Hi all... its becoming a bit apparent that we might not have been clear about what exactly the subreddit is about so I wanted to clear some things up. This is a subreddit centered around world news but we take a different approach to what we want to have submitted around here. Its complicated, but I hope all of you hear me out so that its clear what we are trying to do around here. If you want a TLDR: This subreddit is about what it is like to live on planet earth and we want to capture the very essence of humanity across the world... both the good and the bad. If you want the full explanation as to why and what we decided to do here then please continue reading.
A need for something different on Reddit
As a long time redditor, I have enjoyed interacting with others on this site and love frequenting my favorite subreddits across reddit but as the years have gone on a glaring issue kept bothering me... Reddit tends to funnel like minded people into very small collectives that have a potential to breed toxicity or hate. I have seen it across reddit on many subreddits, and it always is caused by the community's malignancy as a function of the topic of the subreddit.
Here are some examples:
r/Watchpeopledie, /r/DeadorVegetable and the many gore subreddits: Doomed to collect sick minded people who fetishize or enjoy death. Sure, there were normal people who visited those subreddits but much of the devoted and die hard userbase were those who liked watching people die. Sadly, those subreddits were doomed to be banned even though they were informative about the fragility and impermanence of life. You can't allow subreddits that promotes death like that... its evil.
Violence or Justice based subreddits: Its a similar variation of the gore subreddit malignancy problem. There are too many sick minded people getting joy from pain or suffering of others. Sometimes I have run into some die hard users who are clearly self proclaimed aficionados of beatdowns and other nonsense. The average user may have the morals of Hammurabi based on the average comment there. Normal users probably wont frequent that type of subreddit based on that alone.
A failure of video political subreddits in general: I look directly at the case of /r/PoliticalVideo as an example for how stringent submission requirements serves to kill lively conversation and the spread of knowledge. Who the hell is going to subscribe to /r/PoliticalVideo unless they only want political drivel? That will only attract people who are only into that as well and look at how few people are even interested in only seeing that. No one is interested in only politics on video, and if they do - they don't have the numbers to have a substantial conversation worth listening to. We have already proven that with our subscribers shooting past that subreddit already, and /r/PublicFreakout has shown the viability of political videos if given an audience that actually sees it.
A failure of many major subreddits like r/aww, r/funny, /r/Whatcouldgowrong to adapt and evolve with the changing times. Maybe 10-13 years ago it was important for asinine rules to be made regarding watermarks but in the year 2021?.. I disagree. I personally have seen countless 10k+ upvotes submissions to these subreddits taken down due to some silly rule violation. We at r/worldnewsvideo dont do that here.
A Balanced Diet of Video
As you can see... I think submission rules on reddit have been needlessly strict to the point it has impeded the dissemination of information on the platform. I have grown sick and tired of people removing good submissions that are informative and interesting. Thats where this subreddit comes in! We are focused on trying to show the real world as it truly is regardless of how it is captured. If it was captured on a potatocam but everyone here saw value in it and voted it up because it showed something real happening in the world... we are going to keep it. If it has tons of weird emojis but showed something that make us cry happy tears... it stays. We don't care about your anal retentive reddit rules here. I am making my subreddit a place where people with healthy minds can hang out and have a good time seeing the world for what it is.
The rules here are written to keep the moderators in line moreso than the userbase. Behind the curtains, its the moderators that are the ones tasked with rules and guidance that is supposed to help accommodate for our users instead of frustrate them. We mods are supposed to make this experience as easy and seamless as possible for you and somewhere along the way most subreddits forgot about that. Anyways...
Here is what we are looking for with our submissions:
- Submissions that show people living their everyday lives. Whether its funny, celebratory, or just a snapshot of a day... anything goes if its true.
- Submissions that make you identify with someone you may never have met before. Things that make you see that most people are just trying to live their lives peacefully and provide for their families.
- Interesting and eyecatching things/events from all over the world. Rockets landing, TVs being stolen, Backflips off of buildings, crazy parkour, and anything else that makes you turn to the person next to you and say "hey you gotta see this."
- Political videos and news that everyone needs to see. Politics are allowed here and its only because we have all of the other content to help cleanse our subreddit's palate. News videos will be able to get adequate visibility as they will be intermixed with interesting video content from around the world.
- Some violent posts are allowed if they are newsworthy... but moderation will be extremely unforgiving. We do this to ensure no toxic minds can make a home on this subreddit. I have already received multiple PMs from extremely mad redditors that commentary has been locked on some violent videos here. Now you know why... we don't want you here if you want to celebrate death. I am a doctor and I know the importance of understanding death... so that is why I allow it to be occasionally shown here if it is newsworthy. This place will not be for anyone who likes gore.
A balanced diet of video makes for a healthy mind. The openness of submission content should make for an interesting future for our subreddit. I theorize that the "Feel-good" and "Humor" content will serve as a barrier to filter out the worst redditors based on response, while attracting happy every day users. As a result, when those healthy minded users interact with complicated and controversial content... those healthy users will serve as a safeguard for the morality and health of our userbase (akin to reddit community policing). The healthy users we select for in our submissions will likely not condone uncivil behavior and report the offensive commentary and content accordingly. So far, this experiment has been proving to be successful based on current results. Most if not all problematic comments are caught by our good users... meaning we are doing something right.
Live Video is the future (RPAN and Beyond)
We are at a pivotal time in history where many people have video recording cellphones as personal possessions... which means anyone can be a video journalist. During the BLM protests, many redditors visited /r/PublicFreakout for interesting protest videos and I saw that there was a real need for on the ground video of world events if possible. We requested RPAN privileges and the admins fortunately granted us a broadcast channel so that our users can share the world with the rest of reddit. Even though we are a tiny subreddit, we have had live protest footage broadcasted from Ukraine 🇺🇦 and Boston already. This excites us and places us at the forefront of live video news offered on reddit.
I am really sorry about the longpost but I just wanted to try to clarify about what the purpose of this place is and what submissions we are looking for. We want humanity and the world captured on film here. Thats our "world news."
If any of you have any questions feel free to ask. I or one of the other mods will do our best to answer for a little while before we lock commentary. Thanks again everyone.
