Reddit has censored themselves into absurdity. I literally can't read the front page without being logged in anymore because it's actually just all propaganda from top to bottom. At least the site was usable during this cached period, but that version of reddit is totally gone now. The fact that they used to tout free speech is hard to believe these days.
Check out https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditMinusMods. It's dead now, but the number of popular posts removed for arbitrary reasons is insane. According to the graph on the front page, something went wrong in mid-2017, because that's when the number of post removals suddenly accelerated.
That was when they decided the 2016 election could never be allowed to happen again, and “liberal” folks decided free speech (rather hilariously in a dark way) was a “danger to democracy”.
They then proceeded to call anyone who disagreed with this sentiment a “Russian bot”. I remember getting banned from certain subreddits just because I was guilty of the crime of posting in r/TheDonald (not even voicing support!)
Oh yea I've experienced that before by posting on r/subredditdrama. I was then banned from a relationship sub, a eli5 sub and another sub. Ironically I was posting to correct some bad information that was shared, but it didn't matter.
the mods abused the sticky functionality to get posts pushed to the front page for a long time. other subreddits were tired of t_d users brigading. they spread misinformation on purpose.
Engage in good faith in online spaces or get banned. hn is useful because it is tightly moderated.
the auto-ban of users that post in no-no subreddits was a reaction to the continued lack of action on reddit's part.
I remember that one day the frontpage was exclusively t_d posts. Insane stuff. Shortly after, they changed the algorithm. That was the day reddit officially jumped the shark.
I understand why they did it, but reddit was not the same afterwards. The content got stale and boring, astroturfed to hell, and that's without mentioning the clique of moderators pushing a specific narrative on all subs and the horrible, horrible, horrible redesigns that kept getting pushed in increasingly hostile ways.
I am honestly surprised, and saddened, that reddit still hasn't gone out the way digg did, but that's probably because there is no good alternative yet...
The only way to "enjoy" reddit is with old.reddit.com and sorting by "rising" instead of "hot"... or "controversial", if you have the guts.
Reddit will never die like Digg did, but also it already has. When Digg died, it was still primarily a news site, and the community was smaller and more cohesive.
Reddit is now what Forumer used to be and a less reactionary NextDoor if you're in at least a medium-sized city. Today there was a loud boom in my city and the first place I heard about it was the local subreddit. Digg never had that. Nor did it have the special-interest boards (including pornography). Reddit also functions as the best independent product reviews site — my back owes plenty to /r/Mattress.
But as a news and politics site, it's basically dead. If you use any reasonably independent subreddits, people will be talking about how awful the "defaults" are. People prefer Discord for video games and they join filter-bubble communities for politics. The all-time top posts on /r/news are mostly more than two years old. The same is true of /r/worldnews and /r/politics — in the former case, some minor Hungarian drama from years ago outshines every single thread about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
> I remember that one day the frontpage was exclusively t_d posts. Insane stuff. Shortly after, they changed the algorithm. That was the day reddit officially jumped the shark.
This was definitely a turning point of Meme War I.
>Memetic warfare on the part of 4chan and r/The_Donald sub-reddit is widely credited with assisting Donald Trump in winning the election in an event they call 'The Great Meme War'. According to Ben Schreckinger, "a group of anonymous keyboard commandos conquered the internet for Donald Trump—and plans to deliver Europe to the far right."
I'd love to see more systematic documentation of Reddit's censorship, since they have so much power over the opinions of so many. There is https://www.reveddit.com who has done a lot of work for anti-censorship.
I'm the author. Thanks for the mention below! A friend brought this post to my attention. I also have a substack now [1]. My talk from last year [2] did spur some discussion on HN [3], but it was too long for most to sit through.
To be clear, I'm anti-secretive censorship, not anti-moderation per se. But yes, secretive censorship is everywhere!
The long and short of it is that we are all equally guilty and equally capable of pulling ourselves out of this. It's not "just" the government as your article from The Intercept implies. The famous statements about "tyranny of the majority" came from Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill, but you can hear for example Jordan Peterson making roughly the same point [4]:
> "People think that when you're in a totalitarian state, the reason that the state is totalitarian is because everyone is the victim of top-down pressure from tyrants. And that's not how it works at all. A state becomes totalitarian when every single person is lying about absolutely everything all the time."
And shadow removals occur in many online spaces, not just Reddit. They don't get rid of spam, they promote it. Bots easily code around it and real users are left stuck in the mud. "Trolls" don't learn because they aren't facing consequences.
