When did reddit turn Facist?

Evan@lemmy.ml to Reddit@lemmy.world – 112 points –

Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives. Recently though, a vast majority of comment sections seem to excuse violence, such as in this thread (TW: police brutality), where people say things like ::: spoiler TW: Supporting violence

The students didn’t hurt the bullets, right?

They paid to learn so....... You go learn today

Um...good?

Follow the rules of the people who own the property. If they ask you to leave then leave. Don’t interfere with people’s incomes or you’ll end up finding the fuck out

Got it. The next time I stand on a private piece of grass that I paid 200 grand for the privilege of using, I should expect to be shot at like I deserve. I'll keep that in mind.

When the owner of the property wants you to move on? Yeah. Move on. Or don’t and find out.

:::

And I'm seriously wondering when Reddit got so bad that the hivemind supports calls for violence. Are these humans? Are they bots? Why does reddit allow this conduct?

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We all left. Who are the people that stayed behind?

Also bots.

Yeah, last time I went back to survey the landscape the more anticorporate/progressive subs I knew were noticeably diminished, while subs that get off on the futility of activism and immutability of power structures were going strong.

The last natural, human, popular subreddit to arise on reddit was r/antiwork

After that, the site got swarmed by bots and censorship.

If you try and post something even remotely progressive in a popular subreddit, it will get deleted and you will probably get banned.

Spez is a fascist, dude allowed nazi propaganda on his platform in the name of "free speech". Users are disgusted by what's on r/popular so the nazi population percentage grows. Add to this the complete eradication of mod tools and you get bots and extremists invasions.

If it wasn't for reddit supporting /r/TheDonald, there is a good chance MAGA might not have ever happened, at least not in the way it manifested.

Trump was able to get a significance amount of grassroots support early on, and it almost all came from /r/TheDonald. This was before anything was really happening on other social media. People that were disenfranchised with Obama pretty much went with either Bernie or Trump. It was a warzone on Reddit. Both Bernie and Trump did AMA's and this blew them up popularity wise.

What Bernie didn't have that Trump did was an army of russian bots supporting him.

idk, I disagree that /r/TheDonald's existence was what sparked MAGA. Russia had such a heavy hand in the creation and support of MAGA that they would have found another place to start the fire. TheDonald was just the largest pile of kindle available... with many more around it. I could imagine they would have focused even harder on facebook, or news coverage or whatever else.

Regardless, I do agree with the rest of your point that TheDonald had a huge influence on MAGA

Nah, if you want to point at the thing that made all this happen..then its not MAGA.

it was Gamergate.

Gamergate was the prototype and test run for the foreign provocateurs, right wing extremists and other hate mongers to see how successful such a large scale attempt at manipulation of narratives and communities could be.. and it proved quite successful, and the same tactics and methods were scaled up even further to lay the groundwork for Trumpism and what we have today.

Gamergate was the Trinity test that lead to Littleboy (general uptick in rightwing extremism/fascism/alt-rightism and approval of such) and FatMan (Russian "Useful Idiots" who came to power, or threatened to, with Russian backing, not just in America, but elsewhere)

I was so confused by gamergate.

you are very into something but the whole thing was so just,,, incoherent. Like I still don't really get what gamergate was because it was like a Russian nesting doll of gaslighting.

it was a test run that was more successful than the puppet masters ever anticipated, Which is why the only real coherent message out of it was the right wings downright contempt for women.

and those same tactics, and hell, even topics, are still being used today with Trumpism, Right Wing Extremism, and the Russian Puppets push for fascism in western countries.

It's taken me years and reading the explanations a dozen times to figure out what anyone involved even thought it was about.

It was whatever you wanted it to be. I had one friend who bought the line that it was about "ethics in journalism" (imagine me doing a concussive eye roll here). He was on the redpill path at the time (luckily pulled back from the edge since). Anyway, I think the melange of ideologies to sample from gamer gate were appealing to people who felt victimised by society, but didn't want to acknowledge their role in their victimisation, let alone how capitalism/fascism/patriarchy actively hurt them and retarded their aims (aimless though these types tend to be).

