I think instead you would find that it has only become more partisan. Stratification of subs where people with opposing ideologies don't mix, and if they do they get hella down-voted.
Agree to disagree on that, political biases and groupthink are still present here but more diluted, what I do value is that people are more open to different points of view from other users.
It becoming somewhat of an echo chamber might be an unfortunate natural phenomenon: if there’s even a slight lean to one political view, people with contrasting views will shy away from the abuse, leaving only people with the same view, which will make the problem worse and worse. Similar to how the rich get richer, big stars in the galaxy get bigger, etc. Definitely the upvoting/downvoting system and various corrupt mods make it worse.
I think this is true, but the balance has shifted dramatically and will likely continue to do so indefinitely. It used to be that the broad range of opinions and personalities balanced out /pol/ when you were visiting other boards, but it really is getting to the point where every board I visit is skewed by at least some amount of antisemitism, conspiratorial thinking, christian fundamentalism, or pro-nazi thinking. The most amusing thing to happen lately on /pol/ has been their struggle to cohere a consensus opinion around the war in Ukraine. It might be the first broad division I've seen there in a while.
It never was though? Not the site. Some subs might've been, but the site overall never was. Most I've seen is having to leave some subs I used to frequent because the mods became crazy, and their madness definitely didn't lean right. Most I've seen of odious subs like that is people complaining of their existence, but they didn't contaminate the rest of reddit.
The place used to be far more liberal both in the sense of openmindedness and in the sense of people having the ability to tolerate people they didn't actively like. That atmosphere is mostly gone.
Maybe not if OP, despite attributing an importance to "leftist orthodoxy" that I think is silly, does take into account factors beyond Good Side or Bad Side. I could imagine someone finding a subreddit that matches their opinions very well, then leaving it because the culture surrounding those opinions is so toxic.
/r/politics used to be more balanced. Especially if you sorted by controversial. But reddit as a whole has become very unfriendly to conservative viewpoints and so it has driven the moderate conservatives either off the platform or into /r/conservative.
You can post the same comment on /r/politics and /r/conservative and one will be highly upvoted and one will be mercilessly downvoted.
But that is the system working as intended. The whole point of reddit is that each subreddit is a community of likeminded individuals. It was never really set up for debate of opposing viewpoints. One main way it differs from HN, which makes a huge difference, is that on HN you cannot downvote without some karma, and you can never downvote people who reply to you.
It would be cool if reddit added those as options for a subreddit moderator, actually.
The isolation of particular viewpoints into their own subreddit is precisely the problem imo.
There are political undertones in nearly every subreddit. But depending on which sub you are visiting, you can be downvoted or even banned for not having the "accepted" viewpoint. There's no place to have balanced discussion anymore, and that's one of the things that used to make reddit enjoyable.
Creating more siloed echo chambers isn't a fix, it's the problem.
Reddit has always leaned incredibly liberal, that's not new. But some of the most active subs sport borderline extremism for conservatives as well - and that viewpoint would be shared and upvoted plenty, just like ACAB or sympathizing with Chris Dorner will rise to the top of /r/politics.
Online communities without moderation exist, and they're usually cesspools. I don't think they'll catch on like reddit did.
I am talking about any disagreement from the party line getting you banned, not "unhinged extremist views". The fact that you call it that highlights my initial point about political polarization very well. There are definitely subreddits on the other side of the political spectrum which also do the same thing. Point here is that the front page/default subreddits are curated with a clear politcal slant.
And I'm sure a lot of right wing users would suspect the same thing about the left wing subreddits. Or about the politics subreddit in general, which is about as far from neutral as you can get nowadays.
/r/politics has definitely shifted from “OMG Ron Paul It’s Happening Narwhal Bacon!!!111!!” to dominated by progressives, but I think you’re seeing it through rose tinted glasses. After all, /r/atheism was also a default sub.
/r/all is populist as ever, but Reddit as a whole has simply fragmented. For politics specifically, non-progressives just live outside of /r/politics. Neoliberals tended to hang out in /r/political discussion, Trump supporters in /r/the_donald, neoconservatives in /r/tuesday, etc.
Yeah, I think to summarize what I most dislike about what reddit has become is that it's too partisan. Places like /r/conspiracy have become very pro-republican/trump, ridiculous considering the purpose of the sub, and there are also now like 25 different anti-trump subreddits that constantly get to the front page (and I believe many of these, especially the ones that spring up seemingly out of nowhere to front-page status in weeks, are the toys of astroturfing marketing campaigns).
It's a pretty toxic environment and by constantly focusing on Trump they're crowding out a lot of content that could actually make users happier.
No matter what the subreddit is, it’s full of radically far left political comments. They get upvoted and any attempt to provide reason gets downvoted.
Not sure how it became this way but perhaps it’s as simple as what you say:
> People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience
They’re kids.
Or perhaps it’s more sinister and coordinated. Either way, the political component of Reddit has made me abandon it. It’s unfortunate because I used to enjoy niche subs in the same way you would any other niche forum.
If you took more than 5 minutes, you would realize there is. There is still askthedonald and conservative, all the subreddits dedicated to people like ben shapiro, conspiracy, the catholic subreddits and politicalcompassmemes. And it's not as if isn't there a lot of right wing and reactionary takes that get upvoted on default subs whenever trans people or minorities are involved. Maybe you don't see it because you believe conservatism consists of spamming slurs and making thinly veiled threats, but there is a very health conservative portion on reddit.
Part of my point is that Reddit's platform leads to intense polarization, which could be alleviated by improving their platform. The default subreddits are hyper-Democrat (eg. to the point where dissent of COVID-19 restrictions was outright banned last year in many subreddits), and the conservative subreddits are hyper polarized in the same way in the opposite direction.
I think many just discuss this as if it's some inevitable human trends or feature of the internet, but I disagree. If platforms did better to reward higher quality discussion and a variety of viewpoints, then maybe there never would've been a /r/the_donald in the extreme form there was.
And this was the reason I finally deleted my account and stopped browsing Reddit. It was hard to find any sub that didn't turn in to a left vs right argument. I intentionally avoided political subs and anything news related but unfortunately most discussions some how turned political.
What ever happened to neutrality? Moderators shouldn't be promoting an ideology left or right. I understand that Reddit admins themselves don't want to promote an ideology either -- they want to remain neutral -- but they are sacrificing their platform to people who don't hold he same ideals.
The biggest change I've noticed is just how political the city/country subreddits have become. A few years ago, they used to be more fun places but now nearly all the content is very hateful and polarizing.
It has happened in most subreddits IMO. Any palatable subreddit is only palatable because the moderation does not ban you, not because it is more centrist.
Wasn't this the expected outcome of federated social media? More echo chambers for ideologues. It happens within Reddit too. You'd have two sub-reddits of the same kind with one having another word to differentiate it from the other. Often times, split through politics.
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