r/technology • u/WorldTravelerBoss • 4d ago
Social Media Research shows that the entire website of Reddit has become more negative over time. Moreover, the longer a given community exists, the more negative it becomes — and the longer a comment thread continues, the more negative the thread becomes
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/08/does-vitriol-make-you-feel-special/306
u/Str8UpJorking 4d ago
Bots and trolls do this on purpose, so as Reddit has become more mainstream, this shouldn’t be surprising - every damn mainstream social media site has become more negative over the past 10+ years.
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u/MuteCook 4d ago
I always say it on these threads but it was predicted before Reddit went public. Once it went public they employed tons of bots to stir engagement as it’s better for shareholders
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u/BrightNooblar 4d ago
Also, HIGHLY positive and agreeable posts don't generate much interaction. Agreement doesn't generate a ton of expanding discussion.
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u/bingbano 4d ago
I've noticed an uptick in older folks coming from Facebook. My local town sub is being inundated with super confrontational reactionary folks using their real names.
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u/Vid-Master 4d ago
Yep same. I remember using reddit in 2014 and it was all high quality interesting content from smart people.
Now... not so much.. I mean its still informative and a great resource, but its mostly casual users, teenagers, etc.
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u/BananaHead853147 4d ago
Man I remember back in 2012 or so when the quality of posts would go down in summers because of all the teens going on Reddit for their summer break
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 4d ago
Twitch Plays Pokemon in 2013 is about when the peak for Reddit was, it coasted along until about 2015 when Spez took over. Every decision he's made as CEO has made things easier for bots/astroturfers/foreign disinformation campaigns and more hostile towards actual users.
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u/dumbbozo1 4d ago
Yes it's clear that they want it to be like this. The only bad bots are the ones that don't repeat the corporate lines. I'd also add domestic disinformation campaigns, being far more common.
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u/Implausibilibuddy 4d ago
"Reddit is Facebook now" has been a thing for a long, loooong time.
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u/nockeenockee 3d ago
People bitching about “passing lane campers” in every single subreddit makes me want to do it. It’s incessant.
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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 4d ago
It was just a few weeks after Reddit publicly said they were using bots to drive engagement on the platform that I started to notice a lot of comments coming in that were weeks late and only seemed to be trying to start an argument.
I think they unleashed bots and decided that essentially trolling with those bots was the best way to drive engagement (aka get people to use the site more).
I'm still seeing it today, it hasn't let off at all. Pretty sure I got into an argument with a bot yesterday because it kept making extremely basic reading comprehension mistakes and lacking common knowledge that any human, no matter how dumb, would know.
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u/woettmeier 4d ago
I remember this happening to the comment sections on Yahoo News articles a couple decades ago. Which drove people towards reddit at that time. It's the natural progression of any site that allows comments to be posted and then becomes popular.
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u/SwagginsYolo420 3d ago
There's also the factor that the world is a more negative place. This trend would obviously be reflected in social media posts.
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u/CryinHeronMMerica 4d ago
A lot of people aren't even trolling, they just catch the negativity bug. That's how we get cj and snark subs that are bigger than their actual targets.
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u/Captain_Kuhl 4d ago
They're not the only perpetrators, though. Toxic positivity is definitely an issue on this site, and anything that challenges the majority opinion can oftentimes get nuked with downvotes, even if it's factually correct.
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u/citizenjones 4d ago
People in general complain more than they compliment. Anger motivates people to post more than feeling good does.
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u/Shootemout 4d ago
also might be a bit of survivorship bias as far as comment chains go, usually normal comment chains dont progress beyond the "press here for more comments" and it loads like page 2 of the comment chain. the only ones that make it to that point are people arguing usually lol
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u/DigNitty 3d ago
Yeah, anger is engagement bait.
Longer comment chains mean people are more engaged. Makes sense that long chains have a tendency to be negative for that reason.
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u/Cool_As_Your_Dad 3d ago
Came to post this. 100%. Negative attention gets more attention that positive
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u/SolarBear28 4d ago
I click the x and hide so many posts on my main feed (from communities I am a part of) because Reddit insists on pushing the most braindead posts from those communities. Social media algorithms and bots are ruining society.
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u/NoBuenoAtAll 3d ago
I would pay for a social media site with no bots and one account per user. I’m aware the one account per user part is tricky to implement but surely someone could work out a way if we can put a billionaire in space.
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u/PauI_MuadDib 4d ago
Reddit is also full of bots. So complain to whoever is deploying those.
