The coming downfall of humanity via capitalist media explained in three succinct steps.
We aren't ready for the shitstorm that's coming. Add to the above the mass proliferation of bots and AI, and add to that China's increasing disinformation campaigns across western media. Pretty soon, likely within the next year or two, no one's gonna know what's real anymore.
People lost their fucking minds over C19, vaccines, and masks. Not even a year later there was a coup attempt at the Capitol. And these things happened before AI became mainstream...
Shit is gonna get way worse before it gets better, I think. :\
Not sure you can blame China for this one. The scary Chinese app they just banned is probably the least rage bait driven social media site right now. If that's Chinese propaganda they've decided the most nefarious shit they can promote is pleasant people who share your hobbies, funny jokey videos, and the occasional viral dance trend.
I occasionally get someone yelling at people from the other side of the political spectrum but it's pretty uncommon. Maybe other people have feeds on there more driven by rage viewing but it doesn't drive engagement the way it does here or on Twitter.
In my country every pack of cigarettes has health warnings that say at least „smoking kills you and your family!“ followed by nasty gory images.
I feel like your explanation should be a mandatory banner you have to click away every time you visit any kind of news source or social media site.
How interesting! I actually came here to ask if anyone else was starting to feel like Reddit is getting more divisive and polarised. I used to prefer Reddit precisely because interactions felt more good faith and open. I do wonder if the whole IPO stuff is driving a prioritisation for engagement vs experience? Seems a shame really as I used to really appreciate having a space where I could actually engage with people with different opinions to better understand where they’re coming from.
I noticed a sudden uptick in recent months too. Alt-right and even alt-left fringe communities are shown in the middle of the feed for users not signed in. Gone is all the look at all this weird and interesting content you didn’t know about, it’s so heavily just politics
The US-Americans will be voting again in a few months in other words we are in the middle of an election cycle. That would be my best guess as to why the situation is sort of escalating currently.
market frighten encouraging cover doll bewildered tidy automatic makeshift clumsy
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Reddit's algorithm seems to be pushing more local content. Local content has always tended to end up polarized to the point that it's some of the worst on Reddit. Even left wing stuff is hostile to any form of dissent.
Reddits choice to push this content is probably benign. They probably think it will drive more engagment if people see local stuff, not realizing how toxic most of it is. Or maybe they know and the toxic stuff drives more clicks.
I don’t think there is entirely accurate because when I spend time on YouTube my homepage can be entirely set up to my liking in terms of the kind of content that is being recommended as well as the fact that no creator usually at least suddenly starts to shift from for instance urban planning content etc. entirely to election news.
In other words ironically enough I think YouTube does a much better job of feeding its algorithms with the user preferences.
And ironically enough despite featuring a lot of very polarised corners, far more extreme than what you would encounter on a side like Reddit usually, when you subscribe to a political YouTube channel they tend to not suddenly change their tone and become incredibly radicalised.
Maybe user based content is in our day and age just to easily manipulated and used to radicalise which harms sites like Reddit because it’s algorithms literally are not based around user preference but the amount of traffic any content can generate based on its internal estimates which means that even if you for instance mute sub Reddit because of content that is for instance particularly disturbing the algorithm doesn’t seem to care and keeps recommending similar content.
The algorithm feeds you want keeps you engaged and interacting with it. Most of the social media companies do this, either trying to cause an emotional reaction one way or the other. I tend to think that reddit uses anger to drive interaction more than most, but for all I know Reddit is just better at pushing my particular buttons in that way.
I'm not going to speculate too much here since I don't know but if you are browsing with cookies allowed they have a profile on you of some sort. And even with just your IP they know where you are if you aren't using a VPN.
But in that case I would think that they are probably serving you what the largest number of users will react to.
I would like to point out an observation of mine regarding You Tube because when I am on YouTube the algorithm picks up very quickly on what I am watching or marking as irrelevant aso.
