I took some time away from social media, maybe 4 or 5 months this time, then I came back to Reddit.
Honestly Reddit was always my favourite social media, full of the same dumb jokes and bad faith arguments as everywhere else on the net, but at least somewhere in the comments you could find some real source material or real personal experiences depending on the subject matter.
Now I see nothing useful being shared, I see nothing close to any kind of dissenting opinions, no real debate just straight to down voting anything you don’t like into obscurity.
I understand American politics has become even more polarised so maybe it’s a feeling of ‘cant even given one inch of ground because they could take a mile’.
Anybody else feeling this lately?
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Not worse than X, by a million years.
As the internet as a whole gets worse, reddit remains the top. Even if its sooo much worse than it used to be
Unsubscribe from any subreddits that annoy you. You wont miss them.
Have you tried X?
The subreddits themselves are all balkanized echo chambers. Case in point: There’s not really anywhere to open a discussion about how Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have been murdered but was also a vitriolic grifter and not some kind of magnificent Christian bringing peace to Earth through Christ. The conservative subs only allow conservative participation, and anywhere else you might be able to start a thread along those lines and not get banned, the automod has every possible American politics keyword set to auto-remove your post because the moderators don’t want to have to do anything.
This website is becoming another example of the tragedy of the commons.
The smut from TicTok and Instagram are bleeding over
Reddit is the laughing stock of the rest of the internet
Seems that way.
I’m not even really sure what the point of Reddit is. It’s essentially a place for people to type their thoughts and express then to nobody. It’s like having a conversation with yourself loudly and occasionally you hear an echo. When you don’t hear an echo, it’s someone calling you something terrible or banning you.
It truly is a graveyard for discussion.
No, twitter exists.
No, I think that has always been 4chan and it’s children sites. People have been scared of it since they developed the orbital bombardment for slashdotting sites. X is another type of vitriol with two binaries of conversation, what Elon is saying and the opposite of it. Facebook is pretty bad. Reddit is middle ground. You can find a way to unplug and watch kittens. YouTube is pretty good.
Oh look, someone just posted basically the same thought in another thread only a few minutes before you. You guys need to coordinate better.
I’ve used Reddit since 2010, and in those 15 years Reddit has become a legitimate cult. : r/TrueUnpopularOpinion
Are you sure you want more 4chans, 8chans, newsmax, OAN, Fox news, Parler and Truth Social?
Where would the balance come from if the ‘left’ had no more voice?
And where would the non partisan people of science explain things about physics, astronomy, evolution, math and climate change if we got rid of all those subreddits?
Sounds like a veiled attempt at silencing opinions that don’t suit the Right Wing narrative.
FYI, I used to be a member of Freedominion at the time when GWB was invading Iraq. You can’t have a reasonable discussion without somebody accusing me of siding with the Taliban.
Worse than Truth Social?
My subreddits are mostly cats, emotional support and neopets, so I’ve mostly missed out on this phenomenon. Stick to cats. Cats don’t know who Charlie Kirk is.
X
No, but in the top 5.
Yes.
Definitely. But, there’s still dog videos and videos of people doing stupid stuff.
Yes
Yes it is, people are living in an echo chamber and believing their twisted thoughts are reality. Its full of a lot of young people without a whole lot of real life experience, and they mostly share each others beliefs and get self confirmation through this platform without realizing they aren’t actually the majority in real life
Twitter is way worse. It’s literally owned by a right wing technocrat who intentionally alters discourse for political advantage and his own financial benefit.
Nobody can say who even owns Reddit.
Reddit is pretty shitty but the 20 people still over on Bluesky punch above their weight.
Sadly yes.
It is very interesting what subs report/allow…and what they don’t. There’s two very, very different worlds in here.
And yes, there is a ton of hypocrisy on both sides of the political spectrum.
Go to the Fox “News” comments section. That’s an echo chamber. Reddit is still more free than most social media.
I miss smaller forums from the early to mid 2000s. Now there’s like 5 websites and they all are just people screaming at each other.
Hi, American here.
The government is in the process of using AI driven algorithms, posts, and bots to mass produce unlimited amounts of infuriating content to drive the population into a frenzy. Billionares and social media giants are around it, you’re using a social media program aren’t you? There’s your answer.
PS: If you’re in Nato, I’m sorry. RU/India/China just allied. We are going to pull military satellites and the nuclear shield away soon. We are playing into our enemies hands, and if I say this I’m apparently crazy. All the signs are there and have been there for years, people have been screaming, but you were told to ignore the truth and accept the lie.
