[mmiliauskas]

Reddit is garbage these days anyways. Even communities that are scientific/technical seem to be toxic these days. If you want to get to a comment that has any substance regarding some topic or article, you have to scroll all the way down.

[mrweasel]

Reddit is really mismanaged, the community, contributors and moderators have basically taken over in the past five years or so. People are quick to point out that there are really good subreddit, and I have no doubt that's true, the larger subreddits however have all developed in a pretty toxic direction. There are clearly right and wrong opinions, don't based on fact, "rules" enforced arbitrarily and everyone seems to have some type of diagnosis or social issues.

The lacking management of Reddit have allowed it to become a pretty weird place, not quite as bad as Imgur, but the idea is much the same. The community have been left to it's own devices for many years, and now the owners are trying to get some control back, in an attempt to make a profit. They're a just so far removed from what the community have built that they have no idea how to manage the site anymore.

[TheChaplain]

> Reddit is garbage these days anyways.

Not really, there are a bunch of small reddits that really is a good source of information and community. E.g. r/leathercraft, r/learnmath, r/godot and so on...

[kodt]

Basically if the sub gets popular enough to reach the front page, you are in trouble. If it stays small, then you can still have a decent community.

[dabluecaboose]

The sub also needs to get big enough to get out of the "Facebook group" mentality, and have at least one competent mod that keeps it from turning into memes and shitposting.

It's a tricky balance. I've been in small (~sub 500) subreddits that are worse than larger ones just because the mods don't enforce any posting requirements.

[nbar1]

Yes really, for 99% of reddit users who don't subscribe to niche communities about leathercraft and math.

[deelly]

There nothing wrong with it.

[partiallypro]

/r/politics has leaked into virtually every subreddit.

[ravenstine]

The pandemic also ruined a lot of subreddits, especially ones for municipalities. Over 3 years of "OMG COVID" and "we ar liek literally in a pandemic" and "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DON'T SUPPORT MORE LOCKDOWNS" made me give up on a lot of subreddit communities, especially the Los Angeles one. But yeah, the metastasization of Reddit's broad politics also made things worse.

[vsnf]

The municipality boards the world over were all similarly overwhelmed with sanctimony and paranoia. I think this mostly speaks to the demographic of Reddit. Which is to say, the fact that Reddit is home to any edifying discussion at all is in spite of its demographic, not because of it.

[jabroni_salad]

/r/iowa has actually improved but that's only because we are no longer first in the primaries. I hope south carolina has a plan to deal with astroturfing the likes of which they have never imagined.

[anankaie]

The issue is that the admins only selectively enforce their rules, and are very ideologically driven at that (see the general rule of not allowing bans for other subreddit participation). This sets the tone for the moderation.

[Gareth321]

The administrators still maintain that racism can only be by an oppressor group to an oppressed group. That is, they ignore reports of racism against white people. Last year I saw a user get a temporary ban for reporting racism against white people. The rot is from the top down.

[Pet_Ant]

I mean that can be said about society in it's entirety really at this point.

[local_crmdgeon]

Bardfinn is a really, really good representation of this. They're a nutter who controls a huge number of subreddits, talks like they're on a ton of speed, and bans even minor questioning of The Narrative.

Ironically she's a felon who lives in her parents basement. Probably shouldn't be moralizing.

[AlbertCory]

I'm a casual user and it's fine. The specific subs I'm on have very few toxic people, and I either ignore them or block them.

It seems heavily made up of very young people, which means a reliable trope is "I'm just getting into <genre> -- what are some good artists I should check out?"

But that's pretty harmless; you can just ignore them.

[BeFlatXIII]

> a reliable trope is "I'm just getting into <genre> -- what are some good artists I should check out?"

I enjoy trolling those users by posting circlejerk answers in the unironic subreddits.

[newaccount74]

The nice thing about Reddit is that you can scroll down. Even if the top voted comments are garbage, you can just continue reading, and read answers from a very diverse audience, even if they are downvoted.

It's a lot more diverse than Twitter, where it seems that only right wing bullshit is shown any more, or HN, where 90% of posters are men aged 20-40.

[idlewords]

There is a great deal of diversity in thought on Reddit that is just banned outright by moderators. To pick a non-inflammatory example, a lot of dog subreddits will not allow any references to aversive training methods, which in their eyes include things like snapping your fingers or saying "no" in a sharp voice. What this means is you get a bunch of rival subreddits with different dogmatic beliefs, and people are banned for linking or even alluding to the existence of the others.

There are examples of this kind of strict imposition of dogma by fiat in every reddit community, on matters large and small.

[Eisenstein]

Honestly how is that different from anything else? If you get a large enough group of people together they turn into cliques. It is human nature.

[unethical_ban]

Telling a dog "no" is controversial? Wow.

[nbar1]

Welcome to Reddit.

[_ktx2]

Reddit conversations are mostly memes at this point. I have two geographic subreddits for my city. One is owned by a dude in another city, I'm pretty sure Detroit, who just doesn't moderate anything. The other is owned by a group of people who will straight up ban people for even marginal dissent from their favored ideology. Most of the people active on those subreddits aren't even from Portland. They're conservatives, liberals, and leftists who view Portland as this gateway of cultural relevance. It's the internet equivalent of Ballmer and his wife buying political influence in Portland, a city they don't live in, much less the state.

The rot is root deep at this point if it's let things like this happen.

[rootusrootus]

I read this thinking "huh, not a bad description of the Portland subreddit"

> aren't even from Portland

Ah, there we go ;-)

[froggertoaster]

"Sort by controversial" is mandatory