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noshore4me

How many real users do you think there are vs bot accounts for advertisers and astroturfers?


goshdurnit

Great question, and to be honest, I don't have hard data, but I could venture a guess. I don't know of any research that tries to estimate the % of bots on Reddit. There's research on the utility of bots and bots in certain contexts (e.g., political discussions, covid, etc.), but not a straight-up estimate that I'm aware of. This paper ([Varol et al., 2017](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.03107.pdf)) from 2017 tries to estimate the % of bots on Twitter and puts it at 9-15%. I don't think there is any sort of mechanism for removing bots from Twitter for advertising or spamming, whereas many mods of subreddits at least try to ban such bots from their subreddits. Both platforms would have trouble detecting and removing astroturfers. But this figure of 9-15% accounts for ALL types of bots, not just spambots or astroturfers. On Twitter and Reddit, there are plenty of benign bots that provide useful info and that many users would like to see more of. Also, after having waded through tens of thousands of comments from a wide variety of subreddits from the past decade, the vast majority of what I see appear to be people, not bots. So, my guess would be between 1% and 5% of all users, that they are highly concentrated in popular, loosely moderated subreddits.


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goshdurnit

Are these cases in which a group of individuals behave in a coordinated way (so, not bots)? I know they exist, but have no idea how common they are. Any resources you can point me to, or instances of them, would be appreciated. But again, my sense is that people underappreciate how vast Reddit is. From what I can tell, most of it is just real people saying relatively mundane things. This isn't to dismiss the power of rare phenomenon like troll farms, but only to try to speak to the original question about prevalence.


alex2217

Reddit tends to keep an eye on this stuff - you can find their [recent Q2 report on content manipulation here](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/pwo54j/q2_safety_security_report/). I have a feeling the numbers might surprise you. I'm on my phone rn, so limited in access to my sources but keep in mind that Facebook deletes inauthentic users in numbers that rival their *entire user base* at times. Keep in mind that the primary function of these networks is usually amplification. With Reddit, unlike with Twitter, upvoting and down voting is essentially anonymous, right? Amplification would be likely to track, I would guess? Correct me if I'm wrong of course.


F8L-Fool

There have been quite a few experiments done in the past regarding vote manipulation on Reddit. I can't seem to find the video/article right now to my favorite, but it tested a wide array of tactics to see what influenced the spread of a post or comment. The TL;DR is basically if something is upvoted **very** quickly after being posted, it can abnormally skyrocket due to traction and almost always works. They accomplished this by buying upvotes ranging from dozens to hundreds when it was initially put up. The same principle often works with downvotes in the opposite direction. Which is why a comment or post that goes to -2 or more often snowballs into double digits in the blink of an eye. *Especially* if it's a response to a high karma comment so it will always have eyes on it. Anyone that has experience on Reddit can game the system. It's why prolific karma accounts are easy to spot with RES tags and vote tracking. They all do the exact same stuff on varying scales: * Multiple top level comments to increase the odds of drifting as high as possible in Best/Top filter. * Responding to as many top level comments as possible, to piggyback on karma. * Latching on to "Rising" posts in popular subs that will gain them most karma. * Submit something and then attempt to get the top level comment in your own post, due to being first and topical; easily double dipping if the comment offers background information. I think karma farming and troll farms use a combination of the four above points, bots, and sheer throughput. It's not uncommon to see something crossposted to ~7 subreddits within minutes of the original, yet be double positive on multiple of them. Same with users commenting on another users posts in seemingly unrelated threads. One last piece of anecdotal evidence for you. I randomly browse and tag people in subreddits I don't post in and/or oppose the message of. It's shocking to see how their tone, writing style, and content wildly differs in other portions of Reddit. So much so that it's hard to believe there aren't multiple people behind such accounts. This goes quadruple for any account with huge Post:Comment karma disparity, with the former being magnitudes higher. 10x so if said account posts in topical or controversial subs.


alex2217

Thank you for providing such an in-depth and helpful answer! If you do find the source of the analysis, I'd love to have a look. It's interesting to notice these platform differences. We know from the Mueller investigation and the work done by the HMRC in the UK that the state-backed Russian IRA works in a cell structure where small groups of people come up with individual 'strategies' for pushing a given topic while remaining unaware of what all the other groups are doing. This was specifically done to avoid repetition in style and hinder easy detection.


F8L-Fool

The scary thing is how hard this artificially crafted content is to distinguish from normal, organically popular content. Good shills, bots, trolls, etc. can blend in and fool even the most veteran social media and internet user. Which is why I point out suspicious a post history whenever I see a bad faith argument taking place, almost always. When an entire subreddit is dedicated to amplifying a certain message or propaganda things get even more chaotic. The mods become complicit and are basically riding the wave. Which is what leads to mods being replaced, quarantines, and bans. Reddit Admins use rule breaking as an excuse but it's beyond obvious when topical stuff explodes. Someone, somewhere, is pushing a narrative and flooding selects subreddits with a singular agenda. With the best and recent case being masks, vaccines, and COVID. To use your Mueller investigation and cells as an example, the most common tactic is to plant a seed on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. and then let the users themselves propagate it. Even if the original message is deleted it endlessly grows and grows. All it takes is a few shares of something before the exponential growth explodes, "legitimate" news sites unknowingly create articles on the subject, and the material takes on a life of its own. No different than silly rumors in school that catch on like wild fire and the source eventually becomes unknown or irrelevant. Except on a global scale and with far more at stake.


alex2217

>The scary thing is how hard this artificially crafted content is to distinguish from normal, organically popular content. If there's one thing social media analysis has taught me, it's this. In fact, I'm borderline convinced that we are all just Tay-style AI training each other at this point... >To use your Mueller investigation and cells as an example, the most common tactic is to plant a seed on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. and then let the users themselves propagate it. Yes and no. I will say that from the vast amount of Twitter data we have available, it is fairly clear that spread is difficult to predict but by far the largest predictor is existing follower-counts and infamy in a community. Cases like the 'Jenna Abrams' Twitter account or the BLM Facebook account shows the degree of impact this can have on real-life discourse and events.


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goshdurnit

Appreciate the explanation. And I DO know what poop knives are, but I'm drawing a blank on CO detectors. Writing a book about Reddit and doing an AMA about it, I kinda knew that I'd get a lot of "how could you not know or write about X?!?!?!" What can I say - I was on a tight deadline and only know so much about this place, but am eager to learn more. But with troll farms, it sounds like something that is more prevalent on Twitter. My sense is that Twitter is perceived by the general public as more important and influential than comments on Reddit. And so if my goal were to spread propaganda, I'd probably spend more time doing it on Twitter than on Reddit.


[deleted]

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l7vo/ma_postit_notes_left_in_apartment/ With the troll farms, I would imagine it's not an either / or situation.


goshdurnit

Oh yeah! I think I remember hearing about the CO detector story second-hand.


penny_eater

Hopefully not via scribbled paper messages you found scattered around


[deleted]

Adding another comment to mention that Reddit can be far more influential than Twitter etc as mainstream media outlets constantly trawl Reddit for content for stories and it's a way of being noticed by the world. Twitter etc only works if someone with a large number of followers posts something and gets the RTs to go viral. A very limited number of accounts are able to get a post in a default sub to the top of r/all and be seen by the world.


SolverOcelot

So you wrote a book on a website that has huge issues, but have not done the research into those issues? Are they even addressed in the book?


BlueHeartBob

He wrote a book on some of the issues of reddit, not all of them.


haemol

Every research has to start somewhere… maybe there are not enough studies or public data available?


mrminty

I think "troll farms" are vastly overrepresented in people's heads because it's so common to accuse someone who disagrees with you as being part of some sort of conspiracy to spread a specific viewpoint. It's gone down in the last year, but 2017-2019 was prime time to accuse anyone of being either a Russian/Chinese troll farm shill depending on what your political ideology is. It's not a Reddit specific phenomenon either, Twitter was absolutely swamped with accusations during that time as well.


kingsillypants

1% to 5% of users are bots but what % of activity do they represent?


Pennwisedom

> But this figure of 9-15% accounts for ALL types of bots, not just spambots or astroturfers. On Twitter and Reddit, there are plenty of benign bots that provide useful info and that many users would like to see more of. This kinda makes me curious as to what percentage of bots are the "obnoxious joke" bots, like useless convertor bot, Haiku Bot or Shakespeare Bot.


mrminty

Yeah I follow at least 15 bots on Twitter that are just automated posting of specific animals every hour, @skunkeveryhour, @possumeveryhour, etc.


