
Reddit’s Astonishing Altruism - kqr2
http://voltier.com/2010/11/12/reddits-astonishin-altruism/
======
tav
Am I the only person who found Reddit generally quite unpleasant?

It really is heart-warming to hear of all the good that those on Reddit have
done. But I can't help feel that it's the exact same mob mentality which made
me want to leave Reddit in the first place — discussions got extremely
polarised very quickly and there seemed to be very little room for reasoned
dialogue.

The article makes it sound like a good thing that _"comments are generally
downvoted by dozens or even hundreds of people with remarkable speed, pushing
their noxious posts down into obscurity within minutes"_. But, since
_everyone_ can downvote — hell, I have even see non-controversial statements
get downvoted heavily — the quality of dialogue often ends up being at the
level of the lowest common denominator.

~~~
Lewisham
Reddit is not a place to have dialogue. Community-moderated areas just aren't
very good at it. Even HN has been accused from suffering groupthink. If you
want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world (if you can
find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better place to have
it.

~~~
heyitsnick
> If you want dialogue, forums, mailing lists or better yet, the real world
> (if you can find the community you need to discuss things with), is a better
> place to have it.

Why?

~~~
Lewisham
Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system. Perhaps only
Slashdot is the only community I've seen where points are awarded to comments
not based on agreement, but on general merit. Admit it: you've downvoted
people you don't agree with. When enough people do it, you get groupthink.

Forums/mailing lists don't have that problem. Every post is given equal merit
in the number of eyeballs that read it. Those comments that are not
interesting can get ignored, those that are interesting will either merit a
"yeah, I agree" response, or a "you're wrong for [x,y,z]". _That_ is a
dialogue. Community moderated upvoted/downvoted discussions are not a
dialogue. They are a "here's what we all think" metric.

~~~
kaens
_Because groupthink is inherent in the upvoting/downvoting system._

I'd almost argue that groupthink is inherent in human interaction in groups
larger than one. Almost.

Forums and mailing lists are certainly susceptible to it, even though it
occurs less often, but I suspect that has more to do with the size of their
memberships. SA, for instance, has tons of it.

Oh, and /. had a _serious_ problem with it for a long time. Their moderation
system helps, and maybe it's gotten a lot better (it's been a while since I
was active on it), but oh man when /. was _the_ site, it was pretty bad.

/. is a good example of what seems to happen to a lot of online communities --
a small, competent, awesome base of users is very active for a while, things
snowball, you then get a huge upsurge in users and activity and trolling, and
then that eventually fades and your userbase stabilizes at a point where the
userbase is pretty solid and there's not too much in the way of ridiculousness
going on.

------
jimbokun
An oft cited reason for founding a company is to make the world better in some
way. These 25 stories demonstrate that Reddit has undeniably accomplished
that.

------
marknutter
I actually find reddit to be somewhat nauseating. Call me cynical, but I can't
help but think the Reddit community performs every kind act with an air of
smug, self-centerdness you often find in creepy church youth groups or after
school specials. I started visiting reddit because digg's links started
sucking, and now I visit HN primarily because reddit is no longer about good
links either. It's a maassive geek circle jerk where people share semi amusing
images, write self-affirming posts, and run every meme known to man into the
ground. Reddit's new slogan about sums it up: "The Voice of the Internet."
That's a lofty claim. Anyways, the same thing is bound to happen to HN at some
point. The problem with social news sites is that they all get worse as the
user base grows.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping people. But reddit was a link
aggregator at one point, and it has been disappointing to see that side of it
melt away over the years.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I will call you cynical. How can you sit there and say that? You have no
examples of them doing this for self-serving purposes and quite frankly, the
volume and repetition of their generosity is so great that it is bewildering
to think that they are doing it for self serving purposes. And who gives a
shit if I get off on helping people? Isn't it a good thing that I feel good
about helping people? Isn't that in line with a sense of humanity?

