You can't ignore the technical factors. The reddit model is fundamentally a sort machine. The voting and temporal mechanism means reddit style platforms are always sorting for whatever the outcome ends up being. It's not the popular opinion nor the correct one. It's been proven time and again that the machine is easily gamed. Be early to engage with certain types of content and you're guaranteed to dominate the top of the sort.
What we have are not naive social networks. We've arrived at some kind of simulacra. In attempting to "digitize the world" we created a mirror of real life discussion. The mirror has tarnished over time. Distorted and by now taken on a form of itself.
It's a people problem alright. At times people seem to be playing some kind of social media game. Quite often especially on reddit people say things in ways you never hear people talk in real life. It's bizarre.
For example making up scenarios to be angry about. What is even that??? When they have the crowd on their side then everyone is in on the game too. A rational commenter can say, "That's not possible. This scenario is completely fabricated." But it's too late. Everyone is upset and communally partaking in the original commenters rumination.
This is a human problem but one that was arrived at by the technical design of social media nudging people into very weird forms of socialization. It's like people don't know how to be normal anymore.
Moderators not mod tools are very important.. That word moderator doesn't mean what it used to mean. We need to examine definition of moderation. It means to avoid extreme behaviors. Moderators used to provide community guidance. To be the adult in the room. This does not exist on social media. A pillar of old messageboards were people moderators. Someone who would step in when the users misbehave. When people start talking or behaving crazy. Sometimes it was better to just remove a thread all together. These kind of things are essential in solving the people problem.
There's no mod tool that does this. And don't nobody tell me we can throw AI at it. If social networks are to be human then it needs human guidance (aka human moderators). Can't just throw scripts at the problem.
I've been saying for a long time (since the 2010s tech boom). There's needs to be a new term the public lexicon termed "poptech" or popular technology. In the same vein has popsci.
The technology anyone knows anymore is oversimplified for general audiences. These days is almost always imparting wrong understanding.
The industry has been rife with grifters. If people catch on then the bottomless pit of funding will become very shallow.
I got a ban from there after being confronted by a /pol/ troll. One of the ones that attacks things they don't like as being Indian. They said something about them needing to be genocided. I called them a nazi. That was the reason for the ban.
So that's why I'm pretty sure the mods of subreddit are basically /pol/. I think that whole subreddit is a front for controlling narratives.
Most of what I learned about LGBTQ came from homophobes. The ones who would not shut up about it.
For example when I didn't know that rainbows were associated with the community. I had friend school over one time. He saw a blanket with a rainbow stripe pattern. He basically had a gay panic meltdown. He was so certain we were a family of closeted gays.
So anyways later on he got a degree from a bible college or something. And he joined an evangelical church. One where they travel around to city streets around preaching from megaphones. Kind of like that Westboro Baptist thing.
In our early 20s he sexually assault me. I found out later from another guy we went to school with that he also forced himself on that guy too.
He's not the only person I've known like this but certainly the most crazy one.
If there's any true to the saying that gays rub their identity in everyone's face. Then it's the homophobe ones. It's got to be a massive projection. It's like they're trying to tell the world but it manifests as some kind of self-hate in denial or something.
I got ridiculed for talking about how you have to keep a conveyor belt of multiple accounts baking and ready to go (age, karma, post history). A thing that was once normally accepted mode of operation on reddit. Now the perspective has inverted. Reddit has managed to pivot itselt 180 degrees to a different class of internet user. They are totally naive though just as self-righteous as older reddit users.
Apparently now that MO is considered chronically online basement dweller behavior. I know it's not that deep. The newer reddit users are largely there for low brow entertainment. Including harassment/mockery/ridicule of any reddit user they find that is different from them.
They use reddit by scrolling their phone chasing dopamine hits. It's reddits version of the slot machine mechanics that just about every facet of the tech world has been implementing in their own way.
As for the "why was I banned" shenanigans. I think it's mostly automated trip wires every where. It's rats nest of it. Second to that is bad actors gaming it. That's a whole rant in itself.
