Ask HN: Is Reddit still toxic even after all their “changes”?
On Reddit:
- I've tried to help blossoming entrepreneurs by giving them advice from lessons learned myself, just to get downvoted to oblivion.
- I've contributed toward gaming communities, all to be downvoted & "flamed", because I was busy at work when the question I asked was answered by the game developers (just a couple hrs prior to my post on R).
- I've submitted topics highly relevant to other subs, all to have them shut down by a power-hungry moderator who repeats themself like a robot over-and-over again, saying I did not read the FAQ and sub rules, when I did so numerous times and the post's title & content comply.
Is there any hope left for Reddit? It seems either you agree to hate on everything you see or you are booted.
It is sad that many of our youth are on here absorbing and/or spreading this toxicity! We cannot build a better world if we are occupied with spreading hate or other unproductive and potentially harmful actions.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 38.3 ms ] threadBehavior like this should not be carpeted over with PR "here's how we're going to fix things" announcements, like the one they advertised today and/or yesterday. At the very least, Reddit moderators need some extent to the control they have and repercussions for crossing lines when done so. It's really too bad, because the platform could be so much more. Instead, it's either cute animal photos or some of the worst toxicity you can find online.
To me reddit is dead as of today.
I won't name the subreddit, because it essentially names the moderator involved, but I answered a question regarding website performance on a popular developer subreddit. Someone responded back by saying that I was clearly a terrible developer because I said that squeezing performance out of a personal site wasn't essential. I told that person, quite bluntly, not to be a dick, and I got permabanned with the message "no, you're a dick".
I protested to one of the mods, not necessarily for my ban to be rescinded, but for that mod to stop being a dick to people. His comment history showed a pattern of that behaviour, and (most likely) a pattern of bans. The other mod unbanned me, and I left it at that.
Weirdly, the only subreddits I've ever had problems are the larger ones. I post regularly on /r/Games and /r/bjj, and both are moderated brilliantly.
It gets especially weird in some of the football subreddits. Some moderators try to push the narrative that having a popular football subreddit, or controlling the subreddit for a particular football team (e.g. /r/reddevils) gives them the ability to pretend to be "in-the-know", and to speculate on transfers, pretend they know decisions going on at the club, etc.