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I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doe

I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doesn't interest you, just unfollow it. If you are browsing /r/all, you're probably procrastinating anyways!

deadmik3 9y ago
ironically, the_donald is just one subreddit while there are literally dozens of specifically anti-the_donald subreddits that people complain about having to unfollow
- Karunamon 9y ago
  This is what leads me to believe most of these complaints about the_donald are misinformed or worse. It is impossible to browse the site not logged in without seeing some kind of anti-Trump astroturfing on the front page. (And I say astroturfing, not as a throwaway attack, but because the voting and usage patterns on those subreddits are very anomalous and smell of manipulation) Meanwhile, the_donald is the one and only pro-Trump page on the site that has any kind of popularity.
  - kmnc 9y ago
    Reddit has always been a liberal echo chamber that thrives on self parody though... I am not sure how the existence of these anti trump subs leads you to believe that views that r/the_donald is racist and hate filled are misinformed. Also, I disagree with your last point since there are many altright subs, and r/conspiracy has become extremely pro Trump for some reason.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      I know they're misinformed, because I look through there every now and then. I'll ask the same thing I ask every time this topic comes up: Where's the hate? Link some. I see posts praising LGBTs, I see plenty of criticism of Islam (usually in relation to Islamists' poor treatment of LGBTs or worse), but "hate"? Racism? No. That is hyperbole at best. Anytime I see overt racism, it's downvoted into the negatives. Given that my observation conflicts with the narrative, and that verifying it is trivial to check, I have to assume most people repeating it are just going on what they were told by friends or media, rather than their own observations.
      - eregorn 9y ago
        www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6md2i1/remember_folks_this_is_what_all_muslims_men_want/ is +73 positive enough? I wanted to give at least one example but its a bit hard since the work comp doesn't load reddit and my cell has terrible reception here. However, this is mostly about me wondering if you're being honest about this. I have seen this rhetoric before (show me a link!) and it usually isn't long before someone does actually link something. Usually, excuses are made why they don't count. I find it very doubtful someone never showed you the racism/hate straight from the source when demanded.
        Karunamon 9y ago
        >is +73 positive enough? No, because that indicates the post didn't resonate with the user base there. Front page the_donald posts usually start at 5000 points and up. That tells me that the sentiment isn't really shared all that much. On much smaller communities with much lower average scores, this would be more significant. On top of that, unless you install a third party addon or disable CSS (most users will not), you can't downvote posts there. That means the average user can't react to posts they dislike beyond reporting it if it breaks the rules. On top of that, many the_donald users will chain-upvote everything on /new/ without even looking at it in an attempt to counter botting. I can't give you a link here, as this came up in a discord conversation. I certainly hope you don't think these concrete problems are "an excuse". The score of a post is the only signal you have to determine what the community at large thinks about it. Judging a community of 460K (with 13K online during off peak hours like right now) using a nine-day old post with a minuscule score isn't terribly honest. Your example post, if anything, is a counter example to the point you were trying to make.
        eregorn 9y ago
