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I joined Reddit around 2007, and my perspective is completely the opposite of yours. Reddit was a place where you could create your own community, and moderate
by dannyw 5y ago
I joined Reddit around 2007, and my perspective is completely the opposite of yours. Reddit was a place where you could create your own community, and moderate it as you see fit (as long as it's legal). It was a place where people respected free speech, and that you don't have to agree with someone but you'll defend their right to see it.
White supremacy or hate wasn't really a thing on reddit until the past few years. The controversial content on reddit were r/jailbait (which I'd say a majority of the community agreed with; although many did begrudge the shifting of the overton window on 'we host anything that is legal'), but then "social justice" became a thing and a new crowd of redditors seemed to want to de-platform people.
I don't have a time machine, but I suspect if you polled a majority of redditors in 2017 whether they'd support the de-platforming that is happening today, a majority would vehemently disagree.
- jacobolus 5y agoA bunch of abusive Reddit sub-fora (whose users had a way of spilling out across the general site and violating the site guidelines) were banned in the 2011–2015 timeframe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Banned_subreddits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... But my impression is that being the central hub of one of the most aggressively hateful online pro-Donald-Trump communities in 2016 attracted a larger number of abusive users and increased the visibility of the problem.