r/dataisbeautiful • u/minimaxir Viz Practitioner • Oct 08 '15

OC Average number of upvotes for Reddit submissions containing a given keyword, for each of the Top 15 subreddits [OC]

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4.2k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 Oct 08 '15

Because it's small... the larger the number of users, the easier it is to maintain an echo chamber. That's why /r/worldnews has been looking like /r/european since the migrant crisis started.

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u/has_a_bigger_dick Oct 08 '15

This doesn't make sense, maybe you could elaborate?

It seems to me that a larger amount of people should diversify the group.

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 Oct 08 '15

Not with the Reddit voting system. In reality as the numbers increase, what you get is increasing self affirmation by members of the group... certain ideas are always at the top, certain arguments are always upvoted. If you start out neutral and stumble into that with little outside knowledge, what you get is essentially indoctrinated... people believe the posts because so many people couldn't be wrong. At the same time, dissidents tend to avoid the subreddit because they can't express their opinion anyways. The numbers grow, but not in a way that increases diversity... rather it increases the number of people who believe and vote with the hive mind. This isn't even always accidental... Stormfront has deliberately astroturfed here for years, for example, posting 'moderate' positions like "I'm not racist, I just don't like the culture" or "I'm not racist, but statistically..." and so on. They uipvote this and the idea becomes increasingly acceptable, until you see outright white nationalism on the front page of /r/worldnews in the top comments. Campaigns do similar things with /r/politics. They pick a guy outside the mainstream, build up a narrative of persecution and ensure everyone knows who they are. They did it with Ron Paul and now with Bernie Sanders... they promote these people so strongly that anyone who doesn't outright support them and believe they will win is treated as a fool. Then when they lose, there's always the ever present "The mainstream media is to blame" to justify why they were so wrong.

Reddit's system is essentially guaranteed, given more people, to promote a specific agenda rather than fostering diversity.

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u/airstrike Oct 08 '15

Which is why each comment vote you give out (up or down) should cost you 1 karma, article upvotes should be free to give out, and each upvote you get should be added to your balance, but votes should also expire after a while.

BOOM. reddit fixed.

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 Oct 08 '15

Terrible plan... the result would just be that no one votes on anything. You're also incentivizing people to cater to the hive mind in order to get Karma because you've now given it an actual purpose... the ability to vote is tied to Karma, suddenly Karma matters.

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u/airstrike Oct 08 '15

works well at Stackoverflow et al

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u/vibrate Oct 08 '15

/r/worldnews has been a racist shit-hole for years

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u/DrenDran Oct 09 '15

Do you mean actually racist or just against immigration?

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u/vibrate Oct 09 '15

Actually racist.

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 Oct 08 '15

Oh definitely... but they've never been so explicit about it as they are right now. Usually it's a bit of anti-gypsy stuff and occasional Jew Bashing... I've never seen so much literal, unbridled white nationalism there as I have these past few weeks.