Edit:
All social media sites have tools and things to combat bots/AI/misinformation. They are all turned off. We are being bombarded by disinformation, each side is seeing things that radicalize them. The left just watched the president drop an AI video on the official white house youtube page called it out and were called crazy. We have no defense for this. We are not going to survive this. The government is deliberately doing this to us and half the country will protect said government with their life. This is weaponized AI in action over here, it’s on Reddit, X, Facebook, Instagram, Probably bluesky but nobody uses it.
I’m sure if you see unhinged radicalization in your countries it is a result of your population using these media sites as well.
America has fallen.
Doesn’t every app have an algorithm to essentially solo you anymore?
People have forgotten the down vote was not intended for things you disagree on. It was intended to be used to signify irrelevance to the topic thread. If a comment wasn’t relative and offered nothing to the discord of the topic then it was to be down voted.
Yep. Reddit as a whole is designed to be an echo chamber regardless of subject.
Truth Social exists, so by default Reddit is not the worst echo chamber.
It really has become a radicalized cesspool. If you don’t agree 100% with the hive mind, they will jump down your throat, toss insults, belittle and dehumanize you. It’s pretty gross.
Reddit is becoming trash
Echo chambers
Polarized extremists
Filled with bots attempting to engage with real humans
Shelter and playground for America’s mental illness
For hobbyists, still kinda okay, but also dumpy:
a) mods aren’t paid, so don’t really give a crap
b) trolls & griefers
c) Damn stupid A.I.s
Yes.
There are a small number of super moderators that control the most popular subreddiits and through years of banning people with opposite opinions have shaped these communities into eco chambers
You need to factor in the strength of the social media algorithm. Take doom scrolling as an example.
Even lingering on a post for a few more seconds than you normally would, will tell reddit or any other outlet that you want to see more of that content – whether you want to or not.
Reset your searches from time to time.
reddit has always been a left wing echo chamber.
Any conservative opinions are either deleted by the mods or downvoted until the are pushed into the memory hole.
I had to do a lot of clean up of my feed the past week and it’s honestly a more pleasant experience now.
Has reddit become the worst echo chamber on the internet? et? et? et?
Reddit has become overrun with “advice bullies and advice bots.”
I made a thread about plastic poly mailers on r/flipping and I was immediately bombarded with advice bots. “Noooo you can’t use a plastic poly mailer! You have to use a cardboard box!”
Redditors will whine about anything in order to make themselves feel superior. They will even whine about a plastic bag if it means they can bully others through spewing advice.
I can’t even convince those people to use a poly mailer to ship a book. There is no way they would listen to other points of view when it comes to politics.
Yes
Yes, the absence of free speech means we only ever see one sided arguments
Truth Social is way worse lol
“Worst” would be hyperbolic. Twitter exists. Facebook is up there. Reddit is getting there, but it’s not in a league with those other platforms
Has Reddit become the worst echo chamber on the internet?
worst echo chamber on the internet?
chamber on the internet?
internet?
Yeah 100%, especially in light of recent events, I deleted the app for a couple days and will probably do so again soon. Majority of subreddits are so blind it’s horrible
Yes, Reddit is an echo chamber with bots and propaganda. Most popular posts are made by a marketing team, government (left), and propaganda. Look up Reddit 2013 or the Kamala team manipulation. There is a reason why Reddit allows people to hide their posts in their profile now, but you can easily tell it’s a bot by their karma. 500,000 karma on a 5-month account? I hope others see this comment and are aware of the situation.
Subreddit mods
Key-word filters are your friends
It’s bad, but it’s not even close to the worst.
Reddit will eventually kill itself. Mods hand out perma bans like candy, and there is no process to come back. There are only so many people out there.
No and yes at the same time. It’s more like fragmented pools of different echo chambers all over.
Yes.
It has been for a while. Anything that doesn’t fit the left mindest is heavily downvoted. Studies or facts are ignored or downvoted if again it does not fit what the left wants. It’s fuckin weird. It’s like seeing people live in a false reality.
You clearly haven’t been to ifunny
Yeah reddit is designed that way with the upvote system. The mods help reinforce it by banning people not in the hive mind. There are mods that run a ton of subreddits to help reinforce the hive mind as well.
There’s so many posts lately that deserve serious discussion, then you go to the comments and it’s a race to make bunch of lame jokes. I keep expecting the old Reddit and I keep getting disappointed. It’s so predictable now for whatever reason.
There seems to be more brigading, bots, and troll accounts these days.
Yes. This place sucks. I’m probly gonna get banned soon but I really don’t give a fuck
Not the worst, that dubious honour goes to X human comments under “political commentators” threads (provided you can make sense of them from interaction farming bots).
That being said, it is an echo chamber regardless.
I miss the days when Reddit only used downvotes for hate speech or wild personal attacks. Now it’s just shorthand for “I don’t like this” which may as well just be Facebook.
