I spent some significant time exploring Reddit today and really came away with mixed emotions that left me strongly feeling it is not for me. I found some wonderful positive stories, including understanding and supportive stories and comments about the tragedy in Minneapolis, which is dominating the news everywhere. I found some great videos that made me laugh.
I can see the potential of the platform as a space to share information freely, hold discussions, and use it as a learning tool. I actually found a very good article on using Reddit as a learning tool here: https://icto.humanities.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Teaching-with-Reddit.pdf. I actually was starting to consider if we could use it to distribute some company training that I would have no problem with others borrowing on subject such as ethics.
When I opened up a few stories that I was interested in and started reading the comments posted, I started to get both frustrated and angry. There is a crowd of Reddit users that obviously are anti-establishment, anti-government, and feel the need to post their viewpoints on anything even closely related to their issues. The shooting death of a Federal Protective Service officer brought out a huge diatribe on the evils of the IRS, and the discourse went downhill after that. A clean-up of Export Regulations that were restricting export of information that is available on the internet developed into an argument about gun control in the United States. I can appreciate substantive discourse, but many of these people seem to have learned nothing about government, civics, or social studies in school.
Do I think they need to be silenced? NO! I strongly defend the Constitution now, as I swore to do for the first time forty years ago. They have a right to express their opinions. But at the same time, I have the right to not listen. I'm sure if I explored and become more proficient with Reddit, I could become a user and avoid much of that, but I don't see enough positive outcome to be worth my time investment.
When I first signed up on Reddit, I had to unjoin the default groups that were filling my feed and join nice, moderated groups to get an experience I could deal with for the summer. I had to find the good groups on Google - the Reddit search seems mostly useless. It took a little bit to get it set up, but I have come across some really neat content so it wound up being worth it for me.
ReplyDeleteSocial media, Reddit included, is rife with bot chatter https://gizmodo.com/twitter-bots-drove-the-push-to-reopen-america-study-fi-1843614589