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.
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.
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.
AMAs likely had something to do with it. Simple path in for the masses.
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 will brace myself for the inevitable storm to come.
From the outside, a lot of people are fatigued/burned out by those NFT guys (what some people called tech bros) “next big things” and aren’t as interested in learning about shit in its infancy anymore. Yes, they’d come along to the fediverse if it was demonstrably booming and working, but the cynical are coming to equate optimistic discussion of new platforms with grifter technobabble.
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.
This. Reddit left will be talking shit about how violent right wingers are then in the next thread be calling for violence against them. I am pretty left on most issues before anyone jumps in to call me a fascist lol
As someone who remembers the first September and the time before it, I have to agree. OTOH, when I’m wearing my tinfoil hat, I think about the human tendency to rubberneck online slapfights, and wonder whether some of the conflict on Reddit is astroturfed clickbait.
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.
That’s how the Fediverse feels like right now! The earth internet.
I remember forums where people where genuinely just trying to connect to others…and how the internet became when everyone got easy access…the scum seeking riches took over…
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 feel the same way about stuff like Netflix recommendations. You watch one horror movie and all it shows you is horror movies. Like bruh, I have varied tastes as do most humans
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.
You’re absolutely right. It’s become a huge problem and not one that I think Reddit can easily solve given their infrastructure.
I’ve always had a fondness for Reddit, but I think its time is really over…
When a group or community becomes mainstream and starts appealing to the common denominator, it’s the beginning of the end for that group. In the end, the downfall of reddit was bound to happen.
Further, I think people running into argumentative people led to them expecting people to be argumentative, and if you go looking for trouble, you’re going to find it.
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
Definitely will make things more transparent here and root out the power hungry bad mods.
Absolutely, there’s been a large influx of people so it’s sadly inevitable somewhat.
Because Reddit got a reputation for being lenient on people who are toxic. I gave up on general, current affairs or regional subs a long time ago it’s only smaller communities I’m leaving now.
Think of r/incels or r/The_Donald, r/GenderCritical, r/NoNewNormal etc - and they’re the examples from recent, more generally appealing years after the subs named after slurs were nuked. These are the subreddits that got mainstream attention, they may no longer be on Reddit, but their members are, and anyone who would be drawn to them is still signing up, on the other hand lots of people have been turned off the site by those associations. It’s not just that there’s lots of people joining the site, it’s who those people are.
In the same vein it’s a really easy site to astroturf and there’s no doubt in my mind that the “culture wars” are being stoked there because of it. Because there’s a market for aged accounts for use in political astroturfing or general product shilling there are companies running the same shitty repost bots everywhere to produce them. It’s a cycle that seems to be getting shorter and shorter.
In the same vein it’s a really easy site to astroturf and there’s no doubt in my mind that the “culture wars” are being stoked there because of it. Because there’s a market for aged accounts for use in political astroturfing or general product shilling there are companies running the same shitty repost bots everywhere to produce them. It’s a cycle that seems to be getting shorter and shorter.
My conspiracy theory is that almost no genuine posts have made it to the front of r/all in years. The only way to gain the tens of thousands of upvotes you need in the narrow window of time you have to get on rising is to have a botnet mass-upvoting your post in those first few critical seconds.
It would explain why r/all nowadays is half lazy reposts of unfunny memes, and half obvious agendaposting.
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.
We are at war with cancel culture and they don’t like the fediverse.
Its highly topic dependent:
On political things, speaking for myself, frankly, I learned a few hard lessons over the last 8ish years:
- Lots of people don’t want to think and didn’t think themselves into supporting what they support.
- Lots of people are dishonest about why they support/think what they do, even with themselves.
- Unless somebody is exceptionally rational, you’re not going to change their opinion in a short online argument.
So off the bat my preference is for reasoned discussion, sure. But at the first use of the buzzword-of-the-week (“woke” most prominently right now) you pretty much need to throw all that out on the principal of “you can’t win a chess game against a pigeon”. You can just walk away, sure. But if you’re going to continue to engage you need to be aware that you aren’t actually arguing with the person, you’re performing for an audience and trying to show that the other guys position makes him look stupid, and maybe make him feel stupid too… hopefully if that happens a lot he’ll take a different position (but it’ll be 100% based on feelings, not reason). And this isn’t just online, this is in real life too. I realized that I’m too inclined to just walk away from a stupid argument, which these people view as a “win”. Instead, now I more regularly rudely and publicly make my point and make things socially awkward for everybody. It sucks and I hate it, but they’ll never shut up otherwise and that sucks too so it’s like ripping a bandaid off.
Here’s the thing: typically I’m not going into a discussion on social media with the aim to change people’s opinions or even to argue with them.
But what ends up happening is that they immediately assume it’s a bad high school debate and things quickly devolve into bad faith arguments, attempts to nitpick and just general toxicity.
