[tyrust]

>It's also super heavily astroturfed by political groups in all the subreddits (on both sides) to try to influence the general groupthink narrative/consensus. It's so disgustingly obvious but doesn't seem to be an issue for the team.

I've used reddit for 10 years. I heard this claim before and disagree (still [0]). I subscribe to a couple dozen subreddits, some of which are fairly large (/r/cooking, /r/games, /r/programming), and see pretty much nothing off-topic or political (let alone astroturfing). The most I've seen is a sticky or a blackout for a non-related issue. Those are rare enough that I don't think an average user is meaningfully impacted by it, whether or not you agree with the issue being discussed.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27120055

[workethics]

> I've used reddit for 10 years.

I believe that's why you think that. I feel that reddit started to go downhill after 2011, which was 10 years ago. So if that's when you joined you wouldn't have experienced what it was like before to feel that way.

[tyrust]

I mean, the site hasn't been unchanged over that history. I've left many subreddits as they became memed-out messes.

Overall, I find that there are plenty of subreddits with focused discussion and decent moderation.

I'd be interested in what you refer to as the entirety of the site going "downhill". You haven't really given me much to reply to in this comment.

[Jorengarenar]

> I subscribe to a couple dozen subreddits, some of which are fairly large (/r/cooking, /r/games, /r/programming), and see pretty much nothing off-topic or political

Well, that's because those have specific topic. It's hard to make something political about cooking. Bit easier in case of gaming (as games being cultural work can be political commentary), I've seen some political discourses on r/programming as well.

But on r/all you will find post from more political subreddits (r/WhitePeopleTwitter, r/BlackPeopleTwitter, r/TwoXChromosomes, r/MurderedByWords, r/PoliticalCompassMemes etc.) regularly. For better of worse the posts consist mostly of content from left-leaning side of political spectrum, although it creates and echo chamber and you will be highly criticized if you try to raise any concerns.

I consider myself to be more on the progressive side, but sometimes when I see some post I have thoughts "wait, this one actually starts to sound like communism again".

[tyrust]

>/r/all

I have no reason to look at /r/all and neither do you if you don't like it. Just subscribe to subreddits you want to see.

The default Reddit experience isn't my cup of tea, either. But if you spend some time looking for communities that you're interested in, you end up with a pretty good thing.

[Jorengarenar]

Indeed, Reddit is great for niche/specific interests.

But it's also true that some subreddits are susceptible to deterioration by inflation. Take r/MurderedByWords for example - I used to like to browse this one in the past, but when posts being tender tantrum (like [1]) can gain 46k upvotes, it sign something has gone wrong. Same with r/technicallythetruth and several others.

Oh, do you perhaps know about the schism of r/animemes? It was a delightful spectacle of miscommunication, overreaction, misunderstandings, positive discrimination and mutual false accusations. That was when I moved playlist History of memes from fun to education directory in my RSS reader.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MurderedByWords/comments/ne6t0h/sta...

[squeaky-clean]

Try spending just 10 minutes browsing r/all

[tyrust]

I have no reason to do that and it's not a required part using Reddit.

[dankwizard]

games leans so far left it's a flat line.

[tyrust]

If the line is flat then how do you know which way it's facing?

Snark aside, I haven't noticed it. Examples would be interesting.