Reddit used to be a great platform to discuss some topic and get different points of few in a friendly but factual manner. However, slowly it seems like the platform has become a lot more like Facebook, where it’s been invaded by toxic people that are constantly looking for opportunities to shit and hate on others.
The change has been gradual so I really didn’t notice it creep up on me. It’s become super evident now having used Kbin and others for a week or so where people generally seem to be more friendly again and willing to actually discuss things in a usually civil way.
The difference is stark too. Today I replied to a comment saying that I hope things turn out better for them and wound up in a weird comment chain about how people were apparently insensitive for wanting to get a basic haircut that they for some reason couldn’t afford themselves. Meanwhile, Kbin and the Fediverse feels like a refreshing place to actually converse with people once you get past the clunk and figure it out.
I think Reddit may well have reached that main stream social media saturation point where it very objectively now sucks. It happened originally with the internet itself thanks to the rise of the smartphone and this is just another iteration of it. I feel like Spez might as well get that bag at this point because they’ve ruined what used to be the platform people went to for social media without the bullshit, without algorithms to drive “engagement” and to avoid the toxic culture that has prevailed.
Thanks for reading my rant.
Wow, there’s a lot of finger pointing at different generational demographics here over something that’s structural to Reddit.
Stupidly big forums + up/down votes dictating what actually gets seen is a recipe for dunking, sarcasm, and generally shitty behaviour.
Onces there’s more people in a community than people can actually remember the name/pfp of, then other members stop being people and start being either an audience or cannon fodder. Couple that with the fact that people love a good snarky comment or rhetorical thrashing, and that leaves busy spaces as prime real estate for smack talk showdown.
On top of that, there’s simply the fact that anyone not trying too hard to get noticed just doesn’t get heard at all. Taking the time to post something thoughtful when literally no one is going to see it is a fool’s errand, and not worth anybody’s time. So, you either waste your time and become increasingly embittered, or you don’t, and just say vapid but snappy bullshit.
Then there’s the fact that moderators are overwhelmed by groups that large, and will default to mental self-defense by doing things like banning without warning, not being transparent, not attempting deescalation, etc. This creates a gulf between the community and the community managers, which furthers the dehumanizing dynamics (and leads to people seeing moderators as power tripping narcissists, rather than tired and fed up people).
We simply didn’t evolve to empathize with, listen to, or manage 600,000 people at once. We did, however, evolve to try to win popularity contests and define in-groups and out-groups.
You make great points, and style bonus for good turns of phrase.
ETA: I think you touched on a structural element that is also interdependent on demographics. Not age related, necessarily, but what are certain people looking for.
At some population density tipping point, Reddit stopped catering to thoughtful discussion, and became a place for memes and doomscrolling, bumper sticker slogans and reposts. Feedback loops developed, because people were coming for that content. Reddit became the place to find it.
Now, it’s not that I don’t partake of those sometimes, but I appreciate keeping those instances (subs) separate from the more interactive and human part.
We simply didn’t evolve to empathize with, listen to, or manage 600,000 people at once. We did, however, evolve to try to win popularity contests and define in-groups and out-groups.
if you can grasp this concept then the entire internet makes a lot more sense. And politics.
Here is what I honestly think happened: a lot of older gen x and boomers saw their reputations destroyed on Facebook during the Trump Era.
The people who didn’t leave Facebook because of them just put them on mute. They only had other old people to communicate with. This didn’t satisfy them though, because really their entire ideology is wrapped around triggering other people.
So they went to reddit and discovered that anonymous shit posting was safer and their Facebook went back to livelaughlove largely.
Speaking as an older person who’s been on the internet since it became a public thing, I don’t think it’s necessarily older folks’ fault. Most of the crappy interactions I had on there were with young “edgelord” male gamers.
I think it’s more nuanced than any one group.
Basically, if you build it they will come refers to the dross, who come in droves once something is a recognizeable “thing” and then we all have to abandon ship for greener pastures and more measured discourse.
You see this happening on Reddit now when anyone mentions the Fediverse at all. Plenty of replies comparing it to NFTs and other junk from dipshits who will come flocking over to this especially if the stuff Meta is doing takes off.
I really hope they are kept in check. No karma, no corporations, no problem. I hope Meta’s EEE attempt crashes and burns. They are not welcome to the Fediverse.
Reddit’s far left can be pretty toxic too. As an old liberal myself, I don’t believe that there are any good kinds of hate or discrimination, but if you argue against that kind of crap, the absolute worst people come out to defend it. A good chunk of my negative interactions have been with those people.
That being said, the Eternal September is real. I don’t know anyone in real life who actually thinks like that. The trouble is, if you have ten million users, a tenth of a percent of them could be assholes and that’s still 10,000 obnoxious assholes.
Would agree. Also, despite what much of Reddit seems to believe, there are plenty of conservative and moderate young adults and youngsters. Reddit is not a general good representation of public opinion at large. It’s very obvious when elections roll around and many subreddits are calling for landslides that never seem to occur.
