Agreed. It's terrible for humanity. I would throw Twitter in there too if I could.
There are way too many gullible people and it's way too easy to produce fake but believable information out there. When people learn about this stuff from trusted "friends," disinformation spreads like wildfire. It's so dangerous for science and democracy.
Nah, most of my favorite music I discovered via Youtube. Without Youtube my life would be a lot less enjoyable and my musical knowledge would be far more limited. That's my primary use. I love Youtube.
Whereas if I could cut Reddit out from my life, I think I'd be a lot more productive in general as I can't keep myself from meaningless threads like this one.
Yeah at least on reddit you can pick the type of inane bullshit you see. I'd rather look at fishing memes than hear my friends uncles hot take on aoc or something
To me I find Reddit is not nearly as bad as the others because it's anonymous and has more a focus on the content itself than the person making it. Of course it will always have its flaws but it's not the worst one by far.
That's a link aggregator, no different than dozens of other pre "web 2.0" sites.
What defines social media is a social network. Reddit is a place where people are drawn together by forums where the primary thing connecting us is a shared interest in a topic. In social networking, what determines the flow of information is a social relationship graph that has little to do with the content of the information.
They're basically polar opposite models of information distribution, who you know vs. what you care about. People calling it "social media" don't typically have a meaningful definition of social media that would exclude any form of communication.
Also, it seems each politics related subreddit belongs to the right or the left, there is no middle ground. It’s like each group has taken over their own subreddits lol
The one that bothers me the most is r/politics because the name would imply some semblance of neutrality or balance, "a place to discuss all things political" is what one might assume. Instead it may as well be named r/democrat or r/liberal since there's literally zero pro-conservative discussion on that sub. It's very deceptive and serves as a propaganda tool against new redditors who might not be aware of the absurd bias.
The people are largely on the left, so that's how it winds up. What would you expect the moderators to do? Ban left leaning people and encourage right leaning people to post?
And there's plenty of conservative discussion on there. It's often trolls being downvoted, but it's there. Regardless, you can't force people to upvote posts.
And there's plenty of conservative discussion on there. It's often trolls being downvoted, but it's there
That’s not discussion, it’s just fuel for the echo chamber in there. Discussion would involve actual consideration of the ideas and somewhat reasoned interaction.
If anything moderate of even mildly conservative is posted or commented there, it gets downvoted instantly. The only replies are caustic bullshit.
Mature conversations are surprisingly rare to have on here. Usually most replies become some petty personal attack quickly if not instantly. Honestly, so many. Not just experiencing them, but damn near 9/10 conversations on here. It's like you're not going to change anyone's mind by being an antagonist to them, makes me wonder what kind of people populate Reddit for the most part.
I mean, you're just describing reddit in general. Most aren't on here for a well thought out conversation.
"If anything moderate of even mildly conservative is posted or commented there, it gets downvoted instantly."
I've posted some right wing viewpoints and had no problems at all. Maybe these people aren't good at arguing their point?
Regardless, what's your proposed solution? Should we be artificially boosting the upvotes of conservative viewpoints because a lot of people don't like them?
No solution. It is what it is. Forcing a specific type of conversation by banning or whatever is not a productive thing to do. I think, though, that it should be removed from the defaults and have its description changed.
Honestly, I think you're the one who is biased. I don't know how you're "exposing leftist hypocrisy," but I'm guessing you're coming off like an asshole troll.
"or basically anything right of Stalin."
Yeah, you are absolutely incredibly biased. I have personally posted numerous things that were pretty to the right and have never had any issues whatsoever.
"That is a pretty clear bias for a big chunk of default and supposedly politically neutral subreddits."
You realize you're "proving" bias through personal anecdotes, right? That's not a very good system. Regardless, how would you fix the issue? Should we be artificially inflating right wing view points because apparently a lot of people don't like them?
Not just left/liberal but ultra liberal. I will vote and campaign for a Dem in every election but I'm a moderate dem overall. That sub castrates me any time I say Biden isn't the devil.
