What makes Reddit fundamentally different from other social media, is that on Reddit you don't "follow" accounts, you follow communities, called subreddits. It has added the ability to post to your profile, and so users can follow you directly, but the main way of using Reddit is to subscribe to a subreddit, not to a particular user.
Because most users are subscribed to subreddits, not to users, this means that in order to reach most users you must post on a subreddit. That sounds fine, right? Subreddits are just like hashtags, right? You have #art and you have /r/art. Same thing, right?
WRONG. COMPLETELY WRONG.
In most social media, hashtags don't have moderators. Anyone can join a hashtag. Anyone can use any hashtag on their post, no matter how inappropriate it would be. You can have a child's stickmen sketch with hashtag #art and nobody cares. On Reddit, on the other hand, there are moderators, which can gatekeep what sort of content makes it into the subreddit or not.
From one side, this is a good thing, because it keeps children's sketches from spamming Reddit's finest art gallery, where only real art is allowed. From the other side, keep in mind that Reddit has a subreddit called /r/teenagers, which is all proof you need that it's a website full of teenagers, some of which are moderators.
Can you imagine someone whose job is to create something arguing with what could potentially be a 13 years old kid over whether or not their work qualifies to enter their exclusive Internet club? That's just an absolutely ridiculous situation to be put in.
In one case, an artist was banned from /r/art because a moderator thought they used AI to generate their artwork, and wouldn't be convinced of otherwise.
“I don’t believe you,” a moderator for r/art replied. “Even if you did ‘paint’ it yourself, it’s so obviously an Al-prompted design that it doesn’t matter. If you really are a ‘serious’ artist, then you need to find a different style, because A) no one is going to believe when you say it’s not Al, and B) the AI can do better in seconds what might take you hours. Sorry, it’s the way of the world.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/artist-banned-from-art-reddit/ (accessed 2024-11-19)
On top of that, Reddit fosters a culture that is anti-creator in general.
For example, one of the major subreddits, /r/technology, has this rule:
Do not submit anything you have personally written or any projects, websites, or companies you are affiliated with or represent.
Rules of the technology subreddit.
This is probably the opposite of what I would ever want in a "community:" a community where nobody can share with others what they have created.
I'm sure the moderators have reasons for this, such as dealing with users who only join a community to spam their own projects and leave, but, come on. People don't have "Reddit" as a job. People are busy creating stuff. They can't "join" your community and waste time talking with potential teenagers because they're busy creating the stuff they want to share with that community.
However, let's assume the worst for a moment. Let's put on our shiny tinfoil hat.
What if the posts in /r/technology are written by people affiliated with the articles, but it's only people who have connections with the moderators? For example, what if they are paying the mods to be allowed to post their articles there? What if the moderators are saints, but there is such a large incentive to getting on the frontpage of /r/technology that news websites invest enough money in social media to pay some guy just to have a Reddit account and regularly share their articles? If you have never noticed it, there are many accounts on Reddit that do nothing but share articles ALL THE TIME and they NEVER leave any comments. These users make it to the top of /r/technology and large subreddits all the time as well. Are you seriously telling me the moderators can't put 2+2 together? Do they seriously believe someone uses Reddit just to dump links to the same three websites every single day, twenty times per day? Why are larger websites with budgets allowed to share their work if they construct schemes to evade the rules but smaller creators like me can't just post there? If someone bans my account, it has the name of my website, it's banned forever. If someone bans the guy who is paid to spam links to 3 websites and never leave comments, he can just create another account with a random username and continue business as usual.
I can't help but feel that this would be a system very easy to abuse for someone who doesn't have morals.
I think I've seen a rule somewhere of 10 comments per 1 self post. I think some Youtubers don't even reply 10 times to their own fans in the comments before posting a new video.
In essence, moderators don't value the time of people who create stuff. You can spend hours or even days editing a video for a community of Internet strangers, but because you didn't spend hours talking to strangers on the Internet, you don't qualify as being part of the community according to their rules. It just makes no sense.
If you make something, and you want money for it, Reddit thinks it's an ad. For example, let's say you post a strip of a comic you made, and then in the comments you say you're selling the whole comic book. With certainty, someone will accuse you of posting an ad.
This means if you make money off your work, you're just not welcome. At least not if you're honest and direct and say "I make stuff, I want money." If you construct a scheme to get under people's ad-radar, they will gladly upvote you.
This is all very odd, because it creates an environment that is extremely anti-creator, anti-original content, anti-OC. Even though Redditors claim to love OC when it's posted, they make no effort in creating an environment that incentives people to post OC in first place.
I mean, imagine you created a thing. If you post on it, you're opening yourself to a barrage of comments from people who believe themselves to be the world's greatest critics. Every comment you make will be judged with upvotes and downvotes.
Even people who are loved by a community, such as the developer of a great game, can be showered with downvotes by making a statement that sounds bad one time. Those votes don't really mean anything to Redditors, and everyone will forget about it in 20 minutes. But for the creator who gets such treatment, it just feels like you're unwanted there.
You may think that if you're going to get showered with downvotes no matter what you say, it's better not to say anything. And if you aren't going to say anything, it's better not to use Reddit.
I'm sure this has driven a lot of creators away from Reddit, and it will continue to drive them away.
On other platforms, the average creator has a lot more power. They can post whatever they want on their accounts, and in some platforms, if they block someone, they can't comment anymore on the creator's posts, and even old comments won't appear any longer, which means the creator has the power to effectively censor anyone who is bringing bad vibes to their followers. "You can say whatever you want on your account, but not on my posts." On Reddit, it's not your subreddit, so you don't get that power.
This doesn't mean that the people are in power on Reddit. What if most upvotes just come from bots? Then you just think you have power, but you don't really have power where it matters, you only have power to criticize small creators who can't buy a bot army to defend and promote themselves. The bad actors will be upvoted whether you like them or not.
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