Why is reddit so toxic?

[Tony Ramirez]

I never seen it moderated. I see profanity from the Sony TV reddit section while their actual dead forums they would not allow it.

 

[tree]

Have you ever looked at the Rules for any of the subs on Reddit?

Take "Funny" for example.

Spoiler: World News (another reddit sub)

 

[Princess Viola]

Why are you constantly bringing up the usage of profanity as 'proof' that Reddit is unmoderated?

I understand that this site disallows explicit language, but I think you need to understand: other websites, including Reddit, have different rules from this website and other websites are allowed to let their users use profanity. That doesn't make them unmoderated just because people can swear on them.

Also, since you bring up 'the Sony TV Reddit' section and how there's profanity there and they wouldn't allow it on their older defunct forums, I'm assuming you're talking about r/bravia (since that's the only subreddit I can find that's explicitly about Sony TVs), well let me simply quote the description of r/bravia:

An unofficial subreddit for everything related to Sony's BRAVIA series of televisions. Sony neither endorses nor participates in this subreddit. All submissions, comments and information exchanged here is strictly user to user and should not be considered as representative of Sony or any of its products.

I bolded the relevant parts, the r/bravia subreddit is not ran by Sony, no one from Sony participates there, it is a completely unofficial community ran by the users. So why would Sony care that people posting on a subreddit that they literally have nothing to do with are swearing? (Why would they care that people are swearing at all?)

 

[Au Naturel]

"Moderated" does not mean effectively moderated. Moderators get lazy too. It also doesn't describe moderation standards. Maybe the moderator doesn't think it's such a bad thing.

Most importantly, pulling something may only happen upon complaint. If nobody complains to the moderators, it probably won't get noticed, let alone pulled. Readers are a part of the moderation process.

Different rules for different subreddits.

 

[phantom]

Its really easy to get banned on reddit over essentially nothing. If you keep posting like you disagree with reddit hivement you eventually just get banned. Also the ui of reddit is really bad compared to what other modern forums have. A lot of interest focused subreddits will have people on it that essentially don't know anything but just parrot what they heard others say. I have been on the electrical engineering and computer science subreddits and the knowledge of the average poster is very low compared to whats on dedicated forums for those same topics.

 

[phantom]

Part of the reason why reddit has actually been growing is because google kinda stinks these days. Anything you search will return you so many useless blogs and articles written by people who don't have any actual knowledge on the subject, and want you to see as many adds as possible. A lot of these are probably also just auto generated.

So people add reddit at the end of their search so they can get something that was actually written by a human.

 

[Prometheus]

^ I agree very much, I tend to put Reddit in search terms, because I trust it will give back a more human level of information. The dead internet theory.

I check it out that way occasionally. But never joined . Reddit is the height of civilization compared to youtube. Which is a free for all battle royal. And I like the wilderness. No human mods. Paper tiger rules. Total human insanity. Across the spectrum. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. And I've had some very aggressive and crazy and just plain dumb comments thrown at me. All i see on reddit is [deleted]...[deleted]...[deleted]

 

[N2k12]

glad to see someone else can see reddit for what it is. its highly toxic and full of ignorance and narcissistic people. it used to be allot better. the moderators encourage trolling, and rude comments, and when you defend yourself, or argue that the system is in fact, broken, you get banned.

 

[phantom]

glad to see someone else can see reddit for what it is. its highly toxic and full of ignorance and narcissistic people. it used to be allot better. the moderators encourage trolling, and rude comments, and when you defend yourself, or argue that the system is in fact, broken, you get banned.

Problem is they feel extremely justified in doing what they do. You get people that aren't necessarily anti social, but super convinced that bashing you for your opinion is okay because you are on the "wrong side" or whatever. Of course there are also places where being rude is so common that it doesn't make much sense to be offended by it anymore. Not that i would enjoy that.

 

[Luca]

A lot of times reddit doesn’t even have the answers I’m looking for anyway.
I Google a question, and reddit comes up with an old dead thread with like two replies.

Maybe it’s annoying for some people that I ask so many questions on here, but I would rather trust my questions with fellow autistic people who usually have some insight, than go searching the Davy Jones locker of dead reddit threads lol

 

[tree]

@Luca
You look at reddit for answers?