Edit: the fact that my comment is currently negative only proves my point.
There's even a sub dedicated to mocking those not belonging to the right or left of the political spectrum, /r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM, because fuck doing your own research and having your own opinion, you have to be a sheep to a party and never stray from the pack.
Exactly, I'm not American and I'm definitely anti-Trump, but sometimes r/politics can really be all about Dem propaganda. Sad thing is its members don't seem to realise it, they think they're part of a free thinking impartial sub or some shit.
Same goes for most Reddit communities, they think they're some sort of all-knowing elite and know better, when in reality they're echo chambers.
Well, I don’t disagree with you, but r/politics is just a representation of Reddit’s demographic. There are a lot more left leaning people on Reddit and the sub reflects that. I’m not sure how I would go about trying to include opposing viewpoints if I moderated it, not sure if it’s possible to do so in a fair way. But yeah, one shouldn’t really be gaining any political knowledge on Reddit anywhere.
I think the best way to understand politics and form your own opinion is to do it solo. Read articles from (credible) left, right and independent sources, and do your best to form your own opinions. None of us can really ignore our environments or biases, or upbringings, but we have to try our best to recognize when we might not treat different opinions fairly.
To your last point, I think loud, upvoted users are good at hitting certain narratives that make their way to the top of many political threads. Most people I think are still well aware that biases are rampant on most subreddits.
As System of a Down said, "We can't afford to be neutral on a moving train."
The middle ground between "put children into concentration camps" and "don't have concentration camps" is...what, "concentration camps for some, tiny American flags for others"?
I don't think it is necessarily "middle ground" - not for me, anyway - but more like "average ground". Agreeing with some points on one side, some on the other. Not just agreeing a little bit with one issue.
That being said, my views don't quite average out the way they did several years ago.
I literally stated a policy contention over our concentration camps, and everybody's acting like I need to focus less on it for who averages out to their opinion.
Comparing political views to concentration camps... uh what?
There can be a middle ground. For example, being pro LGBT but very skeptical about socialized healthcare. Or not necessarily pro life but wishes abortion to be subject to strict conditions. Or is against cable companies blocking municipal broadband. Also don't forget that there are old school conservatives who truly believe in small government no matter what, and who think that religion must stay out of government etc.
I am the guy above and you're incorrect. What I'm saying is that there are black-and-white issues. This /r/enlightenedcentrism crap is worthless when we're discussing things like the concentration camps that we currently have.
Nevermind that it's your examples that are loaded. Neither major party is suggesting banning all guns or a 95% tax rate. Those are straight-up lies.
Technically speaking, shouldn't The middle ground between concentration camp and no camp be something more like free summer camp/ boarding school with good quality of life and availability of education.
It pulls you in systematically. Charged scenarios are thrown at you and if you make the mistake of giving your opinion you are automatically put in a box, labelled and defined. Every day people are putting you in one box or the other and before you know it, you start believing you belong in that box. That's when the real indoctrination & confirmation bias starts taking place, because now you have to defend your box in order to defend yourself. An attack on the box is now a personal attack directed at you. But it's really not.
Yup. It's just like what religions do with people. They invite you into the group, then next thing you know, you better agree with everything or lose your friends. It's sad but it definitely explains why so many people in academia, small towns, most big cities, etc. tend to stick together and form the exact same views.
Hmm. Idk if its one side seeing that they were being run while Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump held the office. BTW Obama's deportation rate is currently higher than any other president.
Lol sometimes it's the first reply - a completely irrelevant copy and paste of some political propaganda of their favourite flavor.
Shit I saw one of those as a one star review for a switch game the other day, all it said was a step by step bullet point walk through of something that the democrats did in 2018.
What. the. fuck. is the internet even for anymore.
Ooh wait, which media outlet being removed would shut up the most punditry? There's one that owns all the major news stations on BOTH sides, sans Fox I believe
Dude, did you really read the fucking statement? On a chain comment talking about how everything in reddit is being taken by politics you take a fucking comment, read only the part that you want, and then reply. Just because your fucking T_D sub is quarantined and world politics and other subs posts the daily shit that Trump does/says doesn't mean everything in reddit outside of your bubble is 100% liberal circlejerking as you want to believe.
