Hard agree. I deleted my reddit account over the fact that they kept letting T_D exist despite its obvious flouting of the rules around brigading (they arranged brigades on discord and took over other subreddits, repeatedly, after being warned) and how it was an increasingly obvious alt-right funnel full of some of the absolute worst people on the internet.
They ultimately closed the subreddit about a year later, but I had already deleted my account at that point. I was better off in the end though, as the entire site is now just a giant meme dump with no redeeming qualities (it felt like all subreddits eventually saturate with memes on their main page as a function of their popularity, and it gets tiresome and same-ey after a while.)
Indeed. I think the comment editing (and immediate capitulation afterwards) was horrible, but the fact that they allowed the_donald to continue to break their own rules was way worse. They constantly would dox, harass, downvote brigade (in posts stickied by mods), and in general act entirely in bad faith. Other subreddits were banned for much, much less.
Either they wanted their advertising money or were simply supportive of their platform/actions, but eventually it was enough for me to leave Reddit entirely.
green user, only posts are in support of T_D, pretends it wasn't a hate filled shithole... Alright, I'll bite.
t_d was a vile, hatred spewing, white nationalist, violence prone subreddit and its death made the world better. Let's link a few examples, not for you, but for the few people that might still doubt it.
(NSFW links coming up, by the way.)
Their mods regularly left up posts that advocated for violence against leftists [1], calling for civil war in response to impeachement [2], calling for the murder of those who disagree with them [3], general gay and islamic hatred [4], kept a discord with doxxes of leftist in their sidebar [5], calling for political opponent's murder [6], rounding up muslims into concentration camps [7], extermination of migrants [8], and many, many, many others [9][10][11]
I actually don't think that Reddit wanted T_D gone - the Subreddit had a massive amount of subscribes and generated activity all over the site. It surely was controversial, but in the end it probably helped Reddit more than it damaged it.
It just seems that Reddit has a policy of cutting subreddits loose once they get mainstream media attention, in order to avoid overly negative press. It happened to T_D, WatchPeopleDie and quite a few other Subreddits; basically all bans came after they went into the spotlight despite existing (in some case, peacefully) for years. To me it seems that Reddit is totally fine with hosting controversial opinions as long as it doesn't generate press.
/r/politics is just the left version of /r/the_donald, and they're both insufferable.
I miss the niche subs with quality discussion and content, but the rest of Reddit just started overflowing there too and ruined it.
I do not regret deleting my account. Although whenever a web search returns a Reddit link, I don't have RES and old.* redirect to make the site usable any more. Don't know how anyone uses new Reddit.
I was a non reader of T_d, but their front page manipulation was on everyone, you needed no subscription to their sub to be afflicted by their shenanigans.
I mean Reddit changed their algorithms to ensure this never happened again.
T_D was 4chan tier stuff built around “owning the libs” and rubbing it in everyone’s face. The grace of a boozed uncle who wants to dance on your grave.
The other fun part is how long T_D was allowed to run Amok. Special gloves to avoid looking bad, something that’s also forgotten.
If you want to know how bad it is, simply see what their voat/ parler versions look like.
And I’m also not the kind of person who actually did the history digging and detective work on user accounts. This is all passive observation of internet drama.
The T_d crowd was happy with dog whistles and coded racism. For them to find r/politics or any other sub offensive is but natural.
There were constantly posts in subs (including defaults) that linked to T_D. Meanwhile, T_D mods did not allow linking to other major subs to prevent brigading. There was no coordination in T_D or any official channels. As an active users in the community I can say I never saw any brigading. I was an active user on Reddit overall before, during, and a bit after T_D. I quit fully a year ago.
tl;dr There was no brigading by T_D, Reddit just didn't like conservatives using their site. Post proof if you have it, otherwise I'll go with my experience with them.
The problem with T_D was that it mainly functioned as an echo chamber. And I don't mean that as a liberal person just disagreeing with their politics - they'd literally ban and delete _anything_ even slightly critical of Trump.
When you cross that point, it just becomes another channel for propaganda. No different than what you'd see in actual dictatorships.
But that kind of culture / behavior is not unique to T_D, every time someone posted anything remotely critical of Bernie on /politics, they'd get downvoted at the speed of light. Same with pro-Biden threads before Sanders threw in the towel.
But T_D is probably the worst offender. It just functions as pro-Trump worship, and "owning the libs" memes. Everything else will get you banned.