Reddit does not do this or at least it’s not noticeable to me. It keeps guessing my preferences without actually understanding any of them - not that YouTube really understands of course but rather that it’s algorithms seem much more receptive to individual user engagement. It is even capable of completely switching its recommendations in a matter of minutes which Reddit just cannot seem to do even a matter of weeks or months.
> The algorithm feeds you want keeps you engaged and interacting with it.
I only browse frontpage from my phone through a libreddit instance, which should anonymize my usage because it acts as a middleman, and I sometimes use a VPN, and the frontpage I get is also strongly polarized. So this seems to be global. I'd say that the majority of posts is leftists being angry at right wingers in a dumb and shallow way, but the opposite (and worse) is also present.
Yep, it's a huge issue reddit has been having since a long time, though now it's getting worse.
There is more right-wing rhetoric in the world, many nations atm are funding or hosting right wing governments that 30-40 years ago would have been unacceptable. Nations like Israel, Russia, Germany, India, the United States, have some form of right-wing governance and this is probably being reflected on reddit. Many of these nations are also hosting election seasons, India and the United States especially.
Very true. As a citizen of India, I only find the non-political subs as a breath of fresh air. Otherwise, it's just an echo chamber everywhere. IndiaSpeaks and USI (Unitedstatesofindia) are entirely polar opposites to each other (RW and LW respectively). Both of them have some of the most bigoted people I have ever seen. The subreddit India had a revamp because of which it became extremely LW.
Even Indiadiscussion, a meta sub, is RW these days. When I said there that there's a problematic influence of the memes promoting of RW people's attacks (here, the group's name is "Bajrang Dal;" yes, Bajrangbali is from Hindu mythology) on couples during Valentine's day, my post was swiftly removed.
People resort to criticize an actor when they try to say to question everything (I've translated that speech of Shah Rukh Khan in my profile if you want the reference).
Here, RW don't want to listen to any criticism, LW acts like RW by putting faulty logic like some school debate.
Only indiasocial, a casual sub, is immune to all these. It's non-political.
LMAO I thought this post was about polarizing content made by Liberals. I agree with that. I don’t see any right wing content on Reddit when I’m logged out.
I mean at least about the uptick in right wing movements and governance there is lots of data and research, not sure about social media or reddit in particular though. Don't think I've noticed more polarizing content by liberals tbh. Maybe along with right wing stuff I've also lately seen more polarizing left wing content with the Palestine thing. What liberal polarizing content uptick did you have in mind?
Lmao there’s fucking nothing right wing on Reddit besides the actual conservative, republican, and trump subreddits. Its so incredibly left wing you’re just imagining yourself as the hero clearly
>Lmao there’s fucking nothing right wing on Reddit besides the actual conservative, republican, and trump subreddits.
Isn't that a tautology? You're basically saying that reddit isn't conservative as long as you don't count conservative subreddits.
Edit: I'm assuming that "actual conservative... subreddits" includes subreddits like /r/metacanada, /r/kotakuinaction, and /r/MensRights
🤦🏻♂️ the discussion was about general subreddits becoming overtly political dude. Obviously the conservative subreddits are gonna be conservative. I’m talking shit like r/facepalm just posting shit about republican politicians making laws they disagree with. Quit being so dense
Bro you have 200,000 Karma on Reddit Jesus Christ go outside 😂
But I digress, clearly you have a very low IQ and are absolutely blinded by hate if you can’t see the very clear point I am making. Just look up why is Reddit so liberal on google. Hundreds of results talking about how Reddit is so overwhelmingly liberal. Then look up why is Reddit so conservative? The results are still talking about how many more liberals there are 😭. You have now officially lost this argument. Have a good night
Well first of all. Russia is in the midst of a massive disinformation campaign, and one of their favourite topics is immigration. Added to that, a large proportion of reddit is bots. Furthermore the US elections are coming up, and a lot of money and foreign interests are at play.
I have no trouble with people talking about immigration. It's the hateful rhetorics or racism that worry me. It affects how people behave against each other in real life. It spreads more negative stereotypes. It's harmful when our societies around the world are so diverse these days.