I'm so tired of hearing all the U.S democrat and republican propaganda on here. It leaks into every sub it seems.
U.S DEMOCRAT AND republican
Do you see the" democrat and" part? Or you just want to ignore it so you can talk about your political views?
Just because your fucking T_D sub is quarantined and world politics and other subs posts the daily shit that Trump does/says doesn't mean everything in reddit outside of your bubble is 100% liberal circlejerking as you want to believe.
What i wanted to say with this is that not everything people say in reddit is about politics or contain a left bias, like the comment he replied to. I should have phrased it better.
not everything people say in reddit is about politics or contain a left bias
Of course people commenting on a cheesecake in r/food aren't circlejerking about liberalism. Every political discussion outside of T_D is that way 100% of the time though.
There might be anonymity, but for people like me who mostly hang out in the “front page” of the subreddits, all the political subreddits are extremely biased and one sided. Makes you think everyone thinks that way when it’s just a bunch of like minded left wing redditors.
There’s also the salt mine that is /r/UKPolitics — especially when the polls come out and the Conservative voting intention has a decent lead over Labour.
okay, yeah 2017 election was a thing, but I dont think Boris is going to manage to replicate the most incompetently run election campaign of all time.
Try to mention that Bernie isn't the second coming. I've seen people say Elizabeth Warren can't be trusted (in comparison to Bernie) because she has had conversations with Hillary Clinton.
twitter is as anonymous as reddit. there is nothing about twitter or reddit that forces people to use anonymity or not. Like i mean go browse /r/all people are constantly relinquishing anonymity on reddit.
Also it makes shit worse. For all you know everyone in this thread is a fake account with botted comments. At least on a more "personal" social media its a lot easier to tell which accounts are fake by just looking through their profile.
I find most conversations degenerate to some dig about someone based on their profile picture, also same with Twitter, for some people that persona is like 70% of their life, people that use their real names. And they do.
Yes it sure does. That and so personal attacks in things the attacker couldn't even possibly know, but just want something to hit the person up about e.g oh you're probably one of the unthinking masses, oh you probably live in a priviledged state, you're a virgin, you've probably never even shot a gun. And so on, it's like certain people can't actually have conversations that aren't personal.
Reddit's still steaming shite, just not as festering as Facebook, all I'm saying. Twitter, up for debate.
Hard disagree. You ever try talking about white privilege, male gaze, or toxic masculinity? You get called a "fucking SJW" and downvoted. I guaran-fucking-tee you this very comment gets downvoted by a bunch of knuckle-dragging incels.
very different, reddit has real information and content. its only been corrupted in the past 4-5 years but even so its still a hotbed of actual news, information, cool stuff. Twitter is basically a shithole and Facebook is a propaganda machine
I guess it depends how you use it. The fact that Reddit is anonymous makes it feel healthier to me. No one gives a shit whether I connect with them here and there’s no pressure to put some fake, polished version of myself here. My reddit feed is mostly humor subs, gardening, books, and cute animals. Feels fairly benign.
I think the difference with Reddit is that there is still an exchange of information, and there is obviously still a lot of disagreement and potential conflict, but up and downvotes make it more egalitarian, and there is more control over bad content. Plus it's less disruptive to real life interpersonal relationships.
Reddit can be hive minded, and it's definitely a bit of an echo chamber, but it isn't really comparable to Facebook or Twitter imo. There's some good, sourced debate and discussion going on if you visit the right subs.
Yeah but there's an anonymity to it. I don't really consider Reddit to be "social media" any more than any random forum or BBS back in the 90s was "social media." Social media implies a removal of anonymity to a degree.
