That's sad to see, but it's good that he's managing to disengage from it instead of feeling obligated to keep working on it when he's really not interested any more. I'll send him an email...
That's sad to see, but it's good that he's managing to disengage from it instead of feeling obligated to keep working on it when he's really not interested any more.
I'll send him an email tomorrow and see if he'd like to join us here (not to develop a terminal client or anything, just as a platform). I'm sure we can commiserate, since it sounds like he's unhappy for a lot of the same reasons that... I quit working there, and Tildes even exists.
I was just trying to dig up /u/ggitaliano's goodbye from reddit (developer of one of the 5 'official' gold themes which is to-date one of my favorite old themes*, dev later left with similar...
I was just trying to dig up /u/ggitaliano's goodbye from reddit (developer of one of the 5 'official' gold themes which is to-date one of my favorite old themes*, dev later left with similar disillusionment) and it turns out their account is now deleted too :(
If you're looking for fellow commiserators might be worth inviting him too, if anyone knows how to reach out to him :thinking-face:
*It was a damn good night theme back before anyone in the big leagues was even bothering with nightmodes. Somehow it still beats out a lot of standard ones. Dev was pretty cool too.
Not to cherry pick from this post, but it's interesting to see Michael's reasoning in discontinuing development: I can barely use Reddit now, I can't imagine possibly developing for it. It's such...
Not to cherry pick from this post, but it's interesting to see Michael's reasoning in discontinuing development:
More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform. Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying, incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it.
I can barely use Reddit now, I can't imagine possibly developing for it. It's such a lame excuse for a discussion platform—filled with memes and hatred with a citizenship model that brings out the worst in people.
I really hate to keep on pounding on that dead horse by for the love of christ YOU choose what subreddits you read so you choose to read memes, hate speech and general lame content. Yes, with more...
I really hate to keep on pounding on that dead horse by for the love of christ YOU choose what subreddits you read so you choose to read memes, hate speech and general lame content. Yes, with more users the load of crap tends to rise but so does your own responsibility to sort through it. The good content moved and is harder to find but it's not gone at all.
I dislike this opinion because it's basically an attempt to validate the continual posting memes/jokes/hatred, in my view—effectively victim blaming. I'm sick of Reddit's vitriol, so it's my...
Exemplary
I dislike this opinion because it's basically an attempt to validate the continual posting memes/jokes/hatred, in my view—effectively victim blaming. I'm sick of Reddit's vitriol, so it's my fault. It also creates a mandate that this sort of content is acceptable on the platform. In the case of Reddit, it just might be. Doesn't mean I need to like it or not complain about it, though.
Yes, with more users the load of crap tends to rise but so does your own responsibility to sort through it.
I think a lot of people are using Tildes precisely because we don't feel it's our individualistic responsibility to filter content, but it's the community's responsibility to hold itself to a high standard. And that's okay. It's okay if Reddit isn't that. But dear lord, does that former ideal come with a huge number of problems.
It’s just like Digg did and people jumped to Reddit. Digg became too mainstream, and so did Reddit. Look http://web.archive.org/web/20090701022038/Reddit.com/r/askreddit to an old r/askreddit...
It’s just like Digg did and people jumped to Reddit. Digg became too mainstream, and so did Reddit. Look http://web.archive.org/web/20090701022038/Reddit.com/r/askreddit to an old r/askreddit front page from 2009. It’s a lot more earnest and actual questions people asked Reddit, now it’s basically just garnering whatever can get the most upvotes.
Why on earth do people keep lumping memes and jokes in with hatred? 2 of those are absolutely positively fine and I'll fight anyone who says any different - I just won't hate them or tell them to...
Why on earth do people keep lumping memes and jokes in with hatred? 2 of those are absolutely positively fine and I'll fight anyone who says any different - I just won't hate them or tell them to off themselves or any of the other stuff that falls in to the ACTUALLY bad categories of stuff people post on the internet.
I don't think people are trying to say they're all on the same level, just that they're all things that they hate about current reddit culture. There's nothing wrong with jokes/memes, but the...
I don't think people are trying to say they're all on the same level, just that they're all things that they hate about current reddit culture.
There's nothing wrong with jokes/memes, but the problem is that they will completely take over any subreddit that doesn't ban them because of reddit's ranking methods (as well as some other factors like making "card view" the default now). If the mods don't take a strong stance against them, they dominate the subreddit and attract more users that love memes, which just keeps pushing it even further in that direction. I've had to stop visiting all sorts of subreddits about games, tv shows, even technical topics because they just slide into meme-dumps and I realized I was spending more time sorting through garbage with no substance than actually reading anything interesting any more.
I hate feeling like I need to constantly leave communities because they'd rather be able to swipe through pop-culture "MFW something happens" gifs than discuss anything.
Because memes and jokes are frequently used as a medium to spread hatrid. Note that r/the_Donald started off with stupid jokes and memes. That doesn't mean that they are inherantly hateful, of course.
Because memes and jokes are frequently used as a medium to spread hatrid. Note that r/the_Donald started off with stupid jokes and memes.
That doesn't mean that they are inherantly hateful, of course.
Regular speech is frequently used as a medium to spread hatred. So is the written word, music, TV and film, theatre, and literally every other form of communication that has ever existed. You...
Regular speech is frequently used as a medium to spread hatred. So is the written word, music, TV and film, theatre, and literally every other form of communication that has ever existed. You could not have picked a worse reason.
What a rude response. I was literally just giving you an answer to your question: The difference is that speech and writing, and by extention music, tv, and film, are capable of containing complex...
What a rude response. I was literally just giving you an answer to your question:
Why on earth do people keep lumping memes and jokes in with hatred?
The difference is that speech and writing, and by extention music, tv, and film, are capable of containing complex ideas. More importantly to this discussion is that memes and jokes are not a medium, they are the message.
The fact of the matter is that there are very few civil rights memes and jokes going along right now, but fascists, white supremacists, and other regressive ideologies have plenty that are trending.
If you want left wing memes and jokes, look at /r/politicalhumor. If you're only seeing right wing memes and jokes, either you're subsuming left wing ones as 'normal', or you're hanging around the...
If you want left wing memes and jokes, look at /r/politicalhumor. If you're only seeing right wing memes and jokes, either you're subsuming left wing ones as 'normal', or you're hanging around the wrong spaces.
