I left Reddit after the fuck spez debacle and haven't looked back. I occasionally go to reddit through Google for some specific things. But I don't log in or engage in the content besides reading what I was looking for. And I use my ad blocker so that dickward spez doesn't get anything from me.
But yeah I suppose this is more about mods. They think they have so much power at the end of they day it's a fucking forum, that is not much power.
What you say is never as important as how you say it. I noticed that if I came off as a self-righteous dickhead, people would disagree with me out of principle and if the person was still wrong they'd bring neutral "Sure, but" arguments to avoid the same thing happening to them.
The only time you can be a jackass is if you do it in a funny way or the person is so far gone it's the equivalent of default dancing on their grave.
All that matters is whether youâre speaking for or against the prevailing assumptions of the site/the subreddit. Most people on the internet are not experts on the topic but somehow already have their minds made up.
Also, Lemmy is not better than Reddit in this regard. Dominant opinion > everything else.
To be fair, it was only in the last couple years that it became that bad. It's still better than Elon's white nationalist vehicle of a social media site.
Quite often when I see the person who is "technically correct" getting down voted heavily there's usually at least one of several other factors coming into play that would easily explain the down votes.
For instance they edited their comment to add something like "Edit: The down votes just prove I'm right", they're being uncivil or disproportionately aggressive, they're resorting to logical fallacies and arguing around the other people instead of debating with them, or they're just adding confrontational/controversial hot takes in a community that doesn't embrace that type of thing.
And honestly, you can be totally factually correct 100% of the time, but still be a drain on the community or take down the quality of a sub. If mostly all you are doing is punching down on ignorant people instead of building bridges and leading them to the factually correct conclusions, then you are probably a drain on the community and discussion. If you're basically doing nothing but feeding the trolls, then you're also helping to undermine the quality of the sub.
Reddit is great for watching communities being radicalized. Wehther they do it themselves or they get a psyops push is up to everyone's guess but I've watched it several times.
SRS: Started out as a community pointing out misoginy and racism, ended up as a very weird hate group. I didn't watch it that closely, only saw the result.
some tumbler centered sub i followed, I forgot the name: same story, started quite light hearted, making fun of stupid shit said by kids on tumbler, turned into a right wing hategroup. This one I witnessed. They ran out of material quick, started posting lame shit but now they gave it their own, made up context in the comments. After a while, people who pointed out obvious satire got downvoted.
My favorite is how ignorant people are so certain about some issue that top scientists are unsure about.
If you point out that we don't know whether there's any life in the galaxy except on Earth, folks will say there has to be because look how many other planets there are, or even say you're arrogantly self centered for entertaining the idea that there isn't.
Pretty much, seriously, fuck reddit... it's the only service I've ever been banned with in my 33 years of life, and I keep seeing others who have an unfair ban either on the site or from the site.
What's the old saying? If you run into an asshole, fuck him, if you CONSTANTLY run into assholes, you might be the asshole...
Narrator: it was his supervisor
It's been such a 180°.
I used to use Cunningham's Law to find out expert nuances before a presentation to C-suite execs.
These days I tell people online about the things I'm an expert in and was brought in at ridiculous consulting fees to talk about and get dumb disagreement, especially when it goes against hivemind.
Social media got much worse over the past decade. I've gotten the sense there's a bit of a generational aspect at play as well, in terms of the emboldening to spout BS from ignorance as long as being paid attention to and a thin skin in being debated with.
Wait, did they add a cool down for unpopular commenting?
I mean... *we* don't.:-P
