Hobby specific communities were a big attraction point to reddit, but even those have devolved into heavy censorship. There isnt really a good draw to the site anymore.
IMO the 'heavy censorship' is the only thing keeping hobby communities going well. Without that moderation, you'd be trying to learn about something fun like knitting but you'd see a bunch of hateful content, like racist MAGA stuff instead of knitting for example.
Having the moderation get stronger is the only way to save hobby subreddits IMO.
The knitting community is particularly vulnerable to this kind of entryism, as is any other hobby that's seen as traditionally female. Sewing, cooking, etc.
A lot of these groups are getting infiltrated by 'tradwives', a strain of anti-feminist, white nationalist women. They'll join these groups and gladly talk everyone's ear off about how knitting and the like are the only hobbies decent women should be engaged in and how they plan to have as many children as possible to outbreed POC. And that means that any knitting community has to either ban trads on sight or be taken over by them, with no in-between.
I agree that it doesn't necessarily always devolve into hate speech but, anecdotally, every community I've seen without heavy moderation eventually devolves into low effort meme posts, and sometimes hateful content. For example, r/gaming vs r/games. The pattern repeats itself all over reddit.
If a community widely upvotes low effort memes then that’s what the community wants to see. The people have spoken! Why do you think you know what’s better for them?
“Hate speech” is a buzzword that doesn’t mean anything. What is hate speech? No one knows.
All unmoderated communities upvote easy to consume content. That's how group dynamics work. You either have to limit who can enter the community at all (which is what HN tacitly does), or what can be posted.
Are you suggesting that if I start a community called "pics_of_cute_cats" and a bunch of people come in and start posting military insignia, that's what the community wants?
Because it's certainly not what I, a member of pics_of_cute_cats want.
This is false. The piece of the machine that really decides is reddit's algorithm and how people consume content. It also doesn't take into account how communities can drastically change in an instant if a post gets brigaded. Suddenly it's not "your community" that's voting and deciding.
What happens is the most easily digestible content that appeals to the most people gets upvoted the most. Saying "the community decides" is at best naive.
What do you mean, "wouldn't"? This isn't a hypothetical, this is the reality of today. And yes, it is a current problem.
> that’s the whole point of upvotes and downvotes.
No it's not. In fact the reddit rules / guidelines specifically state that is not what upvotes and downvotes are for. It's specifically called out for the moderators to deal with it through user reports, not through votes.
Plus, lots of downvotes does nothing to remove hateful content. The content is still there! Only the moderators can remove hateful content.
Isn't it funny how reddit ended up the opposite of what it was seemingly designed as? A system with a community policing vote process turned into a community that is one of, if not the, most top down moderated spaces on the Internet. Where the voting system turned into a supplementary group control system rather than a liberator.
Having the moderation get stronger is the only way to save hobby subreddits IMO.