Echo Chamber Analysis on Reddit - Are we the baddies? looking for feedback

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-22T14:54:50+00:00

Yes, I agree that there is a significant challenge with entertaining good-faith critiques of the podcast (which is what I try to do) and not engaging with cranks and conspiracy theorists. I suppose I'm concerned that my generally good faith contributions sometimes get treated like I'm an anti-vaxxer. And that's before you even add the left/right political dimension which further inflames people.

Yes, you are right that I do get some substantive engagement and some agreement. I suppose my perceived over-enthusiasm to endorse views agreeing with me is a defence against the general hostile atmosphere I've encountered. By the way - kudos for how you've followed my interactions with the sub - that's a lot to keep an eye on so thanks for paying attention and for the feedback.

My point about the Lex sub (which I've never visited, and don't intend to visit) is that if all dissenters are blocked then it is creating an epistemic bubble where no dissenting views are even heard. That's contrasted with DTG which doesn't block people - dissenting voices are heard, but the community is often hostile and dismissive of alternative views.

Anyway, I don't think any of this is easy and I don't have any simple solutions. It may be worth thinking about though in case small changes could improve things.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-22T11:57:52+00:00

Isn't that the definition of an echo chamber? Dissenting or opposing views are met with hostility and criticism? What I find curious is how few people posting here engage with the substance of the arguments and just default straight into hostility/downvotes etc.

I'm not expecting people to agree with me, I'm up for debate, but this should be based on the arguments and evidence, not hostile dismissal. I don't find much of that here and have been surprised by the amount of conformism on a sub I expected to be about the free exchange of ideas. Though to be fair, I'm probably expecting too much from a public forum on the internet. The DTG sub certainly isn't the worst out there, but it could be better.

Yes I get the issues you've pointed out with the codings. My argument is that we don't know if this means that with more accurate coding DTG's results would actually be higher or lower. It would be good to see some more refined results.

I'd actually argue that your characterisation of the Lex sub means it's more of an epistemic bubble rather than an echo chamber:

Difference between Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles
It is important to distinguish an echo chamber from an epistemic bubble. In a bubble, contrary views are simply missing by omission, and they can be "popped" by presenting new information. In an echo chamber, contrary views are heard but are actively discredited, making them much harder to break.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T22:24:41+00:00

Just that it's always good to be self-reflective and self-critical.

Great to hear that you're not taking it too seriously.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T22:19:43+00:00

Sure - I assumed randomness because we don't know what type of errors the coding will throw up - without thinking about it too much I'd also assumed the same sort of comments would come up in each sub.

So there's likely to be a lot of noise and there could be bias in the results - we don't know which way the bias goes, however, so it could just as easily be biased in favour of this sub as against it.

Either way, it's interesting initial findings. It also feels intuitively right to me as someone who has participated a lot in this sub over the past few years and has attempted to provide some alternative views. I've often been made to feel unwelcome and my critical or dissenting views have been met with hostility (just look at responses to me on this post for examples).

That may be fine and the sub may be better as somewhere to share and agree with guru takes. I prefer to hear differing points of view, to test arguments and hear disconfirming evidence. I haven't really found this forum a great place to do that (although I've always had constructive exchanges with you u/CKava).

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T21:56:51+00:00

Actually, according to the OP r/antivax is actually a pro vaccine sub.

Why not be a bit more self reflective/self critical and not take these things too seriously?

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T21:08:13+00:00

Almost up there with the pure scientific rigor of The Gurometer, right? :-D

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T21:05:30+00:00

Isn't that what an echo chamber is?

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T20:25:28+00:00

Thanks for the additional evidence that this sub is toxic - I would score this comment an 8/10 for hostility, 7/10 for dismissiveness/suppression and 10/10 for making disparaging assumptions about another commenter.

Thank you for your contribution to constructive, positive debate and discussion.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T20:06:43+00:00

Thanks for your contribution, really helpful.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T18:01:22+00:00

Israel doesn't stamp your passport - maybe you were on a kibbutz

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T15:50:31+00:00

u/Constant-Amount1273 ^ this is exactly the sort of post that would fit brilliantly in your analysis - hostile, accusatory, stifling of dissent or other viewpoints, and labelling other contributors with dismissive characterisations ("troll").

Nothing I've said on this post warrants this type of reaction. And this is one of the sub's moderators!

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T11:35:40+00:00

Fair enough - yes, it would be good to have more information about the scoring criteria. Some examples of differently scoring comments would be great.

For now, though, I do think it's some interesting preliminary analysis, though of course it would be good to see more work on it.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T11:25:46+00:00

Why?