Everything I’ve read says that it’s Bluesky
Has Reddit become the worst echo chamber on the internet?
^(I took some time away from social media, maybe 4 or 5 months this time, then I came back to Reddit.)
^(Honestly Reddit was always my favourite social media, full of the same dumb jokes and bad faith arguments as everywhere else on the net, but at least somewhere in the comments you could find some real source material or real personal experiences depending on the subject matter.)
^(Now I see nothing useful being shared, I see nothing close to any kind of dissenting opinions, no real debate just straight to down voting anything you don’t like into obscurity.)
^(I understand American politics has become even more polarised so maybe it’s a feeling of ‘cant even given one inch of ground because they could take a mile’.)
^(Anybody else feeling this lately?)
I’ve been shadow banned just for expressing my opinion on a very progressive sub. I’m mainly and a central liberal myself, but have issue with some things progressives push for. I wasn’t hateful, didn’t name call, and didn’t use any profanity. I’ve messaged the mods multiple times already, but they just ignore me. The sub continues to be filled with nothing but far left progressive posts and the users caught in their confirmation bias. All I tried to do was offer a reasonable counterpoint to confront that bias.
So yes, Reddit is an echo chamber. I’d say it’s mainly due to the mods that can’t remain neutral and non-political.
The crazy thing is people tend to blame each other, but social media became terrible at the same time they started using personalized algorithms instead of allowing universal feed options. These echo chambers are enforced by greedy tech companies and Big Data. They are responsible for a lot of the social hostility and political division imo.
yes
I’ve noticed a lot of ‘… because you’ve visited this community before’.
Gets a bit repetitive.
Yup
No, I feel like Reddit is still a lot more moderate and nuanced than some other sites. Every platform is going to silo you to some extent but Reddit isn’t the worst.
I feel the same way. Used to love the mix of perspectives here, now it feels like you can’t say much without getting buried. Definitely not what it used to be.
It’s a cesspool with some fun and/or interesting subs. Mostly cesspool.
Dude do you see Twitter? Some subreddits are echo chambers but you just need to follow another sub. If you enter Twitter you can’t escape from the elon and co. political discourse
I’ve dropped out of many, many subs because my mental health was being negatively impacted. I’m almost at the point of leaving social media altogether.
But, but … Reddit is the “heart” of the Internet!
Really depends on the subs you follow. For me it’s my least controversial platform, but all I got here is games, pets and art. And, well, this.
I do believe that crown sits on 4 chans head..
Fuckin nailed it, im tired of it. Reddit was always crazy platform but nowadays its becoming worse and worse
Yeah, I kinda stopped posting anything anywhere, except for like two subs, because every time I post something mildly challenging to the hive mind of the respective sub, I get totally wrecked for it.
I miss the old pre-Facebook internet…
Twitter and Facebook are honestly worse
I’m active in other social media and I’ve left a few places. I’d say you are right that Reddit is more of an echo chamber. But the other social media I’ve seen are worse echo chambers.
So Reddit is the worst unless you compare it to X, Threads or Facebook. Or Truth Social, but I think that’s the whole point of that place. If you compare to them, Reddit is the least bad of them.
The only really good place at the moment is Bluesky, I think.
No bkuesky definitely has the top spot but Reddit is far bigger
If it isn’t the worst it has to be top 3.
Most subs are carefully guarded echo chambers.
Yes. And worse, it’s become the source material for AI/LLM across the board. Between Reddit and Wikipedia, our information has become both biased and polluted.
Reddit has always been a bit of an echo chamber, with politics I think it used to be left leaning, but more recently it has mostly become quite left wing as most right leaning posters leave for more right wing places.
I have a bunch of filters to keep out politics but they still don’t work well unfortunately.
It’s hard not to notice how quickly certain ideas get amplified in big subreddits while others get downvoted into oblivion
Yes, it has. There is ZERO tolerance for different ideas, a complete inability of discussing opposing views. It starts with the entire notion of up and down voting, an insult to argument. I had a very surreal and sad moment the other day where instead of posting a question to a sub , I decided to go to Chat GPT. Instead of getting some human input, I chose the artificial. I went diet instead of the real thing.
Platforms want engagement. They target human’s direct desire for affirmation. OMG is my comment good? Look at how many people like it? It’s so toxic.
I still think Facebook is the worst. Fake news articles constantly showing up everywhere. A lot of really awful AI posts with pictures of actors or celebrities that don’t match the text of the post. A bunch of people sharing sourceless information, sharing onion articles as though they’re real. No vetting of any information. FB turns into one big, angry mob over misinformation they couldn’t understand.
This stuff happens all over but it feels like the highest concentration of it happens on FB.