The thing to keep in mind is the future. If we all do this to each other in perpetuity, we're doomed. Fortunately, we humans are smart and can perceive a better outcome. The more people who understand that this does happen, the more who will decide not to do it because they don't want it done to them, and it looks bad when it's revealed.
Thank you for your great work! Reddit has been practically unusable without your tool for a long time. The site's original concept was perfect, reviving the old forum concept with spaces for discussion built around ideas, not people - which I've always loved. It's sad what it's been turned into.
It's more the fact that you NEVER get 2 sides on Reddit, every sub just turns into a circle jerk. Posting on Reddit is pointless unless you're just trying to validate your preexisting views.
The problem is that for some reason, nuance is scarce in Reddit threads. It's not usually thoughtful, multifaceted opinions that get posted, but instead short, quippy, polarized statements that intentionally or otherwise come off as combative.
It's not really possible to have a productive conversation like that, regardless of the topic. Everything degrades into an endless game of oneupmanship that escalates until the opinions being represented are distorted well beyond anything espoused by most people in real-life discussions.
My girlfriend browses Reddit often so I’ve had the chance to see how a self-proclaimed heavy user interacts with the platform. After seeing that, it makes sense to me why the platform is how it is when compared to isolated forums or discussion boards.
Reddit has two types of users, more or less: browsers and posters. The browsers will probably never post anything, or will post so rarely that it does not warrant mentioning. The regular posters will dominate the discussion in a given subreddit, and probably eventually moderate it, so there is a very strong in-group effect. The only way as an outsider to penetrate that in-group is to make well-liked, popular quips which pander to the moderators and browsers.
On the contrary, a forum or discussion board typically has two classes of users, in my experience: active posters who contribute to discussions they want to, and lurkers, who are usually new, and are absorbing from current posters. There is an implicit assumption that users have probably been watching the forum for a while to get a lay of the land before posting and have read through a good amount of the site’s content, and when they post, they are accepted since they are aware of the conversation and can build on it.
The culture of lurking and the desire of viewers to discuss topics with others is what keeps forums strong, IMO. In their place, Reddit has casual browsers who happen to see content and upvote it (effectively deciding democratically what others will see). When a large portion of users who have no intention to engage with others can dictate what their fellow members are most likely to see, it quickly degenerates to a “who can make the coolest comment” club.
The other problem is that forums are divided into threads that each progress in a linear fashion, while comment trees inevitably fragment into a thousand sub-discussions each regurgitating the same points and arguments over and over in slightly different form. It's certainly possible to be "jumped on" in a forum but if three people are making the same argument you can quote them all and make one reply which rebuts the point. It's effectively impossible for comment-tree discussions to come to any consensus except via mob-rule. There will always be someone else wading in with the same argument and someone else rebutting the point in the same fashion and being rebutted in turn.
Comment-tree discussions, especially gamified ones with "points" etc certainly are compelling, they're literally designed to be an endless quicksand for argumentation and gratification, which is why they've taken over. They're fun. But they are awful for reaching a consensus.
Also yes, suppressing dissident voices so that nobody can even read objections and counterarguments is the worst part about Reddit. That model barely even works here (politics discussions inevitably end up in a dogpile of flags and downvotes) with norms around not abusing your buttons, but it absolutely does not work in a mass-market social media site with hundreds of millions of users.
Rarely does a subject have two equally intellectually valid sides. BOtH sIDes is pointless once the facts have been observed and established. The world is not nearly as gray as some fantasize it to be.
If I go to r/cars and ask if I can safely use diesel in my gasoline vehicle there is not and should not be two sides. Destructive commenters who try to advocate for otherwise will obviously be immediately deleted or banned, and entertaining their arguments and complaints about "censorship" and why they think they should be let back in is futile. Trying to argue with them is like trying to argue a complex math problem with ChatGPT - they will always hallucinate a new excuse and nonsensical response no matter how many times you try. A brief look at r/ModSupport will lay evident that Reddit's issue is a lack of moderation tools, not excess.
As much as there is propaganda praising Russia in this conflict, there is pro-Ukraine propaganda, nothing new about it. The fact that you do see one sided propaganda is just indicative of media outlets you use filtering the propaganda they feed you. Or in other words, construct narrative "our side is good, their side is bad".
Why is it so hard for some people to accept that media outlets are filtering propaganda on other divisive topics too?
Reddit hive mind latches onto feel good stories but ignores logic and history. Everything is black and white, good and evil to the average Redditor.
It's best to avoid Reddit front page and large subs.
PS. Reddit's transparent upvote system highly encourages popular and feel good opinions at the expense of accuracy. You can write a quality post backed by peer reviewed science but still get downvoted if it doesn't fit within a sub's consensus opinion.
