Sorry, not the inter-maga war, this was way back during Trump’s first term, when TD was still a thing. They had a whole reddit groyper “army” (terminally online TD / Musk incel fanbois) who’d show up and brigade posts on r/politics, r/news, etc.
Generally not so much that it was obvious brigading (we found coordination threads in TD), but enough to try to cast doubt on events and astroturf enough “genuine commentary from ordinary people” so it could be picked up by podcasters and influencers who could amplify the “spontaneous messages and feedback”, which would turn be picked up by the less reputable right-wing "news outlets and spread from there to Faux News. It was both fascinating and scary, watching the right wing echosphere at work in detail.
We kept trying to beat back the brigaders, but honestly it was a total whack-a-mole thing, especially since spez decided that reddit was a total free speech zone during the first presidency and that he wasn’t going to do anything to help keep things in check because he was too busy building his survival bunker and sucking up to the guys with the big money.
Reddit is ground zero for the whole umbrella of far right incels. What you talking about stretch. I’m so tired people being too timid to call it what it is.
I honestly can’t tell if people are being disingenuous when they say they’re shocked that reddit was any of that at all. I know the far right disavow it completely but of course those guys are bullshitters. They drive propaganda 24/7.
What’s the excuse for those are in earnest about it. Were people really that siloed such that they completely missed pretty much the entirety of what reddit is?
I’m not too timid, I just don’t know enough about the other places on the internet or the behind the scenes on Reddit to say much conclusively
Why should I defend reddit? It was a shithole that only got worse as time went on
At some point I intentionally stopped going and interacting with the darker sides of reddit to protect my own sanity, though. So yes, I was effectively siloed from it. But I’m not shocked, far from it
It’s not behind the scenes when the most popular subreddits were such things as “c*ntown”. It didn’t get better or worse. It’s always been a nazi shithole. Those weren’t the dark cornerse of the site it was the top results on Google back when it was a thing to show it. Those subreddit could regularly be seen on r/all.
This meta is what I’m talking about. People talking like none of that existed or it was too obscure for anyone to have known.
Sorry, not the inter-maga war, this was way back during Trump’s first term, when TD was still a thing. They had a whole reddit groyper “army” (terminally online TD / Musk incel fanbois) who’d show up and brigade posts on r/politics, r/news, etc.
Generally not so much that it was obvious brigading (we found coordination threads in TD), but enough to try to cast doubt on events and astroturf enough “genuine commentary from ordinary people” so it could be picked up by podcasters and influencers who could amplify the “spontaneous messages and feedback”, which would turn be picked up by the less reputable right-wing "news outlets and spread from there to Faux News. It was both fascinating and scary, watching the right wing echosphere at work in detail.
We kept trying to beat back the brigaders, but honestly it was a total whack-a-mole thing, especially since spez decided that reddit was a total free speech zone during the first presidency and that he wasn’t going to do anything to help keep things in check because he was too busy building his survival bunker and sucking up to the guys with the big money.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Oh yeah: fuck spez.
It’s probably not a stretch to say that reddit was instrumental in the ride of the modern alt-reich movement
Reddit is ground zero for the whole umbrella of far right incels. What you talking about stretch. I’m so tired people being too timid to call it what it is.
I honestly can’t tell if people are being disingenuous when they say they’re shocked that reddit was any of that at all. I know the far right disavow it completely but of course those guys are bullshitters. They drive propaganda 24/7.
What’s the excuse for those are in earnest about it. Were people really that siloed such that they completely missed pretty much the entirety of what reddit is?
I’m not too timid, I just don’t know enough about the other places on the internet or the behind the scenes on Reddit to say much conclusively
Why should I defend reddit? It was a shithole that only got worse as time went on
At some point I intentionally stopped going and interacting with the darker sides of reddit to protect my own sanity, though. So yes, I was effectively siloed from it. But I’m not shocked, far from it
It’s not behind the scenes when the most popular subreddits were such things as “c*ntown”. It didn’t get better or worse. It’s always been a nazi shithole. Those weren’t the dark cornerse of the site it was the top results on Google back when it was a thing to show it. Those subreddit could regularly be seen on r/all.
This meta is what I’m talking about. People talking like none of that existed or it was too obscure for anyone to have known.