A lot of redditors today think that Reddit became a hard left echo chamber organically. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It once played host to a large amount of conservative subs, and Reddit’s admins worked hard to eliminate this community. There have been false flags, constant harassment, selective enforcement of rules, and worse.

Famously, The_Donald was one of the biggest conservative communities on the internet. It represented actual politicians and the people who voted for them, it allowed debate. It was ultimately removed for posts “threatening violence against police”. The BLM movement started weeks later, and one glance at leftist subs even today should prove that if this was a REAL reason to remove a sub, then it wouldn’t just be TD being removed. Rather, Reddit wanted it gone from the start.

Spez has been caught editing users posts, for example: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments

and Spez has admitted, he thinks he has the power to influence elections through reddit: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet “I’m confident that Reddit could sway elections,” he told me. “We wouldn’t do it, of course. And I don’t know how many times we could get away with it. But, if we really wanted to, I’m sure Reddit could have swayed at least this election, this once.”

Another big sub was r/cringeanarchy. CA broke no reddit rules, it wasn’t “hate speech”, it just had memes making fun of people who were (arguably) on the left. But Reddit couldn’t allow subreddits that were popular and seemed to mock leftist opinions. CA faced mods being forced in, false flag attacks, and constant cries of “hate speech” from r/AgainstHateSubs. AHS was caught multiple times making false flag attacks on conservative subs, but they would pull out their ultimate trick, which I witnessed in person.

CA was flooded with CP late one night, faster than mods could remove it, and this was quickly and quietly used as a reason for Reddit admins to ban the sub. An AHS user admits to this as well: https://youtu.be/yUV9TyfYaEQ

There have been chat logs tying AHS leaders to reddit admins as well. I have no doubt that Reddit’s admins, who counted among their numbers known pedophiles Ghislaine Maxwell and Aimee Challenor, used posted child porn as an excuse to delete an unwanted subreddit.

Now redditors say things like “most people are left wing” and the classic “reality has a known liberal bias” not knowing that the opinions of actual people who vote right some or all the time, more-or-less half the US, have been deliberately hidden from them.

This same treatment affected LGBT subs outside the main narrative, and womens subs. Subs like r/itsafetish or r/detrans are gone, subs like r/twoxchromosomes or r/actuallesbians have trans members forcibly placed on the mod team.

Who else was there to witness the censoring? What else do redditors need to know?

  • deejay4am@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As I recall, most of those subs got the boot for not moderating, brigading, threats, etc.

    Nice try to change the narrative but no one is buying.

    • GhostedIC@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I completely disagree. CA in particular was quite well moderated and didn’t brigade either. Reddit admins were notorious for using these as excuses to target subs they wanted to get rid of, while being lenient against other subs (AHS was basically a dedicated brigading sub! But merely saying something negative about certain subs could get an immediate warning.)

      • GaryPonderosa@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, I’m sure the moderators of an anarchist sub did a great job enforcing rules they probably didn’t agree with. If I know anything about anarchists it’s that they love other people’s rules.

          • GaryPonderosa@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ah. In that case it’s a virtual certainty that it got banned for transphobia or homophobia, because that’s what “conservatives” always go after these days.