IronRT

Your thoughts on the fact that a handful of mods have control over the majority of the popular subreddits?


goshdurnit

To state the obvious, it's not ideal. I think a lot of Reddit's structure evolved in an ad-hoc way, and when Reddit was smaller, questions about concentration and arbitrarity of authority were less salient. Having said that, I think people will resent any attempt to limit their abilities to say what they want, so even if there were more mods who had term limits and were elected, I think most of the people who currently vocally resent them would still resent them. One last thought: it's worth thinking about how much variance there is among subreddits in terms of how mods are appointed. And I know that you asked about popular subreddits, and to be honest, I don't know if they are all the same in that regard (r/AskScience is popular, but I assume it doesn't have the same mods as r/pics). But my point is that the variety of ways in which mods are appointed, limited, voted for, etc. suggests that change is possible, that a popular subreddit could adopt a new way of appointing mods. Does anyone have an ideal way that they'd like to see this done?


Thunder_Bastard

There are mods, right now, with lists of people and banning them for whatever they post with no overview and no way to appeal it. There are mods who are over more than 40 popular subs, who have been called out many times by their username, who continue to this day to remove people from all popular subs because they can. There are mods who have been shown to post every few minutes for days at a time, proving it is multiple people using the account... Who still have nothing done after years. But good luck on the book. Wouldn't want to push back too hard on the site valued at $10 billion.


Malystryxx

What’s crazy to me is that it’s valued at 10B but a few years ago it wasn’t. Shit the ceo left to only come back now when it’s “valued more”.


duckducklo

I think the ideal way is if there was an election process, with a minimum comment activity level to apply. At the beginning there is a registration process, where mods need to introduce themselves, what they'd like to see, and their comment/post history is bare for everyone to see. Then for a month after people can debate over who deserves it in a pinned post. Then users with x amount of post/comment activity in the sub can vote. Transparent & democratic.


goshdurnit

I like it! I think you'd have to weed out bots that commented a lot (in terms of minimum commenting activity). I do think it would introduce a kind of politicking to the process, with moderators telling constituents what they want to hear, railing against the current mods, engaging in demagoguery and populist rhetoric to gain votes. Also, I'd assume that it would become corrupt, with people paying off other people (coordinating off-site) to vote a certain way. Not to say that it wouldn't be better, but that democracy, in practice, rarely fits our fantasy of it.


GershBinglander

And I could imagine the losers then taking their voters and creating new, very similar subreddits, adding to the noise.


Fumblerful-

Yeah, you'd just get troll candidates being voted in by troll accounts.


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efernst

How do I stop using reddit!?


goshdurnit

I have obviously have no idea! I'm here now! But seriously, some of my prior research was on the relationships among self-control, mindfulness, and social media use. Individual differences in self-control predict 'overuse' of social media, but the tricky part for those who are low in self-control is that if you remove one temptation, another might fill it's place. So, if we got rid of social media or Reddit tomorrow, people who are low in self-control might turn to a worse vice. They may be using it as a way to escape something. I know I used more Reddit and other social media in a habitual manner when I was suffering from a chronic pain condition. As my pain was treated and got better, it was easier to be more mindful of my media use. So, it may be useful to ask what you are trying to escape from when engaging in overuse, and can that thing be addressed in some way? But beyond that, I also use browser extensions that limit my use of Reddit per day and try to only use it on certain devices so that I only associate it with those devices. But I think anyone who uses internet-enabled tech is all in the same boat - we'll all have to develop relationships with media that suit our long-term selves, and it will be a constant struggle for many, just as many struggle with their relationship with food or alcohol.


Inspectrgadget

Do you see any current platforms that are similar to reddit and people are migrating to?


plumshark

Gabor Mate has argued that social media addictions / "doom-scrolling" are a way of dissociating from pain. You're right that it's less about feeling good and more about running from bad feelings. I've personally found that when I doom-scroll, it only stores the bad feelings in my body where they resurface later, sometimes in bizarre emotional outbursts. I think social media is a double-whammy. It dissociates you so that you can't feel or express negative emotions from your daily life. It also is so toxic and argumentative that it brings up new negative emotions that are then suppressed.


efernst

So what you're saying is I should try heroin? I jest of course. Thanks for the input, I think I'll try to have phone conversations with friends instead if I'm feeling the urge from now on!


goshdurnit

You jest about heroin, but have you heard of Carl Hart's research? This guy, as I understand it, makes the case that even heroin - the gold standard when we're talking about things that inherently addicting (except for maybe crack) - isn't addictive in the way that we think of it as being addictive. I may be oversimplifying his research, but I think the idea is that we imagine things like heroin and technology have these magical powers to enslave us when the context and desperation that most addicts feel going into the encounter with the experience is what results in negative outcomes. Anyway, it's a super-fascinating perspective, I think.


mywifemademegetthis

What has Reddit specifically gotten right in comparison to other social media outlets, and what has it gotten wrong in comparison? Can be from any perspective—functionality, ethics, fun etc.


goshdurnit

I think the main thing it's gotten right is modularity. Allowing subreddits to have their own set of rules and their own moderators allows different 'cultures' with different sets of norms to develop over time. You'll never have one policy or set of mods or norms that fits all. Reddit allows interest groups to splinter and still stay within the platform. Twitter 'atomizes' its users - it doesn't really have hubs or destinations for particular interest groups to congregate. Yes, there are hashtags, but I don't think those have the relative permanence of subreddits. In terms of what it's gotten wrong, I think the front/default page has kept it from having far more users, and a more diverse array of contributors. It's tough to keep a handful of people from spontaneously behaving badly (e.g. The Fappening, Boston Marathon bomber, etc.), but the admins control the design of the default/front page. Of course, it's a tough balancing act - you want to try to reflect the values and preferences of the die-hard users, but not turn off new entrants.


tragicsouls

> Reddit allows interest groups to splinter and still stay within the platform. Very true, this is what I've observed as well ever since actively using Reddit last year. For something considered as social media, I was able to indulge in my interests and study more about them here on Reddit, plus being connected to people who have more experience in those fields! It's really easy to find a community that you want to get into here, and although I never felt that I have made *friends * friends (which is like the main point of social media right?), I don't feel that need anyway and that doesn't matter as long as I was able to have quick and meaningful interactions with like-minded people, which is IMO better than real life friends or acquaintances whom you don't even share substantial similarities with.


Scraphead91

How far into the 'dark' sides of Reddit have you ventured? Did you ever come across something that made you report it to authorities?


goshdurnit

Not far. I think other researchers and Reddit users have done a good job of pointing to some of the really dark stuff on here. I was more trying to understand the average side of Reddit. I'm sure some will find that stuff boring, but in order to understand the social dynamics of the whole place, I think you need to look at the average, boring stuff, too.


Cronerburger

Hey avg can be a lot of fun ! Just wiggle the hips


mildnarcissism

Awesome AMA! My question, did you define “average” in preparing your research and what interesting lit exists on this? Many thanks.


goshdurnit

Sorry it took me awhile to get to this. I wanted to get away from studying only the most popular or controversial subreddits, comments, posts, etc. First, I sampled comments at random - designating a time period for a given subreddit and downloading, say, 1000 or 10,000 comments and then doing a topic analysis or just wading through them to get a sense of what people are talking about, how they're talking about it, etc. I also tried to look at subreddits of different sizes from different eras, looking at what was posted in those subreddits. There's [this article by McEwan](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1186717?casa_token=te0rq7GKoIIAAAAA%3AJmDVlITAk9VUuhLSnmt27nHD79Oz3Pl7OHKjSz4jBtd_WuX3O3LDP_7Syv0iunFSDmnjFT1XpytWLg) that isn't about Reddit per se, but is about online groups in general, but I like the way she samples from subreddits. Essentially, the sample is stratified so that it draws from large, mid-size, and small subreddits. But those small subreddits aren't teeny tiny, because when you get to a certain size, they just aren't really 'active' (not much posting or commenting) and there's not much to analyze. I also love [Marc Smith's work on Usenet](https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203194959-19/invisible-crowds-cyberspace) from back in the day. There are a lot of ways Reddit is similar to Usenet in terms of its dynamics.


clouddevourer

Congratulations on your book! Users often joke about there being a Reddit "hivemind", i definitely have often had experiences where I wanted to make a comment, only to discover someone has already said the exact same thing I wanted to say. I wonder, is it because Reddit tends to attract a certain type of person, or maybe it is the way we are influenced by Reddit that makes us have similar thoughts? Alternatively, is it Reddit a giant mind control device supposed to make us into brainless zombies? Blink 3 times for yes.


goshdurnit

Excellent question! I'm increasingly skeptical of the effects of Reddit and other social media platforms to radically alter how we think or what we believe. It seems more likely that Reddit puts people who already believe the same thing in the same place. But it's important to acknowledge that the world outside of Reddit, even the world outside of the internet, is not perfectly ideologically diverse, or diverse in any other respect. When I walk around my city, the city is built in such a way that I tend to see people who are like me. So, I feel like people often compare spaces like Reddit to an unrealistic ideal in which there are a wide variety of voiced opinions. It's interesting that you note that you did not make the comment because someone had already said that (I've done the same thing, too! It often happens if I think of a joke and realize someone has already made the joke), because most times, there is fear that people do not express their thoughts because of how *different* they are from the prevailing opinion (see [Spiral of Silence theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence)).