The idea that a medium of communication should be banned because right wing people use it is abhorrent.
I am not arguing that memes should be banned. I am telling you that memes are the message, not the medium. When you see Pepe the frog on a forum, he is not acting as a mouthpiece for any message,...
I am not arguing that memes should be banned.
I am telling you that memes are the message, not the medium. When you see Pepe the frog on a forum, he is not acting as a mouthpiece for any message, he is there to represent the alt right and white supremacy. That is a kind of speech that I think is reasonable to ban.
Woah there, hold on. Pepe is not that. He's been a meme for the longest time and doesn't really represent anything. The recent usage of him because of 4chan wanting to rebrand him is not what 99%...
When you see Pepe the frog on a forum, he is not acting as a mouthpiece for any message, he is there to represent the alt right and white supremacy. That is a kind of speech that I think is reasonable to ban.
Woah there, hold on. Pepe is not that. He's been a meme for the longest time and doesn't really represent anything. The recent usage of him because of 4chan wanting to rebrand him is not what 99% of people are using him for and implying that is kind of dishonest.
Memes may hold contextual meaning but generally, there's no particular message to them.
Pepe did have a different meaning in the past, but it has been taken over. When you have people retracting pepe memes because it's associated with white supremacists, it's over. Memes can change...
Pepe did have a different meaning in the past, but it has been taken over. When you have people retracting pepe memes because it's associated with white supremacists, it's over. Memes can change meaning just like words and art can. But since memes are strictly social in nature, they change much faster.
Yeah, the Iron Cross was originally a Prussian military symbol, the Roman salute and Eagle Standard were from the Roman Republic/Empire, and the Swastika a Sanskrit religious symbol... but that's...
Yeah, the Iron Cross was originally a Prussian military symbol, the Roman salute and Eagle Standard were from the Roman Republic/Empire, and the Swastika a Sanskrit religious symbol... but that's not what they represent anymore thanks to Nazi appropriation. Pepe is similar at this point, IMO. Nobody respectable would touch it with a 10ft pole.
I'd argue that Pepe is still mostly known as a fun meme rather than badly because of 4chan's propaganda but I guess people I know and myself are just not respectable for using it on an almost...
I'd argue that Pepe is still mostly known as a fun meme rather than badly because of 4chan's propaganda but I guess people I know and myself are just not respectable for using it on an almost daily-basis. 🤷♂️
I was admittedly being a bit hyperbolic there, but when the creator has had to publicly come out against its increasingly common use in racist propaganda, and has even tried to create a #savepepe...
I was admittedly being a bit hyperbolic there, but when the creator has had to publicly come out against its increasingly common use in racist propaganda, and has even tried to create a #savepepe campaign because of its now horrible association with that group in the eyes of the public, IMO it's probably a lost cause at that point.
The difference, of course, is that memes are meant to be just that: memetic. They're self-propagating ideas, perfectly packaged in a way that requires very little human intervention. Memes and...
Regular speech is frequently used as a medium to spread hatred.
The difference, of course, is that memes are meant to be just that: memetic. They're self-propagating ideas, perfectly packaged in a way that requires very little human intervention.
Memes and jokes have been weaponized in a way that the written word, music, TV, film, theater, etc. literally could never be. If they could, they would also be memes.
All forms of communication or art have been weaponized at one point or another. Propaganda and disinformation campaigns are as old as lies, and the word "meme" encompasses a much broader idea than...
Memes and jokes have been weaponized in a way that the written word, music, TV, film, theater, etc. literally could never be.
All forms of communication or art have been weaponized at one point or another. Propaganda and disinformation campaigns are as old as lies, and the word "meme" encompasses a much broader idea than just "silly pictures on the internet".
The only difference now is that the internet allows for much greater speed and scale than before.
Oh certainly, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that memes, due to the fact that they're so readily and easily consumed and shared, have reached a level of weaponization that few other forms of...
All forms of communication or art have been weaponized at one point or another.
Oh certainly, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that memes, due to the fact that they're so readily and easily consumed and shared, have reached a level of weaponization that few other forms of communication can match.
and the word "meme" encompasses a much broader idea than just "silly pictures on the internet".
Right, and I wasn't purely referencing silly pictures. I was referencing memes as a whole. Part of what defines a meme is its recognizability and its ease of propagation, regardless of its method of transport. This allows it to be weaponized far more easily than, say, the novel format, which requires a certain amount of initial investment.
If a meme is high investment to engage with, then it's not a very good meme.
That is not really it, tho. It is still possible to make use of the platform if you pick and choose carefully. I do make good use of reddit as a language learning and emacs community platform....
That is not really it, tho. It is still possible to make use of the platform if you pick and choose carefully. I do make good use of reddit as a language learning and emacs community platform.
Reddit's demise as a good platform will continue, fast; but that should not invalidate the few good communities in there that can be useful to you today.
I only subscribe to subreddits that disallow memes, but that doesn't stop users from submitting them anyways. It can take hours for reports to be acted on if they are at all, and if you reply to...
YOU choose what subreddits you read so you choose to read memes
I only subscribe to subreddits that disallow memes, but that doesn't stop users from submitting them anyways. It can take hours for reports to be acted on if they are at all, and if you reply to point to the rules then users get nasty with you.
I used to make your same argument, but "subscribing to the right subreddits" doesn't seem possible anymore.
I run /r/pizza and some other subs --- and they're all 100% anti-memes / shitposts, etc. I mod all of my subs alone, and once in a blue moon something will slip through and it'll get so much...
I run /r/pizza and some other subs --- and they're all 100% anti-memes / shitposts, etc. I mod all of my subs alone, and once in a blue moon something will slip through and it'll get so much karma. I've thought about having a shitpost Tuesdays (the slowest day for the sub), but I just don't want to deal with the content.
Memes and stuff have their place -- but I don't feel that they add anything to most subs. I am so glad that communities like HN and Tildes haven't gone down that road.
A lot of subs seem to be taking this approach. I still unsubscribe from those subreddits though, because there's no way to prevent that content from bubbling up to my frontpage on whichever days...
shitpost Tuesdays
A lot of subs seem to be taking this approach. I still unsubscribe from those subreddits though, because there's no way to prevent that content from bubbling up to my frontpage on whichever days are affected.
