I would not call reddit anonymized, that title would fit something like 4chan a lot better. On reddit it is common to attack someone based on their comment history or karma.
Maybe anonymized is the wrong word. I mean more that Reddit lacks a sense of enduring identity; while a log of past posts does exist, the site is designed to prioritize the content of a comment more than the identity of its author.
This leads to shallow takes and groupthink, IMO, as comments become upvoted or downvoted based only on what's in that specific comment and not the overall identity of the author. If Reddit were the real world, it would be like starting an entirely new conversation with every single person you meet (even close friends or family members), a kind of endless first impression, in which small things are over-magnified.
> the site is designed to prioritize the content of a comment more than the identity of its author.
The site design is similar to HN on this front. I think that it is culture that separates the two instead.
> as comments become upvoted or downvoted based only on what's in that specific comment
This is desirable imo. It should not matter who makes a post but rather the quality of the post itself.
Regardless, I think that groupthink is an inherent problem of upvoting/downvoting and that this is the main cause of it. The best system that I have seen so far is the one that slashdot and its clones use.
> and not the overall identity of the author
This instead leads to personality cults, where for example tptacek's comment will get to the top regardless of its contents and bury superior comments by "irrelevant" users. Plus it is not like groupthink does not exist in HN either.
> it would be like starting an entirely new conversation with every single person you meet
I do not see what you mean by that. Repeating the same things? If so, I do not see how this would be the case. Rather, I think that being able to discuss with others and evaluate what they post in face value without letting your prejudice and opinion of the person itself get in the way is ideal.
> The site design is similar to HN on this front. I think that it is culture that separates the two instead.
Agreed. Culture is important.
Regarding my comment on identity: I'm trying to make a more subtle point, which is that it's difficult to build a long-lasting relationship via an online community if every comment is essentially speaking to a broad, new audience. I can't say, "Hey User-X, you mentioned this last week and I was thinking about it yesterday, and wanted to say this...". There is no continuity and no relationship-building.
Another (poor) metaphor would be: imagine your job is a traveling elevator repairman/repairwoman. You go from building to building, working at each for a few days. Sometimes, you go back to the same building. Maybe you strike up a conversation with each building's maintenance staff, but the fact that you have no enduring identity, means that you never quite get to know anyone, even if you recognize some of the same faces.
Forums didn't have this issue, largely because of avatars, signatures, and basically being forced to read every comment.
> This is desirable imo. It should not matter who makes a post but rather the quality of the post itself.
I think this makes sense at first glance, but the downsides (personality cults) are a separate issue that arises from the voting system. If you had comments/posts organized chronologically, 'cult leader' comments wouldn't be at the top. This also only seems to happen when the community is large enough for an individual to be anonymous within it.
I wrote a Python script to delete my comments every other day to take care of people pulling small quotes out of context and attacking me for it, or worse what boards I posted to and gatekeeping me based on that alone.
So in other words you never write anything worth keeping. People deleting themselves is massively annoying and a major dick move to the rest of us who have to guess what was said to understand the context.
Does reddit actually delete posts from their systems? Or do they just flag it as deleted in their database? I always assume websites keep deleted data around.
If you really want to be safe, you probably need to utilize multiple online identities. Give the squeaky clean one to your employer if they ask.
Just don't give them anything then. What he's doing now is like handling the corporation a piece of writing on paper, letting people take pictures of it, then grabbing the paper back, ripping in up and dropping the paper thrash on the street. It doesn't serve anyone.
It's very similar, you leave thrash around for others to deal with. And it's just not "one's online content", you also degrade the online content of the ones who spent time replying to you and participating in the thread.
I mean it's quite simple. It serves the user at the cost of the community at large.
HN has similar problems because you can edit your post after people have replied to it. This means you can retroactively change history and how prior arguments were framed, which can make other people look like idiots or completely destroy a comment chain.
If you're really concerned about anonymity or your history being used against you, then create throwaways. Otherwise you're not stopping corporations from keeping tabs on you, the moment you hit post that data's already been scraped and stored somewhere.
This is a great example of why they had to write a python script to delete comments to prevent getting attacked later. People want to throw fits over everything
So what? What other people may chose to do is their issue. Dicks are easy to ignore, but don't be a dick to others in order to prevent potential dickiness reaching you.
Wow. I feel like this is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, at this point. I delete all of my comments, popular and hated. Equally. I don't pick and choose. There's a 48 hour clock on it. No one cares about a conversation 48 hours later on Reddit... No one cares 12 hours later, really. But if you want to think I'm a "dick", because I only give someone 48 hours to have my opinion on Reddit, well I'm old enough to live through that =) message boards don't have to be as permanent as they want them to be.
> No one cares about a conversation 48 hours later on Reddit
I do. All the reddit threads that I look at are from online searches regarding some sort of question that I have. Most of them tend to be months old, some even years. You just make the experience of people like me significantly worse. I wish that services like ceddit stored the content of user-deleted posts.
Deleted comments are also easy to ignore. Deleting your comments regularly might be construed as a dick move by some people, but as you say, dicks are easy to ignore.
I make a lot of HN accounts because of this. Every reply includes more information that can't be deleted but can be used to tie it to my real-life identity. I don't want to have to precede every reply by pointing out it's my views and not my employer's.