        There is a third exception: being on mobile reddit. Admittedly, while the average user in general is more likely on a phone than a desktop nowadays, I don't know if the average The_Donald user is. I very much would doubt it, but I'll let it stand and stand by my admission I wasn't in the greatest position to post a link. So instead, How about +4614? https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/6o7qas/reminder_12_of_the_arab_world_is_inbred_children/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/6o7qas/reminder_12_of_th... While cousin marriages are a problem, they definitely aren't half in the middle east. 50% is only reached in Pakistan and one African country that I'm not sure why its included in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_...
- SippinLean 9y ago
  There are just as many if not more trump/hate subreddits. Some of them were always that way, some have been taken over. Off the top of my head: * /whiterights * /uncensorednews * /justiceserved * /conspiracy * /hillaryforprison * /physicalremoval Most of the time when you notice overt bigotry on reddit, the user frequents t_d or one of those subs, or the similar clones that are now all over reddit.
  - ilugaslifk 9y ago
    There's an absolutely incredible amount of overt white nationalism and calls for violence and even mass ethnic cleansing on Reddit today. I would highlight https://reddit.com/r/europeannationalism/ https://reddit.com/r/europeannationalism/ as the very worst of it. They've also taken over the mod teams of extremely large and supposedly politically neutral subs like https://reddit.com/r/uncensorednews/ https://reddit.com/r/uncensorednews/ (every single mod there is also a mod of /r/europeannationalism). Check https://reddit.com/r/againsthatesubreddits/ https://reddit.com/r/againsthatesubreddits/ for a running log of much, much more. And for every one open nazi, there's a dozen more concern-trolling, brigading, vote-manipulating, and quietly recruiting more people towards the fucking genocidal far-right. It's getting so bad that at it will soon be hard to defend Reddit's admins from charges of complicity.
vkou 9y ago
> I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doesn't interest you, just unfollow it. The problem with having something r/the_donald on reddit is that its posters don't stay in r/the_donald. They go out to other reddits, and post hateful shit. It's like having a shared space for clubs, that also includes a local chapter of the KKK. It'd be fine if they just played dungeon and wizard dressup and complained about black people in the confines of their club room every Tuesday. The problem is that they spill out, and start burning crosses and handing out beatings to the other users of the shared space. Pretty soon, the entire community turns into a dumpster fire, and people who don't want to deal with that bullshit leave. The owners of the space can then pat eachother on the back, and congratulate themselves for encouraging freedom of expression.
- dionidium 9y ago
  You're subbed to the wrong subreddits. You could be getting a lot more out of reddit than you are. The comments here make it sound like 95% of all conversations are about race and politics, but if that's what you're seeing, then that's really just a reflection of what you're reading. There are subreddits about everything. Most of them don't include conversations about police shootings or Islam.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Yes, the guys wearing white hoods will probably not collectively crap all over the knitting club. That doesn't make the overall situation any better, nor is it a good idea to have them make up a large part of the site's userbase. (And the only reason it seems that they aren't a problem is because moderators of more specialized reddits have to delete their posts, and ban the posters.) Some customers aren't worth keeping.
    - dionidium 9y ago
      You seem to concede my point, but then proceed with your argument that it's still a problem, anyway. I don't know how to respond to that except to say that I hope nobody actually listens to you. Reddit has some great communities and people shouldn't be scared to participate in them.