/r/Terraria is an example. They allow memes on weekends and the quality is just atrocious. It just means I have to follow Terraria news through other sources.
A bigger problem for me is not the submitted meme which are often banned but the comment memes. Not to sound all fuddy duddy but what's wrong with speaking to each like people instead of spouting...
A bigger problem for me is not the submitted meme which are often banned but the comment memes. Not to sound all fuddy duddy but what's wrong with speaking to each like people instead of spouting lines? Some subs it's simply not worth visiting the comments section because it's just going to be meme after meme.
username checks out xd Which is to say, totally agree with you. Reddit comment threads at their worst are just endless streams of internal references with 0 actual relevance to what's going on....
username checks out xd
Which is to say, totally agree with you. Reddit comment threads at their worst are just endless streams of internal references with 0 actual relevance to what's going on. But it gets upvotes anyway because it reinforces the weird culture.
That said I think there is a place for that. People can't be putting up their professional, serious face 24/7. Having a place where you can have a sane discussion no matter the topic is amazingly refreshing. But if this is all there ever was, it'd be so dry. Even though that kinda immaturity is obnoxious it's probably also necessary in a way.
This is on purpose, very often. Sometimes, there are sensitive, serious discussions taking place in the comments that certain factions might not want people to see. Similarly, in other threads,...
Which is to say, totally agree with you. Reddit comment threads at their worst are just endless streams of internal references with 0 actual relevance to what's going on. But it gets upvotes anyway because it reinforces the weird culture.
This is on purpose, very often. Sometimes, there are sensitive, serious discussions taking place in the comments that certain factions might not want people to see. Similarly, in other threads, it's funny to watch the joke threads become downvoted because of what these same factions what others to see when they first stumble onto the comment section.
I moderate a number of professional subreddits and we get the occasional low-effort image post, but they are far and few between. I think it depends on the purpose of the community.
I moderate a number of professional subreddits and we get the occasional low-effort image post, but they are far and few between. I think it depends on the purpose of the community.
Enabling users to self-moderate, then using that data to nominate users as mods, seems like the best option imo. In such a scenario you should have been able to mod the sub, but the whole...
Enabling users to self-moderate, then using that data to nominate users as mods, seems like the best option imo. In such a scenario you should have been able to mod the sub, but the whole current-mods-as-ego-tripping potential is too great for a 'just add more mods' solution to scale.
You could have said exactly the same thing without this part, and it would have been far less antagonistic. Starting your comments with something like this just makes the other person defensive...
I really hate to keep on pounding on that dead horse by for the love of christ YOU
You could have said exactly the same thing without this part, and it would have been far less antagonistic. Starting your comments with something like this just makes the other person defensive and ends up as an argument instead of a conversation.
Yeah you're probably right I just felt that this point had been made so many times that I wanted to acknowledge that. And don't most people here come from many years on reddit so I don't think...
Yeah you're probably right I just felt that this point had been made so many times that I wanted to acknowledge that. And don't most people here come from many years on reddit so I don't think it's such a ridiculous statement.
Edit: Buuuut I can see on the replies coming in that you make a good point.
Carefully maintaining a worthwhile subreddit list is absolutely key to getting the most out of the website, but a lot of the attitude issues cited by Michael creep their way into subreddits of all...
Carefully maintaining a worthwhile subreddit list is absolutely key to getting the most out of the website, but a lot of the attitude issues cited by Michael creep their way into subreddits of all sizes. The karma system incentivizes low-effort, snarky, nitpicking, and argumentative style comments. Correcting someone will often yield more upvotes than a purely informational comment might. Low-effort reddit-isms are known site-wide and as such yield a ton of karma, regardless of what subreddit you use them in. And there's no way astroturfing isn't used in smaller niche subreddits to push certain services, products, etc. You've got communities centered around a very specific hobby, ideology, piece of media, etc. and that's a gold mine for advertisers and it costs them nothing.
So the point is that you can greatly limit your exposure to reddit's bullshit by maintaining a solid list of subreddits, but you can never escape it so long as you remain on the site.
My problem here is finding the right subreddits that are interesting but not an echo chamber. Obviously not relevant to technical tops like iphone, and less relevant to geographical subs. But...
My problem here is finding the right subreddits that are interesting but not an echo chamber. Obviously not relevant to technical tops like iphone, and less relevant to geographical subs. But finding a nice, general sub (like say, news) that retains reddit’s original charms has proved impossible for me.
Any and all subreddits can be easily saturated with one off-site brigade. And it happens on a daily basis. Moderators are overwhelmed with reports and content violations. The current moderator...
I really hate to keep on pounding on that dead horse by for the love of christ YOU choose what subreddits you read
Any and all subreddits can be easily saturated with one off-site brigade. And it happens on a daily basis. Moderators are overwhelmed with reports and content violations. The current moderator model simply doesn't scale.
That's the issue here: not that he didn't curate reddit right, but that reddit is inherently uncuratable. Oh sure, it'll have its moments of stability, where your favorite subreddits are producing high quality content you like to see, but it really only takes a handful of people to ruin it. That's a lot on the individual to manage.
I see your point, but for me, the problem is that I have a light addiction (and yes, I use the term seriously) to the scrolling model that Reddit provides -- I actually mostly ignore my own feed...
I see your point, but for me, the problem is that I have a light addiction (and yes, I use the term seriously) to the scrolling model that Reddit provides -- I actually mostly ignore my own feed (which has good, deep subreddits to dive into) and go to r/all. That is my problem, but it might be what @emdash was talking about in their comment. Regardless of whose fault it is, it makes it a worse platform, and that makes me want to quit it altogether.
Also, if Reddit didn't allow that kind of content (memes/hatred/etc), then we wouldn't have to have a discussion as to whose fault it is -- which makes me lean toward that it's Reddit's. It's not like a city, where it's truly publicly owned and so you need to watch not to go to the seedy areas -- it's like a gated community, so the seedy areas are, to an extent, the developers' fault.
It's really turning into an awful experience. Not a day goes by when I don't see someone make an obviously intellectually disingenuous statement, then either run away (only to be defended by some...
