lennybird
So… I have some harsh feelings about Reddit. It’s bittersweet. A reflection of humanity with both good and bad and corruption of power and so forth. Whether Reddit persists is contingent namely on 2 things:
1) Will they revert some of the biggest grievances?
I find this to be highly unlikely. When Spez is quoting Elon Musk as doing good work at Twitter, you know that’s a bad sign. Spez was not the genius behind Reddit — Aaron Swartz was. Spez just wants to cash out and leave Reddit behind. They need to find a way to make an inherently unprofitable concept profitable — and so of course the users suffer. It’s little different to what happened to Digg, and what happened to Facebook when it navigated away from its original UI that was so elegant and simple. So I’m happy Reddit’s devaluation is continuing.
2) Is there a substitute to seize on this moment?
When Digg collapsed under similar circumstances, Reddit was already there. Of course Lemmy is here; Tildes is in progress; and now Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia is spinning up Truth Cafe (WT Social 2.0). All three have significant hurdles to overcome that don’t quite match Reddit 1:1… So we’ll see.
My estimation is that Reddit will “survive,” but with diminished value, reputation, and significantly-lower average monthly users no differently than how Digg has “survived.” My view is to not fix what isn’t broke — and to disrupt applications like Push Shift / RiF / Apollo and so forth that are cornerstones to Reddit’s success, along with a variety of other administrative choices — is shooting themselves in the foot.
I’ll leave a Medium article I wrote going into detail further, along with a terrible experience with both Admin and Moderator incompetency and inconsistency.
In a way I wholly see your point. Who wouldn’t want to surround themselves with more mature individuals with worldly perspectives whose first inclination at disagreement isn’t “winning the argument” but rather the mutual pursuit of truth and a gentle “shifting” of views towards it in kind?
The only reason I’d disagree on this to some extent is it reproduces what is already a key problem with the internet / social media: Echo-chambers. Unfortunately for society to improve, we need to drag along the ignorant and inform them whatever way we can. The nice thing with Reddit is that you’d get a lot of overlap with “reasonable people,” and those… Not so reasonable. I attribute this exposure to changing my views massively over the years (coming from a rural christian conservative background turned progressive non-religious). In my view somehow you need to court these folks so they can be exposed to a variety of outside opinions but also ensure they don’t get… Unruly either.
Fair comment, thanks. I guess I read too many articles recently, detailing their declining valuation and that their value was artificially inflated somewhat by bandwagoning investors - - but that’s not quite the same.
As you point out, it seems they’re just grossly inefficient with what are pretty large existing revenue streams (ads, reddit premium).
Haha man I feel your pain. We have an 18-day-old (2nd kid, have 3.5 year-old) right now and I’m going through the exact problem. Congratulations and good luck lol.
Not sure about your main question, but I browse YouTube or listen to podcasts as an alternative. Throw on some wireless headphones before sitting down with the baby.
10 years, over 500,000 karma. Reporting uncivil, harassment, violence, and general bigotry. Building communities, contributing loads of money to reddit through gildings.
This past year Reddit fucked me with a suspension that was either a glitch or some automated exploit (the charge was completely irrelevant to the random comment they highlighted). They refused to look into it.
Now that the shit has hit the fan with reddit, I am kind of enjoying it with popcorn. They shot themselves in the foot.
Yep. I get the desire to want something different, I do. But it’s essentially impossible until the system changes. And the only way the system changes is through the Democratic party while Republicans are voted out.
Anyone pushing to not vote or vote third party is either politically ignorant or intentionally trying to do this to give Rs an edge.
Honestly I’m just so fucking thankful Biden just got the fuck out of the way of science and medical experts in addressing covid instead of fanning bullshit conspiracy theories like drinking bleach and ivermectin shit. It was so cringe that Trump would hijack expert panels on covid. He sounded like the obnoxious freshman in college who thought he’d stump the professor.
Also thank fuck the Putin bootlicker Trump didn’t get a second term. Pretty clear Putin was banking on that for a more fragmented West.
Worth noting that, no, Democrats did not have complete control for 2 years. If you believe this, then you do not understand how the Senate works as of late.
Reconciliation is literally the only way anything gets passed unless it’s something both parties have no choice to support.
Might be wise to add an age and education attainment requirement to be a moderator. I’m probably in the minority here but I appreciated the mods at r/politics. Mind you I’ve been temporarily-banned a few times from that sub, justifiably so (usually for stooping to the level of the uncivil). They were generally fair and didn’t seem to exploit their positions from what I experienced in ten years there.