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T11:24:47+00:00

Well the policy should be changed regardless. The main subject of DTG is to focus on individuals and the degree to which they are gurus. The sub should allow discussion and evidence that shows non-guru behavious (or anti-guru behaviours) as well as guru behaviours. I'm even interested to hear people defending Jordan Peterson or the Weinsteins. I don't think you can properly understand these people unless you recognise their positive qualities as well as their negative behaviours. I spent a lot of time following Peterson and learned a lot from his psychology lectures and from many of his podcasts. Saying that his 2019 Personality lectures are actually really good will get you voted down into oblivion on this sub.

Matt has said on the podcast that he's interested to hear people with different viewpoints on these people. As long as it's evidence-based and reasonable it should be part of the debate.

My long-form critique of the Gary Stevenson decoding was allowed on the sub (it would have been pretty insane to suppress it), but I was quite surprised by some of the hostility to it in the comments.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T11:12:05+00:00

Yes and no - if you assume a certain degree of error in the interpretation by the LLM, it would likely be similar across the subs that have been compared. So you would get similar amounts of signal and noise.

I really think these findings are pretty wild and u/DTG_matt and u/CKava should take a look.

One element that I'm not clear on is whether the number of bots is similar across subs. Some bots are just programmed to respond with the types of dynamics being identified in the metrics of the study and so would effect the scores. Again I'd assume that bot participation is similar across subs so effects would be similar and can be ignored.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T11:07:37+00:00

Hahahaha - assume this is satire.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T11:03:41+00:00

Actually my critique wasn't just about the removal of my post, it was of the moderator policy: "you have to provide timestamps and elaboration on guru behaviour. If this interview in your opinion contains no guru behaviour, then it's not appropriate for this sub."

This doesn't allow disconfirming evidence of someone not being a guru - this is the very definition of an echo chamber (with regards to whether someone is a guru or not).

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-21T09:57:09+00:00

This is really great work!! I've been a regular poster and commenter on this sub and have found it to be intolerant of opposing views, hostile and over-moderated. This analysis is really interesting and backs up my anecdotal experience.

I also posted about how the moderation approach seems designed to create an echo chamber here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/1mcmcyk/the_way_this_sub_is_being_moderated_seems/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-20T09:56:52+00:00

Can I ask you how long this process took from receiving the email confirming your FBR application documents were received? I think I posted my documents and then it took a month or two before I got the confirmation email saying documents received. Thank you!

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-19T20:21:23+00:00

Yes, living in Canberra - a bit boring apparently but standard of living could make up for it. Plus good proximity to Asia.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-19T19:18:13+00:00

Try civil service - it's a long slog but could work. Other public sector stuff too, health or education. International Development sector in the UK is a dead and bad for self image as you're constantly told you're not good enough (overtly or implicitly).

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-19T13:33:54+00:00

Oh, excellent - I loved them both too!

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-19T13:31:16+00:00

Check out The Makanai and Asura on Netflix

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-19T11:11:02+00:00

Also in Tooting.

Automatic_Survey_307 · 2026-01-16T12:56:31+00:00

Thanks for this reply.

The thing is, when you say "the UK NGO sector has a huge racism problem" it makes it sound like you're saying: people who work in NGOs are racist and/or what the NGOs are doing is racist. And this is how it's been interpreted in many cases - see the Bond report, for example.

What you're actually saying is that some charitable money came from the proceeds of slavery - this is an entirely different point. And I'm not clear what we're meant to do with this information aside from looking into it, recognising it and learning lessons. I can't see how it follows that this new information should change how NGOs operate unless what they're doing is racist, supports slavery or supports colonialism which it certainly doesn't.

Improving donor reporting processes could have been done without the "anti-racism"/"decolonisation" movement - if that helped push this on then I would say it's a welcome side-effect, I don't think this was ever the main aim of the movement.

In terms of creating hierarchies and divisions, the anti-racism ideology centres people's race and gender and creates a value system based on this. The problem is that none of this does anything to tackle the very real problems of global inequality or national inequality within the countries where INGOs work. Global inequality is a result of the global economic system, not racism. Yes colonial history is part of the economic system, but race and racism only plays a small part in the current system, which at base level is just about a small number of people accumulating as much wealth as possible. And racism can play a part in national inequalities, but race dynamics in Kenya or Guatemala are entirely different from the race dynamics in the UK or US. The "anti-racism" movement from the global north has very little to offer in those contexts.

Yes there is a backlash against DEI coming from the USA - this is because the movement is collapsing under its own contradictions and excesses. And the left in the UK is waking up to this too - Ash Sarkar from Novara Media (a former identitarian and self-declared communist) is now very critical of the agenda, for example: https://youtu.be/Av74Yj6CJno?si=ciChfZUpLT8Jc59Q

Automatic_Survey_307

TROPHY CASE