This opinion bothers me. TD was always an explicitly pro-Trump subreddit. You expect anti-Trump content to be modded or removed. The modus operandi of /r/politics is much more nefarious. It is branded as a general politics-related subreddit but content that doesn't fit the left-leaning narrative is removed for ambiguous reasons.

> content that doesn't fit the left-leaning narrative is removed for ambiguous reasons

it's much narrower than that: whatever doesn't fit centrist Dem narratives is removed

You'd expect mods of t_d to not partake in smear campaigns against survivors of a school shooting, actually remove calls for death of various politicans, not telling people to harass journalist and maybe remove blatant fake news.

Straw-man. I never said TD was moral--just consistent with their ruleset.

> TD was always an explicitly pro-Trump subreddit.

Are you saying "smear campaigns against survivors of a school shooting" is explicitly pro-Trump?

Nobody cares about the survivors of a school shooting, other than having sympathy for them.

The survivors of the school shooting politicized the issue which makes it everyone's problem. They want a political action, they are constantly on the television promoting a certain viewpoint which I believe is asking to give up on my civil rights. They're saying that I need to give up my civil rights because of what happened to them.

Virginia Beach Shooting resulted in sweeping anti-gun legislation passed and the flipping of Virginia legislature, almost none of it was targeted at the survivors of the shooting. There was world's biggest Mass demonstration of armed protesters, and almost nobody brought the survivors of Virginia Beach shooting up.

> It was by far the largest online conservative community, and it funneled people into even more extreme communities.

a) This is such a stretch and you have no evidence to support your claim.

b) I'm pretty conservative and know a large number of conservatives and exactly none of the people I know even like Reddit, or consider it a viable "conservative community" at all.

There is a surprisingly large literature of academic literature on Reddit an TD specifically, at least some of which mentions radicalisation, though I've yet to find specific bits.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=reddit%20the_donald&btn...

Work elsewhere certainly expresses and substantiates that narrative: Kate Starbird, Renee DiResta, Samuel Wooley, Kara Swisher, Zynep Tufekci, among others.