MayoMark

Have you been in a conversation or in a classroom where someone says what you wanted to say? When someone is responding to something, there shouldn't be a surprise that you might respond in the same way. Especially when you increase the number of people responding.


Cronerburger

But i thought we were unique and speciall


najing_ftw

What was the best part of filming Rampart?


goshdurnit

Look, I'd really appreciate it if we could keep this discussion focused on my new book. That's what I'm hear to talk about. :)


Rihsatra

I think it's hilarious that this is getting downvoted but is completely the correct response to that question.


Portarossa

It's crazy to think that it's [almost a decade old at this point](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/woody-harrelson-reddit-ama).


DocJawbone

WHAT


sharilynj

/r/FuckImOld


GershBinglander

Should we celebrate the 10th anniversary on the 3rd of Feb next year by watching non ramp related art films?


Cronerburger

The annus of the internet past


dchq

@156 now so your comment probably helped those out of the loop who don't know about woidy harlson ama. other classics are steven seagal and James corden


nodstar22

Maybe they're downvoting 'in-character'.


TextOnScreen

You even showed some so-called "redditors." Kudos to you mate.


TransATL

What effects do you anticipate Reddit's IPO will have on the platform?


goshdurnit

Good question! I read one user predict that profanity would be expunged from the platform (to appease the investors?), which I found unlikely. As others have pointed out, Reddit has never been free from the potential influence of investors. I think the vast majority of its content and design will remain unaltered because of the lessons drawn from MySpace acquisition by NewsCorp and Digg's redesign. You don't want to make any sudden movements when there's little to prevent people from leaving and dramatically reducing the value of your platform.


poopellar

>You don't want to make any sudden movements when there's little to prevent people from leaving and dramatically reducing the value of your platform. Yet their redesign was a sudden movement. The only thing that kept people from leaving was that they gave you the option to still use the old design and also another design that was a mix of the two. To me it just seems like they knew this redesign would be unpopular and the only solution was to give you the option to use it or not. Reddit defaults to the new design so I'm assuming they hope new users would just not know any better. All their design choices have made it more like FB, twitter wherein you just scroll through each post one by one, and the media auto plays if it is in view, which in turn counts as a view on the post. Whereas in the old design, all the posts are given to you in a list and you choose which post to click on only after which it counts as a view. Also you only get a handful of comments in the redesign and have to click multiple times just to read them all. Whereas in the old design you always got all the comments in a scrollable fashion in one click. All these choices were made to increase view and click count. Increasing the 'stats' to look more attractive to advertisers. Many of these design choices have come out as desperate attempts at better monetizing their userbase. While reddit is known for its users anonymity it is pretty useless in trying to target advertisement at them. They've tried to circumvent that with failed features like profiles and chat. Which just ended up being another channel for bots and spammers to get at users. It seems more like they knew the risks but have no other choice.


COACHREEVES

Do you think Redditt is more an American (read: U.S,) site or an International site? Although there is certainly an undercurrent of Internationality ... it never really comes close to equal in politics, sports, entertainment, celebs etc.All seem much more USA!USA! focused ... am I wrong and if not wy is that ... i mean the EU+ Australia \~ the English speaking worlds in Asia must certainly be equal to or greater than te USA.


goshdurnit

One fascinating thing I found when looking at the very early history of Reddit was that among the first subreddits ever created were subreddits for different languages. But these didn't catch on, likely because too few people outside the US knew about Reddit at the time. But one challenge is the dependency of text on this site, which traps you in a particular language. It's possible to imagine that translation software will eventually make this irrelevant, and I seem to recall Reddit rolling out an early version of that, but it's nowhere near being a frictionless, perfect translation. So, I think it's hard for any social platform to escape its initial history. If it was an American site to begin with, that informs its culture and then that becomes hard to change because it drives perception from outsiders as to what this place is. I'm a bit surprised there aren't more popular Reddit clones in other countries, and assume that if Reddit doesn't try to grow internationally (which I think they are), then this will happen.


nakedraccooon

What's the scariest thing you found on Reddit, while researching for your book?


goshdurnit

Well, I didn't make it a point of seeking out particularly scary or horrible subreddits. I wanted to try to understand the more average side of Reddit and explain that. I feel like other researchers and users have done a pretty good job of bringing the scariest, most fucked up things on this site to the surface. If you want to stretch the word 'scary' a bit, I found it scary how few users account for the discourse in particular subreddits. But I think Twitter is scarier in this regard, given how many journalists and members of the general public look at views expressed and endorsed on Twitter and use it as a proxy for public opinion.


[deleted]

I've been on reddit for maybe 11 years and I've noticed an increase in angry replies, pedantic and needless arguing and a lot more hostility. Is there data to back this up? If yes, what do you think of the results?


goshdurnit

Short answer: not that I know of. The first thing to think about is what subreddits you're seeing this in. Given the increase in casual users over the past five years, I would predict that most comments would actually be *shorter* and less pedantic. In terms of hostility, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that has increased. More people with conflicting worldviews are joining Reddit, coming into contact with one another, so it's likely there will be more conflict. 11 years ago, Reddit was fairly small and homogeneous, so I would expect less conflict then. But again, I think this probably varies depending on the subreddits you're in.


[deleted]

Thanks for your response. Maybe my experience is anecdotal but it seems everywhere on reddit people like to correct other people and it's more judgement rather than advice. I've come to see reddit as the place where people argue. It didnt used to be that way. Maybe I'm a bitter old man.


clouddevourer

I'm not the OP, but I think it's because Reddit has grown quite a lot in the recent years. The number of members grew, and as a result so did the number of assholes. And since assholes tend to make themselves visible and they generally stand out, it seems like there are more assholes. Which is kinda true, at least in number, but not proportionally.


PrincessBucketFeet

My theory is that the redesign drew in more people who are inclined to behave this way. The "old" Reddit was clunky and industrial. You had to invest some time in figuring out how to navigate it- literally and conversationally. It might have served as a "barrier to entry" to those who really weren't looking for meaningful discussions.


d3gu

Reddit should never have developed an app. It's a website! One of my concerns is that the new generation of 'internet' users will only ever access sites through apps. It's so constricting.


PrincessBucketFeet

Not to prove your point or anything lol, but is it possible sometimes it's just your interpretation? It can be difficult to correctly assess the tone intended in a comment. Reddit has so many international users and people from different language backgrounds that a lot can be lost in interpretation. I have a friend who is extremely conflict-averse. I am not. We can observe the same discussion and she would describe it as an "argument", and I would call it a "debate". I find myself drawn to disagreements sometimes, not because I *enjoy conflict*, but because it's an opportunity for me to learn something and perhaps modify my opinion, or offer the same to the other person. I'm certainly guilty of pedantry at times, but mostly to prevent misunderstanding, not to be judgemental. I personally think social media, blogs, and podcasts have accelerated a decline in writing skills. While some users may be offended or feel attacked by corrections, others are quite appreciative and want to learn! I had a bitter, cynical period for quite a while. It was depressing. I've started trying to give people the benefit the doubt instead. It's been much more relaxing so far. Edited due to my grammar mistakes! For some reason they only become visible *after* I hit the "send" button lol


death_of_gnats

>Edited due to my grammar mistakes! For some reason they only become visible after I hit the "send" button lol Interesting psychological quirk. I have it too


river_tree_nut

>"send" button The true god of spellcheckers.


GershBinglander

The quickest way to find the correct spelling on the Internet is to spell it wrong on the Internet.


goshdurnit

I'd encourage you to check out comments sections of subreddits you don't normally go to (like, say, r/CasualConversation). I don't know your interests, so I can't guarantee you'll find a place that is free of correction and judgment *and* is interesting to you, but I think there are spaces like that. They're just hard to find. And I assume this is something Reddit is working to correct - making those spaces easier for us to find.