deadmik3 9y ago

ironically, the_donald is just one subreddit while there are literally dozens of specifically anti-the_donald subreddits that people complain about having to unfollow

Karunamon 9y ago
This is what leads me to believe most of these complaints about the_donald are misinformed or worse. It is impossible to browse the site not logged in without seeing some kind of anti-Trump astroturfing on the front page. (And I say astroturfing, not as a throwaway attack, but because the voting and usage patterns on those subreddits are very anomalous and smell of manipulation) Meanwhile, the_donald is the one and only pro-Trump page on the site that has any kind of popularity.
- kmnc 9y ago
  Reddit has always been a liberal echo chamber that thrives on self parody though... I am not sure how the existence of these anti trump subs leads you to believe that views that r/the_donald is racist and hate filled are misinformed. Also, I disagree with your last point since there are many altright subs, and r/conspiracy has become extremely pro Trump for some reason.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    I know they're misinformed, because I look through there every now and then. I'll ask the same thing I ask every time this topic comes up: Where's the hate? Link some. I see posts praising LGBTs, I see plenty of criticism of Islam (usually in relation to Islamists' poor treatment of LGBTs or worse), but "hate"? Racism? No. That is hyperbole at best. Anytime I see overt racism, it's downvoted into the negatives. Given that my observation conflicts with the narrative, and that verifying it is trivial to check, I have to assume most people repeating it are just going on what they were told by friends or media, rather than their own observations.
    - eregorn 9y ago
      www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6md2i1/remember_folks_this_is_what_all_muslims_men_want/ is +73 positive enough? I wanted to give at least one example but its a bit hard since the work comp doesn't load reddit and my cell has terrible reception here. However, this is mostly about me wondering if you're being honest about this. I have seen this rhetoric before (show me a link!) and it usually isn't long before someone does actually link something. Usually, excuses are made why they don't count. I find it very doubtful someone never showed you the racism/hate straight from the source when demanded.
      - Karunamon 9y ago
        >is +73 positive enough? No, because that indicates the post didn't resonate with the user base there. Front page the_donald posts usually start at 5000 points and up. That tells me that the sentiment isn't really shared all that much. On much smaller communities with much lower average scores, this would be more significant. On top of that, unless you install a third party addon or disable CSS (most users will not), you can't downvote posts there. That means the average user can't react to posts they dislike beyond reporting it if it breaks the rules. On top of that, many the_donald users will chain-upvote everything on /new/ without even looking at it in an attempt to counter botting. I can't give you a link here, as this came up in a discord conversation. I certainly hope you don't think these concrete problems are "an excuse". The score of a post is the only signal you have to determine what the community at large thinks about it. Judging a community of 460K (with 13K online during off peak hours like right now) using a nine-day old post with a minuscule score isn't terribly honest. Your example post, if anything, is a counter example to the point you were trying to make.
        eregorn 9y ago
        There is a third exception: being on mobile reddit. Admittedly, while the average user in general is more likely on a phone than a desktop nowadays, I don't know if the average The_Donald user is. I very much would doubt it, but I'll let it stand and stand by my admission I wasn't in the greatest position to post a link. So instead, How about +4614? https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/6o7qas/reminder_12_of_the_arab_world_is_inbred_children/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/6o7qas/reminder_12_of_th... While cousin marriages are a problem, they definitely aren't half in the middle east. 50% is only reached in Pakistan and one African country that I'm not sure why its included in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_...
SippinLean 9y ago
There are just as many if not more trump/hate subreddits. Some of them were always that way, some have been taken over. Off the top of my head: * /whiterights * /uncensorednews * /justiceserved * /conspiracy * /hillaryforprison * /physicalremoval Most of the time when you notice overt bigotry on reddit, the user frequents t_d or one of those subs, or the similar clones that are now all over reddit.
- ilugaslifk 9y ago
  There's an absolutely incredible amount of overt white nationalism and calls for violence and even mass ethnic cleansing on Reddit today. I would highlight https://reddit.com/r/europeannationalism/ https://reddit.com/r/europeannationalism/ as the very worst of it. They've also taken over the mod teams of extremely large and supposedly politically neutral subs like https://reddit.com/r/uncensorednews/ https://reddit.com/r/uncensorednews/ (every single mod there is also a mod of /r/europeannationalism). Check https://reddit.com/r/againsthatesubreddits/ https://reddit.com/r/againsthatesubreddits/ for a running log of much, much more. And for every one open nazi, there's a dozen more concern-trolling, brigading, vote-manipulating, and quietly recruiting more people towards the fucking genocidal far-right. It's getting so bad that at it will soon be hard to defend Reddit's admins from charges of complicity.

vkou 9y ago

> I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doesn't interest you, just unfollow it. The problem with having something r/the_donald on reddit is that its posters don't stay in r/the_donald. They go out to other reddits, and post hateful shit. It's like having a shared space for clubs, that also includes a local chapter of the KKK. It'd be fine if they just played dungeon and wizard dressup and complained about black people in the confines of their club room every Tuesday. The problem is that they spill out, and start burning crosses and handing out beatings to the other users of the shared space. Pretty soon, the entire community turns into a dumpster fire, and people who don't want to deal with that bullshit leave. The owners of the space can then pat eachother on the back, and congratulate themselves for encouraging freedom of expression.

dionidium 9y ago
You're subbed to the wrong subreddits. You could be getting a lot more out of reddit than you are. The comments here make it sound like 95% of all conversations are about race and politics, but if that's what you're seeing, then that's really just a reflection of what you're reading. There are subreddits about everything. Most of them don't include conversations about police shootings or Islam.
- vkou 9y ago
  Yes, the guys wearing white hoods will probably not collectively crap all over the knitting club. That doesn't make the overall situation any better, nor is it a good idea to have them make up a large part of the site's userbase. (And the only reason it seems that they aren't a problem is because moderators of more specialized reddits have to delete their posts, and ban the posters.) Some customers aren't worth keeping.
  - dionidium 9y ago
    You seem to concede my point, but then proceed with your argument that it's still a problem, anyway. I don't know how to respond to that except to say that I hope nobody actually listens to you. Reddit has some great communities and people shouldn't be scared to participate in them.