I know we pretty much all hated spez for all the shit he pulled, but a few weeks ago the tone towards reddit itself around here was more neutral. People liked it here on Lemmy a lot better, but people weren't hating on the old place so much.
Recently I'm seeing this huuuuuuuge surge of just pure fucking hatred leveled at the site itself. Anyone else notice this or is it just me?
I mean, I was there because I thought it was alright. I hated spez for fucking it up and completely screwing his communities over. But I never hated reddit itself, and I still don't. Otherwise I would've left a lot sooner.
Reddit used to be a lawless land that didn't care about comedy accounts or multiple accounts or shit posts. No one ever got banned. No one ever got censored. It was fun. People didn't take it that seriously.
The last few years however it's been turning into basically any other social media site. Politics everywhere, censorship galore and bans handed out willy nilly based on nothing more than ideologies and opinions, mods and admins tightly controlling narratives of threads and entire subs, and just slowly eroding what made it a fun site to visit. Certain political ideologies have taken over and anything outside of those opinions is insta-banned. Going to Reveddit or uneddit (i think thats the name of the second one) and looking at any "hot topic" thread was eye opening - mods and admins removing dozens/hundreds of completely harmless comments because they didn't like the opinion that was shared, leaving no trace that the comments even existed, giving the perception that there wasn't any censoring going on.
I don't hate reddit. I deleted my 12+ year old account and left because it isn't the site I liked, and an alternative now exists in Lemmy. I think Reddit is a shitty site now that is basically a highly censored astroturfed political site, but I don't care that I'm no longer using it.
People on here are hating reddit more now because more and more people are coming here from reddit because of the shitty things reddit has been doing.
I suppose that would lead to a lot of associations. Personally I blame all of that on the people that actually did it though, not just reddit as a whole, which I just view as a successful website. The actual real life people who did those things and made those decisions are the ones that deserve the real condemnation.
But it's those enablers fault. They have names. Blaming just "reddit" lets them off the hook too easy. We should use their names to attack them, instead of the faceless, cold business they are just milking for cash. The business is the tool. The person using it is the dirtbag.
The mods and admins are willing stooges who enabled those I blame: Steve Huffman, and the companies that helped him neuter, remove, or paper over the parts of reddit that users built - transforming it into the shitheap they're trying to parcel out to the market in an IPO.
The blame lies at the top of any shitheap. Always.
(But I have no love for stooges except for the original three.)
True, but the problem is that the real life people that did those things are all anonymous admins and mods that face no repercussions and give you no way to appeal or reverse anything. They're the ones controlling the site and ruining it, much like how lots of people now think that Elon Musk is ruining twitter. Is it twitters fault or musks fault? They're one and the same.
No, they're not all anonymous. You can look them up. I mean, low-level employees are just doing what their boss tells them. But the boss--the person making the decisions--that guy's got a name. A lot of the upper level management of the company are known publicly.
The little guys are anonymous, the mods especially, but not the people that made the biggest decisions. If we blame Musk, we should certainly blame spez. Who you can find the real name of with a single google search.
Admin accounts are fully anonymous. Mod accounts are anonymous. Almost all mod messages are sent from a modmail account, so you don't even know which anonymous mod took action.
It's not just spez who is the problem, it's the admins too.
The misc grunts, sure. But they're just following their instructions. You can follow it up the corporate ladder to find the guy who has the real responsibility for the whole culture and strategy that everyone is following.
The guy in charge picks the playbook his company uses, so to speak.
It's hard knowing that your favourite small subs are a ticking time bomb; once they get too large they tend to be too strictly controlled and the content quality drops.
People act like strict moderation/“control“ is universally bad, yet AskHistorians is often held up as one of the best subs ever created. Do you know what makes that possible? Do you know what would happen if they relaxed the rules?
Most subs are hobbyist or the like and far too often I see 'locked because ya'll can't behave' in the last few years. There's an upvote/downvote system for a reason; not everything needs to be babied and pruned to what the mods want. Might be one of the few good things about the removal of API because they can't mass delete comments anymore, killing the actual discussion.
Oh come now you aren’t so naive as to think that system actually works as intended or anywhere near as good as it needs to be to leaned on. Would you trust a community vote that used upvotes/downvotes?
not everything needs to be babied and pruned to what the mods want.
What the community wants. And no not everything, but frankly some people do act like babies and need to be handled as such. I personally had no tolerance for trolling. The sub I modded did not want that crap at all. Hence why they kept supporting our rules and every vote we held to change things ended with “this works well.”
People think they want a “true democracy” (doesn’t exist with the tools we have) and “total free speech” on forums but let me tell you you absolutely do not. Go ask Voat how that turned out.
Exactly. Reddit used to be fun. anarcho communists and hardcore libertarians could trash talk, debate, and banter. people on the site were just fun weirdos. nothing was personal, very little was seriously political.
then everything became serious business, and no more fun was allowed and mods became growth-grubbing ban-happy nutcases who only allowed 'correct' opinions, and the site became useless as both a source of entertainment and education because it became about perpetuating the very serious bullshit bubble of your sub at all costs.
i have been mostly having the same opinions for a decade on reddit. the past couple of years my pragmatic thoughts are now a bannable offensive because they aren't so far-left or far-right nonsense.
As many mistakes as Reddit has made, I have no desire to return to the time when we had FPH, “ham planet,” and c—ntown. I definitely have no desire to see creepshots or jailbait return. I think your rose tinted glasses are a little too thick, my friend. It was not all sunshine and rainbows lol
There used to be expat circles where it was a great for expats just to vent, China, Japan Korea and Thailand. Making fun of Redditor who are absolutely naive about a country and found 'love' on wechat, to archetypes, making fun naive locals, to self deprecating humour like violently shitting yourself from food poisoning or how squat toilets are racist against caucasian-chinese because white people can't squat to shit. Then I guess some Asian Americans do not understand the country well enough to get the context and then one day it's all gone.
2balkan4u is a great example of this, just users from the Balkans bantering then admins saw this as a 'hate' subreddit and just gone, people knew it banter and a gross exaggeration of beliefs and perceptions about other countries which has been a ongoing thing for last 1000 years. Yet Reddit admins put a stop to that, banned the entire subreddit. For a website that preaches tolerance, people outside of American culture do not see black and white in race, sexuality or politics yet be completely ignorant to the point of intolerance.
Everyone is just looking to be outraged these days. They want to find something to complain about so they can get it banned so they can feel good about themselves.
my entire history of reddit was joining a small cool sub about a niche topic i liked. learning more and more and watching it grow. then watch it become flooded with low quality content by more and more people who were just there to brag and ask stupid questions and troll. then the good users would leave and the mod would ban anyone who disagreed with whatever populist bullshit was being pushed and pointed out viral marketing and steal advertising accounts. that or the mods were uptight nazis who basically banned anyone or anything outside of what they posted. or the pathetic users who would stalk and harass and insult you because you said something they dind't like.
i just wanted a place where i could enjoy things and learn things and be free of peopel trolling for attention and validation for their fragile egos. pretty much all hobby subs become 'look at this very expensive thing i purchased'. or if they were artistic it was 'good vibes only'. on top of all the bullshitting and lying and karma farming.
reddit was best when it was basically link aggregator with comments. as soon as people were able to post images/videos and were able to ban anyone they disagreed with, it basically devolved into a kindergarten level show and tell hugbox with the mods being kindergarten teachers telling us anything other than 'being nice' meant you were no longer allowed to participate.