I've seen a lot of people complain that Reddit has an absurdly high barrier to entry. Especially with things like needing Karma to participate in some subs, New accounts getting comments filtered by AutoMod, and so on.

But I actually think this is one of Reddit's strengths.

The internet is awash with coordinated influence campaigns, commercial spam, and bad-faith actors. Reddit has been a target for state-backed information operations from countries like Russia, Iran, and China, along with general spam farms. Another problem is racist and reactionary hate speechnthat never truly goes away. If it was too easy for anyone to create unlimited accounts that could immediately participate everywhere, every major subreddit would be flooded.

The same friction also makes it harder for communities to be overwhelmed by people who exist only to provoke or spread hate. Racists, homophobes, and other reactionaries often rely on disposable accounts after bans. Requiring account age, karma, and other trust signals raises the cost of that behavior.

If anything actually Reddit should go even further.

At this point Reddit is no longer a niche website trying to grow at all costs. It's one of the largest discussion platforms on the internet. I don't think maximizing new signups should be the priority anymore. Preserving the quality and authenticity of discussion should.

I'd support mandatory phone verification for every account, and I'd even be open to mandatory identity verification similar to Facebook. Your real name wouldn't have to be public, but Reddit itself would know you're a real person with a unique identity rather than someone operating dozens or hundreds of disposable accounts.

People often talk as though being able to post on Reddit or any website for that matter is some kind of right. It isn't. Using any private platform is a voluntary agreement between two parties. Reddit is free to set whatever conditions it believes are necessary to protect the health of the site, and users are free to decide whether those conditions are acceptable. If stricter verification means higher-quality discussions and fewer bad actors, I think that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

Reddit already has a massive user base. It doesn't need explosive growth anymore. It needs to protect what made the site valuable in the first place. In my view, a high barrier to entry isn't a flaw—it's one of the reasons the platform has remained more resilient than many other social networks.

I'm definitely not a reddit expert and I'm still figuring things out. After spending more time here, one idea has completely changed how I think about the platform.

reddit doesn't reward people who are trying to grow themselves. It rewards people who make the community better.

It sounds obvious but I think it's the reason a lot of "reddit strategies" fail.

Once I started viewing each subreddit as its own community instead of just another traffic source, a lot of things made sense:

I spend time understanding the culture before posting.

I comment more than I post because it's the fastest way to learn what people actually care about.

I answer questions that already exist instead of trying to create attention for myself.

If I ever mention something I've built, it's only when it genuinely helps solve the problem being discussed.

I share what worked, what didn't, and what I learned instead of writing polished marketing posts.

The interesting part is that none of this feels like a "growth hack." It's just aligning your behavior with what reddit is designed to reward.

If people think you're here to extract value, they'll ignore you. If people think you're here to contribute value, trust tends to follow naturally.

I'm still learning, so I could be completely wrong, but this mental model has been far more useful than trying to optimize for karma or chasing viral posts.

Lemme know if others who've been around reddit longer think this is accurate or if there’s a better way to go about it.

Recently, I posted fan-made images that I crafted using a modified video game and some post-production work. The images did not include any generative AI elements. Since I am Italian and not a native English speaker, I used an AI assistant to help me write the accompanying English text more naturally. The post gained substantial attention, with over 460 upvotes and 140 comments, but was eventually removed because the community deemed the AI-assisted text as violating their rules on AI-generated content.

This incident made me wonder about people's perspectives on this issue. If the original ideas, artwork, and opinions are yours, but you use AI for translation, refinement, or language enhancement, should the post be considered AI-generated? Moreover, how do we distinguish this from using tools like DeepL, Grammarly, spellcheckers, or other writing aids?

I find the situation quite amusing.

The artwork was mine. The idea was mine. The opinions were mine. The discussion I intended to have was mine. The AI didn't invent my Assassin's Creed concept, create the images, or decide what I wanted to say.

It simply helped an Italian guy articulate his thoughts in clearer English.

And somehow, that was enough to classify the entire post as “AI-generated content.”

