Tl;dr: have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?
I logged out of my reddit account a while ago but still browse some subreddits without logging in and have recently noticed more far-right rhetoric in general. I’m curious to know if others have seen this trend or, even better, wrote about it or documented it. Some examples I noticed were r/sweden and r/exmuslim. These are two communities I used to frequent often and both of them now have descended into more upvoted far-right rhetoric of the “deport them all!” caliber.
I have a feeling (from my own experience browsing these communities) that such content used to be quickly addressed and downvoted, and both of those subreddits don’t tend to ban people on the fly nor overmoderate. Sometimes I see threads with the same title (likely posted by the same person) on both the subreddit and the corresponding lemmy community where the difference in opinion and the general political leaning is obvious.
So, not to succumb to my own biases, have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?
You seem upset
A quick look at your 16 hours ago created profile, and apparently this is what you do; act obnoxious for attention.
Why? And I’m not talking about saying controversial things, but the acting shitty part.
Reddit got greedy and I couldn’t use my app. So when my favorite app was released for this platform I jumped on it. I don’t feel I’m acting “shitty”. I have unpopular opinions. Especially on reddit.
You haven’t expressed your opinions here though, just thrown around snide remarks. If you have opinions, why don’t you share them instead of offering unsolicited advice or speculating on what you imagine someone’s emotional state to be?
Because they will receive the same down votes whether I put energy into a quality post or not.
Here is a surefire solution to that problem if you are accessing Lemmy through a browser:
Install Ublock Origin
Open the dashboard (click the icon, gear button on bottom right)
In the ‘My Filters’ tab, paste the following lines of code:
sh.itjust.works##span.ms-2 sh.itjust.works##span.me-1With this, you can no longer be downvoted and are free to put as much energy into a post as you want. If someone wants to let you know they disagree, they can do so, but will have to use their words.
Hm. Didn’t know that was possible. Although I use the boost app on Android to access Lemmy.
I’m not sure whether anything similar can be done on mobile. It is genuinely difficult to be seeing vote scores and not be affected by them, but I really do think they are best ignored as much as possible. The effects on comment visibility barely matter; unless it’s a top level comment in a large thread, people are still going to see it, and even then they will end up seeking out the dissenting views. If people let fear of derision stop them from speaking their minds, no one will see what they actually think, which is a shame.
It is a shame. I spent almost a decade on Reddit and over the years I saw it devolve into madness.
I quickly learned no matter how much time and energy I spent trying to create a quality reply or post I was attacked, down voted and in some cases straight up banned for having a different opinion.
For example, I replied to a comment in the world news or politics subreddit that said “I disagree with you”. I was banned for trolling. Trolling! It was after that I just gave up all hope for having any kind of sane discourse online. I started with Usenet back in the 90s so I’ve seen the decline since then. I hate it.