T_D went to voat already back when I still used it (I gave up because they refused to add the ability to mute users), they couldn't handle it for even a week.
I hated the_donald plenty, mostly because they banned people for no reason or for stupid reasons. Which is the exact same offense that Reddit at large committed, but at least the_donald people were upfront about it.
I think we're on the same page overall here, just that I never put any faith in the sanctity of Reddit's database
Removing the_donald sub was ridiculous especially when compared to equally if not more objectionable rhetoric on main subs like /r/politics. Additionally if you want to get rival subs banned on reddit you just post and report objectionable material icognito. Reddit is a dumpster fire of juvenile , woke idiocy now and I rarelt visit anymore. That said some of the content on the_donald was just as idiotic but if you are going to allow one you have to allow the other.
The core of Reddit has become rotten not from the_donald; the site admins are 100% at fault. Trying to make their site 100% advertiser friendly has subsequently killed all transparency in what votes do, how subreddits are ranked, and killed a lot of discourse that was not corporate palatable.
I still enjoy the smaller subreddits. Unfortunately anything political becomes brigaded, but things like /r/gamingsuggestions and local city subreddits still make the site worthwhile to me.
The inactive claim is hilarious, let's remove all the mods so you have to close the community so we can claim you are inactive...
The funny thing was they removed mods because of the lack of moderation... which was unfounded as they never said what content went unmoderated.
It's annoying to be persecuted based on political ideology, but we all know what Reddit is now, the most extreme liberal echo-chamber on the internet. It's their site they can do what they want (see their terrible redesign), just like Digg.
---- Replies embedded below due to HN restrictions ----
---- @Rebles ---
> They weren't banned for political ideology, they were banned for doxxing, fear mongering, and generally being a community full of toxic posts.
There was never any proof of said doxxing, which I'm sure happens on all subs across the board in small instances.
Fear mongering and generally being toxic? I didn't see anything like that, I saw people supporting their president and voicing their disdain of liberals and Dems.
I'm sure it's good riddance for you, but you're talking about hundreds of thousands of supporters of the President of the United States.
Good riddance to Reddit, it's a toxic PoS now, T_D was the only good thing about it, glad they have their own site and I don't have to visit Reddit.
I really enjoyed Reddit before it was hijacked by MediaMatters and ShareBlue.
---- @noir_lord ----
> At this point been pro-Trump isn't really an ideology, it's a cult in all but name.
I can see how you would think that if you listened to liberal propaganda all day.
What makes you think that you're not in the cult and the other side is right?
Trump supporters come from all political spectrums of the right, I'm a libertarian, not a conservative.
---- @Rebles #2 ----
> This is a strategy imposed against racism and violence. If conservative voices include a lot of racism, then, yes, I guess they should stop being racists.
That's how they label the right when they don't have anything else to say. We're terrible people with terrible ideas, don't listen to us. No, we live together with races, many of us have mixed families, like myself, and there is no mainstream racism. Racism exists on both sides in a minority and has nothing to do with political ideology.
Labeling someone a racist is #1 in the Democratic playbook, fake sexual allegations is #2.
They never recovered from the Diggification. So weird to remember it from 2010 and think that it would eventually host the_donald and other white supremacy subreddits that sealed its Eternal September.
Another clear red line was when spez started editing comments.[0] It was childish and non-consequential, but should have resulted in an immediate exodus from the platform. I'm not politically aligned with r/The_Donald, but I think this sort of petty power abuse should not be forgiven; the platform needs to die, as an example to other platforms.
It was by far the largest online conservative community, and it funneled people into even more extreme communities.
I don't really get bringing up the freedom of speech angle here - r/the_donald has always aggressively deleted posts and banned users for expressing anything but complete loyalty to Donald Trump.
The_Donald sub has ruined Reddit for me. I can't go into any remotely-political post without a bunch of weird alt-Right commentary that's been upvoted through the roof with poster's comment history filled with r/The_Donald shit.
Who cares if these people go to Voat or back to 4chan...
What are you talking about? It was a large, vibrant, and rapidly growing community of Trump supporters. Funnest subreddit around before it was banned on completely laughable charge of targeting police. Spez did that.
They ultimately closed the subreddit about a year later, but I had already deleted my account at that point. I was better off in the end though, as the entire site is now just a giant meme dump with no redeeming qualities (it felt like all subreddits eventually saturate with memes on their main page as a function of their popularity, and it gets tiresome and same-ey after a while.)
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