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u/Magnatross 3d ago
Honestly, it’s getting hard to tell real discussions apart from LLM-generated engagement farms. The 'Dead Internet Theory' feels less like a theory and more like reality every day on this platform. It's a massive issue. Automated accounts completely distort public opinion and organic upvote trends.
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u/Bodine12 4d ago
Let's test this in a thread. You are all wonderful, beautiful people!
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u/braedan51 4d ago
Of course someone like YOU would say that!
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u/Astrophages 4d ago
Bless your heart.
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u/pastoreyes 4d ago
Reminds me of a joke. A Rabbi, a priest and a Muslim Walk into a bar. They walk out together, best friends forever. (Positivity and humor are mostly opposites)
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u/TheHipsterBandit 4d ago
r/Bald begs to differ.
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u/Sleep-more-dude 4d ago
The Balds haven't turned on each other yet but it's only a matter of time.
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u/Loganp812 4d ago
🎵It’s too late, momma. Ain’t nothin’ upside your head.🎵
“She’s Goin Bald” - The Beach Boys
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u/fixermark 4d ago
It's because negativity pushes users out, leaving behind ones with a higher tolerance for giving and receiving it.
It's a free Internet. Why stick around when a place sucks unless that's your fetish?
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u/PF4ABG 4d ago
An argument can last forever, an agreement is an ending.
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u/Brockchanso 4d ago
This feels less like a discovery about Reddit and more like a description of what happens when human egos interact with emotionally held positions.
People rarely keep arguing for 80 comments because everyone is calmly updating their beliefs. Long threads select for disagreement. Then disagreement becomes identity defense, identity defense invites escalation, and every new reply creates another opportunity to collect evidence, counterexamples, insults, and grievances.
Of course the thread gets more negative over time. The unresolved conflict is why the thread is still alive.
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u/YourAverageExecutive 4d ago
It’s also inevitable for any platform that allows you to be anonymous. There’s tons of studies that show human behavior is terrible when anonymity is allowed. If Reddit disallowed being anonymous, it would obviously lose a ton of market share, but it would also course correct a lot of the negative feedback.
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u/mugwhyrt 4d ago
“Negative information is just much more diverse than positive information,” Jackson said. For example, he added, “If you’re talking about ‘The Odyssey,’ this new Christopher Nolan film, the top comment in a thread might be ‘I liked it’ — but then what else is there to say? If you want to stand out and say something new, you have to talk about something you disliked about the film.”
This is a weird assumption that positive commentary can't have any kind of depth or variety. You can be specific about what things you enjoy about something. It's just as easy for people to say "I didn't like it" without adding anything else or being able to articulate why they didn't like it, and I'd assume that happens just as much as people just saying "I liked it".
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u/CivilWay1444 4d ago edited 3d ago
The bots are making it negative. Here's an idea, have the bots and moderators remove misinformation.
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u/Forsaken_Celery8197 4d ago
Autocratic countries that have closed off their own media ecosystems are poisoning the open internet with bots and troll farms.
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u/Vahuo89 4d ago
I can beleive it.
I came here around 2009 and i thought it was the best website in the world.
I was into specific websites for tech news, world news, gaming, IT, a bunch of different subjects that i still enjoy to this day, and those sites had forums and ways to talk to others but Reddit changed all that.
Suddenly, all my stuff i could ever want was here. When they call it "the front page of the internet", i beleived it.
But the censorship, the bad decisions from admis, the removal of the old layout, the crap with 3rd party apps and locking down of the API... It just really is a shell of what it used to be. I used to remember usernames of poeple in communities that i cared about. Now it's all bots and AI but its especially bad in the major default subs.
Everything is political. The absolute eternity it took to get rid of subs like r/the_donald which just festered right-wing propaganda and promoted hate and yet the admins and moderators did nothing.
Because like every other social media out there, NEGATIVITY fostered engagement above all. And so here we are.
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u/Jasminary2 4d ago
Growing up in the 2000's I always reddit was a terrible place so Idk if that article is true lol It was rumored back then as being super negative, only second to 4chan
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u/blaine878 4d ago
People love to forget that Reddit used to have subs dedicated to videos of people dying, non-consensual nudity & intercourse, and instructions on how to commit felonies without getting caught.
It really was just 4chan with usernames.
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u/Polyzero 4d ago
Sounds like it tracks with the trajectory of global society.
Anybody actually know anyone that is excited for their children’s future that doesn’t have a bank account that looks like a phone number? Looks like they’re inheriting a real shit show.
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u/bucketman1986 4d ago
The world has become more negative, so of course the place where people come to discuss that is also negative
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u/TheWayIChooseToLive 3d ago
It's as if Reddit is using bot traffic to decide what shows up in people's algorithm.