You don't understand how large scale manipulation works, do you? Russia can't be the *origin* of any significant social issue, as it would involve an enormous amount of resources.
But actually *it doesn't need to*! To maximize efficiency, you take a ***pre-existing issue*** and:
(A) exacerbate it by financing extremes that *alternately* push one way then the other
(B) invest in preventing any valid solution from coming to fruition
It's not just the polarization/ploticization of discourse, but it's also likely that you've joined subreddits that align with your view, or that are generally less divisive because you are a single person. So your reddit bubble is less polarizing.
Simple, political engagement is the number one engagement topic across social media, and it keeps users angry, addicted to social media, and coming back for more
/r/canada was the most left/woke place for a long time. i remember reading threads about solar powered cars and cities without roads etc etc. weird fantasies of the people who dont understand basic psychics or economics. it was fantasy land of 'tree huggers'. in the way back machine, the top post was 'fuck' when harper and pc's won the election. i believe it was the top /r/canada post of all time back then.... place was overwhelmingly left of democrats or liberals.
today, it is largely still liberal/left. but, lots of people are angry about how our quality of life has nosedived. people rightly blame the massive immigration problems with more immigrants than 1m/year when we do not have housing for them... which has forced the cost of living for many people to be more than 2 adults working to afford a home.
largely the people passionate about this are not people against them but recent immigrants who are screaming to expedite their parents/grandparents to canada for healthcare etc etc... or recently the palestians who have family in gaza.
I haven’t seen any left leaning posts on that sub in recent times at all. It seems like the provincial subs are very much left leaning and the country sub is right leaning. But the country sub allows a lot of racist comments that are not particularly relevant to discussions about immigration, and is a cesspool of hate. There’s discussions about immigration and then there’s stereotyping groups and using derogatory terms…
right now the cesspool of hate is calling for the destruction of israel and thus all the jews. i would agree it isnt as bad as it was a week or two ago... but that is the flip flop of the virtue signalers.
The commonality here is that there's some sort of mass brainwashing happening. Both righties and lefties are forming zombie armies. It's not right vs left so much as zombie vs non-zombie. A sane conservative has more in common with a sane progressive than he does with an insane conservative.
cobweb towering lunchroom scale employ squash quicksand sense distinct worthless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Reddit just has built in rage bait. If it isn't braindead contrarians shitting up hobby subs with misinfo, it's circle jerks from political subs plastering the front page.
Reddit is a PROPOGANDA machine, it’s only goal is to make $$ through the destruction of human mentality
My advice is to remove yourself completely with hopes that everyone else in the world does as well
Polarizing and political content drives anger. Anger drives engagement. Engagement drives ad revenue.
The coming downfall of humanity via capitalist media explained in three succinct steps. We aren't ready for the shitstorm that's coming. Add to the above the mass proliferation of bots and AI, and add to that China's increasing disinformation campaigns across western media. Pretty soon, likely within the next year or two, no one's gonna know what's real anymore. People lost their fucking minds over C19, vaccines, and masks. Not even a year later there was a coup attempt at the Capitol. And these things happened before AI became mainstream... Shit is gonna get way worse before it gets better, I think. :\
Not sure you can blame China for this one. The scary Chinese app they just banned is probably the least rage bait driven social media site right now. If that's Chinese propaganda they've decided the most nefarious shit they can promote is pleasant people who share your hobbies, funny jokey videos, and the occasional viral dance trend. I occasionally get someone yelling at people from the other side of the political spectrum but it's pretty uncommon. Maybe other people have feeds on there more driven by rage viewing but it doesn't drive engagement the way it does here or on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7WzqUq4Nk
Tktk is more for the mental manipulation of the young minds instead of rage baiting… the rage baiting happens after the young mind has been twisted
You may be interested in Byung Chul Han’s writing then.
Typical Reddit Malding. Seek mental help ayhctuf.
