[monkeynotes]

Reddit is a cesspit of its former self. The OG reddit is far from what it used to be. It's no longer an innocent link sharing platform, it's a socio-political platform with so much slime in between the subs that I find useful. Try and use Reddit daily and ignore all the drama, political shit, and covert rage click posts. It's emotionally exhausting not to get pulled in and have to constantly triage your home feed.

I have deleted my account at least half a dozen times and just tried to use it as a source of useful information, but I inevitably fall into the pit of getting another account because I can't control myself objecting to the nasty stuff on there. I know this is partly my self control problem, but social media in general is just awful. I can get rid of FB easily, there is literally no benefit for me being on there, but Reddit legit has useful content about all of my hobbies and how to do X.

It is unkillable but for some pretty rotten reasons. It's a social media platform mixed in with really useful content. Come for the search result, stay for the drama is what happens to me.

[QuantumG]

One thing that happened was the anti-tracking movement provided a better interface. They have their own comment sections that are somewhat better than the actual site. Bifurcation ensues.

[omginternets]

> socio-political platform with so much slime in between the subs that I find useful.

That’s putting it nicely! I’m increasingly seeing it as a breeding ground for fringe-left radicalization.

[monkeynotes]

It's all sorts of extremism, for sure. I found myself getting pulled into some of it over the Gaza war. It took me a while to realize what was happening to me, it was making me miserable, angry, anxious. I reflected on what was happening to my mental health, my reactivity, believing things without checking them before I responded. Similar on YouTube.

Loads of pro-Russian stuff that started to slip in, if I watched even one they started to accumulate and take over from what I used to watch for enjoyment. I then noticed these American pundits were using hijacked accounts to game the algo and get reach. Like one account was a vietnamese women's fashion account 2 years ago, now it's Americans talking about how Putin is definitely going to win the war very soon.

One day someone is going to write a history book about the 2020s propaganda and how technology was used as a psy-op, or whatever is going on. I didn't believe this was a real thing until I started questioning my own thoughts.

[omginternets]

Of course you get both forms of extremism, but I think Reddit generally leans quite heavily towards the far-left.