Certain topics seem to be irresistible flamebait, instantly poisoning any online discussion. Without effective moderation they become superweapons for trolls, and bombs that anyone can accidentally or intentionally set off.
Upvote/downvote wars are also ugly.
(And it's not just reddit; I used to enjoy ars technica before its comment section degenerated into flame and downvote wars.)
HN is one of the few exceptions where touching one of these electric rails even in passing doesn't seem to destroy everything good, but it still isn't immune to upvote/downvote wars.
Although HN has had its share of heated discussion, I think it’s especially prone to discussions derailing due to pedantry. It’s a curious, technical crowd and people in general like being right.
I think both sites have groupthink dynamics to a point that isn’t pretty, HN markedly less so but it’s still present. This is likely a byproduct of downvoting having such an outsized effect on comment visibility.
Yep, not true at all. My solution has been to just stick to smaller/niche subreddits that appeal to my interests but stay rather small. And I can (anecdotally) say that the majority of them are apolitical.
I just deleted my account over the current reddit situation with everything being about the war. It is important, but I have enough information overload as is without having to sift through 1000 russia/ukraine memes. Reddit calls itself "the front page of the internet" and the front page is very much political.
"but there is currently very little activity there for some of my interests."
my interest is mostly media and even before this past week it feels like every subs got polarized over the years. Anime subs drawing lines over what kinds of characters and genres you can talk about, gaming subs banning discussion of certain games over staff politics of a multi-thousand employee company, art subs devolving into arguments over nude figures (art subs, where you submit typical artistic exercises and expressions which include figure drawing). And you can make an entire essay about how r/movies has shifted over COVID.
They come from a good place, but they do not at all come from a realistic or reasonable one. And some are just outright toxic. Maybe if I could stick to something super niche like woodworking I'd be fine, but man has media as a whole just gone into overdrive where everything is political.
I'd say almost every sub is, especially big ones. Especially the default ones. I've even been preemptively banned from some subs for even being in other subs. Some subs admittedly are pretty good about prohibiting politics, but that's the exception rather than the norm.
Local subs are extremely political. I quit bothering as every post is about something the governor did that literally doesn't affect the city or anyone in it.
You had everything from (hardcore fetish) porn to hobby subreddits shutdown over the admins not banning "right wing covid disinformation" subs. I agree that not all subreddits involve politics (some even have rules against political posts) but the problem is that it's so widespread that even your niche craft subreddit can have a mod that thinks anyone cares about his opinion/online slacktivism.
The problem isn't their message or political stance, it's more than they usually bring absolutely nothing to the table and absolutely no one asked for political theory classes from the internet equivalent of an unpaid internet janitor/average random subreddit user.
It used to be mostly confined to the default subs but i guess reddit grew so much (and with most of the new users using the default subs first) that the end result was inevitable
Subs that celebrate other forms of tribalism seem to avoid politics pretty well.
Places where you see everyone rally around comments like "save that for r/politics. this is where we come to talk about how much the EAGLES suck, not the president."
From my experience it just ends up in different politics. For sports subs, it just takes some player being suspended over something said on twitter and suddenly it feels like r/poltics once again. And that seems to happen more and more often.
Upvote/downvote wars are also ugly.
(And it's not just reddit; I used to enjoy ars technica before its comment section degenerated into flame and downvote wars.)
HN is one of the few exceptions where touching one of these electric rails even in passing doesn't seem to destroy everything good, but it still isn't immune to upvote/downvote wars.