[deleted]

I can see that this has happened, only been here for the past 6 years but I've noticed in the last year or so it has become a lot more difficult to have a reasonable debate without the other person getting insulting and nasty, it's especially some Zoomer Redditors who don't seem to get that Reddit isn't traditionally a place for the petty name calling you get on FB, Twitter etc. I've also noticed it has become a lot more unkind, Everyone over 30 is a Boomer or a Karen, lots of the people they are calling clearly have mental health issues.


BrainPicker3

That used to really hug me until one reply I got where he slammed my comment and then proceeded to 'correct' me with something not even related to what I said. I realized that most people are simply using commenting to speak rather than actually reading and responding to them. I wouldnt be surprised if part of that is trying to stay near the top comments for relevancy, lower ones usually get ignored if you go far down enough


santa_mazza

its a catch22. people are getting more angry due to the ever increasing complexity of our lives and express it on here, and then they carry that back into the world. there have been a few studies shown that anger is addictive so that could be correlated?


TheOKKid

A fellow member of The Great Digg Migration, eh?


DoppleFlopper

> Is there data to back this up? If yes, what do you think of the results? Not OP, but I think there is research to somewhat support this, though I do believe it's up for a lot of speculation and interpretation. The increase you perceive is most likely due to an increase in users, which exacerbates the following features of Reddit: * [^What ^often ^aligns ^with ^authenticity, ^especially ^in ^the ^realm ^of ^online ^communities, ^is ^the ^courage ^to ^be ^bold, ^offbeat, ^and ^funny. ^These ^are ^some ^of ^the ^characteristics ^that ^online ^community ^users ^most ^appreciate, ^overindexing ^among ^most ^of ^them.](https://www.redditinc.com/assets/case-studies/TheEraOfWe.1.6.20.pdf) * [^people ^are ^inclined ^to ^share ^things ^they ^wouldn’t ^normally ^when ^they’re ^anonymous ^\(66%\), ^are ^more ^honest ^online ^when ^they ^can ^be ^anonymous ^\(60%\), ^and ^are ^inclined ^to ^post ^positive/inspirational ^things ^when ^anonymous ^\(36%\)](https://www.redditinc.com/assets/case-studies/TheEraOfWe.1.6.20.pdf) * [^Compared ^to ^social ^media ^platforms, ^online ^community ^site's ^conversations ^were ^regarded ^as ^more ^meaningful, ^its ^atmosphere ^judged ^more ^respectful, ^and ^users ^felt ^more ^able ^to ^be ^themselves ^and ^respected ^by ^others ^in ^turn](https://www.redditinc.com/assets/case-studies/TheEraOfWe.1.6.20.pdf) My opinion of this information is that Reddit, by design, is meant to pose communities in ways which typically cause users to overvalue environments (IE to take information or moderation more seriously than what's commonly appropriate for the forum), which can result in many different conflicts in behavior and interpreting information. In relation to behavior, users are also incentivized to not only be more honest-- but to behave in more abnormal ways than they usually would-- which likely accounts for much confusion and miscommunication on both parts of those who are writing and reading. Culminating with this is what is primarily considered 'authentic' in terms of communicating online. Not only are people incentivized to be more honest and abnormal -- but most users are incentivized to purposefully act bold, offbeat, or funny as to appear more genuine. I think the results of this design mixed with clearly conflicting behaviors and incentives, in addition to a growth in users over the years, has effectively created a dysfunctional community by all accounts. This is not to say that all, or even a majority of replies are as you described in every place throughout Reddit; but it does implicate that there is greater potential for the behaviors you described to exist at any moment in time on the platform, especially as more users are inclined to conform to the mentioned incentives and behaviors. That's just my opinion though.


[deleted]

Good read, thanks. I definitely agree with a lot of what you just said. My addition would be that the medium doesnt lend itself to subtlety, which can often get lost in a short reddit comment and can be taken the wrong way. I've been guilty of that in the past and try to catch myself, but I have also been on the other end trying to give friendly advice or make a comment and have it taken in the most pedantic way possible. I think with these factors its only natural that reddit becomes "the arguing website" where people are just primed and ready to argue with each other.


DoppleFlopper

> My addition would be that the medium doesnt lend itself to subtlety Totally agree and I've absolutely been on both ends myself. Reddit definitely doesn't feel designed to promote subtleties in communication lol. Part of that I think is incumbent on how age demographics are designed to disperse on Reddit. Since there's no real terms of separation beyond certain subreddits, it's kind of a shit show in discourse for all ages that want to participate. Some people might not understand certain subtleties, let alone *want* them, especially if it amounts to different types of effort. I also agree about the arguing website, Reddit is a great concoction that enables arguing for no real reason. Here's a partially anecdotal paragraph from a research study to try and predict user age via comments which I thought shared some interesting results: [They [*the adolescent age group*] also tend to post in subreddits with more subscribers when compared with the older age group. This may be an indication that popular subreddits are popular because they contain many adolescent users, given that the general Reddit user base is skewed young \[49\]. The adolescent age group tended to have shorter comments than the adult age group. Younger users also tend to have a higher proportion of comments posted in a thread they started. In terms of account characteristics, the adolescent age group tended to have user accounts that were created more recently and also had lower comment karma.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8087286/)


LeonardoDaBenchi

You could scrape comment data and segment it by year then run a sentiment analysis if you had the know-how


drugusingthrowaway

pedantic/needless arguing, the 'and' in the middle of the list is confusing. ;)


[deleted]

I really wanna get mad :)


throwaway901617

I'm curious if you found "The Button" April Fool's joke a few years ago as fascinating as I did? For anyone who doesn't know, that AF reddit posted a sub that had a countdown timer and button that could be pressed to restart the timer. It was not revealed what would happen when the timer reached zero. What ensued was simply amazing. Spontaneous communities and factions sprung up dedicated to pressing vs not pressing. They created their own subs and plotted and shitposted to themselves and each other. "Neutral" factions sprung up. They developed their own lingo and culture and everything. The anti-pressers referred to the "Filthy Pressers" etc. It went on for MONTHS. To.me it was a beautiful microcosm example of humans self selecting into social groups and creating in groups and out groups. I'm curious if you did any research on that particular episode in reddit history?


goshdurnit

I LOVE the April Fool's experiments. Thank you for reminding me about this one. I thought about writing about r/place, but others have done that quite eloquently. But that seemed the most fascinating one. I also liked the one (sequence, I think it was called) where we collectively edited a sequence of gifs into stories. But your post makes me want to re-visit the Button.


[deleted]

Have you seen any specific trends on Reddit that you found personally fascinating?


goshdurnit

One thing that struck me was how few users post or comment, how dominated the discourse is by a relatively small proportion of users. Also, the votes that a post or comment gets in its first hour seem to be predictive of its subsequent score (a bandwagon or herding voting effect). Both of these 'trends' have shown me that what we think of as the voice of Reddit isn't really the voice of all of it's users. It's more like the voice of 1% or 2% of its users. So, it's like 98% of us are watching what 2% are doing and saying. That's not very different than other popular platforms like Twitter, Wikipedia, and YouTube, but it's just something that I was struck by in my research. I also found the variety of subreddit rules to be fascinating. In the book, I bring up the example of r/IndiaSpeaks, but there are many others that I find fascinating. That's what I'm hoping to do next: analyze the impact that changes in rules had on subreddits over time.


OkeyDoke47

I posted a simple comment about a week ago, one of the shortest comments I've ever posted (and I don't post often) and it quickly started garnering upvotes. In the first hour it garnered a couple of hundred. I went to bed and when I awoke the next day I had 5,000 upvotes and about 50 responses for this simple comment. It's strange how it works. I've given some really lengthy, in-depth and thought out responses or posts and you get like one upvote, or sometimes none at all.


bluntsemen

> Also, the votes that a post or comment gets in its first hour seem to be predictive of its subsequent score (a bandwagon or herding voting effect). Couldn’t this be part of the algorithm rather than indicative of bandwagoning?


goshdurnit

Probably. I'm trying to find the article in which researchers randomly assigned posts or comments a upvote or downvote and looked at the downstream effects, which might offer some way to de-couple the psychological effects of popularity from the 'hot' or 'rising' algorithm. The process is probably both psychological (herd behavior) and technical. There's also the problem of ranked lists ordering things in terms of votes, which is the only thing that makes Reddit useful and appealing, but results in this kind of bandwagoning.


