Reddit

Their algorithm is designed to stoke hatred and conflict, so they get more user retention.

Which is probably the main reason they closed their source code.

That's why I used third party apps and RES. When I left, I had filtered hundreds possibly thousands of subreddits

Can confirm, I've grown to really hate redditors over the past 13 years.

Well, a lot of folks enjoy subs like TIFU, AITA. I think those subs are just people in first world countries posting their first world problems out in the open or I believe most of the stuff there is totally fake LOL. It's hilarious both way.

I've noticed, over the last month or so, a lot of right wing hate subs have started making their way to the front pages in r/all and r/polular.

If you want to go way back, take a look at old BBSes or Usenet. The flame was commonly deployed. For many decades now people have used the internet to look at pictures of cats and also to talk trash or otherwise say horrible things. I don't think Reddit is different in any major way, except that on subs that were decently managed, many of the worst commenters were banned and the worst comments were often down voted into oblivion. It really did depend on the subreddit.

The fact that some people behave like assholes is not in itself anything indicative about a website working well or poorly. In real life some people behave like assholes some of the time too. Of course we have and should continue to take reasonable steps to deal with much of the badness, but we should never expect or aim for perfection on this front.

It is same thing on every social media platform. The reason why I deleted Facebook and Twitter because I was getting angry all the time.

Seriously, thank you for this thread. I'm glad to hear it's not just me wondering this.

It's the day after the 4th of July in Seattle, so I thought see how many of my neighbors burned shit down by accident.

Instead I saw:

• A car driving around shooting fireworks at people.
• A young man getting stomp-mugged.
• A child in a spiderman costume getting absolutely humiliated and assaulted by his peers.

Realized I wasn't logged in and this was just first-page BS. FFS it's a total depression, rage, hate-machine.

I honestly don’t know, but my inclination is that people trend that way in any space if they don’t go touch grass and have a real conversation with people

Even on Lemmy, I've been seeing a bit of this. Like on the front page, for a day or two, there was that meme from LemmyShitpost about US incarceration rates titled "Happy Freedom Day... I Guess"

Come on, do people genuinely want to shit on a country on the day of it's independence that millions of people look forward to celebrating? Can they not keep their negativity and hate to themselves? Any comment that called out this circlejerk was just downvoted and was told that "Lemmy isn't the platform for you" and that Lemmy is only for "People that live in reality". Verbatim.

It's just saddening to see, and it reminds me why I just curate my subscription feed and never look at the general front page. Like yes, a collective outrage at the Reddit admin is what drove the spike in users as of late, but it feels different when you're shitting on other people and the things they're passionate about, for something undeserved.

So many debate lords just looking to make arguments out of anything. They completely ignore what you say and read what they want to hear so they can argue against points they made up.

It's the politicization of the online space. Chances are it will happen here, or, perhaps worse, lemmy.world will end up filter-bubbling and everyone on the other side of the spectrum will make their own space where we both give the finger to a blank wall and pretend we're brave.

But yes, it did get worse, because it became less about life and more about the appearance of life, much like most social media.