It's really turning into an awful experience. Not a day goes by when I don't see someone make an obviously intellectually disingenuous statement, then either run away (only to be defended by some other person trying to play devil's advocate or, at worst, also troll), or double down when provided with evidence that refutes their point.
It's a polarizing chamber of horribly-curated and terribly-moderated bubbles.
Off-topic in a way but why would you ever use reddit from a terminal? I mean, it's kind of a fun idea to even attempt and I'd understand it on this level. But were any of you actually using this?
Off-topic in a way but why would you ever use reddit from a terminal? I mean, it's kind of a fun idea to even attempt and I'd understand it on this level. But were any of you actually using this?
I could see it being useful if you're behind a content filter that blocks Reddit. SSH into your home machine or anywhere you can run RTV from and let 'er rip.
I could see it being useful if you're behind a content filter that blocks Reddit. SSH into your home machine or anywhere you can run RTV from and let 'er rip.
The WiFi at JFK Airport doesn't block SSH when you opt out of paying for internet access. I have abused the shit out of this with RTV and a few other tricks.
The WiFi at JFK Airport doesn't block SSH when you opt out of paying for internet access.
I have abused the shit out of this with RTV and a few other tricks.
I don't know if it supports this, but it might be a handy way to watch your direct messages. That's something that I haven't yet found a suitable method for.
I don't know if it supports this, but it might be a handy way to watch your direct messages. That's something that I haven't yet found a suitable method for.
I still have an old 2011 netbook hanging around. It's underpowered as hell, but I use it from time to time - had to use it for a month when the keyboard of my laptop broke - and while using Reddit...
I still have an old 2011 netbook hanging around. It's underpowered as hell, but I use it from time to time - had to use it for a month when the keyboard of my laptop broke - and while using Reddit via a normal web browser is impractical - I mostly use Dillo and NetSurf on that machine - rtv works perfectly well.
The Reddit Terminal Viewer is great software. I'm sad to see it go, but I understand all the developer points. He should not keep working on something that is not making him happy. Let's just hope...
The Reddit Terminal Viewer is great software. I'm sad to see it go, but I understand all the developer points. He should not keep working on something that is not making him happy. Let's just hope he comes to the Tildes side of the force, it would be a great addition!
Agree with him on all fronts. Reddit was awesome back in 2011 before the online landscape became heavily politicised and highly toxic. Voat in the early days was the closest I've seen to classic...
Agree with him on all fronts. Reddit was awesome back in 2011 before the online landscape became heavily politicised and highly toxic. Voat in the early days was the closest I've seen to classic Reddit, but now it's been overrun by racists.
Part of the issue is that the admins have allowed power mods and online political activists to take over numerous subreddits and push their own agendas. Another part is that they are not doing enough to combat astroturfing and users selling frontpage posts.
Reddit has turned into the kind of place where you can post or vote on something in a right-leaning sub like r/KotakuInAction, r/TumblrInAction or r/The_Donald then have a bot automatically brand you a racist bigot and ban you from dozens of subreddits. I'm not specifically blaming the left for this, because there are some right wing subreddits with similar trigger happy ban policies - which entirely goes against Reddit's principles as a place of discussion.
"right-leaning" is mildly underselling all three of those subs (and nearly all of the subs around them). TiA has cooled off from its heyday, but all three of them are still chock to the brim with...
Reddit has turned into the kind of place where you can post or vote on something in a right-leaning sub like r/KotakuInAction, r/TumblrInAction or r/The_Donald then have a bot automatically brand you a racist bigot and ban you from dozens of subreddits. I'm not specifically blaming the left for this, because there are some right wing subreddits with similar trigger happy ban policies - which entirely goes against Reddit's principles as a place of discussion.
"right-leaning" is mildly underselling all three of those subs (and nearly all of the subs around them). TiA has cooled off from its heyday, but all three of them are still chock to the brim with people who support far-right movements or who want to do shit like deport or kill all the muslims or bring about a white ethnostate or whatever else, and they have been for literally years now. it's not just "right-leaning" people anymore. hell, i remember even back when i was big into KiA during my gamergate days there were always far-right people in the mix because there was a big overlap with *chan boards. given the circumstances, i'm really not about to blame people for blanket banning accounts which post in subs like that, especially given how bad and utterly inadequate for any sort of decent crowd control or order the reddit mod tools are.
Heck, several of Reddit's powermods actually tried to start r/TheBanOut2018 as a campaign to mass blanket ban anybody who posts in a 'hate subreddit' from many of the site's defaults and major subs. Some of the communities they branded hate subs include r/SubredditCancer and r/LeagueOfLegends of all places... The only reason this didn't happen was because the admins told them to knock it off.
this was a troll op pretty much from the beginning, and both the post and the screenshots you're linking to literally say that it is, so i'm honestly not sure why you're presenting this as if it was a genuine effort on the part of powermods to influence the site and not just powermods fucking with people who take the website entirely too seriously?
I'm not going to deny that KiA, TiA, t_d, etc have bad apples. The problem is that these moderators have been targeting these subreddits from the very beginning even before they attracted such bad...
I'm not going to deny that KiA, TiA, t_d, etc have bad apples. The problem is that these moderators have been targeting these subreddits from the very beginning even before they attracted such bad apples.
A lot of subreddits have been using bots to blanket ban anybody who has ever dared to post a comment, upvote a submission or subscribe to any of these subreddits. Heck, I actually got unfairly banned from r/offmychest because I once posted a comment in a sub they didn't like. The comment I made wasn't racist or hateful or breaching their rules. It was just the fact that I dared to post a comment that got me labelled and banned. My attempts to appeal it got me modmail muted with no reply.
Not only is this lazy blanket censorship but it can also be argued that it goes against Reddit's rules on moderating subreddits as isolated communities. Unfortunately, despite the admins having mod guidelines, they still act like mods can do whatever the hell they like.
In many ways, I think these subreddits have cooled off because the admins told them to actually take action, bearing in mind that inciting or glorifying violence is a site-wide bannable offence. Then again, they've been very inconsistent about how they enforce it.
especially given how bad and utterly inadequate for any sort of decent crowd control or order the reddit mod tools are.
Yet Reddit is one of the most censored sites on the internet.
