IndescribablySad@threads.net @sh.itjust.works

1mo ago

Reddit’s vibe has suddenly changed yet again

Now Reddit’s not just promoting ragebait and AI generated stories, but divisive conservative rhetoric. Anyone else notice the non-political subreddits spontaneously hosting a population of chuds and propagandists where a few weeks ago they weren’t tolerated?

Has reddit changed the algorithm? Has some nation begun its bot operation? Has reddit deployed bots at musk’s behest? Has twitter sent its worst users to brigade? (All of twitter’s users are its worst users) I don’t know, but the effect is striking. All I’m certain about is that I’m avoiding reddit even harder now.

88 comments

I'm enjoying my random unappealable sitewide ban
Now that I've found Lemmy, I don't plan on going back

Reddit is definitely trying the ragebait thing from what I saw before I left. With however the algorithm works there these days, /r/all actually got pretty good at showing me more of what I'm interested in (same as adverts to be honest, I did not mind getting random romance fantasy novels and shit advertised to me), which made me even more suspicious every time it would slip /r/conservative into my feed, even if the post only had like 10 upvotes.
And maybe it's just in my imagination but I would especially start seeing subs like conservative after literally just being active in subreddits that shit on conservatives. So it felt a lot to me like Reddit's algorithm was actively trying to bait me at times to get into fights in places I should just ignore or block.
- Definitely wasn't just you, I've noticed Reddit actively feeds me content from subs I'm subscribed to that will bait me to argue with less than 100 upvotes, meanwhile it won't show me major posts from the same sub that I actually wish to see.
- Hello. I have come today to talk to you about our Lord and Saviour, adblockers.
  
  Haha I use adblock (uBlock Origin to be specific) in Firefox but I was talking about the app in particular. I actually have a hosts level ad blocker installed too but it's disabled a lot of the time because every now and then it breaks something and I'm too lazy to toggle and reboot any time that happens.
  Honestly though, I didn't mind Reddit ads that much. I've spent the last few years questioning gender and shit and honestly, watching targeted advertising try to figure me out on various platforms has been oddly fun and affirming in a lot of cases that I'm on the right track, in the right place and asking the right questions.
  Not that I'm defending it, no ads is of course better but I've seen much worse and more obnoxious styles of advertising than the way Reddit handled it. For all their faults, if they had to go down the advertising route, at least they managed to keep it somewhat more classy than almost everyone else.

We (people who post) are also generally not on the platform anymore. I would surmise that causes changes in how the site operates and what posts get the people who have not left riled up.
- This is the conclusion I came too. I left when they killed 3rd party API's, now when I drop in to r/all it feels like 50% AI/propaganda. Posts linger for DAYS! Back in the 2010's you'd be lucky to find anything from the top 25 in the top 100 the following day. In the last month when I've refreshed the page 24-48 hours later, the majority of posts are purple. It's obvious the volume and quality of posters has fallen off a cliff.
  ...And now the r/Conservative echo chamber is regularly hitting the front page? What a fucking joke. I'm glad I left. It was certainly the right time. If I started using Reddit today, instead of 2009, I probably wouldn't have gotten addicted at all. It's such a shell of what it once was, Lemmy is already close to surpassing it.
  Edit: Oh look, after weeks/months of reddit artificially promoting conservative threads to the front page — a sub which has remained an auth echo chamber of mentally ill narcissists for over a decade — is now doing "open threads" where they all act like they're just your working class neighbors who want peace on earth, and to make the world better for everyone "but just don't agree on how to get there" as though they don't openly support fascism and authoritarianism every other day of the week. Pigboy has officially turned Reddit into yet another fascist propaganda machine, and safe space.
  
  That sub is just... really hard to read. It's almost literally unbelievable the level of absolute gullibility and willful ignorance that goes on there.
- The people who left will have less tolerance for bullshit, and the people who stayed are probably more manipulated by it, because they're less aware of it.

I wonder if it's that in part with the mass exodus to federated internet
- Wait, there was another one? Why?
  
  Yeah there was one about a year and a half ago when all that shit happened with the third party apps, then again very recently as people have become disillusioned with corporation-owned social media.
  
  They just banned pretty much all nsfw subs because of a "bug", including abuse support subs. Probably due to that.
  And there was the white people twitter ban, as well as some Musk critical subs a day or two before the"bug".

i've left reddit for the most part, as of a few days ago. i've signed up here. still trying to tweak my subscriptions
- Welcome! Hope you enjoy your stay.
  I've been here for 1.5 years now, ever since the previous Reddit exodus.
  Its not as big, so finding a niche community is a bit tricky sometimes. But overall I find this place quite cozy.
  One recommendation I tend to give to newbies is to ignore the .ml instances. They claim to be Marxist-Leninists and the moderation there tends to be iffy at best.
  Other than that using this place has been smooth sailing for me.
  
