Research: The whole Reddit has become more negative over time. Also, the longer the community exists, the more negative it get — and the longer a comment thread continues, the more negative it becomes
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/08/does-vitriol-make-you-feel-special/
I like how Lemmy is much for efficient by just starting off negative with everything.
I feel that most conversations I have here are someone genuinely trying to make a point and have a discussion whereas on Reddit it’s mostly people just trying to take a shit on any comment that’s made.
gEnOsiDe EnAbLeR!!1
The article was interesting but your title is a little misleading, OP. They were not singling out Reddit. Merely using it as an example in their study on why social media threads tend to skew towards negativity over time. It was about human psychology more than any specific social media platform.
Their study was based on analysis of 2.05 billion comments from 2,150 Reddit communities.
If they want to generalize their findings to all social media platforms, that’s on them.
Would a remark like this one count as positive or negative?
After reading the article, I feel that the reply was negative and fits the article assessment pretty well
Oh yeah? Well, that’s just like - your opinion, man.
Let me tell you something, pendejo…
I posted a small comment on Reddit for the first time in, oh, idk, years. It was in a thread about the book Dungeon Crawler Carl. My comment said, paraphrasing,
Short and to the point. I received three replies, all of them antagonistic. The first one said,
Except weird and long-winded. The second one said,
The third one was,
Aaaand last time I post a comment on reddit.
I’ve noticed this too. There seems to be someone to violently disagree on even the most benign points and chase the thread indefinitely. I’m sure they are pretty much all bots.
Yeah. Either assholes or engagement bots. That and censorship by mods is why Ieft.
(Rare preemptive /s) I have no idea what the fuck youre talking about because i know at least 3 people who regularly post on reddit so they cant be bots (/s, again)
Maybe it’s not a nihilistic book/series, but it does push readers into nihilism by steeping them in god awful writing.
Good to have research that backs up logical observations. I’ve never encountered any human occupied space that did not follow this pattern.
That’s not quite fair, some places do an amazing job at maintaining a harmonious environment, but they are the exception.
Yea, you notice it here, too. Hell, I do it too. Every time I have the urge to contribute, it invariably furthers the discussion towards monkey-style shit-flinging. Not on purpose, mind you, it’s just something that happens if you’re not careful.
Godwin’s law has been around since long before Reddit.
Just about any forum thread that goes on for pages ends up in an argument. I think this can be avoided with strict rules and users who reinforce the culture.
As far as reddit goes I find the larger the number of subscribers to a subreddit the worse it gets. However depending on the topic of the subreddit even a niche small subreddit can be toxic in some way. This tracks here as well.
I would like to see more discussion about an artificial technical or skill barrier needed to participate on a website or service. This might sound elitist but keeping “normies” out goes a long way to helping keep the discussion quality high. Even having something as simple as an “ugly” more text based interface helps.
I used to think everyone should have access to the internet back in the day. After that happened I changed my mind
There’s an argument that online forums should be kept to CLI interfaces with obscure controls. For that reason.
always used to be like this even back in the PHP BB forum days. Except back then it was something like “all threads eventually lead to Hitler”
If a forum thread was long enough, several pages in, eventually it would get to a hitler reference for something and then you knew that thread was done.
So does it short circuit the fuckery if you make the inevitable Hitler reference right away in a top level comment?
Also fuck reddit.
That’s where it can be one of the outliers and turn positive in the replies. I hope you have a nice day.
Quite! Pip pip!
me_irl was stupid meme place and now all posts are jus ragebait about economics lol