It's classic cruel optimism.

I think the melange of ideologies to sample from gamer gate were appealing to people who felt victimised by society, but didn’t want to acknowledge their role in their victimization, let alone how capitalism/fascism/patriarchy actively hurt them and retarded their aims (aimless though these types tend to be).

Great way of framing it. I just stayed very clear of the whole thing because I couldn't even identify coherent 'sides' at the time.

Fair enough. Sadly, from my years on the internet, I was pretty immediately savvy to the misogynistic fuel under that fire.

Wasn't Steve Bannon involved in that too. Mr get paid by fascist government to travel around the US and after the 2016 election he traveled around Europe to spread the fascist seeds.

This should be the paragraph in text books.

In hindsight it was pretty fucking obvious when TD was regularly inspiring terrorist attacks and was allowed to thrive while CTH got banned for saying 17th century slave owners deserve death

Imo, community-wise, reddit is on track to become another 9gag. Which is to say, a crypto fascist cesspool.

Yeah, I'm still active in the formula1 and NBA subs because politics there is practically banned. There was some drama lately because trump said it's his merit if Lando Norris won the Miami Gran Prix...

Conservatives have a lot to gain by building bots to antagonize and convert naive young (and old) people by plastering their dumb ideas everywhere. It's marketing, if you're cruel and dumb they want you on their team.

Why do they allow it? Many reasons I'd guess.. engagement , capitalism, shared-beliefs.

Controversial things generate engagement.
Engagement generates profits.
Many of the decision makers are narcissistic conservatives who think the same thing, but instead of saying it they just enable it, indirectly achieving the same goal as hate-evangelizing.

A surprising amount of people want to watch the world burn, as long as they can do it from a balcony.

A surprising amount of people want to watch the world burn, as long as they can do it from a balcony.

I do believe I'm going to borrow this one.

It's also so, so, sooooooo easy to post right wing bullshit because it's always emotional shallow and without any nuance.

So if you say immigrants are stealing all our jobs and committing crimes all over our country! People are already getting riled up, while I have to spend 5 minutes explaining that while we have to secure our borders immigrants aren't the cause of all our woes.

And while I'm in the middle of my 5 minute explanation debunking your first horseshit point, you interject "Gays are over running our schools and molesting our kids!"....

So yea... The truth has a huge disadvantage in the online space because it's so easy to spread lies.

The bullshit asymmetry principle.

It takes far more text to disprove bullshit than spout the bullshit itself.

Then, to prevent your followers from reading the debunking, introduce, "Lol libs sure do write a lot, they do that because they are dumb and triggered!"

And, "I love the poorly educated" (because they haven't been taught how to apply reason to arguments so they can't see through my historically well-known hate tactics because they don't read books.)

But they do understand, "Sleepy Joe!" "Crooked Hillary!"

So yeah, you're encountering bullshit asymmetry, it sucks and our job is hard, but hey, since we are on the topic of slogans, let me paraphrase a famous one. "We do this thing or that thing not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

The decision you are left with is knowing when to talk and when to walk away from someone who isn't ready to listen.

Conservatives have a lot to gain by building bots to antagonize and convert naive young (and old) people by plastering their dumb ideas everywhere. It’s marketing, if you’re cruel and dumb they want you on their team.

Because their opinions are unpopular as fuck, even amongst their own base, so they have to resort to paying propagandists and social manipulators to spam accounts and posts about their shit to make it seem more popular than it is, in the hopes of converting some of their idiot base by making them go "WELL SO MANY PEOPLE (BOTS) ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS, IT MUST BE POPULAR, THERE FOR I MUST LIKE IT OR I FAIL CONSERVATISM"

A surprising amount of people want to watch the world burn, as long as they can do it from a balcony.

"I never thought the leopards would eat my face fire would spread to my building!"