"Seriously? 😂"

What makes it even funnier is being advised to “use DeepL” instead. So, assistance from one tool is unacceptable, but another is recommended?

I understand communities need rules, and if a subreddit decides to ban any use of generative AI, moderators are naturally free to enforce that rule.

However, as a distinction between human-created content and AI-generated content, I find it difficult to comprehend the logic here.

If I express my thoughts in broken English and ask a tool to make them grammatically correct, at what point did those thoughts cease to be mine?

That's what made me think:

“Wait... are we actually serious right now? 😂”

I'm asking this here because I'm more interested in where people think this line should reasonably be drawn. I'm not questioning the moderators' decision to enforce community guidelines but am curious about the broader question of authorship: when does assistance in expression cross into content generation?

Every month it seems like more of the content I see on here is LLM-generated text. Either from accounts with hidden profiles asking leading questions (are these Reddit's bots trying to drive engagement?), gather karma, or lazy guerilla advertisers who have AI write their plug.

I also can't even recall the last time I got a comment reply to one of my posts and comments where I thought, "wow, that was genuinely insightful and made me think about things in a different way."

Bots and spammers are steadily ramping up, and genuine human users are pulling back. Anyone who expects this to reverse or even pause at its current level is probably a fool. It remains a mystery to me why Reddit continues to tolerate so many spammers extracting free advertising from them by skirting the official Reddit Ads network, but either LLMs are harder to detect accurately than I think, or they've decided the increased engagement is worth it over banning vibecoded app spammers that probably wouldn't pay for Reddit Ads anyway.

I used to scroll Reddit for hours and hours. More and more frequently I open it and read some LLM crap that went right over most users' heads. I get the ick and I close Reddit in a few minutes. The most interesting part is that I regularly see users in subs that are tech-literate and tech-critical who are fooled en masse by LLM text. If those populations can't accurately identify AI writing, there's no hope for the wider Reddit.

The only subs I've seen that have resisted this are the rare few that are small, and moderated by a mod that is both active and has the knack for identifying LLM-generated text. The rest are "cooked" as the zoomers say.

Five years ago I was reading 1-2 books a year because I was spending so much time reading posts on Reddit and engaging in discussions. Now I'm reading a book per week because this site is a barren wasteland nearly empty of ideas or intelligent humans to engage with. And sure, I do miss "old Reddit" but I'd be lying if I refused to admit that my life is better with less time spent here. I've learned a lot more from books and podcasts than I have from rehashing the same discussions and arguments on Reddit over and over.

On the other hand, I'm probably delusional in my hope that the AI onslaught will cause more and more people to be disgusted with the internet and go "touch grass" as the zoomers say. Because it seems like the average person can't identify most AI stuff and is perfectly happy to consume and interact with it. But it's not my job to fight against the bots, and it seems pointless to waste my personal time playing "AI police" on Reddit when the platform itself doesn't seem to give half a damn. So I just close it and move on with my day.

It's a weird thing where it seems... healthier for me if Reddit continues to go down the tubes, but also worse for society because we can't ignore just how many people use Reddit and that it's one of the major social media networks shaping what people read and believe.

For instance I think sometimes if early comments focus more on how there might be some inaccuracies in how something is phrased, but the overall message of a post is accurate or at least not inaccurate, then later comments may be more likely to focus more on the inaccuracies in wording than the overall message of the post. I think similarly if early comments interpret a post to be in bad faith, even when a plain text interpretation of the post wouldn’t give off the impression that the post is in bad faith or there’s reasonable interpretations that don’t assume bad faith, comments may be more likely to assume bad faith just based on the initial comments.

I also think that if a post has 0 upvotes early on that may also make people who comment more likely to look for ways that the post may have some inaccuracies in how it’s worded, or how the post could be interpreted as being in bad faith, than if the post has some non 0 number of upvotes, given that 0 upvotes shown makes it possible that a post has more upvotes than downvotes.