Absolutely, but the Ukrainian government is rotten to the bone and ultra corrupt as well, it needs to be exposed. Officials are lining their pockets with foreign aid, including the Ukrainian president. I'll still support Ukraine over Russia, but Ukrainian officials are crooks, and you cannot say that on r/worldnews without facing a ban.
It makes leadership complicit and is entirely fair if parent is correct; nobody's going to give a shit about wartime grift after the fact.
Men are/were being conscripted to defend that country. Knowing your leadership is selling you out is actionable information to those deciding whether to answer the call.
But this could also be psyops/lies/propaganda. Russia put a lot of effort into influencing opinion over the last two decades.
Yes, US side, NATO side and Ukraine side, war crimes that US has committed are also very bad.
Even though considering "whataboutism", Russians as a nation are universally hated among their neighbors, they invaded, killed and displaced and are currently occupying lands in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan etc. etc.
And that would be main difference, while US bombs tyrannic regiments and topples dictatorships, Russia invades and is trying to annex their neighbors. It has economy roughly of a Spain and is basically a shithole thug regiment that needs to be dissolved and fast.
Wrong. These are not views, these are facts. Yes, Russia is a terrorist state.
As I said, war crimes are wrong no matter the "side". However there is huge difference between bombing tyrants and dictators vs raping kids in Ukraine.
I mean, on the whole we profit more by having a cheap source of competent labor adjacent to europe, but that doesn't stop the military-industrial-congressional complex from making sales.
If the US is happy with a protracted war, then isn’t pro-Ukraine propaganda anti-war? If we’re willing to keep supplying them indefinitely, it just becomes a matter of which country has the will/manpower to fight.
Since Ukraine is fighting for their home, I guess they’ll have the willpower advantage. So, we should root for peace, achieved as soon as possibly, by the invaders leaving.
I don’t see a ton of other ways, it seems like anything else would require Ukraine to give up something, which is a pretty hard sell in response to an unprovoked invasion.
(I mean obviously it is Ukraine’s right to decide if they want to, like, sacrifice some territory in exchange for a peace treaty, but they seem to have pretty good morale and Russia didn’t respect their previous agreement not to invade, so it seems like it would be hard to start negotiating).
On the other hand, there are entire communities that would entirely disappear if Reddit died tomorrow. Stuff like Marathon (the game) and ergonomic mechanical keyboards just don’t have enough of a presence online to be able to direct everyone toward a new gathering point.
Fuck Reddit though. It’s all propaganda and censorship at this point. Both US political parties too - r/conservative has rules just as abusive as r/politics.
I hadn't thought about that before, but that might be one contributing reason why online communities are moving into discord chats instead. A subreddit or forum has its most toxic posts visible until they are deleted. A discord chat almost moderates itself because anything older than a few days is a pain to retrieve, and doesn't show up on Google.
I've gotten back into Myth 2 recently. I was surprised by the number of mods/plugins available that are of high quality having mostly played the OEM maps back in the day. And there are still people actively playing online. Good times.
> On the other hand, there are entire communities that would entirely disappear if Reddit died tomorrow.
I don't believe that. These communities can exist outside reddit. Plenty of communities that were banned by reddit live on with their own website and thrive.
I think you got your hands reversed - most popular/widespread media platforms, both traditional and social, seems entirely controlled by left-leaning interests.
Saying that corporate media is left leaning is just propaganda that the right uses to play the refs. It's just absolutely not true, downvote all you want. The reason reddi seems shockingly biased to many is because you don't see left leaning media very frequently if at all outside of reddit. Same reason why people search for reddit to try break out of google's seo bubble, it's one of the few outlets for noncorporate grassroots expression left on the internet.
I mean, I'm in Europe. To me, most western media - particularly US - seems to be between left and far left[0], but I'm realizing this may be selection bias, due to several factors:
- I'm thinking mostly about Internet-accessible media. That means social media, Internet-only news/opinion publishing, and legacy news/opinion media that underwent a transformation, from printing papers and running TV channels, to publishing articles on-line and running TV streaming. This is biased against media platforms that are still more focused on TV, radio and/or paper.
- I'm going by my own overall experience and exposure, which is likely biased by my interests and circles - STEM, software industry, higher education, and adjacent.
It feels to me that the "left/right" split in media is ~80/20, but I have no good way to estimate the the actual volume of right-leaning media, as I inhabit a left-leaning filter bubble[1]. That said, the reason I suspect there is some imbalance favoring "left" is because news publishing and advertising both focus mostly on-line these days, are run by well-educated people, and involve a lot of tech - and all those factors tend to lean left, AFAIK.