edit: Additionally, remove /r/pics, /r/funny, /r/atheism and add the more
obscure tech subreddits. There is plenty of tech content that comes through in
/r/programming and /r/javascript that shows up before it shows up here. It is
a link aggregator. Please take the 5 minutes, make an account and setup your
subreddits correctly. I think you could be very pleasantly surprised.

~~~
marknutter
I said I have no problem with people helping others - I'm not a sociopath.
It's the whole "look, everyone, at how awesome we are" circle jerk that I find
nauseating. Besides, I think reddit has performed an equal number of acts of
vengeance as they have acts of altruism and have nailed the wrong person in
more than one instance - perhaps that's worthy of a blog post. At least 4chan
admits what it is.

Again, my issue isn't that reddit is an active community, it's that it has
turned from a link sharing site to a larger, more work friendly version of
4chan with an incredibly inflated sense of self-righteousness.

And to be sure, I'm no reddit noob, I've had an account for 3 years and spent
a lot of time cultivating my subreddits. It is a matter of opinion, I realize,
but overall it has become a pretty poor source of good web content these days,
for me anyhow.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Go find me a significant number of highly voted posts, or ANY, that gloat
about how much they've raised. I remember those posts where they were driving.
The closest thing imaginable to what you're describing was "we're almost to
$xxx,xxx dollars everyone" posts. I've seen OTHER websites talk about it. I've
seen Colbert talk about it, but NEVER have I seen a submission, let alone a
post, that even remotely read "We're so awesome, go us!". If you think that is
the style of comments on reddit, then honestly, I question your actual
participation there. You're blindlyand prooflessly questioning their
intentions and I find that offensive on their behalf.

Their acts of vengence are terrible and misplaced. Even just now I read a post
about the Gizmodo jerk responding and making fun of reddit in a tweet. Someone
commented to torment his flickr photos and someone immediately replied back
that it would be a dick move.

You forget that reddit is made up of people. When it reaches the size it is,
you're guaranteed to have the idiots that do vigilante stuff. But when one of
the ADMINS who rarely condemn the community SHREDS into everyone about
stopping the vigilantism... I think you're missing the forest for the few
rotten trees (and I think it's because you want to).

I still think you are COMPLETELY wrong about the relevancy of posts in the
good subreddits. You're doing a poor job of cultivating your subreddits
frankly if you can't find a good combo resulting in quality links. Again, you
bring up this sense of "self-righteousness" that is COMPLETELY unsubstantiated
and not for you to say.

I think you've made your mind up without giving them a chance, and even when
pressed for details, you make the same vague claims about their motives and
intentions without any more substantiation than the first time you said it.

------
satori99
reddit is basically an IRC server for the web, with voting.

The cleverst thing they have done is also entirely simple. By making all
thread replies to your posts appear in your inbox as personal messages, and
highlighting the orange icon, it successfully encourages users to make
reasonably deep replies to those that bite.

This seems to generate interesting thread content very quickly.

My only gripe is the lack of resolution in the voting system (ala /.). Meme
overload is a real problem when browsing reddit.

~~~
redthrowaway
Meme overload is a significant problem on any large internet community that's
web-centric in its outlook. From SA to 4chan to reddit, any community that
thinks of itself as "the Internet" will employ memes as a means of self-
confirmation.

------
jrockway
Never underestimate the capabilities of people who don't feel like working at
work. I think the whole not doing anything for weeks at a time make people
want to compensate somehow, and this is the result. Sending birthday cards to
90-year-olds and buying people new LCDs. Very nice.

------
sage_joch
The quote that comes to mind when I think of the reddit community: "Look, the
people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul
your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you
while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us."

~~~
vaksel
i attribute that description to 4chan...reddit is kinda meh by comparison

~~~
mitjak
By comparison of what? Reddit is not composed of typical people mentioned
above? Or do all regular folk gather round to share Impact captioned cartoons
of homosexual sheep riding bicycles through fields of scrotums?

~~~
vaksel
reddit's retaliation might be a slap on the wrist.

4chan's retaliation would involve ripping your head off and taking a dump.

reddit is a lot more self controlled, 4 chaners fuck with people just because
they can, reddit only tends to screw with the more mainstream evils

------
scythe
It's altruism, but it isn't astonishing in it's volume. I'm sure that of any
suitably large group of people, the total dollar amount of donations to worthy
causes will be well into the tens of thousands, which is basically what
reddit's done here. You might call them kind of naive for doing things only
about those causes that manage to get popular on reddit -- while reddit has
some well-publicized random acts of kindness the overall impact of what
they've done is pretty tiny.

Would some of those thousands of dollars have been better spent fighting
malaria? I really can't say. Is it impressive to donate only to those causes
that are presented in such a fashion as to jerk at the proverbial heart-
strings? I should think not.

Is reddit above the rest of the Internet in its altruism? I would say perhaps
not, but they're a good and valuable net community. There are many instances
of Internet activism accomplishing something good, both inside and outside of
reddit, and I would say that reddit's accomplishments are nothing short of
pretty good.

------
davidw
I'm quite sick of reddit, to be honest. Many people there take delight in
taking snarky, content-free swipes at others' hard work.

Maybe that is fun when you're 16, but it gets old after you've aged some.

------
panacea
reddit is made of people.

