When did reddit turn Facist?

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

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?

magnetosphere,
@magnetosphere@fedia.io avatar

…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.

BarbecueCowboy,

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.

JeffKerman1999,

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.

TropicalDingdong,

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.

blindbunny,

This should be the paragraph in text books.

theareciboincident,

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

blindbunny,

I knew about TD but didn’t know about CTH.

Habahnow,

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

A_Random_Idiot, (edited )

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)

Notyou,

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.

TropicalDingdong,

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.

A_Random_Idiot,

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.

zeppo,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

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

grrgyle,

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.

TropicalDingdong,

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.

grrgyle,

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

Sylvartas,

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

JeffKerman1999,

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…

spez,

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

Shadowq8,

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

brax,

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.

grrgyle,

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.

Brickardo,

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.

then_three_more,

Probably a bit before The Donald was flooding the entire feed.

zeppo,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Forester,
@Forester@yiffit.net avatar

Then you’re replying to Russian bots…

zeppo,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

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

Forester,
@Forester@yiffit.net avatar

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

zeppo,
@zeppo@lemmy.world avatar

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

RGB3x3,

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?

whotookkarl,
@whotookkarl@lemmy.world avatar

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.

CitizenKong,

Or in other words, Spez decided to speedrun enshitification.

spez,

Yes

TimewornTraveler,

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.

Katrisia,

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).

Juice,

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

drumino,

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.

Juice,

*Sorry its been forever since I looked at these notes. It isn’t the CEO its the Director of Policy, Jessica Ashooh. Thanks for the spot check

old.reddit.com/…/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_po…

old.reddit.com/…/ghislaine_maxwell_was_a_moderato…

off-guardian.org/…/reddit-hiring-nato-shills-to-c…

wikispooks.com/wiki/Jessica_Ashooh

Cloak,
@Cloak@lemmy.ml avatar

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

Juice,

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!

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