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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 7 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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joshdavham ◴[05 Feb 25 15:50 UTC] No.42950233[source]▶
One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind.

Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argue that we’re all a lot more negatively affected by it than we think. There’s a reason ‘brain rot’ was word of the year.

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ge96 ◴[05 Feb 25 17:24 UTC] No.42951934[source]▶
I quit reddit too recently, I still look at it for info but I'm not logged in/scrolling through it

I find myself reaching for something when I have YouTube/chilling at my desk at the end of the day, can't code anymore/make something just on till I sleep. Sometimes have the desire to play a video game (I have a gaming rig too funny how that works)

I've been trying to read HN or IEEE, TechCrunch stuff like that as my "lazy fun"

I will miss posting stuff like "what is this car" or being part of the car talk for a sporty car I drive but idk kind of want to just live too

It's unfortunate people expect you to have social media like a girl asks me if I have Instagram and I'm weird to not have one, I get it they can scope you out too for safety but when I tried using that stuff I felt this pressure to post about something

Anyway my main goal in life right now is getting out of debt/staying fit and work on projects

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niceice ◴[05 Feb 25 19:16 UTC] No.42953624[source]▶
I checked reddit recently for the first time in a while, and I was shocked by how radicalized its become. An echo chamber of hateful people and perhaps GPTs that are agitating the big subreddits. The contrast is stark with all the "no place for hate" in the rules and endless banning of microaggressions.

I saw dozens of death threats. Even an explicit death threat thread with over 40,000 upvotes before reddit stepped in and shut the whole subreddit down.

It reminded me of Ghostbusters 2 with all the aggressively angry people and the ooze pouring out of the sewers, all building upon itself.

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1. nonchalantsui ◴[05 Feb 25 20:32 UTC] No.42954686{3}[source]▶
This is just the consequence of the API protests. Despite people claiming it had no lasting impact, admins coming in and making sweeping changes to mod teams replacing them with loyalists, alongside ramping up centralized feeds to serve more ads onto meant content quality took a nosedive. This is obvious in most subs if you actually look at who is submitting the threads (something the app and All/Popular pages hides in several views), most of these subs are dominated by a handful of accounts. It's a cycle too, because often they'll continue spamming subs in order to get on All/Popular, or make up weird stories to do so, effectively karma farming taken very seriously, with mods encouraging it because of the aforementioned loyalists.

It's all just driveby anger and reposts. Maybe some smaller subs with good communities here and there, but that often requires a mod team putting in substantial hours and remaining under the radar from All/Popular in any shape.

Forgot to mention, Reddit also started paying these accounts for posting. So a literal financial incentive to ragebait. It' called the "Contributor Program".

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2. eloisius ◴[06 Feb 25 02:37 UTC] No.42958339[source]▶
RDDT was a good buy, but the site is absolutely going to be destroyed. That’s what’s valuable. I’m not selling until Reddit is Facebook-tier garbage.
3. safety1st ◴[06 Feb 25 10:58 UTC] No.42961168[source]▶
It's wild how bad it has gotten since the election. It's important to remember that free speech does not protect directly inciting violence and it does not protect advocating for the murder of anyone, even a politician. These are generally illegal

So what Reddit has morphed into, is an illegal content factory - there has already been a comment or two about it from the government and the Trump admin is not one that is likely to sit on my sidelines over this.

Whatever your politics may be, I'm just saying this is going to burn Reddit bad.

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4. NeutralCrane ◴[06 Feb 25 13:51 UTC] No.42962269[source]▶
This behavior has been going on long before the API protests.
5. michaelt ◴[06 Feb 25 18:26 UTC] No.42965045[source]▶
> It's important to remember that free speech does not protect directly inciting violence and it does not protect advocating for the murder of anyone, even a politician. These are generally illegal

Under US first amendment rights, it's actually sometimes legal.

For example, "Watts v. United States" established that if an anti-draft speaker tells a crowd "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ" that's political hyperbole.

So if a crowd were to set up a guillotine outside congress and chant "hang mike pence" it's not necessarily illegal.

6. noah_buddy ◴[06 Feb 25 18:29 UTC] No.42965085[source]▶
The only thing not covered by the concept (and law) of freedom of speech with regard to violence are direct, clear incitements to immediately commit violence. E.g. egging someone on to go lynch another person right now is not legal.

Saying “I think this person should be killed” is legally free speech.

7. solumunus ◴[10 Feb 25 04:47 UTC] No.42997038[source]▶
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but respect of law and norms is being thrown out of the window. That was the old USA and the paradigm is wildly shifting.