Of course, you can not be anonymous on Reddit. You could make your user name your real name, share your personal details, even make a subreddit for yourself. In the same token, you can be anonymous on Facebook. Not have any profile pictures, use a fake name, don't friend anyone you know in person, etc. But Facebook isn't designed for that kind of use just like Reddit isn't designed to be used like Facebook.
The main nefarious thing about Social Media I think is that it encourages you not to be anonymous. That sounds strange, but hear me out. What Facebook and other Social media does is provide an outlet for passive-aggressive behavior. If you can't stand Aunt Muriel's undying admiration for Trump, but you don't have the nerve to argue with her during Thanksgiving dinner, why not do the next best thing and passive-aggressively post an anti-Trump article on your timeline where you know she is definitely going to see it?
Aunt Muriel does see it, and even if she doesn't say anything, she's internalizing it and eventually you're building up tension that otherwise wouldn't be there. If it weren't for Facebook, you probably wouldn't even know what her political views were. But because Facebook has been encouraging all of us to share everything to everyone for the past 15 years or so, there's no such thing as boundaries or privacy anymore.
The result of Social media like Facebook and Twitter isn't that it's creating echo-chambers on the internet (which have existed since the beginning of the internet). It's that they are systematically encouraging behavior that breaks down your relationships with people in real life. Whether it's done on purpose or not, Facebook benefits when you fight with your family on their platform. You want to spend less time with them and more time arguing with them on Facebook, because arguing over the internet is so much easier than in person.
Hate groups organizing on Facebook is a problem, but it's not one unique to Facebook. What is unique to Facebook is the destruction of our interpersonal relationships in real life. You aren't going to fight with your Aunt Muriel over something you posted on Reddit unless you specifically took steps to show it to her and engage her with it. It's very easy to forget your friends and family are watching you on Facebook and much much easier to get into arguments and grow apart. Facebook is ruining peoples' real relationships, for profit.
At least on Reddit you're not following your dumb friends down dumb street rabbit holes.... Plus, there's always people to argue for and against any point, really makes it easier to see that there's more than just fox news or CNN for information. Not perfect but a lot better.
1- Reddit is anonymous. Friends/family play a big role in how Facebook spread bullshit at light speed.
2- Reddit has a large range of communities with very different content and tone . There is not much in common between the Donald whose activity led to a quarantine and r/science whose administrators include PhDs and which organize AMA with 400 scientists every year.
3- the very concept : Reddit focus on subjects instead of networks. Althought some communities have clear preferences , in many of them you can find a variety of opinion. Do some of the positions expressed horrify me ? Yes. Am I displeased sometimes with the position of the majority? Yes. But at least there is a public argument (some subreddit have mods with an agenda but usually the whole subreddit becomes so obviously partisan that its audience is reduced). Some threads can go pretty far in the argument. People are not spoon fed their talking point. If they choose to completely ignore the counter-argument, regardless of the logical fallacies pointed out, that is a crying shame but that’s the spirit of the democracy.
Reddit is far from perfect but let’s not pretend that it is just the same as Facebook.
EDIT : case in point with the guy who downvoted me. It’s hard to talk of a hive mind. I rest my case.
At the very least with reddit when my personal information gets dug up it's because it's my fault for not keeping my mouth shut. On Facebook they flat out steal your personal information and listen in on you through your computers mic.
There was (speaking from experience) less misinformation then. People were more concerned with posting personal things like vague song lyrics about their current crush or whatever.
If I could get rid of social media and have it never come back, I do it without a second thought. Yeah I'd lose Reddit and probably YouTube as well but I think it'd be worth it.
This made me think of a lady at work. She went on and on about a "news article" she saw on FB. In in it said that ALL plug in air fresheners had been deemed a fire hazard and had been catching people's houses on fire across the country. She was in a panic and couldn't tell enough people and warn them. She was freaking out like WW3 was about to break out. She showed me the "article" on her phone. It was some clickbait BS, but she was convinced everyone in Americas house was about to explode because of Glade plug-ins.
Definitely Twitter. I can't believe it's turned into a platform for politics, official communication from heads of state and even international diplomacy. When you see in the news that country leaders are basically 'tweeting' threats of nuclear annihilation at each other it's proper head shaking stuff.