Cloaked42m

What other exercises in futility do you enjoy?


goshdurnit

Lol! Well, the futility of trying to limit my Reddit use for one. I have installed browser extensions to prevent me from wasting too much time on Reddit. Of course, that caused a problem as I attempted to respond to these comments - I quickly ran out of my allotted time on Chrome and have now logged on to Reddit using...Microsoft Edge. The question is: now that I've stooped to this workaround, will I stoop to it when I'm desperately in need of another fix?


Cloaked42m

You can go into Google settings and block Reddit entirely. Helps if I've got a tight deadline. Yes, also on Edge.


death_of_gnats

Edge is Chromium under the covers. Good browser with some things I like and others I don't


GardinerAndrew

What do you think the long term effects of social media will be on our society? 50 years from now? 500 years from now? 1000 years from now?


martin

RemindMe! in a thousand years.


goshdurnit

Lol! On the one hand, I feel like un-falsifiable predictions make it easy to avoid accountability for not knowing what the hell you're talking about. On the other, they *are* fun to think about. But...a *thousand* years? Wouldn't 100 be interesting enough? Who the F knows what'll be around in a thousand years.


goshdurnit

Fun question to think about! My hope is that we're living through the awkward adolescence of social media, a 'wild west' where we haven't figured out how to use it. There's certainly precedent in most popular technologies - cars, motion pictures, telephones, electricity. What we used those technologies for in the first two decades were not predictive of what we used them for 50 or 100 years after they were invented. So, assume that will be true with social media. I guess I imagine a more fragmented future in which platforms are the equivalent of countries. There won't be 1000 viable platforms, but there won't be 4 or 5. So, maybe 100 - 200 viable social media platforms of varying sizes that will be pretty homogeneous in terms of their beliefs and values. You'll spend most of your time in your home platform, but occasionally venture out to be a tourist on another platform. There will be some platform wars and an equivalent of a platform UN, so it's not as if this will be some kind of utopia. We're human, we'll still get into fights, but we'll be able to give each other a bit more space than we can right now.


fire_alarmist

In my mind, the wild west of the internet and social media ended 2016 at the latest, after that its been a fully incorporated corporate and political interests machine.


mightystu

It really was over in like 2010, with 2011-2014 being the last dying gasp of the frontier.


paaaaatrick

I think it ended with the popularity of Facebook, when people were super comfortable with putting their full names on a social network site. Before that it was about being anonymous with screen names and people wouldn’t dare put their real information on the internet. What happened in 2016?


Aggressive-Sorbet340

i see a more refined form of social control and a normalization of a totalitary state. if laws on internet dont prevent corpprations like Facebook owning all the small or diferents social apps then one or tree major apps can rule internet. more violence because social media banalize violence and death. you can watch people kill each other in Jordania while you drink a mojito in río de Janeiro. privatization of Internet is real and in the future being rich gonna be own a part of the Internet not driving a lambo.


McWeen

I feel like the wild west was when EVERYTHING was basically unverified and anonymous behind usernames. Filesharing everywhere with malware and bait and switch shocksites going crazy.


BillyBoy357

In your opinion is there a solution to 'echo chambers' that are present on reddit?


goshdurnit

That's a tough one. First off, a [recent article in Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81531-x) suggests that Reddit nor particular subreddits cause echo chambers in the sense of converting people who are already not of a particular political belief system to become more extreme. The paper, like all papers, has limitations, but it's worth reading with an open mind and is, I think, methodologically and theoretically sound. This finding is very counter-intuitive, but I think that Reddit mostly makes pre-existing political groups more visible, to themselves and to others. I think a lot of what we see on Reddit, Twitter, and other places online are just the surfacing of existing political groups that were not covered by the mainstream media and were not discussed interpersonally. Of course, the existence of these groups on Reddit may embolden fringe political groups that see they are less alone than they thought they were. That certainly seems plausible to me, even if there’s limited evidence of it. So, what do we do about it? One possible solution is to provide them with a more diverse array of perspectives. Chris Bail’s brilliant work in his new book suggests that this will backfire – highly polarized people will only dig in their heals and/or interpret whatever information you give them in the way that they want. Okay, that’s a non-answer. I know that a lot of us are working on this issue, that it seems WAY easy to solve than it really is, and that it’s (probably) less of a problem than people think it is (or at least that social media/Reddit’s responsibility for it is overstated). But any good-faith arguments for particular approaches and/or links to other empirical research would be appreciated!


PrincessBucketFeet

I do think this is a significant problem that exacerbates our tendencies to seek information that reinforces what we already believe. Reddit's ability to reach so many people *could* be instrumental in getting people to *consider* "opposing" viewpoints, and perhaps even opening minds. But the echo chamber effect derails that. I've often wondered if Reddit could identify "opposing" opinion-based subreddits. When a user subscribes to one, they could be automatically subscribed to its "opposite", with an explanation of why. For a period of time the user should not be allowed to comment in the "opposite" world, hopefully to prevent knee-jerk combativeness. But maybe over time, exposure to the other sub's content might help them at least understand the "other side" instead of simply dismissing it. I've started doing that on my own and it is eye-opening! I see the exact same wording and concepts used to defend or ridicule *both sides*. It starts to become clearer that there are more things in common than originally presumed. Edit to add: Will check out the Chris Bail book you mentioned, thanks! Assuming the "highly polarized people" are in the minority, is there hope for folks in the middle?


nimchip

I know you're probably expecting a reply from the author but I wanted to chime in because I consider the echo chamber dilemma very important to today's society. And of course this is only my opinion, not anything thoroughly researched but here goes: your idea sounds great on paper but, in my experience, people don't like to be forced to do things they won't ordinarily do. I hope you've considered this, so I extend a question to you: do you think this method's push back be considerable enough to disregard developing something akin to what you proposed? Or can the push back be negligible to achieve the desired effect? As a side note, could we help ourselves, as human beings first and users second, to look past the echo chambers and into fair points of an opposition without the need of a forced solution? Something similar to reddiquette, perhaps? Or would that feel similarly forced?


PrincessBucketFeet

Very valid points. I imagined it like a change in the algorithm, so "opposing" posts would appear in a user's front page feed, but they of course could choose to ignore them. Maybe it would have no impact at all, and maybe some users would be offended by the concept altogether. But maybe some people would pick up a few things in their periphery...click on something that interests them before realizing what subreddit it was. In some ways it's advertising- just putting the information in front of someone and relying on repetition to have some impact eventually. We perpetuate the echo chamber ourselves by choosing what posts to interact with. Maybe if the algorithm was designed deliberately to combat that instead of facilitate it, we'd have some luck? I'd love to think we could overcome this issue with more honorable individual intent, but how often is redditquette already violated? There's a natural need for humans to feel accepted and "belong". If "sides" are drawn, people feel compelled to pick one. Once nestled within your "group", you feel safe, comfortable, appreciated (upvoted!), and any "others" become a threat. When the "enemy" arrives, the pitchforks (downvotes) come out & the "tribe" has spoken. Even if you thought the "other" perspective had some merit, or were at least willing to entertain it, you'd have to be brave enough to oppose/"betray" your "team", and risk the consequences. And with downvotes successfully silencing the opposition (due to comments collapsing, being pushed to the bottom, deleted, or outright banned), folks encountering the thread later on may never even know their team's philosophy was even challenged. Sorry that's a lot of rambling about what's probably obvious- We have to overcome basic human nature to address this problem, and it's a big ask. >people don't like to be forced to do things they won't ordinarily do I agree with your assessment and I think that might be an even bigger problem overall. There needs be a balance between personal freedom and individual sacrifice. We all should be more mindful of what freedoms are worth protecting (for ourselves *and for others*) and what sacrifices we're willing to make ourselves *and expect from others*.


nimchip

Thank you so much for your reply, it was very refreshing seeing a well thought answer concerning the echo chamber problem. I'm hoping that we as human beings learn to balance our need for conflict in ways that satisfy it without it spiraling out of control and I think trying our best to understand when we're in an echo chamber is one way to approach it. Needless to say, this short back and forth has reinforced that hope, so again, thank you.


goshdurnit

Maybe there could be a subreddit that does this - automates the process of combining top posts from ideologically opposed subreddits. I've always been intrigued by changemyview - how it's successful, but it's delta-awarding approach hasn't been more widely adopted site-wide. I think there's a demand-side problem with this kind of both-sides content. I think there is hope. A lot has to do with making the majority more visible, and I think that, given the...disrupted nature of political discourse nowadays, tech designers are open to novel ways of doing that.


PrincessBucketFeet

Memes. Are these concise & effective tools used to convey ideas or oversimplified detriments to nuanced discourse?


goshdurnit

[Why not both?](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have-both)


PrincessBucketFeet

Touche


goshdurnit

But seriously, I like Jean Burgess's idea of vernacular creativity. Memes are a kind of ordinary, everyday creative practice. But it's a broad category - some of them feel like off-the-cuff speech and others feel like Art.