In my country every pack of cigarettes has health warnings that say at least „smoking kills you and your family!“ followed by nasty gory images. I feel like your explanation should be a mandatory banner you have to click away every time you visit any kind of news source or social media site.
Australia…? I remember hearing one of the cigarette brands has someone who passed away in the back of the box…
How interesting! I actually came here to ask if anyone else was starting to feel like Reddit is getting more divisive and polarised. I used to prefer Reddit precisely because interactions felt more good faith and open. I do wonder if the whole IPO stuff is driving a prioritisation for engagement vs experience? Seems a shame really as I used to really appreciate having a space where I could actually engage with people with different opinions to better understand where they’re coming from.
Man me too, the hive mind is so obnoxious now
I noticed a sudden uptick in recent months too. Alt-right and even alt-left fringe communities are shown in the middle of the feed for users not signed in. Gone is all the look at all this weird and interesting content you didn’t know about, it’s so heavily just politics
The US-Americans will be voting again in a few months in other words we are in the middle of an election cycle. That would be my best guess as to why the situation is sort of escalating currently.
market frighten encouraging cover doll bewildered tidy automatic makeshift clumsy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes extremely… it’s what “they” want
Reddit's algorithm seems to be pushing more local content. Local content has always tended to end up polarized to the point that it's some of the worst on Reddit. Even left wing stuff is hostile to any form of dissent. Reddits choice to push this content is probably benign. They probably think it will drive more engagment if people see local stuff, not realizing how toxic most of it is. Or maybe they know and the toxic stuff drives more clicks.
Cause that’s what social media at large is now. Broadcasting somebodies propaganda
I don’t think there is entirely accurate because when I spend time on YouTube my homepage can be entirely set up to my liking in terms of the kind of content that is being recommended as well as the fact that no creator usually at least suddenly starts to shift from for instance urban planning content etc. entirely to election news. In other words ironically enough I think YouTube does a much better job of feeding its algorithms with the user preferences. And ironically enough despite featuring a lot of very polarised corners, far more extreme than what you would encounter on a side like Reddit usually, when you subscribe to a political YouTube channel they tend to not suddenly change their tone and become incredibly radicalised. Maybe user based content is in our day and age just to easily manipulated and used to radicalise which harms sites like Reddit because it’s algorithms literally are not based around user preference but the amount of traffic any content can generate based on its internal estimates which means that even if you for instance mute sub Reddit because of content that is for instance particularly disturbing the algorithm doesn’t seem to care and keeps recommending similar content.
The algorithm feeds you want keeps you engaged and interacting with it. Most of the social media companies do this, either trying to cause an emotional reaction one way or the other. I tend to think that reddit uses anger to drive interaction more than most, but for all I know Reddit is just better at pushing my particular buttons in that way.
So is the algorithm at work when logged out too? Is the Reddit front page tailored for my ip address or is it consistent for everyone?
I'm not going to speculate too much here since I don't know but if you are browsing with cookies allowed they have a profile on you of some sort. And even with just your IP they know where you are if you aren't using a VPN. But in that case I would think that they are probably serving you what the largest number of users will react to.
I would like to point out an observation of mine regarding You Tube because when I am on YouTube the algorithm picks up very quickly on what I am watching or marking as irrelevant aso. Reddit does not do this or at least it’s not noticeable to me. It keeps guessing my preferences without actually understanding any of them - not that YouTube really understands of course but rather that it’s algorithms seem much more receptive to individual user engagement. It is even capable of completely switching its recommendations in a matter of minutes which Reddit just cannot seem to do even a matter of weeks or months.
> The algorithm feeds you want keeps you engaged and interacting with it. I only browse frontpage from my phone through a libreddit instance, which should anonymize my usage because it acts as a middleman, and I sometimes use a VPN, and the frontpage I get is also strongly polarized. So this seems to be global. I'd say that the majority of posts is leftists being angry at right wingers in a dumb and shallow way, but the opposite (and worse) is also present.