The newer reddit users are technologically illiterate. They have no idea about bans or shadow bans. They'll keep engaging even though their activity is going into a shadowban blackhole.
Economically like the post-Soviet states. Socially and culturally like Iran after the revolution.
I don't think there will be a civil war. It seems like this is popular idea because the American narrative is programmed like Hollywood blockbusters that need to resolve itself between one to two hours. That means a setup, the big conflict, and the brief resolution. Where the righteous American hero prevails in the end as he walks away from the explosions without looking back.
Reality is slower. It's not a linear point A to B story. There's not necessarily the big event that immediately leads to victorious conclusion.
End stage capitalism is going to slowly get worse over the coming decades. The everyone for themselves mind-rot leads to the natural conclusion of economic decay for the lower majority as wealth and power further concentrates. There will effectively be commie blocks. Urban centers once the marvel of American economic and democratic might. Built when there was ample money, resources, and more functional civic systems to maintain it. The effects of the wealthy gutting social systems leaves a helpless population. This compounds a vicious cycle of urban decay.
The conservative supreme court supermajority is going to play out over the next several decades leading to deeply entrenched conservative backlash against secularization of the late 20th / early 21st century.
A saying I've seen a lot lately is that Americans have always had things work out for them. So they think it will continue to work out. It's made them complacent. They sit at home and watch MTV / Youtube while their country kept on winning just like that.
Sometimes there are situations where there is no coming back from. That's just individual life and world history. I think there's a very real possibility America just fades away.
I took psychology to get elective credits. That's how all those classes were. The 101 class was the standard Freud stuff. Then following courses was about the not commonly known psychologists.
One professor was more chatty but I dropped it because I couldn't handle the course load that semester.
Wasn't this known? long before the election. All these things have been earmarked for privatization. Something about some guy who already kissed Trumps ass so he has dibs on government weather data so he can sell it back to you. I remember hearing about his.
I only use reddit anymore for the meta. It's like a zoo. Its users are scarcely self-aware. I know this is conceited but whatever.
I think lemmy being a reddit clone is rather ill-fated but at least for now people generally still post like real human beings. There's something strange about how dialog is basically an algorithm. Reddit is reached some sort of maximum where nothing you can possibly say will deviate the flow of comment sections from the pre-defined talking points. It's like they're all stuck in neurotic thought cycles.
There's a video with Trevor Noah and John Stewart where they talk about how social media is a performance. It's not a "town square" or whatever. It's not really honest in good faith dialog.
You can't ignore the technical factors. The reddit model is fundamentally a sort machine. The voting and temporal mechanism means reddit style platforms are always sorting for whatever the outcome ends up being. It's not the popular opinion nor the correct one. It's been proven time and again that the machine is easily gamed. Be early to engage with certain types of content and you're guaranteed to dominate the top of the sort.
What we have are not naive social networks. We've arrived at some kind of simulacra. In attempting to "digitize the world" we created a mirror of real life discussion. The mirror has tarnished over time. Distorted and by now taken on a form of itself.
It's a people problem alright. At times people seem to be playing some kind of social media game. Quite often especially on reddit people say things in ways you never hear people talk in real life. It's bizarre.
For example making up scenarios to be angry about. What is even that??? When they have the crowd on their side then everyone is in on the game too. A rational commenter can say, "That's not possible. This scenario is completely fabricated." But it's too late. Everyone is upset and communally partaking in the original commenters rumination.
This is a human problem but one that was arrived at by the technical design of social media nudging people into very weird forms of socialization. It's like people don't know how to be normal anymore.
Moderators not mod tools are very important.. That word moderator doesn't mean what it used to mean. We need to examine definition of moderation. It means to avoid extreme behaviors. Moderators used to provide community guidance. To be the adult in the room. This does not exist on social media. A pillar of old messageboards were people moderators. Someone who would step in when the users misbehave. When people start talking or behaving crazy. Sometimes it was better to just remove a thread all together. These kind of things are essential in solving the people problem.
There's no mod tool that does this. And don't nobody tell me we can throw AI at it. If social networks are to be human then it needs human guidance (aka human moderators). Can't just throw scripts at the problem.