It got too big and too accessible. Productive conversation became harder to have as they’d get pushed down by low effort comments from people trying to earn internet points and do little else. That also led to echo chambers which leads people to react rather than discuss. That’s not the whole reason but in my mind that’s a big part of why it degraded so badly.
The karma system was great until it wasn’t. People become so overly attached to fake internet points it’s embarrassing.
And the awards as well. I mean the amount of new awards I have seen introduced in Reddit just in the past 3 years has excessive and kind of cringeworthy tbh.
The awards system immediately lost all meaning it might of had the moment they implemented it.
Reddit silver jpgs were still the best award system that ever was on that website.
Reddit became too popular, and in general the average person using the internet just wants to be nasty to feel better about themselves.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. I try to avoid doing it myself.
I honestly think social media platform algorithms like Facebook/Insta/Twitter have actually trained us to do it more, too. Basically they’re optimized for whatever keeps eyeballs on their platforms longest and it turns out that generating outrage is an easy way to do that, so they prioritize showing you stuff that’s gonna get you to engage by pissing you off and/or making you feel self-righteous. And then that 1. makes people think that’s just how people act cos that’s what gets put in front of them and 2. encourages that behavior because it does numbers.
I’ve quit twitter twice (made it stick the second time) because no matter how hard I try, whenever I end up engaging I end up with people sniping at me and eventually I start sniping back. It just encourages me to be my worst self and it sucks.
Social media requires engagement to get adsense, and what gets engagement? Rage bait and inflammatory comments. Unfortunately, I think “traditional” social media is a huge cause of modern “toxic” online discourse.
I think genuine and thoughtful discussion takes a lot more effort than shit posting, and when you mix that with a karma system that encourages one-upmanship and a few echo chambers, it can get toxic real quick.
As I’ve seen posted before, one of the reasons is due to enshittification. Feel free to peruse at your leisure. Greed is certainly the biggest contributing factor, but there’s another, lesser talked about effect happening here that “compliments” enshittification if you will.
It’s a sort of “reverse gentrification” of a social media platform that has just crested in popularity/usability, which in turn creates a snowball effect (or in the interest of the aforementioned process, a “shitball” effect). It’s when the good posters, the ones that actually READ the articles, the ones that make educated or otherwise well thought out comments and actually take time to speak to the person behind the computer instead of using anonymity as a means to be vile or rude or nasty, all migrate off of the platform. They see the writing on the walls, and so they leave. This leaves behind more and more of those that don’t really care about details or politics or social causes, nor care about anything other than their instant gratification (i.e. we don’t care about the blackouts we just want everything to open back up so we can get back to our memes).
In other words, as more decent people leave a social media platform, all that’s left are the ones that make the platform undesirable to begin with, thus causing more people to leave and the decline deepens. We saw this with Facebook. All that’s left on Facebook are people who are out of touch with reality and those who use the platform as a propaganda machine.
We’re also seeing a rise in what I can only describe as “Corporate Apologists” - People who constantly make excuses for companies that shouldn’t be defended or are otherwise indefensible. It is pretty disheartening to see so many people rush to the side of businesses that are openly exploiting their workforce (in some cases the defenders are the exploited, which boggles the mind). People who defend Elon Musk and his handling of Twitter, people who defend Reddit and think the blackouts were always going to be useless so why bother (those people missed the point entirely), people who defend anti-union tactics or businesses that don’t want their employees to have living wages. All of these are because the person has some self-image or interest that is tied to that business/platform. A part of (sometimes a large part of) their identity is defined by a product and so they won’t even entertain the idea of trying to go against it, lest that product or company be taken away (and a part of their identity with it). There are people who really pride themselves on their number of followers, their internet karma, other useless tokens that they attribute to personal self-worth.
Anyway, I’ve ranted long enough. I’m tired so some of what I said probably doesn’t make sense and I apologize. Maybe I’ll come back later and clean it up a bit once I’ve rested.
The real answer is that smart tech savvy people were first one reddit. Then the masses came. Then it sucked. This happened with literally every platform.
More toxic communities mean more activity. More activity means bigger numbers to show to investors, advertisers, etc. No, they don’t care that a large portion of those comments are just calling each others names.
Let’s hope that kbin/lemmy won’t get too toxic. It’s inevitable at some level, but we can combat it with proper moderation.
I actually don’t experience that much on either Facebook or Reddit, but I trend toward more specific communities/not the big subs and tend to ignore people when they’re being shitty. Any platform allowing some degree of depersonalization empowers people to be a little more rash and unpleasant with their words, but I think in general, some percentage of people will be miserable on any given day, and those miserable people will take that shit out on someone, somewhere, whether it’s the bar or on reddit. Since reddit has a large userbase, there’s a good chance it’ll be on reddit.
Another thought – I’ve found lately a lot of people just don’t enjoy their fandoms – whether it’s comic books, videogames, movies, anime – they just don’t like the basic properties they’re discussing anymore, and instead of moving on to something they do like, they hang around sourly and complaining that the newest Pokemon doesn’t tickle their brain at 35 the way it did at 10.
