this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Has the political spectrum on reddit shifted? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Tl;dr: have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?

I logged out of my reddit account a while ago but still browse some subreddits without logging in and have recently noticed more far-right rhetoric in general. I'm curious to know if others have seen this trend or, even better, wrote about it or documented it. Some examples I noticed were r/sweden and r/exmuslim. These are two communities I used to frequent often and both of them now have descended into more upvoted far-right rhetoric of the "deport them all!" caliber.

I have a feeling (from my own experience browsing these communities) that such content used to be quickly addressed and downvoted, and both of those subreddits don't tend to ban people on the fly nor overmoderate. Sometimes I see threads with the same title (likely posted by the same person) on both the subreddit and the corresponding lemmy community where the difference in opinion and the general political leaning is obvious.

So, not to succumb to my own biases, have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think Lemmy is better than Reddit in a sense that you can see both up- and downvotes. If my message gets +7 / -30 points, at least I can still see that not literally everyone is opposed to what I'm saying. On Reddit, it would just say -23 points, and it can feel like the entire world is against you.

If I say something I believe to be true, then it doesn't matter if I get a ton of hate for it, especially when no one even makes a serious attempt to argue to the contrary. I have something to say, so I put it out there and move on. For instance, if I say something like "I can't help but feel bad for this Russian dude in the drone video whose face just got blown off," and I get downvoted to oblivion for it, my first thought is not "maybe I'm wrong," but rather "damn, these people are cold and cynical." I might be losing my hope for humanity, but at least I'm staying true to my beliefs.

I try to be respectful, even towards people who act in a manner that I don't appreciate, including you. I could've made a much different reply to you acting a bit shitty here and further provoke you to come back at me with a nasty reply, but I didn't. No matter how crappy social media can be nowadays, I try not to be one of those people making it worse.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you.

I guess my app doesn't have that feature yet.

No matter, you guys are beginning to turn me around for the better. Sorry if I came off shitty earlier. My mind was already made up that this was just going to be another Reddit shit fest.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

All good, man!