That's what I like about 4chan. In a sea of ungodly acidic garbage lies a golden heart of contrarianism. The posters will argue for a side one day, and 2 hours later will vehemently adopt opposite arguments. Some of the best leftist arguments I have ever read came from /pol/.
4chan argues for the sake of arguing, and I think that is absolutely beautiful in today's environment of everyone taking everything so seriously.
The result is that only stuff that the majority of users allow will get displayed.
I think bigger problem is poor moderation. Most of the mods are driven by some agenda and even propaganda.
Instead of focusing on quality, they focus on how their subreddit content can be aligned to their agenda.
Any user who doesn't comply, gets banned. Since roughly only 1% user actively engage in a subreddit, update macha end with Eco chamber.
I can't make the connection you make. When people were protesting against the Iraq War, they were told that they didn't believe in anything. I don't understand personal tragedy as an argument against 4chan; everybody you know is going to die eventually, and virtually everybody you're speaking to has known two people who died prematurely and preventably. I, in particular, don't understand people who traveled to kill instead being killed as an argument against humor.
The idea that a 4chan that didn't exist created Judith Miller is bizarre.
When the internet media and regular media merged one of two things had to happen. Either expose how much of a performance act the old school media was from jump street. Or make the idea of believing everything online at first pass a reasonable position to have.
Q anon grew and continues to exist precisely because it is in the best interests of "respectable" media outlets to not teach media literacy to their consumers.
HN is no different. Anyone can come here and make any argument.
I'm sorry, what exactly makes the current wars neoliberal?
The /r/popular and /r/all pages are intensively manipulated by a constellation of leftist activists. Have you ever noticed just how often the same "screenshots of tweets" submissions from people like AOC end up being reposted ad nauseum across several subreddits that basically share the same message - and most importantly - moderators and power users?
However, you are onto something.
Almost every single post on r/MurderedByAOC is made by u/LrlOurPresident, and those posts hit the front page on a nearly daily basis.
Don't you think those Redditors are a bit too often bit too dumb to argue with? They ARE! 9/10ths are corporate shills and half of them are bots and the rest are complete boneheads, yeah yeah I agree wholeheartedly. Why not relieve yourself of duties and use that extra time to morally ascend yourself a bit? Watch them run into walls and cry from couple miles away. MSMs are gonna cover them, you won't be missing single bit of it.
Just quit. Click "logout". Going back is as easy as buying a pack of cigarettes and lighting it.
Obviously the site itself leans left.
There's a difference between a large amount of users who lean left making posts and comments that align with their views and what looks to be an obviously coordinated effort from a few dozen powermods and powerusers who seem to work 365 days a year to shape the content and discourse of the site through what appears on the frontpage and in the default subreddits.
If the NFL craps astroturfing all over the online sports community that still constitutes manipulation even if the occupants of the sites in question were marginally more predisposed to those ideas than the general population. What the mainstream left does to Reddit with their astroturfing is no different.
I'm not sure Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are hugely fond of progressive politics.
No, by definition, it does not lean in any direction on the political compass.
> at least compared with the US Left/Right divide
More precisely, the overton window of the US goes from center to the far right.
It's well known that SRS engaged in brigading, but they'll never be held to the same standard as those with ideologies that are less sympathetic.
Do you see the same content when browsing in an incognito window?
I ask because I've long suspected Reddit tracks even logged out users, and generates a front page showing them more of things that keep them on the site.
It can stay that way, but it's a hard decision to untick these boxes: https://i.imgur.com/E2G9SUh.png
Too early and the sub dies, too late, and you'll wish it died.
https://old.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/2a32sq/experimen...
Apparently, there were some subreddits that got bombarded with unwanted comments which prompted the new feature.
It's located on a page that you only visit once to set up the subreddit, or to make large subreddit changes. (On old reddit, not sure about new reddit)
To Reddit's credit, they have been adding new features over the years to help separate communities and ensure they are somewhat able to maintain their culture.
E.g. Crowd Control which limits the posting / commenting abilities of individual users based on their history or other heuristics.
Aren't you of the opinion this could be misused?
If admins wanted to disappear a viewpoint, it would be a lot easier to just autosuspend the accounts, or shadowban without a trace.
My null hypothesis is that there are some really loud people on the internet who like to talk loudly about their unpopular ideas. And they're unaware of how deeply unpopular those ideas are until their little corner of the internet suddenly gets mainstream public attention.
Maybe there's something about Reddit's algorithm and mechanics that predisposes it to low effort neutered meme content. After all, the default Reddit homepage subreddits are all trash (by the way this isn't unique to Reddit, same goes for say Youtube).
This is why we need platforms where users actually own their data, and can customize their own algorithms and UIs (ie. what web3 hopes to solve).
Simply by exposing conversations to the greater mob. No fascist master plan required.
It's like removing the fence from around a garden.
I'm seeing this happen now, with r/streamentry.
That's the very force of the reddit hivemind. I have no interest in /r/antiwork nor their ideologies, but they kept popping up on /r/all, so they get a constant influx of people aligned with the reddit mean opinion, which in turn changes the original community.
As long as the popularity of a subreddit is below a certain threshold, it gets to foster specific discussions on whatever fringe ideology you are interested in, but it never stays that way for long.