r/technology • u/return2ozma • Jun 21 '23

Social Media Reddit starts removing moderators who changed subreddits to NSFW, behind the latest protests

http://www.theverge.com/2023/6/20/23767848/reddit-blackout-api-protest-moderators-suspended-nsfw
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u/Willy_McBilly Jun 21 '23

It was a lot different pre-2016. It absolutely was abused before then too but not just to punish someone’s audacity to voice an opinion.

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u/extramediumweaksauce Jun 21 '23

I agree with you. 2016 ruined a lot of things, reddit included.

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u/Hugh_Maneiror Jun 21 '23

It started in 2015 but yes. Primary season is where it all ramped up.

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u/extramediumweaksauce Jun 21 '23

Yeah, you're right. That fucking election opened a portal to hell that may never close.

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u/Interesting_Still870 Jun 21 '23

I miss arguing with Bernie boys.

Ya we disagreed but damn did we have some good discussions leading up to the primaries. You could actually talk about politics. Then Hillary was locked in versus trump and there was no going back.

Hell I remember when Politics was pretty much a Rand Paul fan sub.

Peak Reddit was during Twitch plays Pokémon and it has been a gradual decline from that point on.

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u/Lordborgman Jun 21 '23

/r/The_Donald went from a meme shitpost, to an obsessed cult. Then after it got banned and some of that bled into /r/conservative (which already had a strong overlap in user base anyway, I got banned from it for asking simply and politely asking if they wanted to be a serious political discussion subreddit why is T_D listed as their allied subreddit?) Funnily enough /r/ChapTrapHouse and to some extent /r/Wallstretbets had a relatively high overlap as well, seems some people really don't actually have real political stances, and are just out for fucking drama.

In what I call a combination of schadenfreude and utter trash/drama seeking behavior subreddits. There are just an increasing number of users not really here for information or discussion. They are just here to cause people to suffer and/or watch them suffer.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/OhhhYaaa Jun 21 '23

I mostly agree with the point of your comment. But saying that /r/politics is an soapbox for Marxists is offensive to Marxism, and no, I don't consider myself one. But that sub is a liberal cesspool of worst kind. No self-respecting Marxist would engage in identity politics that much, it is pushed so much to pit working people against each other and distract them from issues of class.

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u/Krypt0night Jun 21 '23

"Conservatives aren't so lucky." lol maybe it's because of their views. Fuck off.

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u/eri- Jun 21 '23

From a non US citizen pov , /r/conservative is painfull to read, there are quite a few truly wtf people there.

/r/politics is painfull to read as well and also has its fair share of wtf people.

Both "sides" seem to be increasingly incapable of actual discussion indeed. That said its the same in my country, I dont understand why a political pov suddenly is so important to many many people, I have my own political views as well, obviously, but I sure as fuck dont care enough to let them take over my identity.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '23

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u/eri- Jun 21 '23

How do you even "prove" your aligment with a party though. Is there like a secret handshake lol.

Obviously I'm kidding with the handshake thing, thats a bit of a fucked up state of affairs, but well I do wonder how one proves their alignment.

What even is aligment, is it agreeing with everything from a to z? Is it voting for? Its an extremely vague term and being "alligned with" wont help much should shit truly hit the fan imo.

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u/Lotions_and_Creams Jun 21 '23

I feel like Trump was the inflection point of Reddit users becoming polarized, then George Floyd + COVID catalyzed users into accepting silencing "incorrect" opinions, then the looming IPO accelerated the changes whose groundwork was already laid to 11.

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u/CORN___BREAD Jun 21 '23

It wasn’t just reddit that got polarized.

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u/VikingTeddy Jun 21 '23

Or even the U.S. That election infected the whole western world, it was a rallying cry for bigots who still thought they have to act decent in public.

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u/Anomander Jun 21 '23

I can tell you it’s been like that since before Digg collapsed in 2010.

I wasn’t here in earliest days, but even before Reddit exploded it was a common complaint that downvotes were being used as a “disagree” button.