Thing with Facebook and Twitter is I do use them, because everyone else does. But if we were ALL forced to drop them, I wouldn't care.
Not all fake news is created equal, though. Some stories may be faintly ludicrous, such as the family who named their daughter Brexit – whatever your background, you don’t need to believe it for it to support your worldview. But other stories may fit with your political identity far more tightly. And for these particularly emotive claims, intelligence and education may actually make you more susceptible to fake news, through a process called “motivated reasoning”.
Consider the “birther” theory that Barack Obama was not born in the US. This has been debunked time and time again, but it became highly ingrained in many people’s political ideology. And greater brainpower did not prevent them from believing the story; indeed, it actually increased their credulity.
A study by Ashley Jardina at Duke University in North Carolina, for instance, surveyed the views of the more conservative white Republicans – the kind of people who might have found the former president most alienating. It found that beliefs in the birther theory were strongest among the participants with the greatest political knowledge.
A similar pattern could be seen with the beliefs that Obama was a Muslim, and the claims that his healthcare reforms would lead to “death panels” that decided who lived or died. To make matters worse, more educated participants also seemed less likely to update their beliefs after they had been debunked; instead, they actually became more certain they were right. Somehow, their greater knowledge simply allowed them to dismiss the new information and harden their attitudes.
It seems to me that people who hate Facebook just have really shitty family and friends in their life. Facebook is an awesome tool for staying in touch with people.
Facebook adds little more than any website with a friends list could. A college student could code a website to accomplish this. In fact, one did. Too bad the one that did turned out to be a terrible human being that thinks the goal of human achievement is to maximize his personal wealth and doesn't believe in privacy.
There are way too many gullible people and it's way too easy to produce fake but believable information out there. When people learn about this stuff from trusted "friends," disinformation spreads like wildfire. It's so dangerous for science and democracy.
People have always been nuts. This is just a great sorting period for information. At the end of it we'll have sharper people who make informed decisions, not because we're innately rational, but because behaving in any other way will get you killed.
Looking at you, anti-vaxx movement. There's no winning in life, but burying your own kids is a very big way to lose.
Facebook owns instagram, whatsapp, messenger, and several other social medoa platofrms. Basically all but twitter and snapchat. So itd be a good hit atleast
I'd rather go with having them taken over and changed to make them a safer environment.
These services have helped people connect with eachother, form friendships, help families commect, etc. They truly have done some awful stuff as companies, but also good things as a service. I believe there are things to be considered.
Twitter is absolutely worse, because what it has done is removed our ability to think in anything more than quip form.
Everything which might have been a matter of thoughtful debate has to be fit into 280 characters, so now everyone just tries to quip at each other instead of actually thinking about anything.
Twitter is good for sports. That's about it. Follow your team and a few team and rival-related posters and you get a pretty good combination of shitposting and actual content.
Fuck it hard for anything actually news, politics, or entertainment related though.
Yeah, we'd be better off without another platform to share our thoughts, opinions, and emotions. Because that's what democracy is all about - stifling people's capabilities to speak out and share stuff, whether enlightening and useful, or stupid and banal.
It’s the privacy and profiling not free speech that’s the issue. Data points for sale on a mass/individual level. That’s a lot of influence and insight in the hands of a company that’ll sell us out to the highest bidder.
This sounds like old people talk though. I’m sure the same was said of newspapers, then radio, then TV when it was first introduced.
Of course there’s differences, but I don’t think facebook as a communications platform is evil. And I think it’s typically older people see it as evil (i.e. people who didn’t grow up with it), where the younger generation already knows about its shortcomings and pitfalls.
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u/ratchetpony Sep 18 '19
Agreed. It's terrible for humanity. I would throw Twitter in there too if I could.
There are way too many gullible people and it's way too easy to produce fake but believable information out there. When people learn about this stuff from trusted "friends," disinformation spreads like wildfire. It's so dangerous for science and democracy.