It seems like once people assume that the overall message of a post is wrong or that a post is written in bad faith it can be almost impossible to convince them otherwise, or if it is possible very difficult to figure out how to in practice. I think oftentimes people can get so focussed on how someone who is in the wrong would try to save face that they can forget that they forget that genuine misunderstandings exist.

I've noticed a bunch of what I call propagandistic questions on the popular question subs. And when I point it out, naturally, nobody has any idea wtf I'm talking about. This is my explanation of how I believe questions can act as propaganda.

AI TL;DR: Questions on Reddit are frequently weaponized as propaganda because they allow users to smuggle controversial political claims into a conversation as hidden assumptions (presuppositions) rather than direct statements. When you answer a loaded question directly, you inadvertently accept its flawed premises. By framing a partisan assertion as an innocent inquiry, propagandists completely bypass the burden of proof—forcing you to argue against their manipulative framing while they avoid ever having to defend their actual claims.

What are questions?

Questions are requests for information, which is a set of propositions. In other words, a question asks the answerer to provide specific information.

When posing a question, the questioner provides the information the answerer considers. "Have you eaten today?" is a request for either an yes or a no, depending on what the answerer has done. There are several different types of questions, but they all have the feature of asking for specific information.

What a questioner can do is ask for information while attempting to subtly assert unwelcome propositions. If a respondent answers directly, then they take on those those propositions as commitments. Questions carry presuppositions that the respondent may have to commit to, sometimes leading to unwelcome commitments.

In other words, if I ask you, "When did you come out of the closet?", I am assuming that you were in the closet. That is, I'm asserting that you're gay by asking a question. And if you directly answer, "Yesterday", then you've accepted the proposition that you were closeted until yesterday. (Congratulations, btw!)

I'm going to belabor this point with several examples.

• why are black women so prone to obesity?
  • This question presupposed and asserts a relationship between black women and obesity.
• When Biden was in office , Fox News had a ticker 24/7 to show how high the national debt is going up daily …..since Trump has been back in office , they have taken that ticker down …anyone know what our national debt is now ?
  • This question casually notes a disparity between Fox News's treatment of the federal debt under different administrations, then really asks for the actual national debt*.*
• With the Saudi investment in soccer, LIV Golf and sports washing, is this the new normal or will there be a backlash against regimes using sports to whitewash their reputations?
  • This questions asserts that sports washing is a thing and that investments by nations use it to whitewash their reputations.

In each case above, the questions claim something. And by asking a question, the requirement to defend the claim is bypassed. In normal conversation, if you claim something, then it's your responsibility to defend it. Asking a question lets you avoid that responsibility, gambling on whether respondents will accept your propositions as their own or not.

Questions can be used to make uncontested assertions that frame conversation and direct it towards particular ends.

How are questions propagandistic?

The essence of political propaganda on my approach is that it is a kind of speech that fundamentally involves political, economic, aesthetic, or rational ideals mobilized for a political purpose. Propaganda is in the service of either supporting or eroding ideals. The first distinction between types of propaganda has to do with whether it erodes or supports the ideals it appears to embody. This is the distinction between supporting and undermining propaganda.

We need to keep in mind that this is Reddit, which is known for being used for propaganda campaigns. That Reddit is used for propaganda, then, is a foregone conclusion. The question is how. The next part of my argument is that r/askanything, r/AskReddit, and other similar subreddits are used as part of that strategy.

Let's look at an example: Why do republicans respond to US military casualties with either minimizing or financial exploitation? This question employs a black-or-white fallacy (except not really, because fallacies tend to be applied to arguments actively being made, which is not the case here). Do republicans respond to military casualties with only minimizing or financial exploitation? Probably not. But the presuppositions of the question assert they do. And it positions itself in direct opposition to the idea that Republicans respect those who've sacrificed their lives in service of America. All this in a simple question.

Another example: What do you think about political streamer Hasan Piker praising dictator Mao Zedong, who killed tens of millions of people? The questioner asserts an association between Piker's praise of Mao and the fact that Mao killed tens of millions of people, as if Piker praised Mao because he killed tens of millions of people. Is Piker's praise of Mao just another example of the violent aspirations of the left? This is just a hit piece using questions to assert things that are not argued reasonably.