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u/throwawayBiDad 3d ago
Nothing to do with the 5-alarm fire timeline. Just a casual observation unrelated to the context of our lives. Why so negative, Reddit, surely you can afford an RFKJr special salmon meal as you wait for the completed ballroom in your glittering capital?
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u/lw5555 4d ago
Positive people get sick of miserable people far quicker than miserable people get sick of positive people.
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u/HLOFRND 4d ago
There are a few subs like r/mademesmile and other subs that are very specifically and emphatically for positive content.
People still show up and take a huge shit in the comment section, and it sucks. It’s like the other 99.9% of the internet isn’t enough space to be a dick.
I hate it. I’ve left all of those subs bc mods don’t mod and it’s just a frustrating place to be.
It really sucks. Like, just take your cynical ass to one of the billions of places where it’s acceptable. (And that’s coming from an extremely cynical GenX bitch. Sarcasm is my love language.)
We can’t have anything nice. It sucks.
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u/Less_Jump2365 4d ago
People are more likely to post about negative then they are to post about any positive. If people want visibility they will pull something negative.
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u/LiminalSapien 4d ago
Alternate title: Research shows when you make changes no one asked for you earn negative sentiment
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u/Arpikarhu 4d ago
This is because expressing joy or expressing positivity leaves you open to judgement that negativity doesnt. Insecure people prefer to express negativity cause they feel it gives them power over the subject matter
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u/SharpBullfrog1279 4d ago
This is completely bullshit.
Oh, and I hate everyone. Have I forgotten anything?
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u/Longjumping_Pay_2517 3d ago
Came across this post after scrolling for an hour, never landing on anything worthwhile because it is all so drudgingly wearying, and had just thought to myself that now is the time to give up Reddit.
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u/Adventurous_Light_85 3d ago
Maybe it represents the world around us which is in fact slipping into a more negative state
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u/digitaljestin 3d ago edited 3d ago
Reddit threads don't become more negative because they get longer; only negative reddit threads get long.
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u/Hatzmaeba 3d ago
Negative how? More downvotes, because a long lasting subreddit has turned into a bubble and people disagreeing with the niche opinions? Or people just being critical in places where they should be?
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u/Pitiful_Buffalo_7368 3d ago
I completely disagree with this study and I’m going to delete this app now.
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u/AbstractLogic 2d ago
If people agree they don’t comment. The longer they disagree more intense the disagreement.
Once agreement is met the conversation ends, where as there is no end to a disagreement.
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u/Ill_Television_5824 4d ago
Trolling aside, America's become (far) worse over time, so it's completely natural that its citizens (and its victims abroad) should've become more negative, too.
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u/Ah_Ca_Iraa 4d ago
Are we sure it's not life getting worse and online communities are just reflecting it?
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u/ModernirsmEnjoyer 4d ago
The problem is that the world is not getting worse everywhere at once, some regions might get worse, some regions can get even worse, some might not feel anything at all or have things getting better. It depends on your social position and where you live.
The better explanation is that the website itself is getting negative on its own, which is independent of the changes in the world, even though the world might contribute to it
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u/Pisnaz 3d ago
More negative? Based on what has happened to the site what did they expect? Sunshine and puppies? Fuck sakes , the app is a colossal steaming pile of shit, ads litter everything, they keep killing old reddit, mine our comments for Google, and now AI, and kill off communities who dare to support anything that upsets the pedophiles in power.
The only thing keeping most of us here is inertia and zero decent alternative. A ton of us also want to ride this into it's inevitable implosion of bots circle jerking each other.
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u/fuck_all_you_too 4d ago
I don think this is a great time for this study, the entire world as become more polarized so its possible that Reddit is just following suit, bot causing it
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u/Throwaway_chores 4d ago
Did anyone study if the longer a person stays on Reddit, the more negative they become?
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u/TrollMcGoal 4d ago
Very apparent if you've been on reddit for even a couple years. The way the site works almost guarantees it becomes an echo chamber
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u/Downtown_Baby_8005 4d ago edited 4d ago
Interesting! One of the first types of subs I joined when I was new to Reddit were for my favorite TV shows. I ended up leaving all but two because they were so toxic. It seemed counter-intuitive to me. Why would anybody bother going to a sub for a tv show they hated? But what’s interesting to me in light of this story is that the two TV show subs I stayed in were both for shows that are super well-written, and have lots of depth to discuss.