  Definitely do not subscribe to any .ml instances. That was my mistake when I started. They will ban you as soon as you say anything negative about Russia (pre or post USSR, hilariously), China, tankies, authoritarianism, etc.
  ml is a propaganda machine, filled with the type of narcissist auth scum who turned reddit into a cesspool around 2015.
- I recommend sorting by all and blocking everything you're not interested in, works better for me than searching communities to subscribe to.
- Welcome!
  !newcommunities@lemmy.world
  !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca

It’s been plagued by bots for like 15 years and the last 5 AI has been the killing blow of it being entirely useless it used to be the place to get actual humans talking about things and giving each other real advice from their lived experience and now it’s just a ton of AI pretending. And as it continues to recursively feed off itself it’ll continue to become total trash. With my conspiracy cap on it’s being done on purpose to destroy any other avenue of public discourse and control every single thing people see, think and now think that’s what other people must be thinking too. It’s passively establishing and enforcing information control and conformity to ideals. There’s a ton of 70s and 80s movies about this exact type of dystopia being established. Recommend everyone give Colossus: The Forbin Project a watch were like a stones throw from losing control.

Sorry I only go on Reddit for porn
- Don't have to actually visit them if you browse reddtastic instead!
  
  Thank you naming that. I have a new place to visit.
  
  I'll live, there's no ads on porn multireddits
  
  Cheers!
  
  Or redlib!
- Bad news about that.
- They make me log in! F that
- Check if the lemmit bot scrapes them

Please stop reporting comments that you don't like, we only remove rule breaking posts/comments.
- Any of the reports funny or are they all just angery? There used to be a subreddit for funny user reports, where mods would chronicle the silliest reports and Ive had a hankering
  
  Not this time haha, just people mainly reporting for "breaks community rules" but the comment doesn't

I've noticed:
r/news and r/worldnews hijacked by conservative zionist mods.
r/pics locking many political anti-maga comment threads with hardly anything there and never an explanation for transparency.
r/conservative feels like it's being artificially amplified.
- r/news and r/worldnews hijacked by conservative zionist mods.
  correction: USA hijacked by conservative zionists
- r/pics is absolutely bonkers. Not only it's mostly not about the general pics and it's mostly politics, but the pics are ALL anti-trump, anti-Elon etc. It's supposed to be for pics and not a leftist political echo-chamber for showing how much they hate Trump and Elon. It's so crazy.
  
  Nah r/pics is pics and pics of anything are permitted there.
  Naturally it represents the zeitgeist and what is on the collection of people's minds who frequent that sub will determine the content.
  Beggars can't be choosers. If you want more specific rules, then find more niche subs. Simple as that.
  Alternatively, don't shove fascists down our throats and this wouldn't happen.
  
  Thats what some people need to learn. A street is for driving, yet it can be occupied to protest fascism. A factory is for producing stuff, yet can be occupied for protesting fascism (and other things). Thats what we‘re doing all around the world now and so help us science, we wont stop until the fascists fuck off.

I'm thinking bots/troll farms could have something to do with it. I'm on .ee, and we federate with .ml. I've been on Lemmy for about two years and just saw the first post I ever felt the need to report, had huge nazi energy against trans people on fucking .ml. That suggests to me that it was either a deliberate troll or someone didn't know what the fuck they were doing.
It got handled promptly, btw, good job mod team!
- It was probably someone who just signed up for the first instance they could find
  
  .ml gets specifically targeted on account of the, you know, commieism
- .ml really just is causing a lot of problems.

Once Reddit went corporate this was inevitable. I am proudly perma-banned from that shithole.
- Only reason I'm still on it is because they have yet to do anything except issue warnings.
  Until they actually do something other than wag their finger at me, I'll continue spreading leftist propaganda.
  
  Feel free to also have a look at !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com to see promotion opportunities about Lemmy

It's been like that since 2016. You're saying it's gotten worse? Oh well.
Besides. Belligerent conservatives have always been a core component of reddit. Doesn't anyone remember much the left leaning atheism type of users were ridiculed. What I find more interesting than anything is how everyone even leftists accept the default view that reddit is center to left. While everything right leaning is a minority and an aberration. They're not seen as actual reddit for some reason. Spoken of as if conservatives are outsiders. It's bizarre. Old reddits favorite politician was Ron Paul. They were a bunch of Ayn Rand loving pseuds. How the hell does anyone get the remote idea that reddit is historically anything but at least right of center.
By the way Musk bots have been on reddit for a long time. Once upon a time the mods of /r/technology tried to limit the amount of musk posts on that subreddit. Otherwise they would be flooding the top posts of the subreddit all the time. The musk bots caused quite a scene. I think it led to that subreddit getting removed as a default. I might be remembering wrong though.

