
Where Trolls Reigned Free: A New History of Reddit - prostoalex
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/books/review/christine-lagorio-chafkin-we-are-the-nerds.html#click=https://t.co/FMrdDrVLue
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gibba999
I don't think the right word is 'trolls,' so much as bullies. While there's a
fair bit of trolling on reddit, what concerns me more is the culture of
bullying.

Entire subreddits -- iamverysmart and similar -- which are devoted to finding
people who made a comment which was embarrassing in some way, and publicizing
it widely. One day, half of the videos on the front page of reddit (default
page when not logged in) were random cell phone and surveillance footage --
people who don't know they were being filmed -- doing something dumb or being
jerks.

Now, those people were genuinely jerks, but we've all been jerks at some point
in our lives. Should that really become an internet phenomenon that will track
those people for the rest of their lives?

We've got the political mobs too (the liberal mob and its feminist sub-mob
tend to be particularly aggressive in ripping people apart, with similar but
smaller communities on the right).

~~~
chmod775
Basically none of these videos will have the full name of that person attached
to it (if it is even known).

Nobody is going to find it by googling their name.

And many videos of people faceplanting going viral are actually going to be
used to the effect of providing cred in that person's circles.

"Look I went viral! Hahaha"

That's people for you.

~~~
gibba999
You're saying it's okay to bully people and violate people's privacy because
it's good for them? Interesting argument.

If you really believe that argument, post the most cringeworthy video of
yourself on the Internet. For the cred.

You're right that the way these things get found usually isn't by Googling. If
something's on the front page of reddit, the most likely way is your friends
or colleagues will run into it and pass it around. In smaller communities,
that may continue for years.

But Google is certainly _a_ way people will find it too, even if the name
isn't in the post. Search engine 101: the way Google works is by looking at
text in incoming links. If I have a few links posted on social media which say
"Hey, chmod775 lost his temper in a restaurant and boy did he make a fool of
himself," that's exactly what Google will point to. If this person isn't
famous enough to have other high-profile pages about them, it's likely to be
on page 1, or even the top link.

~~~
chmod775
> You're saying it's okay to bully people and violate people's privacy because
> it's good for them? Interesting argument.

No. Don't put words in my mouth. That's rude.

I merely said that those videos generally have much less of a fallout on
people's personal lives than they are often made out.

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erpaa
I was very happy with Reddit around 2008. "The pre-1995 Usenet is back, you
can say anything you want and then enjoy the verbal lashings you deserve".

Around 2015 everything changed: you were either transphobic nazi or morbidly
obese surgically modified foul-mouthed thingy, who had zher own pronoun. There
was no room for normal people anymore.

~~~
Grangar
Seems to me like there's a growing backlash against the outrage culture that
started halfway this decade. I hope it lasts and we can return to normalcy.

~~~
beaconstudios
agreed, I've been seeing and experiencing more nuance in response to media
recently. I wouldn't say it happened around 2015 though because Brexit/Trump
seemed to cause a massive amplification from both sides.

We have to get back to a place of nuanced, policy-based liberal democracy as
opposed to ideological mud-slinging, or the fallout is just going to get
worse.

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treerock
This seems to invert the situation at Reddit. The article does it's best to
troll, while the comments provide a level of sanity. Weird.

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AllegedAlec
Is it strange that I find it somewhat endearing that this person seems to
thing that:

1: Reddit was some place where all the worst of the worst people meet 2:
Reddit was intentionally toxic. 3: Reddit was some singular hivemind, rather
than small, clustered communities. 4: That there aren't any worse places on
the internet.

~~~
7000skeletons
The author has clearly never ventured onto 8chan. Which is probably just as
well, given how they found ye olde Reddit bad enough.

~~~
nailer
I don't think the author has discovered user generated content before.

~~~
7000skeletons
Which is a real shame, all things considered. I feel like the author is
latching onto some of the most extreme examples of the worst Reddit's ever had
to offer and then holding them up as if that's all the site ever was and ever
will be. I'm about as far from a Reddit fanboy as you'll get, these days, but
this still strikes me as profoundly unfair to the site as a whole and the many
great communities you can find there.

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jarfil
Sounds like the NYT is mad that all these internet kids don't want to pay for
a subscription.

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nagVenkat
Any topic/subreddit not dealing with politics can be a decent subreddit. The
best example is /r/Linux. When the code of conduct change came, it was
unusable for 2 weeks. Now it is mostly back to normal.

~~~
baud147258
I had a good time in specific reddits, which were not centered on politics,
like r/xcom and r/shadowrun.

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quantummkv
The author seems to have confused 4chan with Reddit. Not sure if the author is
being sincere or just trolling at this point.

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shapiro92
I must admit the author is definitely exaggerating about how dark reddit
was/is or he hasnt actually seen the darker side of the web.. Nevertheless,
there has been no other more toxic concept than reddit. Micro communities that
generate their content to be used by people who already are interested in that
content to feed on their ego, while being monitored by a few people who
believe are the top shit of society because they moderate a sub reddit. Just
head over to /r/berlin , a not even tech based sub or anything related to an
ideology, ask a question and wait for the barrage of insults.

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iamgopal
For average guy like myself, my comments usually downvoted on HN, while same
are upvoted on reddit. Guess, where am I going to spend most of my time ?

~~~
sergiosgc
HN could be compared to a single subreddit, not the whole reddit site. The
comparison is unfair.

However, even if the comparison is unfair, I much prefer lurking in HN. The
reason is the same that makes an average guy feel unrewarded: Top comments
here are usually insightful, well thought, and sitting on real knowledge. It
makes for a vastly better reading experience, at the cost of a poorer
"interactive" experience. I don't mind and, in fact, appreciate it.

~~~
craftyguy
> Top comments here are usually insightful, well thought, and sitting on real
> knowledge.

Uhh. one of the top comments for this story is this "insightful" gem:

> Sounds like the NYT is mad that all these internet kids don't want to pay
> for a subscription.

~~~
nailer
And? It's a common habit of journalists to attack anything which either
criticises them or competes for their audience.

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hsienmaneja
How about manipulating front page content to harass an unsuspecting user,
juxtaposing public info such as an affiliation that’s documented on Wikipedia
with content intended to gaslight the victim?

Earlier, popular content had links to endless malware.

Reddit always has been a cesspool. It’s simply symptomatic of a much broader
societal cancer. I’m confident we will root out such problems in time, though.

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jenkstom
Ironically, this article is some really great trolling in itself.

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somecallitblues
What a troll this David is.

