[stared]

Reddit is diverse. I hear a lot of “Reddit is toxic”. Or that “Reddit is the best place”. Both are correct. It is not only about the majority view. It is mainly about which subreddits you pick. I am not a massive Redditor. Yet, for some time, I opened r/MachineLearning daily.

Some subreddits are/were highly toxic (e.g. the infamous r/incels). Some other are full of vulnerable life stories you won’t find anywhere else. People won’t post them on their public FB feeds; not everyone writes anonymous blogs. Any coverage of such topics by journalists (if the topic gets ever covered) is likely to focus on a handful of cases, be biased and heavily edited.

For an example from Reddit, see “Trans people of Reddit, what was something you weren’t expecting to be told, find out, or experience when going through your transition?” (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...).

Another subreddit with not so much majority view is CMV: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/. It is heart-warming (and mind-stimulating) to see people open to changing their minds. Compare and contrast with Twitter, where there are no enough characters to express a more nuanced argument. And views are usually pushed down one’s throat (if they ever leave a bubble).

[dijit]

I disagree with your overall point that reddit is diverse (and it is beyond the scope of this comment to mention why) but I'd like to chime in with my love of ChangeMyView.

I just love the idea that you can have a judgement free place to discuss things openly and get reasoned replies without being piled on.

Sometimes we hold views which are controversial, and it's great that we can had a non-adversarial discussion about those things.

The only downside is that the person asking to change their view might end up being right in the end, and that the view should not have been changed, but that's against the spirit of the subreddit.

It also has some minor problems of people asking to change their view but have no honest intention of doing so.

But regardless of that, I love that subreddit and I'm sure it wouldn't be possible without good moderation.

[darkerside]

Your comment would have been much better without the first statement. Why include it if you don't want to explain or talk about it? Seems flamebait-y.

[dijit]

The main reason is to acknowledge that I disagree before I speak highly about a certain part of Reddit.

It would have been unclear and implicitly sound like I agree if I didn’t include that.

[stronglikedan]

On the contrary, it's an objectively true statement, and everyone already knows the reasons why. Therefore, explaining it here is what would be flamebaity, since even those that know the reasons still try to disingenuously pretend the reasons aren't valid. What is valid is the point made, since it addresses a point of the previous comment directly.

[Blikkentrekker]

I find C.M.V. essentially failed due to the vote system.

All the upvoted, visible views are the same trite repetition topics that have been done a thousand times before that are also about hot button political issues: more interesting apolitical C.M.V.'s are often downvoted for not being political enough. I've seen views about optiomality of certain cooking methods be downvoted there.

[stared]

> I disagree with your overall point that reddit is diverse

To make it clear, I know that the whole Reddit demographic is not representative.

However, each channel subreddit has a different demographic. Too much of a male perspective? Go to r/TwoXChromosomes/. Too libertarian or heteronormative? You can find your channels too.

I once posted my praise (and interactive exploration) of NSFW content (https://observablehq.com/@stared/tree-of-reddit-sex-life, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19640562). In short - I don't know any other place with that much openness to different body types, styles of grooming, etc.

[babyblueblanket]

I disagree with the notion that subreddits can be so considered atomically and not part of a whole. r/Fantasy has had this problem where the regulars and the moderators are generally great, but authors they invite to do AMAs will often risk being harassed by users who aren't even regulars of r/Fantasy. The mods even had to go to other subreddits for new beta features condemning some planned stuff specifically because it would enable even more harassment of authors.

[wincy]

For awhile I was harassed in almost every subreddit I frequented because I’d posted in The Donald. Not even a full throated support of Trump just a post-2016 election “well let’s see how he does” sort of support.