
Reddit Terminal Viewer development is shutting down - pplonski86
https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv/issues/696
======
kuzehanka
> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform.
> Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying,
> incessant nitpicking and arguing.

Ever since starting a project to collect and analyse the reddit firehose, I've
had a series of eye opening experiences about just how _manufactured_ the
popular reddit content is. Every day, comments and posts with hundreds to
thousands of upvotes get deleted by moderators because they don't fit the
desired narrative. A small ring of moderators are in control of most default
subs. A small ring of accounts make up for more than 50% of regular front-page
content.

If you ever want to take a glimpse at the amount of manipulation going on,
point something like snew.notabug.io at a popular politics or askreddit
thread.

Reddit is a platform for pushing manufactured consent/controversy and guerilla
advertising. It is not a platform for open speech. The reddit content that
most users see often does not represent the views of the userbase.

Here's a random post I picked from an old analysis notebook where most of top
10% of comments were deleted, and then the post itself was deleted when new
comments started mentioning the censorship. Should give some idea about the
magnitude and scope of what's going on
[https://imgur.com/a/2C5Kn2R](https://imgur.com/a/2C5Kn2R)

~~~
nsilvestri
To preface: I have over 650,000 reddit karma, mostly collected from 2014-2017.
Roughly 150,000 of this is from posts, the rest comments.

I completely agree that mods can push their own agenda about their subreddits;
they have almost completely unfettered control of their subreddits, and the
admins almost never intervene. But I don't agree that there's an argument to
be made for the actual posters of content; it's simply a numbers game, as well
as a good amount of "gaming" the system; e.g. posting during high-volume
times, crossposting content, etc. I think the calls of shilling on Reddit are
significantly more pronounced than shilling itself actually is, as I myself
have posted content on multiple occasions and then been called a shill, when
in reality I simply found whatever product interesting or useful or otherwise.
On one occasion I was offered a free product _after_ making a post about it (I
declined). I've never made a post that I've received any kind of compensation
for, but I have made posts advertising non-profit events that I organized as a
volunteer.

I have a group of friends that I've been on Reddit, and all of them have
100,000+ karma, and a couple with over a million, and they have somewhat
shared the sentiment. I don't want to sound like I'm saying there's no
astroturfing at all, because there definitely is, but there's this culture of
calling anything with any kind of recognizable product in it an advertisement,
when it can be explained much less conspiratorially.

~~~
kuzehanka
What are your thoughts about accounts such as u/mvea consistently hitting the
front page on a daily basis, often with links that were posted by other
accounts earlier but only gained traction when posted by this account?

What are your thoughts on accusations that admins are able to adorn comments
with gold/silver for free and manipulate comment priority? What are your
thoughts on the fact that any discussion about this on default reddit gets
nuked?

There are broadly two kinds of manipulation on reddit. One is by outsider
parties - the state sponsored propaganda, the guerilla ad campaigns, etc. The
other is by the core moderation and admin team who appear to be actively
shaping front page content through selective promotion of desirable and
deletion of undesirable content even if it does not break rules. My above
screenshot of a 50k upvote post being nuked due to anti-chinese sentiment is
an example of #2, I think you're talking about #1 which is not so prevalent
lately.

~~~
Scrantonicity
> What are your thoughts about accounts such as u/mvea consistently hitting
> the front page on a daily basis, often with links that were posted by other
> accounts earlier but only gained traction when posted by this account?

Not the guy you replied to but here's my take on this. Users like gallowboob
and mvea have been known to post and repost the same content multiple times.
If it doesn't get traction within the first few minutes, they delete that and
try again. On some other subreddits like EvilBuildings, the mods frequently
prune the subreddit's front page which lets posts with a lower number of
upvotes hit /r/all more easily. This kind of manipulation was also being done
by some other subreddits which led the admins to step in and stop them from
showing up on the front page

~~~
nsilvestri
It's this; I'm guilty of doing it, and I believe there is a comment from
/u/GallowBoob of him admitting it, but I can't find it. Sometimes a post just
doesn't take off simply by bad luck, and it's easier to try again rather than
to comb for new content.

------
ralusek
> More concerning, I no longer wish to support reddit as a platform.
> Widespread astroturfing, manufactured controversy, politics, bullying,
> incessant nitpicking and arguing. I don't like how people treat each other
> on the platform, and I don't like how it makes me feel when I use it.