Exactly, my theory is they are too narcissistic to realize that fire will spread to their metaphorical balcony.. idk. My own theory seems dumb to me, how could they be so shortsighted?

My own theory seems dumb to me, how could they be so shortsighted?

There are countless events in human history where that question could be asked. Thinking long-term about the health of the environment and the species just doesn't seem to be within human capability.

It simply grew too big and corporate. Reddit is not a niche social network anymore. It's Facebook.

It was never a niche social network. In the beginning, Spez used sockpuppets to fake engagement, later on advertisers and state actors (In 2016, they forgot to scrub the bots from their statistics, and posted that Eglin Airforce Base was the most reddit-addicted city) generated engagement.

What it absolutely was a niche network to the point where if reddit was mentioned in mainstream media it made big waves. Dudes even had secret greetings like when does the narval bacon or smt like that I don't remember. But reddit was super niche and that's what made it special imo. The first secret santa exchanges were trully amazing, unique experiences that will never be replicated again and the platform was full of these niche little gems that are forever lost now.

Reddit also harbored trading rings for CSAM. It took a CNN report about r/jailbait for it to be removed. There was also r/picsofdeadkids. r/creepshots.

Reddit was doomed the moment Aaron Swartz left in 2007.

June 30th, 2023. There were always subreddits like r/thedonald that used violent right wing authoritarian cult-like political rhetoric, but after the users and mods who gave half a shit left when they banned third party apps and sided with advertisers over the people keeping it from becoming 99% bots and bootlickers.

Well, you see in June last year, Reddit decided to make some greedy corporate changes. So in response, tons of principled leftists departed the site. What did yall expect? Same thing happened to Twitter.

This shit is spreading everywhere, even to non-US subreddits. I regularly saw anti-muslim, homophobic comments on supposedly non-political subreddits like /r/indianboysontinder.

Even self-proclaimed feminist subreddit like TwoXIndia has their members posting BJP talking points when duscussion turn to politics

Two things are happening simultaneously Russia/China are trying to spread discontent, and Trumps followers are being told they no longer have to abide by social norms that keeps societies civil.

I believe the uncivil thing just always comes in waves as the people that don't like change are forced to change and get resentful. Some kind of event happens and resets the floor, or all the people that don't want to change die off, and things settle down.

And this is the mental framework through which I see the world.

That's a choice though. Have you thought about biodegradable plastic or some other composite material? Oh not "metal framework" sorry, carry on.

Everywhere is shit. Lemmy has those folks too

I think you have AI to thank. Bots are going to take over everything, and I worry that soon comments of anything on the Internet will be rife with garbage like this.

Internet solipsism; you realize you're the only real person on the internet

Edit: solipsism probably isn't the right word, i think i heard a word for this but can't recall what it was

Anyone worth a shit left already. It's full of normies and bots now. The "reddit is a psyop" guy is starting to make sense now.

It's flooded with bots as well as karma farmers. You can tell by the way they write down their comments.

For better or for worse, you'll often find real people at the reddit comments when sorting by controversial. Often for the worse, but sometimes for the better.

I assume it happened around the time most of us left for other places. The fascist community there probably hasn't grown much in numbers, but as a percentage it increased because the decent people left.

Reddit admins straight up love Nazis. That's not hyperbole. It's a long and recorded history.

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I said, "when will he die already", referring to Trump? And was permanently banned. "Inciting violence."

I said, "He should be shot" to a picture of Reagan. Who was shot and lived for two decades after that and was banned for 6 days.

If I can't say ridiculous things on the Internet where the fuck else am I supposed to say it?

My theory is that if you were really principled, you would have got out of there a long time ago. So what you've got left are people who are ok to put up with a shitty status quo, so long as they get their fix. You know, moderates.