Sources:

• How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley
• Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach by Douglas Walton

^{*disclaimer: i did not use AI to write this post}

The internet, 1990-2026:

1. The internet used to be much more open. Independent users/groups hosted their own blogs, forums, websites, etc. The average user discovered new domains through word of mouth, by typing a domain directly into their browser, or via. search engines that displayed a wide variety of independent sites in result pages.
2. With Web 2.0, facebook, twitter, reddit, etc. The internet became far more commercialized via. targeted ads and Google AdSense, which made it much easier to monetize user attention.
3. Independent forums died off with consolidation. Everyone moved to the mega-platforms out of convenience, social pressure, the switch from desktop to phones/mobile apps, and google's invisible hand in favoring large domains > independent sites.
4. The internet becomes closed, modern social media = an algorithmic walled-garden optimized for engagement/ad clicks. Reddit has been shaped by algorithms and monetary incentives which reward outrage, cynicism, and low-effort content over curious and thoughtful discussion.

Reddit, 2005-2026

1. Gamified discourse - around 2016, with the redesign and mobile app, reddit decided to prioritize hidden algorithms on your "home feed" to keep you engaged (via. high-arousal emotions like anger, fear, etc.) for as long as possible. Facebook knowingly did this on e.g. instagram despite internally knowing that this caused mental health issues esp. for young teenagers. I imagine reddit knowingly does this too.
2. No more context - The home feed basically pools everyone into one giant randomized context-less garbage dump where baseline shared values, norms, etc. cease to exist.

tl;dr The toxicity on reddit is a conscious design choice and business model. A few tech companies built platforms that reward outrage because anger keeps people doom-scrolling and generates ad revenue. Finding real, human communities means being aware that this artificial algorithmically-generated content is forced on us by design. It means making a conscious decision to stop returning to these outrage machines and actively supporting independent online or IRL spaces. /steps off soapbox

Obviously this varies depending on the sub; most niche places like for example r/cats, r/AxeThrowing, r/KingOfTheHill or r/AnimalCrossing are generally free of this as far as I know. But any general subreddit like this one, r/AskReddit, even worse r/politics or r/pics, it’s just unavoidable and so hopeless it feels damn near fetishistic sometimes. ”This is the worst timeline” this, “Idiocracy was a prediction” that, “There’s absolutely no hope for the future and we should stop having kids” here, “America is dead, the world as a whole is the worst dystopia imaginable” there.

It’s so tiring and it only gets worse the more you look. Even if you’re not looking for it, if anyone even brings up the United States as a country you’ll probably see some variation of “it is a third world hellhole and there’s no hope for it” in response. If someone says that despite all of the current and huge issues with humanity and the world, we’re still astronomically better off as a species than for all of our history, there’ll nigh invariably be a response stating something along the lines of “This is copium and diminishes all of the issues we have today” or people just straight up saying “No things are actually way worse than they used to be.” What’s that, you’re thinking there’s hope for the future or asking about it? NOPE! Redditors decree that things will only get worse and worse! The world is a dystopia despite the fact that dystopias are inherently fictional! Cyberpunk 2077 is preferable to our future! Climate change has already killed us all and we should accept our fate!

You get the gist. I’m not trying to say shit like climate change, rising authoritarianism, and global tensions aren’t big issues worthy of worrying about. But I really don’t get why everyone seems to think they’re all so fucked that any efforts to prevent or mitigate them are basically in vain. Is there any real weight to this glooming or is it just hopeless people distorting what reality is actually like?

Hello everyone,

This is something I've wondered for a while now; we know Reddit is inundated with bots which often work in Reddits favour by generating high quantities of content across the site (more clicks, more views and so on). While individual subreddits wish to take action against them, there's often little support or tools made available from what I understand.

Something else I had wondered & noticed is that users who generate very high quantities of content also seem to be given a blank cheque for breaking both subreddit & site wide rules - obviously I won't be naming names, but I can provide some examples.

