Just posted a question/discussion on Reddit about EV tarrifs. Was up for several hours, generated a great discussion and then it was removed by a mod. They reckoned it shouldn’t be there, despite loads of super-helpful comments that were relevant to the community. The mod directed me to another sub. I posted in there and it was auto removed in minutes. Then my account was banned. Platform is fucked.
Sounds like big brother doesn’t want people complaining about tariffs.
And big brother doesn’t want anyone to interfere with the financial bottom line of electronic vehicle sales.
Reddit is in bed with big brother.
I literally only still use Reddit for one niche hobby board.
yep, they don’t want actual content now
You can’t even post on many main subs like /r/videos. I mean, it will appear that you’re posting, but no posts are visible. I’m not sure what’s up with those subs, they’re very popular so should be getting a new post every minute, but there’s new one every 20 minutes or so, so it’s safe to assume nearly all are getting removed
there is a ton of shadow banning going on too I think, just completely discouraging for new real users
though they have identified me and my main devices and IP, I have created accounts on unrelated devices in an unrelated location and still been unable to make posts successfully. yes, they make show up to my user logged in, but not to anyone else
It literally does feel like this. The bots are already taking care of posting, you’re not supposed to be here smoothskin…
I completely removed my reddit account a few years ago. Occasionally I accidentally click on a reddit link. Thankfully, because I use a VPN, reddit blocks me from viewing their site.
I have been a very very long term user of Reddit for years but it is only in the past two years I have begun to notice a downturn in posts, moderation and pretty much every other aspect of the platform.
All things have a lifespan but honestly I have considered returning to good old phpBB. :D
Reddit is nothing but bots now and it’s way past time to just let it go.
Believe it or not but some of us old farts used to learn about things by reading, researching, and using libraries, etc. Wild! Right!?
Right, but people love sharing their knowledge and it’s super helpful for others to be able to troubleshoot something by reading how others handled similar problems. Both those things have more or less been killed off by enshitification, after after basically being a porn-tier staple of the Internet for decades. Not just on reddit, though.
The best part is, you get no “proof” of your “crime.” What was the post? Dunno, it was deleted. What was the reason? Dunno, you’re banned for 3 days, congratuatlions!
Fuck 'em, no more free content for them.
3 years ago in r/pics I left a comment to a pic. I know that it was a “piling-on” situation, as my entire comment was
And my axe!
Banned. The entire thread was killed and I could only see my comment: no clue as to context.
I asked a mod and got some ‘f-u’ response. I asked for clarification on that (politely, I promise) and got perma-banned.
Corrective action needs context. That was just fronting. As an ass, I can confirm: that mod also was an ass.
I was in a small country sub and I asked why I was banned and got a snarky reply saying I copy pasted my question from the internet and I’m like what bro and got permabanned. (This was before chatgpt) Later, I found out a bunch of the mods didn’t even live in the country which makes sense in hindsight cause they would be confused about certain cultural contexts and would take a more pro American stance when it comes to political posts/comments…
Its starting to happen here too which is disheartening.
Lemmy has open modlogs, so not really
Not as open as they used to be.
Makes you wonder about some of the folks ensuring their stakes are in the ground early here.
You can spin up your own instance though.
Reddit is unusable
Correct! The majority of Reddit content was already mostly fake users from botfarms and corporate astroturfing even before the rise AI.
There is a reason their vote system is a black box where votes go in and some other number comes out.
lol reddit is fine
Reddit makes more sense when you realize it’s not a discussion forum or a place to socialize, it’s a content generation company that you work for for free.
So stop using it. Problem solved.
No, problem is not solved. Ceasing to use Reddit yourself is necessary, but not sufficient. For the societal harm to end, everybody else needs to quit using it too.
Consider my statement as universal advice for everyone, not just OP.
Don’t go there anymore. Problem solved.
That’s not enough. Everybody else needs to quit using it too.
Everybody else is an idiot, eroding our way of life because of their ignorance and stupidity.
I tried, but I can’t control everybody else.
It’s so insane to me that mods would rather kill off a great discussion than let something that might be a little off topic exist.
Exactly. I even checked the community rules before I posted. Fucking basement-dwelling sociopaths.
There should be a place like reddit but with real people who post and moderate for their own enjoyment instead of being herded by corpofascists.
Man, if only there were a place like that
If you find this promised land, let me know.
I recommend to either;
- Use RSS feed to view Reddit posts.
- Curate it very tightly if you want to stay on Reddit.
- Do not post or comment a lot (if at all).
- Post your question/ discussion on Lemmy.
Personally, I have noticed a lot of hostility on Reddit, a lot more than it was before. Bots and people just post bait content and comments to stir up anger of people.
Plus Moderators on Reddit are just power tripping people. They feel high and mighty because of the volunteered position they have. It’s their way of coping with the fact they have to deal with unnecessary problems and conflicts for free.
I curated the Reddit feed on RSS but had to already delete 4-5 subreddits from the RSS feed due to the continuous bait posts.
the problem is all the AI crap reaches into your tiny niche subreddits. what you are talking about worked in the early 20s, but is no longer viable.
my local city sub had like 1000 regular users. but around '23/'24 w/ the last election it got 'turfed to shit and tons of AI bot removals of legit posts. most of the posting also became rage-baiting over political topics, or tourists making really dumb/controversial posts.
i never used popular subreddits, but in my time on reddit even niche subreddits eventually just got worse over time as it grew, and the moderators had ever shittier tools to manage them and ever more politicized. pre 2016 you could talk pretty openly on reddit about whatever, then the Trump election galvanized everyone into being thought police.
but none of that is reddit specific. it’s the entire internet and social media and real life as well. i lost a lot of irl friends over the last few years because social media warped their brains and radicalized them.
How are you so sure of that? What if you’re the one that’s radicalised not them and you just not aware of that face?
because most of my beliefs are boring and non-exciting. that’s now i know i’m not radicalized.
and the the radicals of both sides absolutely hate my stands on politics. if both sides hate you, you’re not radical
it sounds like you are proving their point lol
That is the problem when any forum/community gets “large” - to make it possible to find anything in the noise they have to be extremely strict about a narrow topic and killing anything not in that narrow topic. This in turn makes the mods look like jerks. Don’t read the above as saying the mods are not jerks, or defending them. Often they are jerks even when they don’t have to be.
What we need is a way to select everyone into smaller groups of random people who know something but don’t overlap. I sometimes want a couple doctors to discuss some deep issue near me, but 1000 would be too many. I sometimes want to talk fishing with a few people. There are millions of other topics someone can get in depth in and my life is better when I hear a few of those conversations - but all million is overwhelming. I don’t know how to do this though - there are too many “anti-vaxer” types in the world that sound like they know something about a topic when you don’t know anything about it: but they are worse than nothing.
I have the feeling that this is where we are (and have been) regarding politics and national borders with the current population levels. Local politics has slowly, over the course of centuries, been losing to national/federal politics. I feel like democracy works best when it’s in the sweet spot for not being too big (where good ideas are easily drown out) and not being too small (not being able to effectualize good ideas on a scale that matters).
I sometimes think the world would be better served if we went back to a nation-state size that promoted regional powers instead of global superpowers. I don’t know it would necessarily always be better because eras of recent history where there is no clear dominant regional power, you tend to get more wars. :/
Speaking to the USA, national politics became more important as the federal government became the means for funding social programs. People forget that the quality of life varied significantly between different states. You also saw a reevaluation of the limits of political morality, was it moral to let people in your country be politically oppressed.