I don't go on reddit anymore, but if it's full of people who put up with shit, then it's only natural that the shit started rolling in.

just a feature of engagement algorithms, they promote mad and stupid shit, and fascist takes are exactly like that

I've been using reddit since 2008 and the idea of any conservative bullshit on there would have been really surprising before 2015. Overall though the amount of generic person stupidity has increased in the past few years. Not that all sports fans are like this, but often i get the stupidest reply from someone - like, close minded, blithely cruel about whatever topic - and look at their profile and the ONLY other thing they've commented on is sports.

Then you're replying to Russian bots.....

No, the conclusion would be that they're replying to me. However I'm quite certain Americans like that exist as well.

Oh, I'm certain that they do exist, but also it's a known Russian tactic to spread disinformation . https://youtu.be/3X2puLun3-8?si=8mL_b72va5bLn2pL

Sure, I get that. The whole thing is that they imitate legitimate accounts.

Its a universal tactic, look up Manufacturing Consent, it's a book but you dont need to read it to grasp how insidious the governmental news machine is instead look at the Wikipedia page

Friendly reminder the "block user" function is available on all your favorite platforms. Much like we had to invest the time in filtering mail back in the day, so do we have to do the same for comment threads now.

I don't think this will solve the issue OP is describing. They're concerned at the existence of fascists on reddit, not just that they are seeing them. Blocking them all would be more like sticking your fingers in your ears and saying it doesn't exist.

Oh, agreed. Just pointing it out as a tool-in-the-toolbox kind of way. Like, not going to reddit = less fascism now (apparently).

But then you won't get the satisfaction of downvoting them in the future.

I’m pretty sure you can only block people who have replied to you on reddit.

I left reddit for good 4 years ago for just this reason. I suspect it was well before that, like when someone tracked the IPS of reddit users and discovered that the most redditors were in the town where Eglin Air Force base is located. Now there's more bots but they used to have more people just doing the same shit. Lots of large police forces have big social media teams I wonder what they do. And the most prolific mod and poster of their time was likely Ghislaine Maxwell. Oh and their CEO made their career in the CIA before coming over to Reddit, which from what we know about people who left the CIA to go into media, is that they never really left

Interesting hypothesis, would you mind citing some sources for those claims? I never heard of spez being CIA or any of the other rather huge claims you make.

I agree these claims are a little crazy, but not actually that crazy. Did a little digging and

that the most redditors were in the town where Eglin Air Force base is located

Ghislaine Maxwell

their CEO made their career in the CIA before coming over to Reddit

No fucking clue on this one

Sorry I hadn't looked at my notes or thought about this in a while. Its not the CEO its their director of Policy, Jessica Ashooh. My apologies to Spez I hope his mountains of money can give him comfort.

That air force study is cool, gonna add it to my notes!

Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives.

Yes, in international subreddits. The national ones were often right leaning (e.g. r/Canada, r/Mexico).

…with strong pockets of conservatives.

Being loud, disrespectful and obnoxious is frequently an attempt to mask weakness and insecurity.

I get what you mean, though. I avoid that cesspool as much as possible.

Fascism's quite profitable until they start rounding people up.

Helping keep track of who to round up was very profitable for IBM, and it was for Facebook in Myanmar.

And even then, it's profitable for the "right" sort of people... :-P

Reddit still trends liberal overall, but anti-police sentiment has been on a decline for awhile. To me, it feels like the anti-establishment crowd basically died out completely over the pandemic. Reddit also tends to trend anti-hamas and pro-israel, the newer users don't really understand that you can be against both so if it hurts the one they don't like, it has to be good.

Anecdotally, about three years ago is when I started to pick up on it.

It's so wild to me that the same people who espouse the second amendment to the constitution completely ignore the first part, where freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are.

If you love the constitution so much, why aren't you supporting those who are actually exercising their rights?

Probably just your average Russian Trolls/AI bots. May I suggest simply just not subscibing or browsing political/news subreddits/communities? You're ragebaiting yourself for no reason. Just ignore those areas of the Internet. Your mental health will thank you.

