Ironically that is the real issue I see with reddit. Half truths or exaggerations shrouded in psuedo-intellectual rhetoric are taken seriously and as a comment passes a certain threshhold it becomes impossible to refute.
At least on HN, the community does an excellent job of downvoting low quality comments that don't contribute to the discussion. Although there are times where it seems like reddit is leaking into this site.
I'm not sure how this would be avoidable anywhere, without heavy moderation by mods (who are, on reddit, volunteers) that had to read every single comment and consider its place on the line between 'shilling' and 'talking about products they like'.
Reddit isn't dead, it's a place where people talk, and on the modern internet, that means that companies send people to talk, too.
Urgh, I feel like I just ate a second lunch reading that. The author is in dire need of an editor.
Either way, this piece is nothing new: shilling has been around for as long as time, and the bedrock of propaganda has always been guiding people into drawing conclusions that they believed they came to on their own. The Internet has only sped up and quantified the process.
The solution (which the author leaves the reader to determine) is obvious: spend less time on the Internet, don't get caught up in pointless debates (and don't let them dwell on you when you're offline), and read more books, preferably by people who are long dead.
EDIT: Speaking of books, I am reminded of the space-Rastas from (the very much alive) William Gibson's Neuromancer. Since they lived in their isolated space station, they avoided the Sprawl's relentless homogenization and retained their own identity. The same holds true for online communities: the bigger they get, the more valuable they become to marketers, who inevitably bring corporate-culture-crushing with them.
Looking at /r/all on any given day shows an interesting combination of meme's, astroturfing and what I would describe as 4chan leaking. Except for some very specific subreddits around some niche hobbies, the site has lost any value to me. Even then, I feel like those hobbies would be better going back to the pre-reddit days of one off phpbb forums etc.
If reddit is dying, is going to be because of censorship and poor treatment of their users.
The latest debacle was the incredible mishandling of the Orlando nightclub terrorist attack this Sunday. The moderation team on the r/news subreddit blocked and censored users, almost certainly over a fear of political correctness [1]. People couldn't even share information for donating blood to the potential victims in the area. People in the gay community had to go to the damn Trump subreddit to get the news and information.
And it doesn't seem appropriate anymore to blame this on a few bad apples. This is a systemic problem with reddit. It is a site where cronyism decides the moderation teams on huge subreddits read by millions of people.
Reddit may not be dead, but it certainly is dying.
The worst part of that whole debacle was that the Trump subreddit began touting itself as a champion of free speech and unbiased discourse, which is hilarious because you'd have one post with 3k upvotes titled "We are now the only subreddit to have a fair and even discussion!" and the one right below it with even more upvotes called "DEPORT ALL MUSLIMS". The only thing worse than being absurdly biased is being absurdly biased and then thinking you're not...
I have no problem with multiculturalism and all that, but some of the recent overcorrections against racism and prejudice are getting pretty ridiculous. The Rotherham scandal also comes to mind.
>The inquiry's initial report, published on 26 August 2014, condemned the failure of the authorities in Rotherham to act effectively against the abuse and even, in some cases, to acknowledge that it was taking place.
>Members of the British-Pakistani Muslim community condemned both the sexual abuse and the fact that it had been covered up for fear of "giving oxygen" to racism.
It's ironic, because I would bet that cover up gave far more "oxygen" to racism in the long run than investigating and reporting on it like they would any other crime.
it's interesting to me that if this massive wall of text was written by an author who I know and trust will give me a combination of entertainment and insight, I would be willing to read it. However, I don't know this author and a quick skim of the text didn't give me any clues to what the point is. Thus, I made the decision not to read it.
The one thing that can change my mind is if the HN community (which I also trust) makes it clear that it's worth it. But still, it made me realize that there are certain things that you can't really do before you have a loyal audience, even if you do have the skills in place already.
He could tighten up his writing: high idea density and conciseness are welcome even in an opinion piece.
Even so I happen to agree that Reddit has unfortunately been overrun by paid commercial and political interest shills. Much like I did with Facebook, I'm probably overdue to delete my account and move on because I just want to have a legitimate conversation and not a marketing interaction.
The sad thing is I still really do like Reddit for the little communities, especially the ones around programming languages and technology. r/cpp, r/python, r/c_programming, etc. I have them all in those "meta" reddit groups or whatever they're called, and when I log in I actually get a rather nice list of discussions and links. In years passed it seemed the "bad" part of Reddit was just a little growth on the "good" whole, but now it seems to be the reverse... It's strange having a nice discussion on r/cpp on the same site which is so full of racism and bigotry at the top level.
It's probably the best place to talk about history in general that I've found on the internet.
It's orders of magnitude better than the rest of the site IMHO.
20 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 58.5 ms ] threadHow about the author lays off the flowery language and pseudo philosophy, and gets down to the actual issues instead?
At least on HN, the community does an excellent job of downvoting low quality comments that don't contribute to the discussion. Although there are times where it seems like reddit is leaking into this site.
Reddit isn't dead, it's a place where people talk, and on the modern internet, that means that companies send people to talk, too.
Either way, this piece is nothing new: shilling has been around for as long as time, and the bedrock of propaganda has always been guiding people into drawing conclusions that they believed they came to on their own. The Internet has only sped up and quantified the process.
The solution (which the author leaves the reader to determine) is obvious: spend less time on the Internet, don't get caught up in pointless debates (and don't let them dwell on you when you're offline), and read more books, preferably by people who are long dead.
EDIT: Speaking of books, I am reminded of the space-Rastas from (the very much alive) William Gibson's Neuromancer. Since they lived in their isolated space station, they avoided the Sprawl's relentless homogenization and retained their own identity. The same holds true for online communities: the bigger they get, the more valuable they become to marketers, who inevitably bring corporate-culture-crushing with them.
The latest debacle was the incredible mishandling of the Orlando nightclub terrorist attack this Sunday. The moderation team on the r/news subreddit blocked and censored users, almost certainly over a fear of political correctness [1]. People couldn't even share information for donating blood to the potential victims in the area. People in the gay community had to go to the damn Trump subreddit to get the news and information.
And it doesn't seem appropriate anymore to blame this on a few bad apples. This is a systemic problem with reddit. It is a site where cronyism decides the moderation teams on huge subreddits read by millions of people.
Reddit may not be dead, but it certainly is dying.
[1] - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3639181/Facebook-Red...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
>The inquiry's initial report, published on 26 August 2014, condemned the failure of the authorities in Rotherham to act effectively against the abuse and even, in some cases, to acknowledge that it was taking place.
>Members of the British-Pakistani Muslim community condemned both the sexual abuse and the fact that it had been covered up for fear of "giving oxygen" to racism.
It's ironic, because I would bet that cover up gave far more "oxygen" to racism in the long run than investigating and reporting on it like they would any other crime.
it's interesting to me that if this massive wall of text was written by an author who I know and trust will give me a combination of entertainment and insight, I would be willing to read it. However, I don't know this author and a quick skim of the text didn't give me any clues to what the point is. Thus, I made the decision not to read it.
The one thing that can change my mind is if the HN community (which I also trust) makes it clear that it's worth it. But still, it made me realize that there are certain things that you can't really do before you have a loyal audience, even if you do have the skills in place already.
</meta>
Even so I happen to agree that Reddit has unfortunately been overrun by paid commercial and political interest shills. Much like I did with Facebook, I'm probably overdue to delete my account and move on because I just want to have a legitimate conversation and not a marketing interaction.