Mods have the ability to lock any post they please and do so liberally. They have the ability to use automoderator and similar bots to mass delete comments which contain a list of 'bad words' or mass ban users for daring to participate in a community they don't like. They can also mute people who send them modmail which is a good way to silence any ban appeals whatsoever.
Just make a new account? Not a good solution anymore. Ban circumvention is a site wide rule violation which the admins do punish for, which is a hypocritical double standard given Reddit's phony laissez-faire attitude towards how the community self-moderates.
I would argue that Reddit mods have plenty of tools at their disposal. The problem is more-so in the number of moderators.
[citation needed], because they always had bad apples, dude. again, i was on KiA almost from the start and even then, KiA had a white nationalist/neo-nazi/fascist contingent who wanted to white...
I'm not going to deny that KiA, TiA, t_d, etc have bad apples. The problem is that these moderators have been targeting these subreddits from the very beginning even before they attracted such bad apples.
[citation needed], because they always had bad apples, dude. again, i was on KiA almost from the start and even then, KiA had a white nationalist/neo-nazi/fascist contingent who wanted to white ethnostate things up. we're not talking some movements that got co-opted: T_D was bad from the beginning, KiA was bad from the beginning, TiA was not "bad" to start out like KiA or T_D but was always dedicated to a cringe culture that readily took on people who were far-right and quickly became inundated with such people when those far-right people became more than a tiny internet minority, and so on.
A lot of subreddits have been using bots to blanket ban anybody who has ever dared to post a comment, upvote a submission or subscribe to any of these subreddits. Heck, I actually got unfairly banned from r/offmychest because I once posted a comment in a sub they didn't like. The comment I made wasn't racist or hateful or breaching their rules. It was just the fact that I dared to post a comment that got me labelled and banned. My attempts to appeal it got me modmail muted with no reply.
Not only is this lazy blanket censorship but it can also be argued that it goes against Reddit's rules on moderating subreddits as isolated communities. Unfortunately, despite the admins having mod guidelines, they still act like mods can do whatever the hell they like.
it's lazy blanket "censorship" which would probably not happen if reddit mod tools were actually good. as it is, there is literally no good way to collectively keep people who universally make a subreddit worse out beyond blanket banning, so moderators use that because they don't have time on top of all the things they already have to do because reddit outsources mod labor onto its userbase to try and parse out who is and is not going to contribute to making their subreddit markedly shittier and more bigoted. maybe you're the good apple, but there are a hundred bad apples who aren't you which measures like that keep out, and whatever good apples might get caught up in that can just make alts anyways if they really so need to engage on some subreddit.
Mods have the ability to lock any post they please and do so liberally. They have the ability to use automoderator and similar bots to mass delete comments which contain a list of 'bad words' or mass ban users for daring to participate in a community they don't like. They can also mute people who send them modmail which is a good way to silence any ban appeals whatsoever.
[...]
I would argue that Reddit mods have plenty of tools at their disposal. The problem is more-so in the number of moderators.
...and guess what: all of those features are clunky as shit, miserable to work with, and a gigantic pain in the ass even when they do work because most of them are predicated on a shitty backend and a programming language that is annoying as fuck to work with. ask literally any moderator around here from reddit how the mod tools are, and they'll agree with me that they suck tremendously. reddit's mod tools are in fact so unbelievably shitty that people literally demanded better mod tools back when half the website shut down over victoria's firing, and reddit "committed" to giving them those better tools because even they couldn't deny and PR spin themselves out of how absolutely atrocious it is to moderate subreddits with what you're given. reddit mod tools are so bad that they are worse than every phpBB board that i have ever worked with. fucking forumotion, a forum farm hosting website out of france, literally has more powerful, streamlined tools and a better backend than reddit does. the tools are woefully inadequate for what mods are tasked with doing, and i can honestly guarantee you that reddit would be an order of magnitude better if it simply implemented the tools to reflect what mods are asked to do when they moderate subreddits.
I remember that too. They were a minority for several months. At some point it seemed like the people who were there for better gaming journalism as a primary motivation either got what they...
i remember even back when i was big into KiA during my gamergate days there were always far-right people in the mix
I remember that too. They were a minority for several months. At some point it seemed like the people who were there for better gaming journalism as a primary motivation either got what they wanted and left, or got sick of those people and left, leaving nothing behind but yet another hate-focused community. It went off track fast after that.
I'm seeing this same trend creeping into film and television reviews now. It's most noticeable in the chats and comments. So far, the people there for an enjoyable romp and information outnumber the people who are ... 'hate-signaling' in the comments. I've honestly reached the point where if I were moderating those places, I'd on-sight block anyone talking about politics, and many of the better channels are doing this. I'm getting tired of everything being twisted to serve alt-right or sjw nonsense, it's like an omnipresent dogfight that just won't go away... and it's coming from a tiny, tiny (but loud!) group on both sides.
That's sad to see, but it's good that he's managing to disengage from it instead of feeling obligated to keep working on it when he's really not interested any more.
I'll send him an email tomorrow and see if he'd like to join us here (not to develop a terminal client or anything, just as a platform). I'm sure we can commiserate, since it sounds like he's unhappy for a lot of the same reasons that... I quit working there, and Tildes even exists.
I was just trying to dig up /u/ggitaliano's goodbye from reddit (developer of one of the 5 'official' gold themes which is to-date one of my favorite old themes*, dev later left with similar disillusionment) and it turns out their account is now deleted too :(
If you're looking for fellow commiserators might be worth inviting him too, if anyone knows how to reach out to him :thinking-face:
*It was a damn good night theme back before anyone in the big leagues was even bothering with nightmodes. Somehow it still beats out a lot of standard ones. Dev was pretty cool too.
Not to cherry pick from this post, but it's interesting to see Michael's reasoning in discontinuing development:
I can barely use Reddit now, I can't imagine possibly developing for it. It's such a lame excuse for a discussion platform—filled with memes and hatred with a citizenship model that brings out the worst in people.
I really hate to keep on pounding on that dead horse by for the love of christ YOU choose what subreddits you read so you choose to read memes, hate speech and general lame content. Yes, with more users the load of crap tends to rise but so does your own responsibility to sort through it. The good content moved and is harder to find but it's not gone at all.
