What is wrong with reddit

[SS451]

So I see a lot of people in Linus' comments and int he chat of the WAN show who hate on reddit they can never articulate why. So allow me to say why I dislike reddit (feel free to copy and paste my argument). 

 

People like to act like reddit has gotten worse when I argue it's decline is because of systemic issues it always had, I feel like people try to blame something wider like the API protest or the dead internet theory. I think the real issue is something endemic to reddit, that being it just ask more from it's users then other social media sites and it is only getting more demanding. 

 

This mainly comes down to Karma. Karma has been hell for new users for a while. We all know that you start at 1 Karma and most subs don't let you post with negative Karma so a new user getting downvoted scares them away, still even then it just adds busy work to using the site and doing what the user wants to do on the site. If you only joined for 1 sub then you have to engage with content you don't care about to get to the stuff you do care about. This causes a lot of bad engagement from people who don't care about the topic of the thread or sub and are only there to get their Karma up. Reddit has in general become more polarized making it easier to lose Karma and harder to gain it, subs have also had a karma limit inflation so to speak. This also makes it easier for people to age out of reddit as they get more and more busy and have less time to do busy work just to get to what they do want. 

 

I implied that people were hating reddit without thinking about why it is bad, people love to say that the Karma system rewards divisive content that drives engagement, no it doesn't. It rewards falling into line and not questioning anything.

 

I know everyone loves to hate on TikTok and there is indeed a lot wrong with the site, but the reason it's popular is because it gives people what they want with as little effort required on their part as possible to both make and find content.

 

So with Karma's problems reddit decided to make it even worst with the introduction of the contributor quality score system. It's an opaque system where you can't even regularly see your score and you have basically no idea what influences it or if you are making progress to raise it. If you have a low CQS you sometimes can't post at all or your post always get's send to moderators having to be manually approved. This can take hours and someone who just wants to spend an hour talking about something doesn't have the time to wait, by the time their post get's approved they don't care anymore. This is especially bad for discussions that are rapidly developing.

 

 

Reddit is infamous for being behind the rest of the net in the discuss, because stuff has to be basically focus tested before it's deemed appropriate to talk about.  

 

 

I like to be constructive so I will offer some solutions on what reddit could do to turn this around, redditors and possibly the site themselves don't want to hear this, but if reddit wants to stay a live they need new blood and they need to reform the Karma system. I would personally rather just have it be removed but that is not realistic so here are some workable reforms to make it more accessible to new users and people who aren't as devoted.

1: Get rid of negative Karma, having 0 Karma is already enough of a punishment.

2: Get rid of comment and post Karma just have them combined into one score. This would give users more flexibility with how they can interact with the site and raise their Karma.

3: Get rid of CQS, I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to begin with.

 

I got my account banned, I can explain why in the comments but whatever.

[TempestCatto]

My biggest issue with Reddit is how they treat new/naive users. Just asking a simple question will get you downvoted to oblivion, and when asking about what you did wrong you get banned. Mods over there have way too much power. They are arguably worse than Discord mods. It's almost as if being a sub mod is their full time job, it's just sad really.

 

The irony is you usually find good info buried amongst the shit. It's a website that really can't be replicated or replaced.

[SS451]

3 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

My biggest issue with Reddit is how they treat new/naive users. Just asking a simple question will get you downvoted to oblivion, and when asking about what you did wrong you get banned. Mods over there have way too much power. They are arguably worse than Discord mods. It's almost as if being a sub mod is their full time job, it's just sad really.

 

The irony is you usually find good info buried amongst the shit. It's a website that really can't be replicated or replaced.

reddit mods are worse then discord mods and I am sick of pretending otherwise.

 

Redditors do just assume the worst in you.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

is this one of those issues you see in bigger subreddits? im just chilling in the r/overclocking subreddit and i behave exactly the same as in the forums and have yet to see any issues though i guess is this a pretty niche subreddit

[BootlessBuck]

I see 2 big issues. 
 

First, the site is too big. When a site hits a certain critical mass of users the quality falls off a cliff, especially when its user generated/influenced, as all the low effort stuff rises to the top. Similar to eternal September, but a bit different. 
 