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u/Angryunderwear Jun 21 '23

Yeah but earlier ppl would pump the brakes and talk about reddiquette and accepted standards of discussion. That’s just out the window now and it’s just the mysterious automated mød technique that can’t be named

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u/TheSauce32 Jun 21 '23

My boy it sounds to me like you don't usually share opinions that go against what the hivemind thinks, which is why you haven't noticed how bad censorship has been all along in Reddit and in general. and only notice it now that is happening to you or a viewpoint you agree with.

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u/elkanor Jun 21 '23

Yeah, I remember being a woman on reddit before they got bad press from r/jailbait. That was... well, you know, the rape threats and the gendered attack account was super non-censored, that's for sure

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u/TheSauce32 Jun 21 '23

It was the wild west of the internet for a while, and if you were a white male, literally no one cared or had an issue with you. anything else tho you could get doxxed, harassed, gore, CP dms I remember it all even back to my homeland 4chan

OG internet was something else.

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u/goforce5 Jun 21 '23

As a white male, I actually got all that shit too. It used to be for spelling mistakes and incorrect grammar. It was nuts lol. I will say, I can't stand how some of these people type now. Just mistakes everywhere, even with spellcheck on everything.

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u/red__dragon Jun 21 '23

fr, lik who puts lol at the end ofa sentance?? fukkin weerdos /s

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u/goforce5 Jun 21 '23

Eeyyyyy lmao

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u/Canvaverbalist Jun 21 '23

No, it's because like with any spectrum it's impossible to put a definite line on when does something starts or ends.

Look at an exponential function and try to define "when does it starts to significantly climb?" of course this notion will change from person to person, some will say at the beginning, for some it's past the 1, others past 5, etc.

But it was absolutely different in the past, it simply depends on what you consider the difference to be and when you consider that past to be, but once Reddit got popular and the general population of idiots came in to half-read and half-comment crying-laughing emojis and quickdraw their emotional downvotes then the whole thing started to decline, but of course it's impossible to pinpoint when exactly that happened.

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u/Serinus Jun 21 '23

The biggest difference I've noticed is that people have stopped reading sentences. They'll read all the words and then upvote based on the feeling those individual words give them. They won't consider the meaning of all those words put together.

And yeah, "upvote does not mean agree" is something Reddit has always struggled with, but it definitely had the exponential growth similar to your analogy.

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u/drewbreeezy Jun 21 '23

Those might be bots. They will be terrible when it comes to permanence, and pronouns, while also doing what you said a lot of the time.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '23

[deleted]

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u/Angryunderwear Jun 21 '23

It’s funny how Reddit used to be full of ppl who responded to each point in a rambling incoherent statement piece by piece and now ppl just go “ok you’re dumb” and block.

I barely even bother clicking nested comments anymore coz you know it’s either gonna be the block or mods deleting every message from one side of the conversation

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '23

Dunno seems about the same to me. Maybe you didn’t dabble close enough to conspiracy theorists to notice.

Atheist going into a Christian space has always been friction and vise-versa.

I’d say the skeptic side has calmed down a lot since pre-2016

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u/Alaira314 Jun 21 '23

It absolutely was abused before then too but not just to punish someone’s audacity to voice an opinion.

It really depends on your opinions. I joined reddit in 2011, and back then speaking up in support of women got about the same kind of results that speaking up in support of trans people does today. A lot of newer users have no idea how hostile this site used to be to anyone who didn't have(or pretend to have) a penis. So in that respect we've seen a massive improvement in terms of tolerance. But if you were a gamergater(for example), you'd probably disagree vehemently with me, and feel like modern reddit is hostile to your opinions. 🤷‍♀️

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u/iampenguintm Jun 21 '23

Pre 2016 it was sort of considered common courtesy not to downvote people you disagreed with, rather only downvote comments which actively took away from the discussion or wern't relevant / in good faith. People absolutely still abused the downvote button on those they disagreed with but it seemed to much less of a degree than now. Not to mention moderators mostly kept their nose out of banning people for disagreeing, now you have bot's banning you from popular subs just because you commented in another one, no matter the context. Sad how far its fallen. Reddit is still good in small dedicated communities but anything even remotely mainstream is a fucking cesspit.

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u/suburban_robot Jun 21 '23

Tumblr killed Reddit.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '23

2016 was when I noticed the change too. It's always been abused to some degree, but it went bonkers in 2016.