What factors do you think contributed to the "Reddit Hivemind"? How do you believe it can be avoided?
I've been seeing more often (and others have posted the same) that some of the elements of "Reddit etiquette" seem to be taking over here. Luckily I can still find discussion comments but it seems the jokes and general "downvote because I disagree" are slowly taking over.
So the question becomes is it the size or the functionality of the site? The people or popularity? What's your thoughts?
edit: should I change it to Lemmy-hivemind? Exhibit A: the amount of downvotes without a single explanation (guessing it's anything to do with Reddit being talked about).
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Literally nothing can be done to avoid it. The "Reddit hivemind" is the human hivemind. When enough people start contributing to a certain community, certain ideas usually unanimously shared between individuals get boosted up to the top and become general consensus.
Weird how those ideas of yours usually correspond with something western politicians and think thanks spout on the daily.
Weird how non western ideas that somehow survive deletion are usually downvoted to oblivion or flagged and hidden.
Weird how Reddit hired a literal CIA agent to manage their content even though said person had zero experience working that role.
Weird weird weird
But everything at all times is the Reddit hivemind. Nothing can change or improve. Reddit is inevitable.
Reddit doesn't represent the entirety of humanity. It represents a specifically self-selecting group of people that tend to come from a combination of converging material conditions that allow them access to the site, and site retention for each user depends on whether that user is likely to opt into that particular group's increasingly-ossified norms that are provided superficial but effective incentives to continue doing so by the site's owners.
Social groups can and do change over time, and some are better or worse off in varying ways, and they are not all "Reddit hiveminds" unless you are lazily equivocating all human social structures as "hiveminds." What else is there? Some fantasy of rugged Randian individualism?
To say otherwise is useless fatalism, or at the least, false equivocation.
I think you missed their point. Yes, the specific beliefs held by the Reddit hivemind are specific to that platform. But the idea that Reddit has a hivemind is a natural human factor. So Reddit's hivemind might be a centre-left liberal hivemind, HN's might be more libertarian, and Lemmy's is more leftist. But there's some degree of hivemind on any platform that exposes users too each others' content and where participating in those public discussions is the point.
A site like YouTube or Facebook lacks as much of a hivemind effect, because people aren't on there for the discussion. They're on YT for the videos, or on FB largely for their friends. Though both YT and FB comment sections are also proof that lacking a hivemind is also not a sign of quality.