I dislike this opinion because it's basically an attempt to validate the continual posting memes/jokes/hatred, in my view—effectively victim blaming. I'm sick of Reddit's vitriol, so it's my fault. It also creates a mandate that this sort of content is acceptable on the platform. In the case of Reddit, it just might be. Doesn't mean I need to like it or not complain about it, though.
I think a lot of people are using Tildes precisely because we don't feel it's our individualistic responsibility to filter content, but it's the community's responsibility to hold itself to a high standard. And that's okay. It's okay if Reddit isn't that. But dear lord, does that former ideal come with a huge number of problems.
That's some good points that I actually agree with and how I feel too deep down.
It’s just like Digg did and people jumped to Reddit. Digg became too mainstream, and so did Reddit. Look http://web.archive.org/web/20090701022038/Reddit.com/r/askreddit to an old r/askreddit front page from 2009. It’s a lot more earnest and actual questions people asked Reddit, now it’s basically just garnering whatever can get the most upvotes.
Why on earth do people keep lumping memes and jokes in with hatred? 2 of those are absolutely positively fine and I'll fight anyone who says any different - I just won't hate them or tell them to off themselves or any of the other stuff that falls in to the ACTUALLY bad categories of stuff people post on the internet.
I don't think people are trying to say they're all on the same level, just that they're all things that they hate about current reddit culture.
There's nothing wrong with jokes/memes, but the problem is that they will completely take over any subreddit that doesn't ban them because of reddit's ranking methods (as well as some other factors like making "card view" the default now). If the mods don't take a strong stance against them, they dominate the subreddit and attract more users that love memes, which just keeps pushing it even further in that direction. I've had to stop visiting all sorts of subreddits about games, tv shows, even technical topics because they just slide into meme-dumps and I realized I was spending more time sorting through garbage with no substance than actually reading anything interesting any more.
I hate feeling like I need to constantly leave communities because they'd rather be able to swipe through pop-culture "MFW something happens" gifs than discuss anything.
Because memes and jokes are frequently used as a medium to spread hatrid. Note that r/the_Donald started off with stupid jokes and memes.
That doesn't mean that they are inherantly hateful, of course.
Regular speech is frequently used as a medium to spread hatred. So is the written word, music, TV and film, theatre, and literally every other form of communication that has ever existed. You could not have picked a worse reason.
What a rude response. I was literally just giving you an answer to your question:
The difference is that speech and writing, and by extention music, tv, and film, are capable of containing complex ideas. More importantly to this discussion is that memes and jokes are not a medium, they are the message.
The fact of the matter is that there are very few civil rights memes and jokes going along right now, but fascists, white supremacists, and other regressive ideologies have plenty that are trending.
If you want left wing memes and jokes, look at /r/politicalhumor. If you're only seeing right wing memes and jokes, either you're subsuming left wing ones as 'normal', or you're hanging around the wrong spaces.
The idea that a medium of communication should be banned because right wing people use it is abhorrent.
I am not arguing that memes should be banned.
I am telling you that memes are the message, not the medium. When you see Pepe the frog on a forum, he is not acting as a mouthpiece for any message, he is there to represent the alt right and white supremacy. That is a kind of speech that I think is reasonable to ban.
Woah there, hold on. Pepe is not that. He's been a meme for the longest time and doesn't really represent anything. The recent usage of him because of 4chan wanting to rebrand him is not what 99% of people are using him for and implying that is kind of dishonest.
Memes may hold contextual meaning but generally, there's no particular message to them.
Pepe did have a different meaning in the past, but it has been taken over. When you have people retracting pepe memes because it's associated with white supremacists, it's over. Memes can change meaning just like words and art can. But since memes are strictly social in nature, they change much faster.
Yeah, the Iron Cross was originally a Prussian military symbol, the Roman salute and Eagle Standard were from the Roman Republic/Empire, and the Swastika a Sanskrit religious symbol... but that's not what they represent anymore thanks to Nazi appropriation. Pepe is similar at this point, IMO. Nobody respectable would touch it with a 10ft pole.
I'd argue that Pepe is still mostly known as a fun meme rather than badly because of 4chan's propaganda but I guess people I know and myself are just not respectable for using it on an almost daily-basis. 🤷♂️
I was admittedly being a bit hyperbolic there, but when the creator has had to publicly come out against its increasingly common use in racist propaganda, and has even tried to create a #savepepe campaign because of its now horrible association with that group in the eyes of the public, IMO it's probably a lost cause at that point.
Maybe among certain circles, but most of the internet has been taken over by Pepe as an alt-right 4chan/8chan meme.
The difference, of course, is that memes are meant to be just that: memetic. They're self-propagating ideas, perfectly packaged in a way that requires very little human intervention.
Memes and jokes have been weaponized in a way that the written word, music, TV, film, theater, etc. literally could never be. If they could, they would also be memes.
All forms of communication or art have been weaponized at one point or another. Propaganda and disinformation campaigns are as old as lies, and the word "meme" encompasses a much broader idea than just "silly pictures on the internet".
The only difference now is that the internet allows for much greater speed and scale than before.
Oh certainly, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that memes, due to the fact that they're so readily and easily consumed and shared, have reached a level of weaponization that few other forms of communication can match.
Right, and I wasn't purely referencing silly pictures. I was referencing memes as a whole. Part of what defines a meme is its recognizability and its ease of propagation, regardless of its method of transport. This allows it to be weaponized far more easily than, say, the novel format, which requires a certain amount of initial investment.
If a meme is high investment to engage with, then it's not a very good meme.
That is not really it, tho. It is still possible to make use of the platform if you pick and choose carefully. I do make good use of reddit as a language learning and emacs community platform.
Reddit's demise as a good platform will continue, fast; but that should not invalidate the few good communities in there that can be useful to you today.
I only subscribe to subreddits that disallow memes, but that doesn't stop users from submitting them anyways. It can take hours for reports to be acted on if they are at all, and if you reply to point to the rules then users get nasty with you.
I used to make your same argument, but "subscribing to the right subreddits" doesn't seem possible anymore.
I run /r/pizza and some other subs --- and they're all 100% anti-memes / shitposts, etc. I mod all of my subs alone, and once in a blue moon something will slip through and it'll get so much karma. I've thought about having a shitpost Tuesdays (the slowest day for the sub), but I just don't want to deal with the content.
