Reddit should break off all political content into its own site, porn into another, and keep the rest in place. If a post is porn or political, mods can click a button to move it to the dedicated site. This would be similar to the “move topic” functionality from phpBB and vBulletin.
This might solve a lot of problems, but it would create issues on the edge, like r/pics content that may not be overtly political but clearly has an agenda.
Personally I use Reddit exclusively for political flamewars on one account, and in-depth technical content on another account.
I’m starting to feel pretty unwelcome, though, when it comes to anything “misinformarion” related. Once you get banned from one subreddit, if you have a post reported on the same subreddit from another account, then both your accounts get banned site-wide. Combine this with the dragnet, unsolicited bans that some mods are sending to anyone who posts in certain subreddits and you have a real chilling effect.
The average IQ on Reddit is also about 110, which is just boring in most cases. When you can predict the top comments on a thread, reading them is probably a waste of time.
You're ignoring the way that subreddits like r/ChoosingBeggars are full of trivially faked texts that tick off every box to rile people up on political and social issues.
In the current polarized era, all discussion online is inherently political. The only way to escape it is in small groups with other people you have mutually agreed not to talk about it with.
This is the result of Citizens United; when elections are decided by who has the most money, it’s a zero-sum game until politics have consumed the totality of our lives.
Is HN "small"? Political discussions at HN (which are quite rare) seem obviously low-quality compared to the rest of the site, but still rank well above much of the Internet. I assume that the same would go for many niche-focused spaces, where curiosity and intellectual interest can dominate.
I actually don’t feel the discussion on any topic on HN is any higher quality than other sites with a similar age demographic. And yeah, HN is kinda small by internet standards.
This might solve a lot of problems, but it would create issues on the edge, like r/pics content that may not be overtly political but clearly has an agenda.
Personally I use Reddit exclusively for political flamewars on one account, and in-depth technical content on another account.
I’m starting to feel pretty unwelcome, though, when it comes to anything “misinformarion” related. Once you get banned from one subreddit, if you have a post reported on the same subreddit from another account, then both your accounts get banned site-wide. Combine this with the dragnet, unsolicited bans that some mods are sending to anyone who posts in certain subreddits and you have a real chilling effect.
The average IQ on Reddit is also about 110, which is just boring in most cases. When you can predict the top comments on a thread, reading them is probably a waste of time.