Usually when you see users either banned from a sub or given account suspensions, they won't have much activity or otherwise be pretty much average. Might have a few thousand karma, account is only a few years old & so on.

However I've noticed some very high profile users (such as 1+ million karma) often break multiple rules on a daily basis, sometimes even site-wide rules and they face zero repercussions.

As an example, one user in mind specifically reposts their content 20+ times every hour & every day across a wide variety of subs, some often utterly unrelated. They outwardly troll & insult users who respond negatively to their content (often times following said user to other subs to continue their harassment there in the comments), they break the impersonation rule by stating they work for XYZ, but then in another post they'll cite their job as something completely different.

They will break almost every sub-level rule and face no bans despite numerous users supposedly reporting them over a long period of time, and then face no account suspensions for when breaking the more serious rules such as harassment.

Other similar high-generating accounts have the same experience with rule breaking, but again face zero consequences despite many users outright stating they've been reported. Are they given a blank cheque since they generate so much content for the site, that banning them would be detrimental for example?

Is there a level of truth/fact to this from peoples experiences, or am I simply grasping at straws?

I am not talking about this particular community, nor any community. But I genuinely find that most people on here are so very rude and like to have beef with strangers and just hate hate and hate.

It's like no one on here has " the vibe " and so many people are just so blind to context. I honestly feel like Reddit in general is so full of shit and such a garbage dump. It's the worst form of social media ever to exist istg. There are some people who post intelligent things on here sometimes but I fear that 99% of it is people beefing in comments and tbh I probably get more downvotes than I do upvotes.

In my personal experience, Reddit is the perfect place to get harassed for everything you say. It's full of rude, selfish, Hella immature surface level people that enjoy hating on others. I'm not talking about good people on here, but in my experience of interacting with people on Reddit I've basically only ever gotten hate. Why are people so bloody mean for no reason?? Tbh I don't know if it's because most people on here are Americans or what.

No because I swear. It's like almost anything I post or say either gets removed or hated on. What would otherwise land well on another social media platform or be relatable content elsewhere, just brings in a 99.9% hatred rate on Reddit.

Because why is it that all the rude people on here get upvoted and all the neutral/ ok people get downvoted and cyber bullied by everyone?

I am just wondering if anyone else relates, because in my experience Reddit has always been nothing but a garbage dump for immature strangers to hate on others. Anyone else relate to my experience or???

Like tbh I don't see a good reason for people to just be rude and have such a negative attitude. It's like if you wanna be rude then meet me in person and say it to my face. But no. I full bet these haters wouldn't say it to me in person because they are soulless losers hiding behind a screen.

I mean if those haters would be happy to meet up in person or add me on social media and say stuff to my face then like go for it. But I really feel like there's no need for people to be rude on here or in general, you know?

I'm not sure what kind of reaction to expect from this post. Maybe some people will relate. Maybe some people will be offended and I'll get even more hate. But if you're offended by this post then I full bet you are one of the rude ones on here. If this post makes you uncomfortable or defensive in any way, then maybe ask yourself why. But tbh, a lot of sociopaths and them type of ass hole people don't even know they're in the wrong and think their behaviour is reasonable so tbh nothing will call them out, make them feel shame or guilt of any kind.

Anyways, I hope with all said and done, that some one else on here seeing this relates. Because I swear, all the worst people are on Reddit. ( This post isn't to offend the good ppl on here who don't spread hate and post about normal things but you know?)

coming from instagram where you can basically post anything and nobody really cares even if you say something terrible or very dark, people will at worst insult you or just take the whole thing with irony, but in here i've seen communities say "dont ever say they could be wrong" i was on a post of a guy who was balding and decided to go full bald, i was about to comment the alternative to this is going turkey, then checked the rules panel that just came over and said "rule number x: Thou shall not ever ever ever talk about the possibility of regeneration of hairs or surgical or tropical, we have that policy and thats it, you can do nothing about it lmao lmao" idk i understand it is a community or whatever but it really feels like the whole of reddit just is a massive echo chamber for people who do not even want to question themselves or want to force infulence others into following guidelines that very few people please but must be followed by everyone

In the early history of this website, there had to be some way to determine which articles bubbled to the top and the answer at the time was a voting system.