I never thought of trying to use it that way.

I just look at reddit for entertainment.

 

[Luca]

@Luca
You look at reddit for answers?

I never thought of trying to use it that way.

I just look at reddit for entertainment.

Not specifically reddit, no, but when I type questions into Google I often get directed to reddit threads.
Like I said, usually old threads with few replies.

 

[Princess Viola]

Tbh with how useless Google is nowadays I basically have to add 'Reddit' to my Google searches to actually get results written by real people as opposed to complete the garbage SEO spam sites probably written by AI that normally populate the results.

 

[Luca]

Tbh with how useless Google is nowadays I basically have to add 'Reddit' to my Google searches to actually get results written by real people as opposed to complete the garbage SEO spam sites probably written by AI that normally populate the results.

So the results I’m getting might not have even been written by real people??
That’s interesting, and weird

 

[N2k12]

So the results I’m getting might not have even been written by real people??
That’s interesting, and weird

its true. a.i is becoming more prominent. have a look on reading about analytics. especially google analytics. and what they really trace about you, and sell your info. scary world out there. now they are using ai, to "crunch the numbers" and learn about people, where they live, shop, their interests, the lot. its all about 1)control, and 2) advertising

 

[Forest Cat]

So the results I’m getting might not have even been written by real people??
That’s interesting, and weird

That is going to get worse quickly, all the tech companies are now trying to be first to implement AI into everything. Soon search engines will be AI and people will use AI to create content. It won't be possible to know if what you are reading was written by a person or a machine. People on forums like this one could turn out to be machines. If you own a forum and you need more users to make it bigger and attract more users, you can just use AI.

 

[phantom]

its true. a.i is becoming more prominent. have a look on reading about analytics. especially google analytics. and what they really trace about you, and sell your info. scary world out there. now they are using ai, to "crunch the numbers" and learn about people, where they live, shop, their interests, the lot. its all about 1)control, and 2) advertising

Rule of thumb: if you put it on the internet it's theirs. If you want to keep something private don't get it even close to being on your pc.

 

[Orange Creme]

It's sad how Resident Evil fanboys glorify games like RE4, which is predominantly and deliberately an action game. Yet when RE7 was a success, they claim they made 8 like 4 because people wet themselves at how "scary" it was.

I just... do not have the words for how idiotic that actually sounds!



I'll never understood that community, man.

 

[Tony Ramirez]

Tbh with how useless Google is nowadays I basically have to add 'Reddit' to my Google searches to actually get results written by real people as opposed to complete the garbage SEO spam sites probably written by AI that normally populate the results.

I have to agree with you. I am sick of getting top 10 problems and how to fix them with useless fixes like move your device closer to your router to dumb solutions like change the channel on your router, to the utter stupid like change your ethernet cable to plug it directly in the wall written by College grads who studied journalism where I did not complete college and I have more know lage than they do.

But I put the search term then the word forums at the end because I want to get results from other forums

 

[Magna]

I understand that this site disallows explicit language, but I think you need to understand: other websites, including Reddit, have different rules from this website and other websites are allowed to let their users use profanity. That doesn't make them unmoderated just because people can swear on them.

^ Exactly. I find the censoring of expletives to be constricting. Certainly written communication can be done without expletives and other words can be substituted to express the idea, sentiment, nuance, etc but depending on the context the substitution can be weaker, less accurate, less impactful, etc. I'm not even saying I wish this forum allowed for that kind of free expression. I understand and am fine with those rules here. This site feels and is very "clean" and that's not a bad thing. For me however, it feels more like being back in middle school (e.g. watching what you say and how you say it or consequences result, etc). That too can be refreshing and a nice respite from the world. However, I also need to interact sometimes where I fully feel like an adult, interacting with other adults. That's what my regular friends are for.

As to Reddit being toxic. Did you also mean, @Tony Ramirez that people's comments were/are toxic? If that's the case that seems to be the case across most forms of social media (e.g. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, etc). Summing it up in one word, I would describe the prevailing overall sentiment to be...mean. I believe the reason many people are anonymously mean on social media is that deep down they hate their own lives and they're not happy. I truly believe it's that simple. Sad, but simple.