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Considering how fast Reddit is growing I think people should keep an eye on the moderators of r/worldnews and r/news. The viewership of these subreddits is seve

Considering how fast Reddit is growing I think people should keep an eye on the moderators of r/worldnews and r/news. The viewership of these subreddits is several times bigger than their subscriber count because both subreddits are regularly featured on r/all and r/popular. It's also no secret that many journalists use these subreddits to gauge which topics interests people. It's possible that in a few years all an authoritarian regime has to do to shut down bad publicity is to get a moderator on r/worldnews.

ep103 5y ago
In the future? Mods of the major subreddits have been on payrolls for years. Its a topic that used to come up with regularity ~6 years ago. I would be absolutely shell-shocked if it wasn't commonplace now.
- Covzire 5y ago
  My thoughts as well, /r/worldnews is for a long while already an echo chamber dominated by one political perspective that, to use a courtroom analogy, act exclusively as prosecutors against populists, centrists and conservatives or they act as defense attorney's for those they already vote for, depending on the hot issues of the day.
meowkit 5y ago
The inability for users to police mods on reddit is becoming a serious problem in my opinion. An additional problem is that most mods enable the rapid development of echo chambers through often well intentioned rules that become draconian when enforced by the right mod(s).
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  As long as people keep using reddit, nothing is a problem (for reddit).
- aeternum 5y ago
  How would users police mods? It's very easy to write a karma-farming bot, you would end up with bots controlling mods, not users.
screye 5y ago
r/worldnews The sub has gone to hell a good few years ago. If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up. It is often considered a badge of honor to get banned from r/worldnews. A sign that you haven't fully given in to the hive mind. Funnily enough, the best world news subreddit right now is reddit.com/r/anime_titties (SFW). It started as a joke subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics being taken over by porn, but has somehow managed to be the best world news subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name. A lot of innocuous subreddits implement sweeping bans for participation in any black-listed subreddit. r/offmychest is famous for a huge ban hammer (I'm a victim). Honestly, every subreddit that has a r/trueSubreddit version has run into this exact problem at some point. Honestly, most of the default subs are pretty much hard-censored already. The election year has to led to the complete deterioration of wat used to be well-moderated subs like r/science and r/ask_historians. Then there are the geographical subs. The default country subs are almost all hard-censored. r/India is so bad, that there's conspiracies about it being run by an ISI operative. Sadly, the reaction to r/India's polarization was the formation of another heavily polarized subreddit in r/india_speaks. So now we have 2 uniquely bad subreddits. In the US, I have noticed a similar thing happen to r/seattle and r/seattleWA around views on homelessness, but to a lesser degree of mutual deterioration. Any time I step into the real world, I squarely fall into the urban atheist liberal mould. Yet for some reason, the exact same views warrant complete ostracization on a lot of these internet front pages. The insularity of the echo-chamber is mind-boggling.
- gnarbarian 5y ago
  I've completely quit reddit after 15 years and my life is better for it.
  - spiderice 5y ago
    I've been very aggressively filtering out problematic subreddits from r/all, and it's helped tremendously.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >It started as a joke subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics being taken over by porn, but has somehow managed to be the best world news subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name. I routinely find that the best content is on the subs that are parodying the subs you'd think would have that content.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Since trump, most of the subreddits have been taken over, and the rest quarantined or removed.
sschueller 5y ago
You can add r/videos to that list. They suppress anything relevant. If 9/11 happened today you would not know going on r/videos. You have to go to r/publicfreakout which wouldn't even be the relevant subreddit but at least they don't censor reality even if there is a lot of astro turfing going on.
TMWNN 5y ago
>It's possible that in a few years all an authoritarian regime has to do to shut down bad publicity is to get a moderator on r/worldnews. Too late. After the Orlando nightclub massacre in 2016, /r/news and /r/worldnews completely shut down postings about it because a Muslim was the killer. /r/askreddit and, yes, /r/the_donald opened up discussion threads because there was no alternative on Reddit.

ep103 5y ago

In the future? Mods of the major subreddits have been on payrolls for years. Its a topic that used to come up with regularity ~6 years ago. I would be absolutely shell-shocked if it wasn't commonplace now.

Covzire 5y ago
My thoughts as well, /r/worldnews is for a long while already an echo chamber dominated by one political perspective that, to use a courtroom analogy, act exclusively as prosecutors against populists, centrists and conservatives or they act as defense attorney's for those they already vote for, depending on the hot issues of the day.

meowkit 5y ago

The inability for users to police mods on reddit is becoming a serious problem in my opinion. An additional problem is that most mods enable the rapid development of echo chambers through often well intentioned rules that become draconian when enforced by the right mod(s).

commandlinefan 5y ago
As long as people keep using reddit, nothing is a problem (for reddit).
aeternum 5y ago
How would users police mods? It's very easy to write a karma-farming bot, you would end up with bots controlling mods, not users.

screye 5y ago

r/worldnews The sub has gone to hell a good few years ago. If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up. It is often considered a badge of honor to get banned from r/worldnews. A sign that you haven't fully given in to the hive mind. Funnily enough, the best world news subreddit right now is reddit.com/r/anime_titties (SFW). It started as a joke subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics being taken over by porn, but has somehow managed to be the best world news subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name. A lot of innocuous subreddits implement sweeping bans for participation in any black-listed subreddit. r/offmychest is famous for a huge ban hammer (I'm a victim). Honestly, every subreddit that has a r/trueSubreddit version has run into this exact problem at some point. Honestly, most of the default subs are pretty much hard-censored already. The election year has to led to the complete deterioration of wat used to be well-moderated subs like r/science and r/ask_historians. Then there are the geographical subs. The default country subs are almost all hard-censored. r/India is so bad, that there's conspiracies about it being run by an ISI operative. Sadly, the reaction to r/India's polarization was the formation of another heavily polarized subreddit in r/india_speaks. So now we have 2 uniquely bad subreddits. In the US, I have noticed a similar thing happen to r/seattle and r/seattleWA around views on homelessness, but to a lesser degree of mutual deterioration. Any time I step into the real world, I squarely fall into the urban atheist liberal mould. Yet for some reason, the exact same views warrant complete ostracization on a lot of these internet front pages. The insularity of the echo-chamber is mind-boggling.

gnarbarian 5y ago
I've completely quit reddit after 15 years and my life is better for it.
- spiderice 5y ago
  I've been very aggressively filtering out problematic subreddits from r/all, and it's helped tremendously.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>It started as a joke subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics being taken over by porn, but has somehow managed to be the best world news subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name. I routinely find that the best content is on the subs that are parodying the subs you'd think would have that content.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Since trump, most of the subreddits have been taken over, and the rest quarantined or removed.

sschueller 5y ago

You can add r/videos to that list. They suppress anything relevant. If 9/11 happened today you would not know going on r/videos. You have to go to r/publicfreakout which wouldn't even be the relevant subreddit but at least they don't censor reality even if there is a lot of astro turfing going on.

TMWNN 5y ago

>It's possible that in a few years all an authoritarian regime has to do to shut down bad publicity is to get a moderator on r/worldnews. Too late. After the Orlando nightclub massacre in 2016, /r/news and /r/worldnews completely shut down postings about it because a Muslim was the killer. /r/askreddit and, yes, /r/the_donald opened up discussion threads because there was no alternative on Reddit.