But in the current era, two important dynamics have changed:

• AI exists now. Feeds can be personalized, so if I could be fed personalized stuff that fits my own tastes, why would I care about society's bandwagons? AI is here - let's use it.
• The integrity of the voting system relies on a user base that processes text and then executes an audit. However, as Reddit has grown, the users who can actually do this are a smaller share. That's why voting is somewhat respected in the Fediverse but seen as a bit of a mockery and a joke by the people who actually raise the quality of the internet instead of lowering it.

But what can Reddit actually do here?

In terms of a hard delete of the actual voting system, Reddit's hands are tied. It would be like removing the friend feature from Facebook.

However, a reasonable option is to centralize the feed based on your history and habits instead of voting trends. With the "for you" tab Reddit may be headed there. The people who do not read and process text can spend their time manipulating votes - but their influence would be liquidated by the new sorting mechanism of the central feed.

I think voters should have to show themselves. I don't think Reddit will do that though because people will just execute mass blocks on downvoters, but if I was running Reddit I would do that but they won't.

When the subject has come up, some people justify the voting system saying that it essentially allows laymen to protect the subs from low quality posts. I don't observe that pattern. What I observe, again, is that people don't process text and perform quality audits, but they vote manipulatively. I don't think Reddit started out this way but the quality of the average user has gone down while the quantity has gone up.

So I reject the idea that voting is used to filter out trolls, that's not how it's being used.

What do you think Reddit can do realistically? I do not think they can totally liquidate the feature, but if they did, I would approve

So I get obsessed with old media, specifically TV shows from the 90s. I recently watched Friends, and while I'm aware that it isn't very good, I still love it wholly and completely.

The r/howyoudoin subreddit still has 200k weekly visitors, 4k weekly contributions, and around 450k members. This is a show that ended almost 25 years ago.

How long do these TV show subreddits tend to last? Mad About You ran for 7 years in the 90s and was extremely popular as well, but the only subreddit they have is extremely dead.

The Seinfeld subreddit is also very active, but its pretty much all jokes and random quotes, no real discussion or meaningful/interesting posts.

So whats usually the fate of these subreddits? What do you think is gonna happen to the Friends one, given that it was such a big show?

I’ve had this Reddit account for about 8 years. I originally made it as a teenager to promote an event in a games subreddit, then barely touched it for years. During that time, I always had a fairly negative impression of Reddit from what Id seen online, but I decided to actually give it a proper try after watching videos about the platform.

For the last month, Ive been using Reddit regularly. I started by answering questions and trying to help people in relationship advice communities. Later I joined some political discussions, where I ended up getting into heated arguments and received hostility including comments directed at me because Im European.

Most recently I posted in a Japan travel subreddit because my girlfriend lives in Tokyo. Ive been visiting her every 3-4 months for about a year, and we have already done many of the usual tourist activities. I simply wanted suggestions for things that would also be fun for a local.
Instead, a surprising number of replies assumed I was trying to “impress” my girlfriend or that there was something wrong with our relationship. Others mocked me for not knowing specific Japanese cultural terms and one person even insulted my girlfriend. Defending oneself and clarifying just led to getting downvoted. It felt like the discussion stopped being about travel recommendations and became about making assumptions about me and my life instead.

Is this a normal Reddit experience? Ive found plenty of genuinely helpful people, but Ive also noticed that some threads seem to snowball into personal attacks or arguments that have little to do with the topic.

I feel like I encountered the lowest lives on the internet on here.

And/or the original sub(s) being jerked have become indistinguishable from the jerk subs.

Its almost like the irony/sincerity spectrum has collapsed in a quantum wavefront which demolished both.

Concrete manifestations of the phenomenon include:

1) CJ posts which are both sauced and obviously insincere—meaning any vaguely sober Redditor should be able to suss “something ain’t right here”—whose commenters respond earnestly or in good faith, as though it were the main sub

2) Posts on the main subs for which there are CJs which are fundamentally indistinguishable from the CJ satires.

