker to argue against even the most minor of points (often unrelated to the actual topic) or type up a “takedown” of some perceived opinion before they’ve even stopped for just a second to ask for clarification and find out what the OP actually meant.

Is this just me or has anyone else noticed this 😆?

So recently I visited r/Youtube because I was curious about the comment section on old COVID videos, and after navigating a little bit I realized that it turned into a pretty angsty place, in my opinion at the level of some infamous subreddits like KotakuInAction. Most upvoted posts are low effort or repetitive ragebait, they spam drama about famous youtubers rather that commentary on the platform itself, people exaggerating actual problems on the platform like ads duration (I very rarely remember having to wait more that 10 seconds to skip ads, and usually are 5), promoting their hatred of certain features that aren't inherently bad like shorts or the visual design, and what annoys me the most: how they are so angsty to their audience, people who disagree are downvoted to oblivion and called YouTube bots, most popular commentaries usually are people insulting or being mean, a post gets deleted and people immediately accuses the mods of being involved into some kind of corporative conspiracy, etc...

Meanwhile this sub that is about discussing a pretty controversial web page seems fairly reasonable, at least I learn something rather than having a bad taste on my mouth, why is this?

Also, I find interesting that apparently according to YouTube channels Reddit is the worst and according to Reddit, Youtube is the worst.

This week we're looking at a direct comparison of Reddit to 4chan, perhaps the one "social media" site that breaks the Facebook/Instagram/TikTok convention even more than Reddit does: Comparing structure and humor between Reddit and 4chan. /u/aero-deck (who disappeared shortly after posting this) draws on their experience as a /b/tard and a Redditor, comparing how the mechanics of engagement drive the social dynamics of both sites. Many of the top level replies are worthwhile too - there are some lengthy perspectives by others that are also excellent.

Given the unique points laid out by OP and the comments, has that remained over time? How has 4chan's culture changed over the last decade, if at all? I think everyone would agree Reddit's culture has changed; is this due to the mechanics of posting/commenting changing, or more site demographics? And should we read into the fact that OP was posting this on Valentine's Day?

Reddit creates spaces where herds of people can feel comfortable, and I think it's great. People need to socialize, chat, and ultimately belong.

I use Reddit to get to solutions to problems people don't normally encounter. Sometimes - never really think they can encounter.

Maybe it's my fault that I don't value belonging with a group nearly as much as doing my own cool thing, but I guess that's how I am. However, when I ask questions, especially if they can lead to a shift in paradigm, people on Reddit really don't like it. I noticed that it's surprisingly common for people to look for some marker of supposedly acting in bad faith/breaking rules/being this or that. Sometimes, people try to skew the discussion into useless weeds or tell how (as a response for question) one need to act this or that way.

Here is partially anonymized example. I discovered/invented a cool way to do something in an area where I don't have formal education, and I asked a question about specific nuances people with formal education would know. Yes, this happens sometimes, for example, the leg lengthening techniques were invented by a guy inspired by horse yokes, or the sewing machines were created because of an enterpeneur's fever nightmare. Instead of seriously answering the question (which is not that difficult), people take an offense, immediately presume bad faith, and take (perhaps subconscious) steps to derail the question.

But it's not just the people, but Reddit's Comments karma system makes it worse. Like ~75% of Subreddits require positive comment karma, once the comment karma is too low, the account is as good as dead. Unless you can recover it through AskReddit or something. This indirectly discourages even responding to the accusations, as once the community really doesn't like you or your ideas, they will downvote someone they don't like to death, and Reddit is set up to allow for that.

But to end it on a positive note, I found answers to some really important questions. I discovered an absolutely amazing tourism & hospitality entrepreneur in another country through a Reddit recommendation on DMs, I learned a lot about obscure non-Googleable tech and knowledge.

TL;DR: Yes, Reddit is often useful, but once you or your ideas are outside of Reddit users comfort zone, they are geared to be unhelpful, and the Reddit system even creates means to suppress descent.

So the obvious one that I've run across quite a few times is for a discord dating app called LightUp. Essentially the user will pretend to be someone having a hard time finding a relationship or saying something about being lonely, wait a bit for responses and then come in on an alternate account recommending their "discord dating app". I've only casually looked into maybe a dozen comments but they seem to be a group trying to match women with men based on hobbies and not appearances..lol

I haven't seen moderators really notice or do anything about it yet.

Just curious if there's any others going around out there?