Memes and stuff have their place -- but I don't feel that they add anything to most subs. I am so glad that communities like HN and Tildes haven't gone down that road.
A lot of subs seem to be taking this approach. I still unsubscribe from those subreddits though, because there's no way to prevent that content from bubbling up to my frontpage on whichever days are affected.
/r/Terraria is an example. They allow memes on weekends and the quality is just atrocious. It just means I have to follow Terraria news through other sources.
that's a shame. I think it would only increase the mod-work for the rest of the week, since very few people read the sidebar / guidelines.
A bigger problem for me is not the submitted meme which are often banned but the comment memes. Not to sound all fuddy duddy but what's wrong with speaking to each like people instead of spouting lines? Some subs it's simply not worth visiting the comments section because it's just going to be meme after meme.
username checks out xd
Which is to say, totally agree with you. Reddit comment threads at their worst are just endless streams of internal references with 0 actual relevance to what's going on. But it gets upvotes anyway because it reinforces the weird culture.
That said I think there is a place for that. People can't be putting up their professional, serious face 24/7. Having a place where you can have a sane discussion no matter the topic is amazingly refreshing. But if this is all there ever was, it'd be so dry. Even though that kinda immaturity is obnoxious it's probably also necessary in a way.
This is on purpose, very often. Sometimes, there are sensitive, serious discussions taking place in the comments that certain factions might not want people to see. Similarly, in other threads, it's funny to watch the joke threads become downvoted because of what these same factions what others to see when they first stumble onto the comment section.
Well that's really sad to hear. It's not my experience but I can see where it's coming from.
I moderate a number of professional subreddits and we get the occasional low-effort image post, but they are far and few between. I think it depends on the purpose of the community.
Enabling users to self-moderate, then using that data to nominate users as mods, seems like the best option imo. In such a scenario you should have been able to mod the sub, but the whole current-mods-as-ego-tripping potential is too great for a 'just add more mods' solution to scale.
You could have said exactly the same thing without this part, and it would have been far less antagonistic. Starting your comments with something like this just makes the other person defensive and ends up as an argument instead of a conversation.
Yeah you're probably right I just felt that this point had been made so many times that I wanted to acknowledge that. And don't most people here come from many years on reddit so I don't think it's such a ridiculous statement.
Edit: Buuuut I can see on the replies coming in that you make a good point.
Carefully maintaining a worthwhile subreddit list is absolutely key to getting the most out of the website, but a lot of the attitude issues cited by Michael creep their way into subreddits of all sizes. The karma system incentivizes low-effort, snarky, nitpicking, and argumentative style comments. Correcting someone will often yield more upvotes than a purely informational comment might. Low-effort reddit-isms are known site-wide and as such yield a ton of karma, regardless of what subreddit you use them in. And there's no way astroturfing isn't used in smaller niche subreddits to push certain services, products, etc. You've got communities centered around a very specific hobby, ideology, piece of media, etc. and that's a gold mine for advertisers and it costs them nothing.
So the point is that you can greatly limit your exposure to reddit's bullshit by maintaining a solid list of subreddits, but you can never escape it so long as you remain on the site.
My problem here is finding the right subreddits that are interesting but not an echo chamber. Obviously not relevant to technical tops like iphone, and less relevant to geographical subs. But finding a nice, general sub (like say, news) that retains reddit’s original charms has proved impossible for me.
Any and all subreddits can be easily saturated with one off-site brigade. And it happens on a daily basis. Moderators are overwhelmed with reports and content violations. The current moderator model simply doesn't scale.
That's the issue here: not that he didn't curate reddit right, but that reddit is inherently uncuratable. Oh sure, it'll have its moments of stability, where your favorite subreddits are producing high quality content you like to see, but it really only takes a handful of people to ruin it. That's a lot on the individual to manage.
I see your point, but for me, the problem is that I have a light addiction (and yes, I use the term seriously) to the scrolling model that Reddit provides -- I actually mostly ignore my own feed (which has good, deep subreddits to dive into) and go to r/all. That is my problem, but it might be what @emdash was talking about in their comment. Regardless of whose fault it is, it makes it a worse platform, and that makes me want to quit it altogether.
Also, if Reddit didn't allow that kind of content (memes/hatred/etc), then we wouldn't have to have a discussion as to whose fault it is -- which makes me lean toward that it's Reddit's. It's not like a city, where it's truly publicly owned and so you need to watch not to go to the seedy areas -- it's like a gated community, so the seedy areas are, to an extent, the developers' fault.
Which just kicks the can down the road, because the platform inherently rewards low-quality low-effort content. So it ends up on those subfora too.
It's really turning into an awful experience. Not a day goes by when I don't see someone make an obviously intellectually disingenuous statement, then either run away (only to be defended by some other person trying to play devil's advocate or, at worst, also troll), or double down when provided with evidence that refutes their point.
It's a polarizing chamber of horribly-curated and terribly-moderated bubbles.
Off-topic in a way but why would you ever use reddit from a terminal? I mean, it's kind of a fun idea to even attempt and I'd understand it on this level. But were any of you actually using this?
I was/am for a few subreddits - I find it nicer on my laptop, its easier to pick fonts/colours than the website and it barely uses any resources.
I could see it being useful if you're behind a content filter that blocks Reddit. SSH into your home machine or anywhere you can run RTV from and let 'er rip.
The WiFi at JFK Airport doesn't block SSH when you opt out of paying for internet access.
I have abused the shit out of this with RTV and a few other tricks.
I don't know if it supports this, but it might be a handy way to watch your direct messages. That's something that I haven't yet found a suitable method for.
I mean... Just hitting the API endpoints with basically any language or platform?
I still have an old 2011 netbook hanging around. It's underpowered as hell, but I use it from time to time - had to use it for a month when the keyboard of my laptop broke - and while using Reddit via a normal web browser is impractical - I mostly use Dillo and NetSurf on that machine -
rtvworks perfectly well.I guess if you're at work/school and don't want to appear to be on reddit it would help.
The Reddit Terminal Viewer is great software. I'm sad to see it go, but I understand all the developer points. He should not keep working on something that is not making him happy. Let's just hope he comes to the Tildes side of the force, it would be a great addition!
Agree with him on all fronts. Reddit was awesome back in 2011 before the online landscape became heavily politicised and highly toxic. Voat in the early days was the closest I've seen to classic Reddit, but now it's been overrun by racists.