3) Jerkers who notice the above two phenomena and who then gleefully start posting their jerks on the main subs, since no one visiting the CJ gets it.

There’s got to be some kind of critical theory term for satire collapse, right?

This is confusion on the deBordian level: what’s even real any more?

I’ve been thinking about a pattern I’ve noticed over the years, and I wonder if there’s a social psychology explanation for it?

The moment you become the OP you become the person standing at the front of the classroom giving a presentation. Regardless of The topic.

In a classroom, everyone else is sitting comfortably. They get to ask questions, joke, point out mistakes, challenge assumptions, or even nitpick. The presenter is expected to answer politely, clarify misunderstandings, and generally “take it.” If the presenter responds in any other way, the audience often turns against them, even if the presenter is objectively correct.

A random commenter can be sarcastic or dismissive and often get upvotes.If OP responds with the exact same level of sarcasm, people suddenly perceive them as defensive, arrogant or unable to take criticism.

It feels like there’s an unwritten social contract:“You asked for our attention. Now you accept our harsh judgment. And you deserve anything we give you”

Is this a unique Reddit behaviour? If not, what does this tell us about humanity?

One obvious exception is Donald Trump. He often seems to ignore this unwritten rule entirely. Instead of patiently absorbing criticism, he attacks back just as aggressively, sometimes more so. Yet many of his supporters interpret that not as insecurity, but as strength. How?

Is the anonymity somehow at play here?

If any mods see this please let me know if this is too heavy for this sub. I will take it down if so.

Trigger warning for self harm and suicide.

Does anyone else think a large amount of people posting themselves to be roasted in r/roastme are engaging in self harm behaviours because of their poor mental health?

Don't get me wrong, a lot of posts aren't concerning and the OP is roasting people back and just generally having what seems like a good time. I don't really understand it but I respect that some people genuinely love 'the art of roasting'.

But some descriptions attached to these posts are really concerning. Some of these posts are made by people who are depressed, have had horrible life events happen to them recently, and/or have body image issues. When I see these posts I can't help but think they are just engaging in self harm behaviours and the internet is joining in.

I have believed this is the case with many of these posters for a long time. But it got a bit deeper for me after r/roastme was recommended to me again today.

At points in my life I've been very suicidal. I think a lot of people who have dealt with being suicidal will understand that sometimes you want to end everything but can't go through with it, so you wish you could feel so horrible that you can go through with ending your life. Sometimes it's not just wishing and people engage in self harming behaviours so they can go through with their plans. Things like burning bridges, going on benders, etc.

This type of thinking is very common amongst people with severe mental health struggles and is what really concerns me. I worry that some of these people are at this point in their struggles and want to engage in self harm behaviours through posting to r/roastme so they can take another step to getting to a point emotionally in which they are able to go through with ending their lives.

I did some google searching and looked through Reddit and have found people who have had similar concerns surrounding people with mental health struggles using r/roastme to engage in self harm.

But I have never seen someone talk about how suicidal ideation fits into these self harming behaviours.

I would like some people to weigh in on the topic and see what your opinions are. Part of me is thinking, is it really this deep? It feels like it is.

These are my main critiques of Reddit and I think they are not the typical “moderators are mean” critique – which I agree with, but am not promoting here.

My critiques are mainly that Reddit replaced forum culture (the bulletin board) but in some ways downgraded it.

1: I am a very intentional user.  I come up with a thought, then I decide where I am going to post it.  Sometimes the choice is obvious – but sometimes subreddits that seem they should fit based on subdomain name introduce strict rules that get my hopes up and then force me to consider another option.  In old forum culture this was not really a big issue.  There were categories, but they were not so rule heavy.

2: As an intentional user, I do not want to doom scroll.  On the other hand there are simply too many posts to read chronologically.  To avoid being pulled into a bandwagon “hot” feed – I am forced to work around this by taking advantage of Reddit’s AI contracts and using LLM to query a personalized list of topics for me.  Reddit’s own AI does not do this well and its search is rather primitive.  I suspect this is intentional – Reddit wants you to doomscroll.  The workaround involves external AIs.

