LogFAQs > #979709875

The upvote system is actually pretty neat for when people are looking for help, in the same way GameFAQs Q&A or whatever it's called gives you a top answer. I'm often directed to reddit when looking something specific up, and it's very nice that instead of reading through dozens of comments trying to find the actual answer, people have upvoted the most reasonable and/or helpful comment.

On the other hand, for discussion subs, it creates all the issues foolmo has mentioned. Groupthink and hiveminds are a big problem, especially with subs having their own mod teams (or super mods that own hundreds of subs, another weird phenomenon of reddit culture and a whole can of worms in itself, all of whom usually have very specific ideologies and control a sub's acceptable opinions). When a sub leans too hard to one side, it usually ends up in someone creating a splinter sub that promotes the opposite ideology, which incentivizes groupthink even more. And because upvotes are like crack to some people, they all try to one-up each other by trying to make the funniest comment, creating endless chains of frequently terrible jokes and puns. None of this is precisely toxic, but I find it incredibly annoying. The loss of individuality is weird too to us who come from old school message boards, but it's kinda like that everywhere now when you think about it - tiktok, twitter, reddit, instagram comments, whatever else.

Naturally, reddit is also a news source for many, which means it can risk spreading misinformation or selling a specific narrative, which can have actual impact on people in a way that teenagers calling each other Nintendrones will never be able to replicate. I'm subbed to the Today I Learned and You Should Know subs, and a lot of heavily upvoted threads are completely false or blatantly misrepresenting the information that is being shared. Then you have karma farming to sell accounts, bots that repost threads and comments, and bots who post merchandise and advertise websites trying to pass themselves off as real people. It's wild out there.