This is the sure-fire solution. Before I left Reddit when the API bs went down (RIP RIF), I had already filtered out all the popular and simipopular political and adjacent subs. It change my Reddit experience and overall frustration levels immediately and all for the better. I still got the news I wanted here and there but without that dumbass antagonistic shithole that's the comments section. Anyway, good riddance, Reddit.

Lemmy has the same doomscrolling ragebait political bullshit though. So make sure to hide those here too.

Yup, I've seen enough posts where bots are clearly reposting (huge) comment chains from older posts to know the place is absolutely crawling with them

Subreddit Simulator wasn't an experiment, it was a proof-of-concept.

When people are scared or worried, they tend to move towards conservatism.

And people are worried a lot about their finances.

'Twas the added limitation of the Public Reddit API. Basically, everyone good left and everyone crappy is staying.

I think reddit is Usally far left ngl (if that's a word) I never really seen racism happening it just gets deleted

I remember someone on reddit saying the n slur to me I reported him and reddit deleted the account (idk?)

ever since occupy wallstreet scared the elites, reddit and other social media had a target on its back. Even 4chan. Itsbombarded by noise now.

It didn't. Lemmy is ultra liberal so Reddit appears fascist.

Yeah, I don't support most of the crackdowns on the protests, but it's silly to think that people are suddenly fascist for wanting state power to crack down on what they BELIEVE is antisemitism. If I believed that the protesters were doing it more out of weird racist shit than concern for Palestinians, I would want them out too. ESPECIALLY now.

And before you say "well they should know better!" I mean sure, but not everyone has the luxury of spending tons of time analyzing every single piece of news, looking into multiple sources, reading the history of a middle east region the size of New Jersey, etc, etc. What makes it even harder is that Israel and Palestine are ultimately foreign countries, no matter how much of an alliance the U.S has with Isreal, it's still a country in the middle East.

Then there is the nuance, Hamas are still terrorists and Netanyahu even supported them until October 7th, Israelies were trying to actively get red of the guy until the 7th, the country was set up by the British have both sides fight and hate eachother forever, real antisemitism is rising all over the world and fascists are trying to take advantage of that and connect it to Israel-Palestine. Then Add media bias and how even video footage can be fake with AI and you have a basically completely out of control situation.

Eh the brits were just following the example the Ottoman Empire set.

Source? I'll admit I'm very new to Israel-Palestine, that's why I keep quiet about it most of the time, but I felt like speaking up for other people who know even less about the issue would be a good idea here on Lemmy where people seem to have a great deal of knowledge on the subject.

Its not specific to Palestine as it was due to how the Ottoman empire typically left the existing adminstration structures in place when they conquered regions.

Then, many of its sultans used rival groups against each other, typically to their own benefit as both groups jockied for power over the other.

An example whwre this benefitted them was Mehmud(1 or 2), who used two rival groups dislike of each other to make them both weaker and his own position much stronger.

An example of this backfiring on them was the uprising / rebellion of Egypt.

Also, notably, non-muslims(and non-male muslims) were explicitly inferior citizens in the eyes of Ottoman law. They(example: christians and jews) were allowed to make their own communities, but they weren't seen as equals and would be fair game to be enslaved.

Source: the Ottoman Empire by Kenneth W Harl as well as https://www.britannica.com/place/Ottoman-Empire

Idk, the subs I used to frequent the most have definitely shifted to the right.

Worldnews over there is just a horrendous shitpile of fascism and Hasbara. It used to be way more variable depending on time of day and stuff.

Same as it ever was, only now events have changed. There never was a massive exodus from Reddit, so the opinions you see there are a better representation of the masses than the limited ones you read here.

At most a few hundred people will vote on a post like this. That's all you really need to know.

Nope, the Israel Palestine occupation has been a thing for decades. Redfit was different in, say, 2014 (another hostage situation) to what it is now.

Personally I think it has a lot to do with the total unleashing of bots and astroturfers, but it's definitely noticeable to me.