A somewhat sensationalist video. But a lot of good points are made. Preaching to the choir here…but I thought you would all like it.
A somewhat sensationalist video. But a lot of good points are made. Preaching to the choir here…but I thought you would all like it.
Reddit still has a lot of value for me, and I still see loads of critical comments almost every day tearing down certain topics & figures that you touch on above. If the censoring / banning were really that bad, I doubt I’d be able to read all that on a regular basis across their site.
I think it’s probably simpler than that: 1) they’re a big social media site out to make money first and foremost, 2) they want to avoid agitating powerful figures of the day, and 3) they see their users moreso as convenient assets than individual voices who might stir up trouble for them. It’s pretty much just the corporate model of the day in a late-stage capitalist reality.
My point here is that I’d rather not buy in to and perpetuate false assumptions and false narratives. I don’t want to just assume that all their admins are really as bad as you think, when in reality many of them might just be trying to give users a fair shake. Many might in fact be ‘resisting.’
I got permbanned for saying Neo-Nazis should be named and shamed. Spez edits comments that are critical of him. There was a massive ban wave a few months ago of anyone posting the names of Elon Musk’s DOGE goons (who btw are supposed to be known as public officials) because Musk whined to Spez about it. Mods of r/news locked several recent topics on the atrocities committed by the Israeli government, without explanation and within an hour of being posted. On topics critical of the Trump regime, from what I can gather from replies and even quotes, the [removed] comments are tame, yet they continue with their draconian crackdown on “advocating violence”
And on that subject, I got caught in a 3 day ban for “advocating violence” when I was joking about a mosquito smoking a cigarette and getting cancer. My appeal was denied.
And I haven’t even touched on the thousands upon thousands of bots I’ve seen posting, commenting, getting awarded and boosted, and even running entirely-bot populated subs while admins and powers that be throw up their hands saying “welp nothing we can do” at the same time making it easier for bots to sign up, spread propaganda, and hide their tracks. Why? Because bots are their bread and butter. They drive up engagement. They boost reddits active user count (big number = investors happy). There exists an incentive not to do anything about it.
Reddit is biased, bots are everywhere and their mods and admins are out of control. The platform is circling the shitter, from personal experience.
Edit: I mean don’t get me wrong, reddit was a good resource for a great myriad of things from like 2005- ~2023 ish. But now, it’s become so permeated with misinformation, disinformation, astroturfing, and LLM slop that it’s currently unsalvageable, in my opinion.