Second, bigger subs being run by people trying to push or enforce their own ideologies (even if the sub has nothing to do with an ideology). If someone does not fit neatly into the box for the ideology they are at best downvoted, and but often banned. If something can be misinterpreted, it will be misinterpreted, leading to a lot of people banned over misunderstands that they are either not allowed to clarify, or the means to do so are so over the top that no sane person would feed into the unhinged power trip the mods are on. One (or more) experiences like this alienate users and it’s not worth the trouble. For example, I responded to a joke with a similarly lighthearted, but on-topic, reply. Banned. I looked up the appeal process and I would have to “admit that my behavior was unacceptable,” “acknowledge that I understand why it was unacceptable,” and “commit to change my behavior so I won’t cause anymore harm.” It also had to include various code words that were listed elsewhere in the FAQ to prove it was read in its entirety. I read the rules 10 times and for the life of me couldn’t figure out which one I broke, and the mods refused to tell me. I also didn’t do a low-effort, “what did I do?” I linked to and quoted my last post in the sub (that I assumed must have been it, because it was the more recent) and then listed the 3 rules it might fit under if I did enough mental gymnastics, so I could try and get clarity. One of the rules was don’t lie, and if I didn’t know what I was being accused of, how could it be anything but a lie? If I’m being accused of a crime that is “unacceptable” and “harmful”, I’m not sure how they expect people to improve without knowing the problem. And if these people consider a bit of levity harmful, then I don’t want to associate with them. I ended up walking away from it, as it wasn’t worth putting any more energy into to it, but that was my first run-in with insane mods and it seems all too common. 

 

I don’t think these mega sites should exist. I think the internet was a much better place when smaller forums (like this one) were run by people who cared about building a community around a common interest. They used to be very common, but are now few and far between. Mashing them all together turns into a mess. When 2 people have a difference of opinion on a smaller forum, it is easy to assign a bit of an identity to that person with avatars and signatures, and hash it out… at at the core you share some common ground, which is why you’re both on the site. On sites like Reddit where usernames are often ignored, it seems like people fight against the hive mind, which leads people to feel ganged up on,  and I often saw confusion related to other people entering the discussion and having it all attributed to a single poster. Threading is great and all, but not at the expense of the context of who you’re interacting with. Plus, with all the topics on one mega-forum, random people show up who don’t know or care about the topic, so there is no actual common ground (other than both using Reddit, which isn’t the bond it once was), and some people are there to fight for the sake of fighting, presumably because they’re lonely and that’s the only way they can get any interaction with another person. Reddit is not the healthiest outlet for this issue. 
 

Ok, maybe it was more than two issues. 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

8 hours ago, SS451 said:

This mainly comes down to Karma. Karma has been hell for new users for a while. We all know that you start at 1 Karma and most subs don't let you post with negative Karma so a new user getting downvoted scares them away, still even then it just adds busy work to using the site and doing what the user wants to do on the site. If you only joined for 1 sub then you have to engage with content you don't care about to get to the stuff you do care about. This causes a lot of bad engagement from people who don't care about the topic of the thread or sub and are only there to get their Karma up.

I am mainly interested in a handful of semi-niche subreddits over there, but totally oblivious (by choice) of the wider stuff apart from maybe the front page. So I was always wondering what 'karma farming' was about, now I know.

 

Anyway, I don't think this issue is really that bad in itself, much more so that the site has a general issue of being not one website, but a ton of subreddits with an ever dwindling amount of social cohesion. Some of the issues I see that contribute:

• Echo chambers being easily formed and self-selecting. 
• Mods with too much power in otherwise "public" places, i.e. very large subreddits that aim to be open to everyone. I don't care if the creator of a niche subreddit is a powertripping idiot, I just leave. But if the semi-official sub for hobby/place/game etc. is suffering from that, well...
• Bots amplifying stupid content in the best of cases, propaganda in the worst cases. 

The way upvotes/downvotes work and how things are sorted also lends itself to "punishing" people for not looking up "obvious stuff". Having said that, the ones I frequent usually are pretty chill and helpful with that. Good example is r/eldenring, with the infamous "how do I get here" + image posts of the same location every time the game went on sale. Yes, people would sometimes mess with OPs, but usually the third or fourth commenter gave the correct answer. But new people will not realize how many times that has been asked before, nor does google help them find it (or they are too lazy in the first place).

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

My biggest issue with Reddit is how they treat new/naive users.

Not even "new" users, just people who don't live on reddit. Like I know artists who post their good art, and then one of two things happen:

a) someone steals their work and posts it on Reddit

b) artist posts their work on reddit and gets called a thief (due to someone already posting it before they got to,) despite being the actual artist's signature is IN the image.

 

With all the AI cruft, lots of people are also just willing to call someone an AI and down vote them to oblivion.

 

[Nat4Sail]

To add another reason for why Reddit is bad. It's largely people who feel most comfortable talking only online that have the most vocal opinions. This leads to some wild takes. Just look at the am I the asshole or relationship advice subreddits. 

[BootlessBuck]

1 minute ago, Nat4Sail said:

To add another reason for why Reddit is bad. It's largely people who feel most comfortable talking only online that have the most vocal opinions. This leads to some wild takes. Just look at the am I the asshole or relationship advice subreddits. 

I’m curious how many relationships and marriages those subs have ended. They tell people to divorce at the drop of a hat after only hearing one side of a skewed story. 
 

The OP doesn’t even know who the person giving the advice is. There is a 99.9% chance that if they saw the person in real life, they would not take advice from them. 

[SansVarnic]

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