This article looks at Reddit as a “comment economy.” Beneath the rhetoric of community and information sharing, the platform’s economic incentives favor conformity, reaction, endless engagement, and compulsive commenting over independent thought, meaningful discourse, and the exchange of knowledge.
Reddit’s revenue ultimately depends upon the creation of, extended attention to and the scrolling through of massive amounts of comments. This produces advertising opportunities, data value, repeat visits and valuable user engagement metrics.
‘Aggressive bans’ should be ‘random mod is just being a petty cunt’
I’d prefer a petty cunt with a backbone over a limp weenie unwilling to take a stand against dogwhisles and slop
The problem is you get both in the wrong places. You get petty cunts where the discourse is actually important and you get limp weenies in subs like r/museum that let bad-faith users trash it.