Part of the issue is that the admins have allowed power mods and online political activists to take over numerous subreddits and push their own agendas. Another part is that they are not doing enough to combat astroturfing and users selling frontpage posts.
Reddit has turned into the kind of place where you can post or vote on something in a right-leaning sub like r/KotakuInAction, r/TumblrInAction or r/The_Donald then have a bot automatically brand you a racist bigot and ban you from dozens of subreddits. I'm not specifically blaming the left for this, because there are some right wing subreddits with similar trigger happy ban policies - which entirely goes against Reddit's principles as a place of discussion.
Heck, several of Reddit's powermods actually tried to start r/TheBanOut2018 as a campaign to mass blanket ban anybody who posts in a 'hate subreddit' from many of the site's defaults and major subs. Some of the communities they branded hate subs include r/SubredditCancer and r/LeagueOfLegends of all places... The only reason this didn't happen was because the admins told them to knock it off.
"right-leaning" is mildly underselling all three of those subs (and nearly all of the subs around them). TiA has cooled off from its heyday, but all three of them are still chock to the brim with people who support far-right movements or who want to do shit like deport or kill all the muslims or bring about a white ethnostate or whatever else, and they have been for literally years now. it's not just "right-leaning" people anymore. hell, i remember even back when i was big into KiA during my gamergate days there were always far-right people in the mix because there was a big overlap with *chan boards. given the circumstances, i'm really not about to blame people for blanket banning accounts which post in subs like that, especially given how bad and utterly inadequate for any sort of decent crowd control or order the reddit mod tools are.
this was a troll op pretty much from the beginning, and both the post and the screenshots you're linking to literally say that it is, so i'm honestly not sure why you're presenting this as if it was a genuine effort on the part of powermods to influence the site and not just powermods fucking with people who take the website entirely too seriously?
I'm not going to deny that KiA, TiA, t_d, etc have bad apples. The problem is that these moderators have been targeting these subreddits from the very beginning even before they attracted such bad apples.
A lot of subreddits have been using bots to blanket ban anybody who has ever dared to post a comment, upvote a submission or subscribe to any of these subreddits. Heck, I actually got unfairly banned from r/offmychest because I once posted a comment in a sub they didn't like. The comment I made wasn't racist or hateful or breaching their rules. It was just the fact that I dared to post a comment that got me labelled and banned. My attempts to appeal it got me modmail muted with no reply.
Not only is this lazy blanket censorship but it can also be argued that it goes against Reddit's rules on moderating subreddits as isolated communities. Unfortunately, despite the admins having mod guidelines, they still act like mods can do whatever the hell they like.
In many ways, I think these subreddits have cooled off because the admins told them to actually take action, bearing in mind that inciting or glorifying violence is a site-wide bannable offence. Then again, they've been very inconsistent about how they enforce it.
Yet Reddit is one of the most censored sites on the internet.
Mods have the ability to lock any post they please and do so liberally. They have the ability to use automoderator and similar bots to mass delete comments which contain a list of 'bad words' or mass ban users for daring to participate in a community they don't like. They can also mute people who send them modmail which is a good way to silence any ban appeals whatsoever.
Just make a new account? Not a good solution anymore. Ban circumvention is a site wide rule violation which the admins do punish for, which is a hypocritical double standard given Reddit's phony laissez-faire attitude towards how the community self-moderates.
I would argue that Reddit mods have plenty of tools at their disposal. The problem is more-so in the number of moderators.
[citation needed], because they always had bad apples, dude. again, i was on KiA almost from the start and even then, KiA had a white nationalist/neo-nazi/fascist contingent who wanted to white ethnostate things up. we're not talking some movements that got co-opted: T_D was bad from the beginning, KiA was bad from the beginning, TiA was not "bad" to start out like KiA or T_D but was always dedicated to a cringe culture that readily took on people who were far-right and quickly became inundated with such people when those far-right people became more than a tiny internet minority, and so on.
it's lazy blanket "censorship" which would probably not happen if reddit mod tools were actually good. as it is, there is literally no good way to collectively keep people who universally make a subreddit worse out beyond blanket banning, so moderators use that because they don't have time on top of all the things they already have to do because reddit outsources mod labor onto its userbase to try and parse out who is and is not going to contribute to making their subreddit markedly shittier and more bigoted. maybe you're the good apple, but there are a hundred bad apples who aren't you which measures like that keep out, and whatever good apples might get caught up in that can just make alts anyways if they really so need to engage on some subreddit.
...and guess what: all of those features are clunky as shit, miserable to work with, and a gigantic pain in the ass even when they do work because most of them are predicated on a shitty backend and a programming language that is annoying as fuck to work with. ask literally any moderator around here from reddit how the mod tools are, and they'll agree with me that they suck tremendously. reddit's mod tools are in fact so unbelievably shitty that people literally demanded better mod tools back when half the website shut down over victoria's firing, and reddit "committed" to giving them those better tools because even they couldn't deny and PR spin themselves out of how absolutely atrocious it is to moderate subreddits with what you're given. reddit mod tools are so bad that they are worse than every phpBB board that i have ever worked with. fucking forumotion, a forum farm hosting website out of france, literally has more powerful, streamlined tools and a better backend than reddit does. the tools are woefully inadequate for what mods are tasked with doing, and i can honestly guarantee you that reddit would be an order of magnitude better if it simply implemented the tools to reflect what mods are asked to do when they moderate subreddits.
I remember that too. They were a minority for several months. At some point it seemed like the people who were there for better gaming journalism as a primary motivation either got what they wanted and left, or got sick of those people and left, leaving nothing behind but yet another hate-focused community. It went off track fast after that.
I'm seeing this same trend creeping into film and television reviews now. It's most noticeable in the chats and comments. So far, the people there for an enjoyable romp and information outnumber the people who are ... 'hate-signaling' in the comments. I've honestly reached the point where if I were moderating those places, I'd on-sight block anyone talking about politics, and many of the better channels are doing this. I'm getting tired of everything being twisted to serve alt-right or sjw nonsense, it's like an omnipresent dogfight that just won't go away... and it's coming from a tiny, tiny (but loud!) group on both sides.
Alright but - why was it posted as an issue tho