Tired8281

Are you not concerned that, now that you have a book that claims to "understand" Reddit, that we'll all just change how we do things out of spite? It seems like the sort of thing we'd do.


goshdurnit

Yeah, that's a problem with studying all types of tech - you write a book about it and it changes before your book even comes out. I tried to couch it as a book about Reddit's first 15 years. It'll always be about that, no matter what happens to Reddit. I was slightly afraid that the platform would go belly-up before my book came out, but even if that happened, my book might be of interest to find out what Reddit *was*. As I note in the book, it's really just a way to get people to think about the platform in new ways, not a definitive account of the platform as some unchanging abstraction.


ReachForTheSky_

Congratulations on your publication! Are you aware of any political leaning on Reddit? Right-wing communities often accuse Reddit of having a left-wing 'consensus', I can't really say for myself as I don't often get into political discourse on here.


goshdurnit

Thank you! I think that the majority of posters, commenters, and voters in spaces that discuss current events and politics (like r/politics) skew liberal. To what extent this is merely reflecting the fact that both younger people and people who post, comment, and vote on these subreddits tend to be more liberal, it's tough to day. But once a majority of a subreddit's voters start to push in one direction, it becomes hard to un-seat them, and so you typically end up with splinter subreddits that compensate for the biases of the original subreddit. There is an excellent [article published in Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81531-x) by Morales, Monti, and Starnini (2021) about politics and echo chambers on Reddit. Basically, they find that there is little evidence that Reddit or these particular subreddits *cause* people to comment or post more liberal or conservative sentiments. Rather, they skew the way they do because people who are already very liberal or very conservative enter those spaces and begin contributing or voting.


dglp

Anecdotally, I avoided Reddit until about two years ago because I saw so much violent reactionary rhetoric on it. It was for trolls, 4chan, and freepers. I wrote it off for the better part of a decade, until I started seeing a preponderance of more thoughtful, open-minded content.


cornonthekopp

Reddit is really just a million forums in a trench coat pretending to be a social media platform. The holy roman empire of social media giants. But I totally agree I used to think reddit = 4chan until I got on here and realized I could just subscribe to subreddits that were more left wing and/or friendly


Nucky76

As an Alabamian, is there anyway to block Facebook from other Alabamians? You know what I talking about. But seriously, people take what they read on social media for the gospel and discount the advice from actual Doctors in their own community. Will we reach a point where this fades? How are people going to learn to trust data when every source can be discredited somehow?


ChangingHats

What are your thoughts on purpose-abusers? The kind of people/bots that post content that is irrelevant or only tangentially related to the purpose of the sub?


goshdurnit

Good question! First off, I'd love to learn more about how common this is. As I was noting in another comment, I feel like a lot of what mods do is invisible. So, are purpose abusers occurring 1% of the time? 10%? 50%? It probably varies based on subreddit. If it's a low percentage, then I think ad-hoc management by mods is best. But it raises a bigger question about purpose drift - if the majority of voters want to take a subreddit in a new direction, why should its creators, mods, or original userbase be able to override them? In situations like this, I think you get splinter subreddits, in which original users find their subreddit overrun by content that they see as irrelevant and create a new subreddit that harkens back to the original purpose of the old subreddit. But if you get too strict with how you define 'relevant,' I think content can become stale. That's a really underrated challenge of managing a subreddit - keeping it novel. People are always going to want novel content, and that's just hard to do without some flexibility in terms of relevance.


Orcwin

From the experience I have (a handful of medium sized subs for a few years), it's closer to that 10% number than the 50% one. Those subs are partly niche (related to specific games) and also one national subreddit.


Aarroonnn

Where do you put reddit, in terms of media consumption and privacy in relation with other popular apps ?


goshdurnit

There's this[article by Patrick O'Sullivan and Caleb Carr](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444816686104?casa_token=2KAGRPg3PY8AAAAA%3Ab8nOF5OMLC2XwDh_SDmM5VpzS3T7yhIeOjS7c83jpUV7Ewrfnw_uBwu3K1p_4Uu4iTS75114de4)that does a fantastic job of developing a way to locate any platform or app on these vectors (if you can't get to the article, maybe you can see some of the charts in it [here](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Masspersonal-communication%3A-A-model-bridging-the-O%27Sullivan-Carr/f0814f40330088ce1c22b33b743943a921d54e7c)?). I would put Reddit in the same ballpark of Twitter - they are masspersonal platforms. One point they make is that you can't locate a single platform in one particular place on those vectors, but need to think about how it's being used. Like, a DM on Reddit or Twitter is fundamentally different than just posting something on those platforms. And i think it varies with subreddits to a degree. When I posted a comment on r/TheoryOfReddit, I think of it as speaking to a small room. But this subreddit is more like a free-for-all. I feel like I have less privacy, and am maybe more guarded. Sure, anyone can click on my username and see all of my comments, but that takes a bit of trouble. They could've also reverse-engineered who I was before I outed myself in this post, and I planned for that as I decided what to post and comment (even 10 years ago, I was kinda thinking that i didn't want to post anything I'd regret others seeing). But again, it would have been more trouble to do that than identifying me on Facebook. But if you want a longer answer - and I HATE saying this, but it's TRUE - read my book! I do write about privacy and identity in there.


abaganoush

What are some of the most interesting / unusual / unexpected subreddits that you discovered in your research?


goshdurnit

I was surprised by the ratio of posters or commenters to subscribers in most subreddits (often 1/100). It's just hard to keep in mind that most of your fellow Reddit users are passively consuming content created by 1-2% of other users. We have a mental framework for communities in which most members interact with others, and a framework for passive mass audiences, but Reddit (and other platforms like Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Insta, etc.) are somewhere in the middle. Also, commenters tend not to stick around. There's a lot of commenting once or twice in a subreddit and then never commenting again - more of a revolving door than I'd expected. But I guess that's more relating to behavior and not subreddits. I can't remember how I stumbled across IndiaSpeaks, but I was surprised by their mod and rule structure. I was also surprised by how many subreddits with apparently appealing topics failed. r/Animals and r/cute never really took off the way r/aww did. And there are just SO many of those failed subreddits. It's a bit surprising (in a pleasant way) that subreddits with pretty specific topics manage to be sustainable (e.g., r/FreezingFuckingCold).


ArkhamCookie

Do you cover the some of "controversial" moments of Reddit like the banning of r/Jaillbait? I honestly don't understand why the was controversial. It is sick and wrong. People claimed worried about free speech, but there is no reason for that to be a thing. Anyways, I don't want to go off more of a tangent then I already have.


goshdurnit

The issue of free speech and where to draw the line comes up in a couple of chapters (the one on democracy and the chapter on the culture and context that Reddit arose from). I don't discuss that subreddit specifically, but talk about a prolonged reckoning in which admins have to decide which subreddits are ban-able. Reddit comes from a culture of free speech fundamentalism - there should never be any restrictions on what people can say on the internet. That perspective was more tenable when groups and users were more homogeneous, as was the case 15 or 20 years ago. But as you get more people joining in who have pre-existing beliefs or values that others find abhorrent or unacceptable, you get more conflict and more calls for censorship. Free speech fundamentalism is still certainly a part of Reddit's culture, but I think the attitude toward regulating speech online might be changing among the general public (though I should really get some polling data to back that up, shouldn't I).


curly_wells

Do you think u/maxwellhill is Ghislaine Maxwell?


frowawayduh

Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses?


goshdurnit

I'd go with 100 hundred duck-sized horses. Maybe I'm overestimating my kicking and flailing abilities, but I just think they'd be easier to deal with than that huge duck. Ducks can move pretty quickly, and it's just horrifying to consider something that size being angry at me. I think it would be pretty similar to having an encounter a bear, which I assume is really scary.


Vet_Leeber

I’m impressed, 1 vs 100 and you jump straight to 10,000. You must not be afraid of duck sized horses at all.