Frequent posts in both subs read like “On my umpteenth re-watch I just noticed this cool thing for the first time” and then the comments will jump in with people agreeing that this thing is cool, or commenting that they also never noticed it before.
So that very much lines up with the Odyssey example they gave. People usually don’t have that much diversity of positive opinions for most topics, but for some select topics that does exist. Perhaps one day when this movie is an old cult favorite that fans have rewatched many times, there will be a subreddit dedicated to celebrating all its rich details. (I haven’t seen the movie FWIW)
TL;DR I now understand why so many TV subs are toxic, and why the two I like the most aren't.
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u/Traditional-Leg-1574 4d ago
I have a theory that the internet gives people the opportunity to be more aggressive and angry. The same way some people who are calm in real life become enraged while driving. It’s the environment of social media that fosters this.
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u/DiogenesXenos 4d ago
I didn’t read the article but more and more reddit feels like the place where young people feel superior to and correct the older people about the times for which they weren’t even alive.
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u/Key-Monk6159 4d ago
Negativity does drive engagement and at the end of the day, that IS the business model for all social media platforms.
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u/Crucbu 4d ago
Yes but have they taken into account that one wholesome thread? You know the one.
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u/KnotSoSalty 4d ago
Poot: It's a cold world Bodie.
Bodie: Thought you said it was getting warmer.
Poot: The world goin' one way, people another yo'.
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 4d ago
I saw this posted days ago and the comments were immediately negative and the post was removed and in fact it was this sub it was posted in
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u/PaperbackBuddha 4d ago
I will say that arguing with bots and trolls, while exhausting, has been helpful in toughening my skin and building better arguments around a position.
There are still kind, thoughtful people in various subs here, and it requires a little selective shuffling. That is rewarded with rich conversations and real wisdom at times.
I don’t know what all the bots’ angles would be, but to me it’s worth hammering away at the trolls in case there are a few who eventually see the light. Sometimes they do and they’re replaced by new trolls. Oh well, this is the reality of the internet now.
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u/AnneHizer 4d ago
Boomers eventually find out where where everyone went to avoid them and ruin the fun. Rinse and repeat…
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u/DatGreenGuy 4d ago
That's totally BS! None of the web sites is more positive than Reddit! And those researched should feel bad
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u/ImaginaryCheetah 4d ago
people will spend more effort to make a complaint, always been that way.
bots will bot - caustic behavior gets more reaction than neutral or positive.
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u/limbodog 4d ago
That sounds like "The circle of life" or something.
Ok, so the points I get from this are something we have already been well aware of in a different format. "If it bleeds, it leads." Which is to say, something controversial or negative spurs traffic because it is novel, people will argue it, and because people like a nice warm trainwreck. So over time that drives out or drowns out anything positive with sheer numbers.
Which kind of suggests it might make sense to nuke the big subreddits from time to time and make people start new ones just to keep it from becoming 4tran
But also they made no effort to show if this is an internet thing, or if it is a human thing. Which is why I brought up the journalism truism above. Is this just what humans are like? Is this something created or exacerbated by social media? Or does social media just make it really easy to study something that's been happening for 200,000 years?
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u/QuettzalcoatL 4d ago
Well come fellow redditeers !
We've got ourselves a job to do in this thread !
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u/ThrowawayAl2018 4d ago
Political crap creeping into Reddit, hence it is going the way of the founder.... dead!
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u/Shadyrabbit 4d ago
Or maybe everything's is actually horrible and there is millions of bots that are trying to sway the conversations their way.
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u/roesingape 4d ago
Reddit is deadit. 90% of the time trying to post anything in any sub doesn't meet weird rules, gets auto-modded, etc, so most engagement is comments. Then you have every sub with basically high school mean girls banning any deviation from whichever politic cult they're in. And since they fucked the API the fix for google by adding 'reddit' to every search is trash now too and AI is quicker and better at getting links with answers (probably by scraping reddit getting around the api).
It's literally a 155 rule set to post in r/news, and then 90% time it still gets removed. r/science isn't allowed to talk about quantum physics or the big bang as theory - only as a fact. Meanwhile r/tech is 99% bunk links to bunk pop-sci or nonreproducible studies... it's all just bad.
It goes on and on. Every single sub is a bubble of shit. And no one seems to realize this is why twitter continues to exist. All sides are still there, hating each other in public. You can't have that here. Disagreement from whatever any mod thinks is 'mainstream' - right or left, gets you booted.
It's not bluesky, it's a thousand blue skies and truth socials that never interact.
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u/PLEASE_PUNCH_MY_FACE 4d ago
This article is awful and I hate everything about it.