~~~
zeraholladay
Yeah, but you could say the same thing about the Nazi party and the civil
rights movement in the United States. That statement is vacuous since I
seriously doubt anyone reading this thought Reddit might be made of non-
people. What's your point?

EDIT: While I agree with your sentiment and my comment could be interpreted
has harsh depending on the tone of voice, I've said this kind of thing before
(x is made of people) and always wished I had clarified it more. So please
think of it as more of an invitation rather than a challenge.

------
radu_floricica
Just an observation for those here who haven't spent a lot of time on reddit:
the main page is _much_ more superficial then what you can get if you make an
effort. When you're logged in you can subscribe and unsubscribe from
subreddits. Once you get rid of pictures, wtf, politics and a couple more
things already look a lot more mature... and then you can start looking for
more obscure but rewarding ones.

A good example of what a smallish sub-forum can do, take a look at
<http://www.reddit.com/r/motorcycles/>. This is a topic I'm interested in, but
there are literally thousands of subreddits, smaller or bigger.

------
olalonde
How about a HN gift exchange this Christmas? Anyone else would be in?

~~~
pavs
Don't hold your breath.

------
heed
Arguably none of the altruistic acts 'reddit' has performed are representative
of the entire reddit population.

------
BornInTheUSSR
Hmm, this spontaneity might just be channeled into a start up idea. Imagine a
site predicated on a community of users pitching in a buck a month or more to
fund some life-changing event for a random or deserving person.

~~~
state_machine
But this kind of thing exists: charities and fundraisers are nothing new.

The fact that it is their reddit taking action, and not some church group or
NGO, is probably what motivates at least some of the participants.

------
josephd
Are you all forgeting the good deeds reported about in the article? Does that
count for anything from an online community?

~~~
revoltingx
Churches are the biggest donators in the world. Does that count for anything
for them?

~~~
thomasz
Is that true?

------
skbohra123
Am I the only one here who doesn't know what's 4chan ?

~~~
ComputerGuru
Probably not, but (and not to be snarky or anything... well, maybe just a
little), you do know what Google and Wikipedia are.... right?

I never understand the point of posts that ask knowledge that can be easily
obtained (in both concise and verbose forms; with all the perspective and
facts you could want) by just clicking on one of the top 5 results in Google.

~~~
skbohra123
Probably the intent of such posts is to find out if I am outdated or what? If
more people haven't heard about something discussed here I would be convinced
that this isn't something to worry about.

------
db42
waiting to see similar list for HN :)

------
phlux
As a redditor of going on nearly 5 years, this story brought me to tears
(followed each of these events and participated in some) - and is personally
my favorite YC spawn.

------
zackattack
Jesus christ, these stories make me cry. I don't know if this is something I
need to explore deeper, or if I'm simply torturing myself by reading them.

~~~
archon810
Twinkles were abundant today near my facial area.

------
incogneato
pretty cool. too bad about that rally though, they had a bunch of dildos and
communists and a killer on stage singing about peace.

------
revoltingx
Reddit and its community blows balls. There are churches out there who
contribute in much bigger ways and get less publicity.

What a bunch of self serving douchebags. I'm sure they contribute online, but
what will they do when someone in need approaches them in the street?

This kind of behavior is disgusting.

~~~
limedaring
Seriously? You hear of a group of people who do good things, and your response
is, "Well, they don't do as well as this other group that does good things!"

They did some really great things, and your response is "disgusting". Sad.

~~~
incogneato
I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that Reddit constantly bashes
that "other group" and never gives them credit when it's due.

~~~
limedaring
Which negates their own achievements?