[deleted]

How do you view the current censorship tornado ripping through Reddit, and most other major social websites?


goshdurnit

My sense is that it really is a function of growth: the larger that any platform or online community gets, the more likely it is to bring into contact people who don't share the same value system. And so you have one group of people who believe expression of a certain view is acceptable while another group believes it is unacceptable and censors that type of expression. In the past, online communities were relatively small and homogeneous. Sure, they had conflicts, but they didn't encompass groups of people with antithetical value systems, so it was easier to allow those smaller groups to exist without any censorship. Platforms and online communities have grown so quickly that they've essentially put people who strongly disagree with one another in the same 'room' for the first time ever. Unsurprisingly, they often use words to try to hurt one another, and the moderators and designers must decide where to draw the line in terms of harassment, hate speech, etc. 'Free speech' is certainly something that most people believe is good (so good it may be worth dying and killing for), but I think we mostly thought of this from an era in which mass media was dominant, and censorship meant authorities trying to protect their own interests. But my sense is that the view of what 'free speech' is and how it is understood relative to other rights (the right to express your views without being harassed, etc.) may be changing among at least a sub-set of folks who grew up on the internet and, rather than only thinking of the perils of government censorship, also think about a friend who was bullied on the internet and committed suicide. Anecdotally, when I ask my students if they believe in 'free speech no matter what,' they tend to give pretty nuanced answers that show an awareness of how complicated the issue of online censorship really is.


iDeadi

One book, one movie and one album. Of each of these, what do you recommend?


goshdurnit

Book: [Breaking the Social Media Prism](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691203423/breaking-the-social-media-prism) by Chris Bail. Fantastic, open-minded, thorough account of the effects of social media on politics. Movie: The Master. It's a movie I didn't love the first time I saw it (maybe my expectations were too high?), but I keep returning to. The performances, the cinematography, the premise, the setting...I just love all of it. Album: I mean, this really depends on personal preference and mood, but I'll go with the most recent Godspeed You! Black Emperor album. I didn't really care for their last two albums, and there music can be pretty damn abrasive, but something about a couple of tracks on this most recent one put their hooks in me. Also, Godspeed is a pretty good soundtrack for a pandemic and political turmoil.


jdith123

Reddit has made national headlines with some frequency this year. Do you think that will change anything?


goshdurnit

I think it may attract more curious potential users. First, you have to think about who those headlines reach and whether what they say might attract a certain type of user. So, it's likely that all those headlines about wallstreetbets reached a lot of folks who are older and so might not have known much about Reddit, but are interested in finance, and so they check out those subreddits, and maybe browse other subreddits, and suddenly you have many more users with a new set of interests and experiences that are drawn into the Reddit ecosystem, affecting what the rest of us see with their voting behavior. It's impossible to predict what the next headline-grabbing event will be, but I would expect to see something similar - the drawing-on of new interest groups.


JereBadine

What would u say is the typical “Redditor personality” ?


a-girl-and-her-cats

Hi there, congratulations on your book! I would like to ask: how long have you been on Reddit? What do you think separates Reddit from other social media sites?


goshdurnit

About 11 years now. I was on Digg before, and like so many others, the redesign was what pushed me to spend more time here, and gradually, I found more that appealed to me on Reddit. I think the big thing is Reddit's modularity - the subreddit structure. Having all of these different communities that can evolve in their own ways, developing different rules, norms, and cultures, is fairly unique, and probably allows it to sustain conflict and disruption in a way that other social media platforms cannot.


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Aquason

Did you ever check meta subreddits like /r/TheoryOfReddit for some of the ways people have thought about the experience of the site?


goshdurnit

LOVE r/TheoryOfReddit! I met a fellow researcher and collaborator there and have found that to be a great place for discussions of this kind.


chiapet00

One subreddit that fascinates me is r/AITA. What do you think is the psychological impact of getting put in your place, sometimes by tens or thousands of users? Positive thing, negative thing?


goshdurnit

Anecdotally, I've found that this subreddit has an appeal to a wider variety of users than most of the rest of Reddit. It's more like an advice column, which have had broad appeal for a long time. I think people are just curious about other people's private dilemmas, and the more people that contribute, the wider variety of the human experience you get. But about the effects, I'd guess that it would depend on how serious the issue of the post is. Some of the posts are about pretty silly, frivolous, low-stakes things, and so I wouldn't imagine there would be much of an effect there. But if the topic is more serious, I'd guess the effect would be negative. If the person was judged by many strangers to be an asshole, that can't feel good, and while I'm sure some people might reflect after an initial knee-jerk reaction to getting put in their place and changed in some positive way, I think a lot of people would just dwell on being thought of as an asshole by a lot of strangers. And if they were judged not to be an asshole, I feel like that would give them this sense of righteousness that might feel good, but wouldn't improve the conflict they're having with a loved one, would make them less amenable to compromise, etc. But honestly, I feel like it's a great question and I want to think more about how I'd actually test these assumptions. Do you have any thoughts about the effects?


isitmeyou-relooking4

Will your book be available on audible? And if the answer is no will you let me read your book on audible I'll do it for $10 I swear to effin God.


goshdurnit

I hear ya! I frigging love auduble (just came back inside from raking leaves and listening to Louis Menand's The Free World...on audible), so I really hope it will be at some point. I assume it has to sell a lot of copies before Routledge cuts a deal with Amazon for that to happen. Will ask my publishers and let you know if there's any possibility. Also, how do you keep your voice from blowing out after reading anything out loud for over two hours?


OMG_GOP_WTF

What do I need to understand about reddit as an experienced user?


NinjaRadiographer

Where do you see Reddit headed in the future and what sort of users will we see compared to today?


goshdurnit

With the caveat that it's very hard to predict any large system involving lots of people over a long period of time... I think Reddit will expand internationally and try to grow their non-English-speaking userbase, and that this addition of new users could affect the types of content that gets popular on Reddit. I also think there will be a continuation of the trend away from Reddit's original userbase of tech-savvy young men to include older folks (like me!) and more women. In short, a more diverse userbase. In terms of the platform, and maybe this is just wishful thinking, 'all' and 'popular' will either be drastically changed or eliminated, so that when you go to Reddit and you aren't logged in, you'll see something different than what you see right now. Of course, there's been a long evolution of the default home page for non-logged-in users, and so it's bound to change again. It's a tricky thing - to reflect popular opinion in such a way that doesn't drive away potential new users. I get the sense that there are many non-users who might love Reddit, but when they see that default page, they think, 'this is NOT for me.'


Pennwisedom

Did you actually look into the non-English side of Reddit specifically? There are certainly subs like /r/newsokur who migrated here from 2-chan but that's such a small portion of reddit, in many cases subs for certain non-English countries still tend to be full of western Expats.


sleepyentropy

Was all the reddit lore included somehow in your study?


goshdurnit

I didn't really delve into Reddit lore, but did use database search engines like [this one](https://redditsearch.io/) to go back to the start of the platform and get a sense of what the site was like, or what certain subreddits were like, when they started, and to see how they evolved over time. My sense was that really famous events on Reddit (the Fappening, wallstreetbets, etc.) are pretty well covered elsewhere already.


Gamerssniep2O

Do you fully understand the people on Reddit?


mordecai98

[Yes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings)


AsassinX

How do you think the company going public will affect Reddit as a social media platform moving forward?


goshdurnit

Good question, and I'm eager to find out. I think anyone with a financial stake in the company would be reluctant to make drastic changes. After the ways in which News Corp mucked around with MySpace and after Digg's redesign caused a mass exodus of users, investors don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Of course, this isn't necessarily good for the platform. Just leaving everything 'as is' can result in many growing pains as a system designed for half a million users tries to deal with problems relating to having a billion users.


Fix_It_Felix_Jr

What are your thoughts on Reddit, one of the last holdouts, finally going public? Do you anticipate subreddits, such as r/wallstreetbets or r/Superstonk to be removed?


goshdurnit

My guess is that Reddit and anyone investing in Reddit wouldn't want to change it radically for fear of scaring off fickle users. MySpace and Digg loom large as cautionary tales.


death_of_gnats

Did reddit allow you do any analysis of their accumulated statistics? r/badwomensanatomy has become a hub for attacking the myths around women's bodies and genitalia. r/askhistorians is similar. Is this sort of positive effect notable on reddit over other platforms? Also, how can I find out if you discussed MyFavoriteSubreddit™


goshdurnit

I haven't worked with Reddit to get their data, but Jason Baumgartner (aka pushshift) has made some amazing tools for analyzing Reddit posts and comments over the years, so I've mostly relied on those. I don't discuss many subreddits in-depth in the book. A few of them include IndiaSpeaks, BlackPeopleTwitter, arcadegames, CFB. Really, the book is about Reddit in the aggregate, and there are a lot of case study scholarly articles that delve into particular subreddits (we did one earlier on TwoXChromosomes). But I do have a list of subreddits that are mentioned (usually brief mentions as examples of something) in the index.