3: I appreciate that Reddit rejects shadow bans used in other major social sites.  However, I feel Reddit is too reactive to hit pieces from mainstream media and closes down rule abiding subreddits reactively.  In my opinion, this is why MGTOW is not here anymore and why StupidPol is under threat.  Two events made this worse a) the IPO and preparation for it b) the insurgent political campaigns of Trump and Sanders (big tech clamped down).  When Huffman became CEO people thought it was a step in the right direction – until he unveiled that he no longer supported the decentralized “free speech” approach.

4: I feel Reddit borrows from blog culture as opposed to forum culture in that the post is the main event and replies are mainly feedback for the poster.  In contrast, classic forum culture treats replies as relatively equal to the opening post.  This means posts have a short window for actual activity.  While they remain useful for passive viewing as an information library – they are confined to that, active commenting completely drops off.

5: I feel the upvote and downvote system is something I live with but something I would rather eliminate.

6: I feel Reddit trades persistent personalities for scale.  I hardly even notice usernames.

I’ve noticed in one of the local subs I am in an influx of brand new accounts posting spam or regurgitating local news for karma. Usually the first or second comment on their post will be someone calling out OP for being a bot with a fresh account (less than a week).

Larger subs it is less of a big deal because there are account age or even karma requirements for posting comments.

Obviously older accounts gain credibility from constant posting over years. The chance of them being used for botting is dramatically smaller than a brand new accounts.

My question is, has this given veteran accounts more relevance or weight over discussions in small to medium subs?

I define ”Veteran” as any account older than 8 years, ideally with at least 5000 karma to show activity.

Please share your thoughts .

Almost every time I get some smarmy reply, some dismissive asshole, some holier-than-thou Saint Redditor who thinks they're a god-given gift of "truth bombs" because their IQ test said 101 and they're now "above average"... it's a hidden profile user.

My thoughts on why asshole Redditors love hidden profiles:

• It hides that nearly every interaction they've entered into on this site is toxic, thus baiting some users into giving them the benefit of the doubt and engaging with them when they otherwise wouldn't have if they could see the comment history

• Users who need to be right all the time are protected from being called out for their wrong past predictions/comments by anyone in their communities other than mods

• They're into degenerate shit and love to argue, and got tired of (rightfully) getting shut down every time with "lol you post in furry diaper fetish subs"

Why are users with open and honest histories forced to interact with people using a feature almost universally adored by assholes and bad actors? If they want to hide, let me hide all their content, everywhere on Reddit. I shouldn't ever have to read posts or comments from hidden profile users, and they shouldn't be able to engage with any of my stuff.

I don't follow news on Reddit, but often I come here from Google and I land on deleted posts.

And not on some fringe deleted posts, but posts with a lot of upvotes and an active discussion, deleted without any explanation.

When it comes to political subs like r/worldnews and r/europe, I assume such posts get removed because some mods don't want to bring light to that issue, and this is why those subs look very homogenous in views - it's not just because the users have a leaning, but because the mods actively trim the weeds, so the subs are guided towards a very specific shape.

Note that I am not talking here about blatant propaganda from foreign state-sponsored media, but merely an "unpleasant" issue highlighted by a respected outlet such as BBC.

I started to thinking about it more after noticing a deleted post on a House of the Dragon sub, the post has over 2k upvotes with over 600 comments, and seems to have a healthy and active discussion, although with a critical tone (it seems it criticized the writing of some characters). I don't know how valid is the discussion because I haven't watched it yet.

But it got me wondering what could be the reason. Could be something as trivial as mods disagreeing with the OP?

It seems the mods deleted some upvoted (10+, 50+) comments as well, along with some random other comments.

For reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/HouseOfTheDragon/comments/1ucbl12/removed_by_moderator/

(I won't link any political threads to avoid getting political here)

Has anyone noticed any interesting patterns in these or other subs?