Don't think this has to do with Reddit so much as the way we interact with
each other online, in general.

~~~
keyle
The barrier of entry for someone to go and write counter-productive /
aggressive / abrasive comments online is very low now.

In the past you had to have half a brain to even be online. I don't mean
internet connection wise, I mean to set it up and find stuff.

What scares me the most is "justice by social media". People felt wrong doing
against them burning torches and calling for pitchforks online, instead of
getting a lawyer and getting justice. It's a lot easier, but it then snowballs
into a raging fury of everyone strongly or mildly related to the issue chiming
in, demanding justice. Then is justice served? no.

~~~
ohyeshedid
"...but it then snowballs into a raging fury of everyone strongly or mildly
related to the issue chiming in, demanding justice."

I think mobs often mistake vengeance for justice.

~~~
dymk
Your average _individual_ mistakes vengeance for justice. Read almost any
thread in r/AmItheAsshole. The top comments will be the most vindictive, knee-
jerk-y reaction you'll ever see.

~~~
maxheadroom
> _Your average individual mistakes vengeance for justice._

I think it's far graver than that, sadly: A cacophony of kangaroo courts, all
yelling into echo chambers.

Worse, though, is the failure to delineate between an individual's actions and
those who have nothing to do with the 'x' thing in question.

More egregiously, as a result of that aforementioned failure, even family
members of those "suspected" for 'x' thing are ripe targets for abuse; which
is entirely ignoring the premise that the individual in question could
ultimately be innocent, in the end[0].

It seems that this group of individuals (en masse) demands its pound of flesh
and its going to get it, no matter _who_ it comes from.

I'd say that's far worse than simply mistaking vengeance for justice.

[0] - [https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-falsely-accuses-
sunil...](https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-falsely-accuses-sunil-
tripathi-of-boston-bombing-2013-7?r=US&IR=T)

------
cubano
I always marvel that Reddit has seemed not have learned even one lesson from
Digg.

They are literally making the same exact mistakes, and its leading to the same
exact results...karma whoring, piling on, ingroup/outgroup ete etc.

It seems beyond comprehension to me that they wouldn't have thoroughly looked
at the rise and fall of Digg and not made every effort not to follow the same
path.

~~~
Angostura
> They are literally making the same exact mistakes,

I haven't seen them make a formal system whereby publishers can pay to have
their content autosubmitted and promoted to the front page. That was what
killed Digg.

~~~
cubano
Ok..yes I'll admit I never even knew that Digg did that.

I thought Digg's vote system was simply being gamed by bad actors. The idea
that someone at Digg thought it would be even a reasonably good thing to have
the system you describe is totally bonkers.

~~~
Angostura
Nice little summary here [https://searchengineland.com/digg-v4-how-to-
successfully-kil...](https://searchengineland.com/digg-v4-how-to-successfully-
kill-a-community-50450) It was really was an astonishingly cack-handed set of
decisions.

------
Trufa
I wonder what the "next reddit" is going to look like...

~~~
radcon
Hopefully we go back to forums, where the format is more conducive to
conversation rather than snarky one-liners and memes.

This whole nested comment format becomes completely unreadable once you have
more than two people involved in a comment thread, and the fact that
submissions can't survive more than 36 hours guarantees that no deeper
conversations would ever happen even if the comment format could support them.

On forums, there are discussion threads that last for years and the format
makes them much easier to read from start to finish.

~~~
mrmuagi
What forums do you peruse? The ones I run through are generally okay, but
mechanisms of voting, liking, and rewarding post count of users, seem to
increase low effort posting.

------
dredmorbius
A phenomenaly good and useful app, though I agree completey as to Reddit's
faults.

------
kkarakk
It's always sad when the original maintainer gets burnt out and refuses to put
in the effort to transfer ownership but que sera sera - i'm glad forking
exists as a concept in Code management

~~~
tty2300
What would transfer ownership even mean? Its open source, anyone can continue
maintaining it without asking permission.

~~~
ycgeu
Not under the same name and URL.

~~~
y4mi
> _Why not transfer ownership to someone else?_

> _Frankly, I don 't want to put the work into vetting a new maintainer or
> transferring ownership to an organization. Stuff like this scares me._

he addressed why he chose not to transfer ownership.