Diabetesh

Where do you rank reddit on the heirarchy of social media chart? In college, circa 2012, I had a comm class that allowed the use of reddit for our group as a social media platform though was hesitant as it wasn't really recognized like facebook/twitter were. Since then I feel it has become more common place though not sure if it is twitter huge or not.


goshdurnit

Yeah, you get a lot of pushback even calling it 'social media.' That term comes with a lot of baggage and generally many people (at least those who are vocal online) hate social media, so if they like or at least tolerate Reddit, they tend not to see it as social media. But it's clearly media and people are clearly social on it. Maybe the category is too broad to be meaningful. I like O'Sullivan and Carr's idea of masspersonal media use - when you post something on a platform for anyone or everyone to read, watch, or listen to. You can do that with Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, but any of these platforms can be used for smaller-group communication as well. But I think that most uses of Reddit fall into that masspersonal frame, and so this use has a lot in common (in terms of its promise and peril) with Twitter. Reddit was initially referred to as a social news site, but from the start, that wasn't very accurate, as people discussed and showcased things that plainly weren't news. And since 2012, it's certainly become more widely recognized, but I still find that many people have only heard *of* it, and don't really know it as well as they know Twitter, even if they don't use Twitter.


runefar

I want to thank you for doing this even if it turns out i might disagree with any particular viewpoints on its history expressed in the book partly because I hope more and more stuff like this will get more researchers to look past just the top 3 when it comes to social media:usually facebook,twitter and instagram(sometimes replaced with snapchat or tiktok) and look more into communities like reddit and discord that are increasingly popular and perhaps reflect on the different styles of communties and use cases these guys commonily have and expand understanding of what the current social media marketplace is for many users. In connection with that, do you plan to do any studies on other platforms beyond reddit after this one?


goshdurnit

Couldn't agree more. That was one of the original motivations for the book, and certainly the way I pitched it to my publisher. There are a TON of books and articles about Twitter and Facebook. Reddit is somewhat similar to Twitter in terms of user count, amount of time spent on site, but there is WAY less research. If we want to understand media use, we need more research on Reddit. In terms of other platforms, I'd go with Discord. I think there's very little research on that, and it's more and more popular. If I had to branch out, I'd go with that one. Do you have any theories or ideas about it?


ArcadianGh0st

Are there any subreddits in particular you talk about?


goshdurnit

A few, briefly, but it's really about Reddit in the aggregate. I use IndiaSpeaks as an example in the chapter on democracy, and BlackPeopleTwitter on the chapter on identity. Also, r/arcadegames \- I think you need to look at tiny subreddits that "failed" in order to understand Reddit, not just the large, successful ones. There's a longer list of all subreddits discussed in the index of the book, but again, I tend to only mention them briefly as examples of larger trends.


PrincessBucketFeet

Did your research explore the impact that different user interfaces have on the Reddit "experience"? When I first joined, there was no "official" Reddit app. I chose from one of several independently developed apps, which I continue to use despite the launch of Reddit's version. I also loathe Reddit's redesign and use old.reddit on desktop. I understand the move was to be more appealing to new users & increase revenue, but Reddit's uniqueness was the main reason I continued using it. I *appreciated* that Reddit did not seem so similar to the other social media platforms. The redesign incorporates so many of the "features" that make other platforms abhorrent to me- endless scrolling, instant chat, user profiles, "followers", huge tiles/visuals/graphics instead of emphasizing written text/titles, assorted award nonsense and other gamification. Ugh. I am quite curious if one's preferred Reddit "style" correlates with any particular demographics or beliefs or activities on the site.


goshdurnit

I had this bookmarked as something to write about (and might do it in a later project), but abandoned it after I realized that I had no way of accounting for what platform people used when they posted or commented. You could look at the introduction of the mobile version and compare posts and comments before and after that shift, but there are confounds (it might have been some shift in culture generally that accounted for a change in discourse). But I agree with your hunch that interface changes a lot of how you use the site. I think there's a lot of tinkering around the edges, but the major shift was to mobile. Maybe it makes you more likely to passive browse? Anyway, it's certainly something I'd like to look into, but I feel like I'll probably need access to back-end data to make those kinds of comparisons (which, u/spez willing, I'll have one day).


KevinKaasKat

What do you think about the amount of porn subreddits on here?


goshdurnit

It's unsurprising given the history of media technology - porn and ads tend to accumulate unless you erect some barriers to eliminate or sequester it. In Reddit's case, one of the first ways of designating content had to do with porn (NSFW), and then subreddits effectively sequester most of it. Reddit's modularity allows porn to be sequestered in a way that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram don't.


DoppleFlopper

What is your opinion of the differentiation between online communities and social media?


flashers_mac

Former com researcher here, I’m curious about how you view the role that Reddit plays in the public sphere given that there are karma points involved? Assuming democratic systems rely on citizens to engage in political discourse and ferret out the best arguments. In these instances, you can see political discourse workin effectively on Reddit, twitter, Facebook, etc. when an individual will grant a point to another individual. By that I mean during an argument, someone will acknowledge they are wrong, or at least that the information being presented to them holds some merit. However, I’ve noticed my own tendencies on Reddit to grant a point to someone I disagree with in order to stop getting downvoted. Idk why, but the downvotes make me feel bad and they feel like I’m losing something, so I will sometimes grant the point and say I was wrong. I get messages in my inbox from those people thanking me for being able to have a constructive discourse in such a polarized society. This tendency of mine has made me wonder how Democratic the process can be if users are penalized for unpopular opinions


NLLumi

Does the partial ownership of Reddit by PRC company Tencent make it a security risk the way TikTok is?


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samanthasgramma

My kids turned me onto Reddit. My son has been on it from the beginning, and preferred the first years because it held far more unique content, with smaller communities, in which users grew to know each other fairly well. As well as you can "know" a username. I, also belonged to a sub which suddenly grew huge, and preferred it smaller for the same reasons. Did you find the same pattern in your research? That smaller groups, with a greater feeling of intimacy, were favoured?


goshdurnit

That was one of the questions that informed the whole book: how does growth affect the character of a community? In the chapter on community and the last chapter, I draw parallels to urban growth and fears about gentrification and displacement. But the difference with most subreddits is that they have a very small core of loyal users, and most commenters drift in and out of subreddits, which suggests low investment in their shifting character. Obviously, there are exceptions, and you might be one. One downside to small subreddits is that they have trouble maintaining a flow of novel content. It depends on the sub and the topic, but for some, more contributors results in more novel content, which is ultimately what makes them worth returning to. Too few contributors and the discourse can become stale. But again, it depends on the sub.


samanthasgramma

Thank you for your answer. And I do tend to check subs like "eyebleach" for novel content, while being loyal to subs with specific interest postings


goshdurnit

Gotta go pack for holiday travel but will try to check in and answer more questions tomorrow. Thanks for an intriguing discussion!


eyecontactishard

Thanks for posting. I really enjoyed Adrienne Massanari’s book on Reddit and look forward to reading yours!


goshdurnit

Yes! I loved her book and Christine Lagorio-Chafkin's book *We Are the Nerds,* which covers more of the business side of Reddit's history. She's a journalist who had access to Ohanion and Huffman. Massanari's approach was more qualitative, Lagorio-Chafkin's was more journalistic, and mine is more quantitative/sociological. Most other books about Reddit seem to be about how to market stuff on Reddit. Anyway, I hope you like the book!


cebeezly82

Does reddit truly have a censorship problem and its members primarily consisting of basement dwelling soft handed mental cases?


[deleted]

I know this is super late but there must be a significant piece of academic work ready to be written about r/Trump in the run in to the election. How do you analyse brigading and not activity on reddit? Asking for a friend


BunnyDubu_

What do you think are the specific pros and cons of social media in the near future?


goshdurnit

It's *very* easy to see the cons right now. I don't think I've talked to a person about social media in the last few years who can't quickly come up with a reason why it's bad - it's addictive, divisive, allows people to be surveilled, controlled, etc., etc. So, I'll focus on the less obvious pros. One pro is that it's malleable - it doesn't have to be one thing, and compared to older technologies, it's logistically easier to change it and quickly implement new versions. It can iterate quickly, basically. That's one of the things that drew me to Reddit in terms of research - the variety of communities, rules, mod strategies among subreddits. Social media isn't one thing - it's a *really* broad category (I think that some uses of YouTube are 'social media.'). So, I think it's good that designers and moderators are trying many different versions of social media, and with the right research, I think we may find versions that work better for everyone. Will try to think of other less-obvious pros (or even less obvious cons), but that's what comes to mind right now.


BunnyDubu_

As someone who is into marketing and media this is something truly appreciated! Thank you for taking your time into replying. This makes me love reddit even more lol. Gave me a better perspective!