>See how the alt right infiltrates gaming groups

Goes both ways (if you insist to use the traditional political compass). GCJ is a perfect example of that. I use the "terminally online" word for these people rather.

I agree but I’d caveat the equivalency.

Sure GCJ and other overly leftist subs are annoying. But there is a world of difference of spamming “[video game] is secretly about trans fem boy communism” by GCJ types. Vs alt right groups talking about (real life) minorities not deserving equal rights.

Subjectively, I avoid any overly politically forced sub. However let’s not push the “both sides” argument.

> terminally online “interest groups.”

In my view, terminally online interest groups are responsible for the current protests against Reddit. Several of the smaller low traffic area-specific subs that I frequent have been taken offline (some threatening permanently).

It's definitely a hard problem, but also an extremely important one as real life democracies also suffer issues like this to some extent. Obviously you'd need a bunch of rules around who could vote to prevent brigading, e.g. tenure and activity on the forum at a minimum.

But also, this could be an excellent platform to experiment and discover systems that DO work. I think it's worth trying in any case, as the status quote already "doesn't work" in an even worse way. Special interest groups grab control and there is no way at all to unseat them.

Agree. It's already democratic in Reddit's current form in the sense that anybody can just start a community to replace one with moderation they don't like. The subreddit with the moderation that works the best often wins out.

This is not remotely democratic without discovery. E.g. if you start an alt, the original would need to be force to display the alt as an alternative. Otherwise it's too easy to control the narrative and prevent anyone from even finding out about the alternative. Today, the primary sub generally actively bans any mention of alternatives. Also the most obviously named forum will attract the new users simply because of the name.

what about of each breakaway pointed to reach other under an opposing views area, where people can go to read the other side, or the group that's breaking away?

Kind of like in real life. Shitty people have more resources.

Yeah, that's the big issue. There's no incentive to want to be a public unpaid moderator, except arguably bad ones. Someone wanting to run for power creates and runs some of the worst communities out there.

For better or worse, the best moderating schemes on a moderately large group is via a paid position. At least there a mod has a "boss" that you can hope to appeal to should they abuse their power. May not always work but it's more security than hoping an admin pays attention to a subreddit's drama.