It’s complicated and a lot of nuance can easily be lost when talking about it. When looking at voting behaviour and political beliefs various factors are at play:
- Geographic location
- Age
- Gender
- Education level
- Tendency to vote
And even with all of that, in different online spaces certain demographics can have outsized influence in various ways, so it can appear that one type of person is more common than it actually is (and this applies in all directions, not just left-wing spaces).
Yeah, I’m another old school early adopter who was on the internet since the '80s. No way the enshittification and souring of Reddit was caused by boomers and Gen xers. Most of them wouldn’t know how to get on, and those who would… Honestly, I’m the only boomer I know who is on there. Well, unless you go to some of the subreddits that are specifically for people over 50. And those people are incredibly nice! One of the few things I will really miss about Reddit.
When I joined Reddit 10+ years ago there was no “old.reddit.com” it was just reddit. The “new” UI was designed to basically entice users who found the original threaded discussion forum a bit daunting. But that (barely) complicated looking format kept a lot of lazy minded fools away from the place.
It’s that way with literally every “scene”. The easier it becomes to join, the more diluted the quality of the music/activity/discussion/hobby.
So…that’s what happened. Reddit made reddit more palatable to a wider audience, and that wider audience includes a wider spread of the bell curve that is humanity. Sucks, don’t it.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the official phone app for Reddit but its an even worse version of that. There’s no “hot” etc of your subscribed subs, rather it’s now a firehose of whatever the algorithm thinks will piss you off enough to interact more with it.
I still can’t believe people are okay with an algorithm choosing what they see on social media, let alone a completely private one where you have no clue how it works. Like, obviously because it’s a bright-red flag that they’re going to try to manipulate you. But even if you don’t care about that, like, I want to see posts from communities and creators I’ve chosen to follow. Not have my feed flooded with garbage from random creators / communities.
I first joined Reddit in 2007 when it was a genuinely friendly and informative place. The first big change came with the Digg exodus which brought mainstream meme culture. I think at that point, Conde Nast starting putting serious pressure onto management for Reddit to become more of a social network. This then led to the broken UI changes which, as you say, brought the wider bell-curve of humanity with it.
The problem is that Reddit simply didn’t have the security controls/moderation in place for that type of activity. By 2016, Reddit was being widely manipulated by outside sources – Large corporations were hiring troll-farms to shill their products; Nation-state actors were doing the same; political activists were trolling/abusing Reddit’s systems in any way they could – doxxing, death threats, extreme trolling…
And the friendliness and trust were gone forever. And instead of having discussions, it’s now just everyone shouting over each other.
Now the management just want to cash out and using Reddit is now like writing a college essay while sitting in a McDonalds basmement eating a stale three-hour old Big Mac.
Also, there are so, so many bad faith actors on reddit that at some point, you start assuming everyone around you is arguing in bad faith. So you don’t even try to engage in conversation any more, you either jump straight to insulting / trolling them, or just downvote/report/block without even interacting.
I think there are multiple reasons, but one I want to highlight is Reddit’s shift towards driving engagement at all costs.
I used the “new” Reddit for a while, and I noticed that more and more it was trying to recommend posts and communities to me. “Popular with users in your area,” “Similar to another community you visited,” “You visited this community before”. A lot of the time, these would be posts and communities that I didn’t like or want on my feed.
I would venture to guess that these recommendations are putting people into contact with communities they wouldn’t normally seek out, and since they’re not a member of that community (and may even be hostile towards it), you get more people breaking community norms or trolling or antagonizing people, etc…
Hit the nail on the head with this. The phone app makes this especially apparent as the front page is a feed of stuff you’re not subscribed to but rather what the algorithm thinks will drive engagement. The website with the new interface has the same approach but for now still retains the old functionality too or I think they would have had yet another riot on their hands.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the popularity of subs that are about disliking things or groups of people. That kind of shit drives engagement but turns communities toxic really fast.
I use(d) RIF, which let me filter subs out of my feed and the experience has been a lot less horrid, except for when those subs leak their toxic waste into other discussions, which happens way to often.
To be fair, I do see some signs of it here as it’s grown. It wasn’t like this even five days ago, where you would see downvotes on comments that weren’t inherently just toxic or just being assholes. But lately, I see more downvotes for people stating a differing opinion to the majority, or even asking questions. To me that’s usually the start of the toxicity.
Check the modlogs too, I’m seeing censorship from mods for petty reasons. Everyone can see what every mod is doing via the modlogs.
That’s a feature I didn’t know about. Will definitely keep an eye on that
It’s not just the toxicity but the intense hivemind. I flicked back to check some news and saw an article about Pete Davidson crashing a vehicle into a building and to my recollection it was really the only controversy he’d been a party to, but because he’s on the Reddit’s Most Hated list every comment was picking apart every perceived slight, calling him terrible names saying he was washed up, waste of space it was just like… guys take a fucking breather. He’s a human person, sorry he dates celebs.