in all fairness to the people of reddit, this is a top-down propaganda assault, not a grassroots uprising. reddit is 100% used as a controlled-narrative dissemi

in all fairness to the people of reddit, this is a top-down propaganda assault, not a grassroots uprising. reddit is 100% used as a controlled-narrative dissemination tool by nation state actors all over the world. monkey brain see upvotes, monkey brain assume group consensus correct, monkey brain follow [0]. repeatedly banning or blackholing anything that goes against your desired narrative leads to a smaller and smaller percentage of users willing to speak out against the consensus, so these opinions become even more marginalized, repeat until desired level of radicalization is achieved. it even happens on HN - heavily downvoted comments are presumed to be barely worth reading because multiple people went out of their way to downvote. you could control the public opinion of a small country with <$50k worth of black market upvotes per year. that kind of power doesn't and hasn't gone unnoticed [0] see 1951 Asch conformity study