EDIT: also another factor suggesting an imbalance - there is clear one-sideness in terms of effective cancellation, performative victimhood and outrage activism - if there was no media bias, both extremes would be equally effective (or neither would be). This is not to say only one extreme is trying to manipulate people like this - I just suspect one side does it mostly through the media, and the other mostly through church sermons[2].
--
[0] - The meaning of "right"/"left" I'm using here is the US one, as much as I internalized it. Over here in Europe, the "middle point" is located somewhere else, making the US "right" and "left" both be mostly on the same side - I just can't ever remember which one.
[1] - I don't seek out news myself, so I ingest mostly whatever happens to cross my way (and half of that is via HN anyway). My main exposure to more right-leaning media is through the government TV station my in-laws watch, and some talking point one of my parents picks up from weird and mostly partisan political YouTube channels.
[2] - The little exposure I had locally with Catholic sermons tells me that priests often push specific political / social views on the parishioners.
Well I would consider far left media to be anti capitalist. Could you name one or more outlets that don't lick corporate boot and have any kind of relevancy outside the internet? The only one I know is Jacobin, which has 3 million views per month on their website and sells 75000 newspapers, which is not a large publication (Those are medium sized youtuber numbers).
I think this disagreement comes from people using vague terms like "leftist". E.g. one person might think it means anti-capitalism, anti-globalism and workers rights, while another might think it means pro-trans, pro-environmentalism and anti-hate speech. And both think the other is using their definition.
It is bizarre that for so many of the modern day cultural issues we have, there is extensive relevant academic work that we could leverage, but if you look around you at various discussions and goings on, it's as if these resources do not exist. I always wonder the degree to which this is organic.
I'd argue this is because those cultural issues aren't academic. The topics themselves may be studied to smaller or larger degree, and as you note, there's a wealth of relevant, universally applicable knowledge - but this doesn't matter for cultural issues, as the "issues" part here means this is a fight. The people driving the conversation are trying to win something - like political power for their group, or self-esteem for themselves. Being considerate and reasonable in fighting such fight is, unfortunately, a hindrance.
I absolutely agree, my point is I do not know of a single human being on this planet proposing that semiotics and various other academic disciplines within philosophy are relevant and or useful here, I haven't come across anything and I look for these things on the regular. From a systems analysis perspective, it seems to me this is where THE problem is.
If this is actually true, I think it would be absolutely hilarious if this is what took humanity down, I can't think of a more deserving species.
What jazzyjackson below said prompted the realization that the GP is indeed talking about leftism, as opposed to liberalism (conventionally seen as a center-right political philosophy).
Most popular and widespread media companies are bastions of liberal thought, not leftist thought. And can be as intolerant of leftists as they are conservatives.
I think they're serious but they have a particular definition of "left" which includes anti-work and late-stage capitalism. When you think the left isn't left enough, everyone else is to your right.
> I mean, Ghislaine Maxwell was the head moderator of /r/news.
The conspiracy theory claimed that Ghislaine Maxwell was a moderator of /r/worldnews, and the evidence supporting this is extremely weak.
> The “evidence” shared by conspiracy theorists is that the user in question, u/MaxwellHill, has the word “Maxwell” in their name. The conspiracy theory's architects claim that gaps in the user’s posting history are tied to what they believe to be significant events in Ghislaine Maxwell’s life that apparently would have precluded her from posting links to articles about climate change, insects, Bitcoin, and a host of other various general news, as the account has dutifully done since 2006. They also have glommed onto a 2011 Gizmodo article in which MaxwellHill mentioned they were "busy with a potential business venture."
> However, despite multiple Reddit users quickly jumping in on the investigation event to the point of conducting a stylometric analysis, it appears that maxwellhill isn't actually Maxwell. Already on the same day as the thread went viral, [edit to add: after the real Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested] /r/worldnews moderator hasharin posted screenshots of maxwellhill commenting in the subreddit's backroom and a chat between them.
I think it based on the u/MaxwellHill account going dead at the same time Maxwell was arrested.
Personally, if it was me and I was tired of the moderating role - I would use the name coincidence to create an absurd conspiracy and have an absolute laugh about it all! Sort of Andy Kaufman kind of thing.
They were just lax about moderation until things got out of control and the company was at risk of being kicked off the app stores and being held complicit in some of the illegal conduct that was happening on the site.
So the same arc Twitter is on. Claim “free speech*” and heavily take action when you realize your viable business model is advertising and that means some level of brand safety.
