4 ms·
Not surprising. Subreddits are basically like totalitarian institutions. I've been banned, or even worse shadow banned, for the stupidest most nonsensical stuff
by JSavageOne 6y ago
Not surprising. Subreddits are basically like totalitarian institutions. I've been banned, or even worse shadow banned, for the stupidest most nonsensical stuff. Everytime I've responded to the message asking me to respond if I wanted to contest my ban, I've never gotten a response. The worst are those ultra-strict subreddits that act as "safe spaces", censoring any dissenting discussion that challenges whatever propaganda the mods are trying to peddle (the most ironic are probably /r/socialism and /r/latestagecapitalism).
A lot of people will say "yeah that's unfortunate, but Reddit can do whatever they want because they're a private company." I don't quite agree with that. When you have 430 million active users (that would make it the 3rd most populous country) and market yourself as a "community of communities", and your site is the go-to for people looking for discussion, I think your site needs to be held to a higher standard. If /r/economics with its 810k subscribers automatically censors comments that don't conform to its handful of mods' neoliberal agenda, that's a real imbalance of power that has serious consequences, not just within the Reddit community but to the world at large. If /r/politics with its 6.1m subscribers is censoring viewpoints that don't align with its agenda, that has serious implications. Humans are unfortunately extremely susceptible to hivemind bias.
In any case, Reddit is generally not the best place for meaningful discussion ever since ~2009 or so when it devolved into a watering hole for memes and pun threads (thankfully the pun thread thing died). Top comments seem to consist of 1-2 sentences of sarcastic jokes. The default subreddits range from the internet equivalent of junk food to outright propaganda. HN is great, but it'd be nice to have some alternative places to go to discuss the more non-tech things (eg. politics/economics) and niche topics.