• aaron@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    119
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    Reddit is pretty useless for getting any kind of advanced information on any topic. The impression I had of the US election based on it was completely out of line with reality, so in that case it couldn’t be trusted as an accurate source of information on current affairs.

    People are addicted to it, but you’d have to be pretty sad to pay for it.

    Blocking ads on it is a trivial matter. It never made any money.

    The question is why did anyone think it would ever be worth much at all.

    • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      70
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      The impression I had of the US election based on it was completely out of line with reality

      I’ve largely switched to Lemmy for the past two years, but this was really the last nail in the coffin for reddit for me too. It’s an enforced echo-chamber and no longer a reliable source of information. It’s hard to notice how bad things are when the politics are leaning in your direction, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and it feels gross.

      Lemmy is obviously pretty politically homogeneous too, but the difference is that I don’t feel like someone is trying to trick me. Topics and and sources are clearly influenced by the individual posters’ opinions, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a coordinated behind-the-scenes effort to push an agenda, which makes for a better vibe.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        17 hours ago

        your comments also wont get astroturfed by russian bots most of the time, or angry conservative doesnt know how to discern the meaning of your comments.

      • Vreyan31@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        So this place isn’t overrun by bots. Awesome. As someone new here, are there fewer bots bc it’s a smaller audience, or are there actually protections against bots?

        • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          edit-2
          19 hours ago

          Welcome welcome! The few bots that try to spam have been found out and disconnected relatively quickly (there have been a number of Fediverse-wide intentional efforts to spam that were dealt with).

          The comment quality tends to be higher on average and braindead meme chains that bots can copy for karma farming are far less common.

          That said, the Lemmy experience is yours to craft. Subscribe and block as needed, don’t feed the trolls, don’t sweat getting a few downvoted comments here and there, report bad behaviour and have fun.

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          17 hours ago

          lesser bots, i think because reddit bots are mostly political propaganda ones from RU and US.

        • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          22 hours ago

          So, it’s all down to federation, essentially. If an instance allows its users to act in bad faith (lemmygrad, exploding heads, etc), then typically people will ask their instance admin to defederate from them or else move to a server that will. And if you can’t find a server you like? Great news! Just pull down the source code and start your own!

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        14
        ·
        1 day ago

        lemmy.world news and politics subs mirrored reddit strongly during the election shill op

        people were banned to ciritizing Kamala’s campaign. Any discussion of 3p was also banned.

        With that being said… federated nature permits people with different opinions to find other subs for discussions.

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          ·
          1 day ago

          There’s a difference between being banned and being downvoted to oblivion for pushing idiotic tactics.

        • LeninsOvaries@lemmy.cafe
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          18 hours ago

          Absolutely correct, comrade. And what happened? We leftists told everyone Kamala is evil, and the people listened to us and didn’t vote Democrat. We got Trump into the white house. And then the Democrats realised that they need to appeal to the left to win next time. So they’ve cleaned up their act and taken genocide off the agenda. And now they’re actually stopping Trump’s fascism. He’ll be impeached any day now!

    • Comtief@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      1 day ago

      Reddit is pretty nice as a source of information, but mostly on smaller and more obscure things, not big political topics like US elections… that’s what the last year has taught me, at least.

    • Delta_V@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 day ago

      Its value is equal to its usefulness as a propaganda organ. Twitter wasn’t purchased to make money. A megaphone is more of a tool than an investment.

      • aaron@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 day ago

        Dunno, I think Musk was forced to buy it, then he suggested it was going to be all sorts of things while massively cutting costs, before pivoting to giving Trump a quarter of a billion in order to get access to government.

        I don’t think there was any intention to buy twitter for propaganda, and I haven’t seen any evidence that shows to what degree (if at all) it helped Trump get elected.

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          17 hours ago

          he only used it as a propaganda tool after he was forced to buy, he had to make that money back somehow, SAUDIS and putin did step in to help.

          • aaron@infosec.pub
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            16 hours ago

            Exactly. I responded to somebody who said twitter was bought not to make money but as a propaganda tool.

            Then a sequence of morons ‘attacked’ me. (I put attacked in quotation marks as it hardly counts as any kind of ‘attack’.)

        • gimmelemmy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 day ago

          I mean, you DO understand that the current situation involves granularity like we have never witnessed before, algorithmic fuckery that we have been warned about, and the fact that access to Twitter data in controlled by the guy who initiated all of the fuckery involving twitter, right? What I’m saying is that your standard for evidence is not in touch with the current reality. Fortunately, this guy can’t seem to hide his intentions, so we really don’t need an in depth analysis. The only ones who would wish for the rest of us to demand such a thing in order to believe what we are seeing in front of our very eyes are the ones who would benefit from the truth being obscured… Oh. I think I understand now