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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   29061 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I think Reddit is a more sophisticated psychological operation than is publicly known. There is compelling evidence that Ghislaine Maxwell ran one of the top moderator accounts. The account MaxwellHill was an influential power-mod on the default subs since Reddit took off and it posted almost nonstop since the early days of Reddit’s acquisition. The account shared common interests with Ghislaine Maxwell, was named after the nickname of Maxwell’s estate (Maxwell Hill), and randomly stopped posting the week Ghislaine was arrested. (Imagine possessing powerful influence over a community for more than a decade, spending about every day on it, and you randomly quit forever without any sign of discontent and no public comment.) Ghislaine on her Twitter (iirc) showed an early interest in forums and I think specifically mentioned Reddit. Ghislaine’s father Robert Maxwell was a media mogul who has been labeled “Israel’s Superspy”, and Ghislaine was partners with Jeffrey Epstein who is theorized to be an Israel-associated intelligence asset rather than a financier.

I also think that the Reddit feed structure betrays its utility as a psychological manipulation operation. There’s a community called “AmITheAsshole” which is inorganic. The top content often follows the same structure: “is [following tradition or conventional wisdom] and [having a special affinity to family] good, or does it make someone an asshole?” The answer is going to be that it makes you an asshole, a status which is to be deterred. This acts as psychological shaping for the Reddit user where he gradually learns that everything he has learned is wrong and can’t be trusted, and that he can only rely on Reddit for what is right. This is accomplished through dramatic and unusual social dilemmas. This cognitive habit is kept when the user consumes the rest of Reddit’s content which is commercial + political slop. Now the user is primed to assent to what is presented on Reddit, because he has previously learned that Reddit overrules everything he has understood before.

There is definitely room for a Reddit competitor and I think making one is one of the greatest moral acts a programmer can do today (unironically). If you’re serious about making one let us know because there’s a lot of psych wisdom that can be implemented to make it take off.

I’ve noted elsewhere the incredible coincidence that Maxwell’s father was the man ostensibly responsible for privatizing science journals, and reddit wunderkind programmer Aaron Swartz killed himself awaiting trial for trying to pirate all of JSTOR. I appear to be the only person who thinks this could be the seed of a conspiracy theory that /u/AaronSw was “convinced” to kill himself by /u/maxwellhill.

There is definitely room for a Reddit competitor and I think making one is one of the greatest moral acts a programmer can do today (unironically).

IMO we've reached a point in the technology adoption curve where the hard piece to build such a competitor is not programming. Acquiring and keeping a critical mass of users while dodging politically-charged lawfare (copyrighted content, criminal activity, pornography) seems like the real missing piece. And the users are probably more difficult than the lawfare.

Even people who use Reddit hate Reddit. “Redditor” is synonymous with loser online. Reddit clones have been terrible for a number of psychological reasons which are actually pretty easy to deal with.

Just thinking aloud here… This site is a Reddit clone of sorts. I don’t know if the current codebase would allow users to set up a second “sub” without requiring them to create new accounts, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that it does. From there, don’t you think the biggest obstacle preventing this site from becoming the next Reddit would be the userbase?

Userbase and moderation, yes. The_Donald branched out to be a multi-subreddit diaspora site, with KotakuInAction and the QAnon sub migrating there… along with genuine Nazis, genuine white supremacists, etc.

I know that you're not wrong but it never ceases to amaze me that genuine Nazis support a man who was literally Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel.

IIRC, themotte.org is a stripped down version of rdrama.net, and they have subreddits holes. Creating a Reddit clone isn't a technical challenge anymore.

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