It's just a happy accident that I had my 15 year old reddit account banned for calling out one of the many karmafarmers on the site. You know, the ones that'll post something, get a bunch of upvotes (who knows if botted or not), then delete said post a couple of hours later. Who am I to tell if there's a botting conspiracy there or not, but so much reposted slop ends up on r/all all the time. Anyway, glad I've, albeit forced, moved on just in time for the site to implode.

If reactionary stuff is the latest rage and all the progeessives are leaving the site, it's no wonder that the reddit demographic is turning conservative.

I dunno. I don't really 'feel' Reddit being much different to 2023. Well, beside from some of my favourite niche subs not being the same because the mods felt strongly about the API protests.
There was r/TheDonald before, too. That was much worse than r/conservative, I'd say. And the big general bullshit subreddits were filled to the brim with nonsense before 2023 as well...
I'm glad to have Lemmy as an alternative, though.

i have noticed those espousing anti Fascist ideas are targeted ....by reporting them for bogus reasons. like hate speech...against Fascists and Nazis.
not only are the Mods helping but so are the Admins. they are actively supporting Fascist and Nazis against other voices.
they appear to be attempting to make those ideas more acceptable to the general population.

I'm not a fan of reddit. For me it was always a small group of Admins that imposed their control over everyone including the unpaid mods of groups. I've written about this before, but the other thing about reddit is what seems to be their ever changing reasons for banning people. And not just a ban for a week but permanent site wide bans. What I really object to is when a social media platform sells itself as politically neutral but really isn't. There are Trump loyalist groups like patriots win and truth social that tell you exactly what they are. If you dare say anything negative about Trump you are banned forever. And that's OK because you wouldn't want to go there and at least they are telling you upfront what their deal is.
If Lemmy has this, I haven't found it. But there should be a group for political discussion without labels. Regardless of your politics it is illogical to always defend "your tribe" since both sides do and say dumb stuff. The big secret is most people are not actually on the left or right. They are just living their lives trying to get by.
I also will never understand the name calling. If you have a different opinion it's easy enough to have a civil discussion realizing that the other person just has a different point of view. That doesn't make them a bad person.
Many years ago Saturday Night Live made fun of this whole name calling thing. Each week there would be a right vs. left debate of an issue. And the guy on the right always began his rebuttal this way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYRVUqNHD9U
So what we all laughed at then is now far to common and accepted today

I dont know shit about reddit except what this community says. I would assume they have relaxed moderation against conservative viewpoints (likely in an attempt to suck the dick of the current government).
Honestly I'm celebrating reddit becoming shitter and shitter it makes federation look like a better option.

A post with some links on the topic: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1ik0bhu/reddits_algorithm_change_and_why_youre_feeling/

I have tried avoiding reddit as much as possible. I only browse a few subs that are highly specific with their RSS feeds, so I avoid the slop that is the rest of that site

There are also a couple of subreddits that are still good. But from what I can see, Reddit is probably only good now for visiting the subreddit of your country or town. I also still look at Reddit for occasional news, as long as I avoid mainstream news subreddits that go on the front-page.

I only go on it occasionally to check out niche stuff but I’m unsubscribed to most of the defaults anyway. I still find Lemmy too extreme left wing but at least I don’t have to put up with all those crappy in-jokes.

I just deleted all my posts and my account there. Havent used it much anyways since the 2023 api changes. Though I still use rdx on iOS to read few sports sections for the latest news.
- rdx?
  
  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rdx-for-reddit/id6503479190

reddit is promoting divisive conservative rhetoric? that could just be conservatives being conservatives. this is a moment of strength for them and their cause. they could be rallying in awe of what is taking place-- you don't have to like it but maybe stop trying to push everything you don't like or agree with out of every corner of the internet and learn to promote your own rhetoric better. it probably didn't occur to you that they (conservatives) do make up a large percentage of the population of this country.
- Don't give these fuckers an inch. They will take a mile and be shitting all over you before you know it.
  
  I wouldn't bother taking anyone who uses "this country" unqualified on the Internet seriously. Even if they are being serious.
  
  He is "these fuckers"
- I'd agree, but I went to check reddit the other day and a post from r/conservative bitching about "leftists" was on the front page with 400 upvotes surrounded posts with thousands of more votes. Kept scrolling and more of them were showing up. I know reddit is bad, but I never used to see this many ragebait posts on the front page.
- And another fascist! Having a run today. See ya.
  
  ^ ladies and gentlemen, this is normal-- why is this normal?

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