I’ve mostly left reddit and switched to beehaw, but I posted on somewhat of a niche tech-related subreddit today since there really isn’t a community for that here yet. And wow, I got instantly downvoted twice and the first comment response was rude and hostile. All I posted was a feature suggestion for software that I thought would be useful and that a good amount of people would like based on other feedback I’ve heard. This is not the sort of topic that should be controversial or aggravating, and it wasn’t like I made an ignorant post suggesting a feature that already existed or otherwise wasn’t well researched.
This type of instantly hostile response has happened numerous times on reddit for various different topics, but I just haven’t posted for a while, so I forgot just how shitty it can feel. It makes me really appreciate how friendly and respectful the community is here on Beehaw and on Mastodon. People seem to have good faith in one another similar to how the internet used to be in the old days.
Have you had similar experiences with Reddit and similarly opposite experiences here on Beehaw/Lemmy?
Do you perhaps have a source on this? (I’m really interested, not a sarcastic question)
I thought that Reddit’s only major problem was the fake internet point thing, before the venture capital craziness started that is.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024292118
https://www.frac.tl/work/marketing-research/emotional-content-drive-engagement-social-media/
The long and the short of it is engagement of any kind drives dollars. This is always been the case. The more emotionally invested a person is the more engaged they will be and I don’t remember exactly where the research was that I saw but anger drives the most engagement. I believe cuteness was rated as second best but again this is a foggy memory. This is why cats are popular on the internet, puppies are popular on the internet, there’s an r/aww etc.
If you don’t have emotional engagement, you literally don’t care so why would you post, why would you read and why would you reply?
More specifically not just anger but outrage drives the most engagement because you fight against what you are outraged by: https://www.techdetoxbox.com/weapons-of-digital-manipulation/how-attention-economy-profits-from-outrage/
So if you’re pro-life and you see pro-choice winning out and that disrupts your view of the world that would cause you outrage right?
If you’re pro-choice and you see how roe versus Wade just got overturned that would cause you outrage right?
In both cases, you want to learn more, you want to read about it, you want to fight against the thing that is threatening your identity, or your beliefs, or generally even just your view of the world.
There’s also a larger conversation to be had about how this type of conflict is used to distract us from more important conversations like inflation, global warming, and more generally class struggle. All of those, generally being driven by profit motives.
The most disappointing thing for me is that’s probably just a perverse incentive. They probably don’t even actually care whether people are angry or happy or sad just that the ad revenue just keeps pouring in.
It kind of makes me wonder what it would take to make improving the world become highly profitable. Hmm.