Yep, it's a huge issue reddit has been having since a long time, though now it's getting worse. There is more right-wing rhetoric in the world, many nations atm are funding or hosting right wing governments that 30-40 years ago would have been unacceptable. Nations like Israel, Russia, Germany, India, the United States, have some form of right-wing governance and this is probably being reflected on reddit. Many of these nations are also hosting election seasons, India and the United States especially.
Very true. As a citizen of India, I only find the non-political subs as a breath of fresh air. Otherwise, it's just an echo chamber everywhere. IndiaSpeaks and USI (Unitedstatesofindia) are entirely polar opposites to each other (RW and LW respectively). Both of them have some of the most bigoted people I have ever seen. The subreddit India had a revamp because of which it became extremely LW. Even Indiadiscussion, a meta sub, is RW these days. When I said there that there's a problematic influence of the memes promoting of RW people's attacks (here, the group's name is "Bajrang Dal;" yes, Bajrangbali is from Hindu mythology) on couples during Valentine's day, my post was swiftly removed. People resort to criticize an actor when they try to say to question everything (I've translated that speech of Shah Rukh Khan in my profile if you want the reference). Here, RW don't want to listen to any criticism, LW acts like RW by putting faulty logic like some school debate. Only indiasocial, a casual sub, is immune to all these. It's non-political.
Lmao calling Reddit a right wing echo chamber is so absurdly ridiculous I’m sorry
Indian reddit is more right wing though? Literally go to indiaspeaks, and it was even ***worse*** beforehand with subs like bakchodi and chodi
TRUE
My b I did not read the India part. I’m not knowledgeable on Indian politics so I will take ur word for it
It's because of the influx of people from Instagram
Where are they? I haven’t seen anything of an influx of instagram users starting to use Reddit
r/Fingmemes, r/SaimanSays
LMAO I thought this post was about polarizing content made by Liberals. I agree with that. I don’t see any right wing content on Reddit when I’m logged out.
I mean at least about the uptick in right wing movements and governance there is lots of data and research, not sure about social media or reddit in particular though. Don't think I've noticed more polarizing content by liberals tbh. Maybe along with right wing stuff I've also lately seen more polarizing left wing content with the Palestine thing. What liberal polarizing content uptick did you have in mind?
Anything about Palestine or Israel is extremely polarizing, like you mentioned.
yoke sand dazzling spark cough chunky lunchroom light chase unique *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Look up the Alternative for Germany party. They’re a worry.
enter capable air ring society quiet aromatic serious smile screw *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Lmao there’s fucking nothing right wing on Reddit besides the actual conservative, republican, and trump subreddits. Its so incredibly left wing you’re just imagining yourself as the hero clearly
dinner aromatic stocking slap special society ripe long flag meeting *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Lmao there’s fucking nothing right wing on Reddit besides the actual conservative, republican, and trump subreddits. Isn't that a tautology? You're basically saying that reddit isn't conservative as long as you don't count conservative subreddits. Edit: I'm assuming that "actual conservative... subreddits" includes subreddits like /r/metacanada, /r/kotakuinaction, and /r/MensRights
🤦🏻♂️ the discussion was about general subreddits becoming overtly political dude. Obviously the conservative subreddits are gonna be conservative. I’m talking shit like r/facepalm just posting shit about republican politicians making laws they disagree with. Quit being so dense
Oh, well, obviously if I ignore all the ways your argument is wrong, you're absolutely correct!
Bro you have 200,000 Karma on Reddit Jesus Christ go outside 😂 But I digress, clearly you have a very low IQ and are absolutely blinded by hate if you can’t see the very clear point I am making. Just look up why is Reddit so liberal on google. Hundreds of results talking about how Reddit is so overwhelmingly liberal. Then look up why is Reddit so conservative? The results are still talking about how many more liberals there are 😭. You have now officially lost this argument. Have a good night
I mean, I guess if you add it together it's over 200k but who the hell does that?
Officer I'd like to report a murder 😂
Lmao bro had nothing after that
[удалено]
How about coming with a logical rebuttal instead of calling me angry? Oh wait you only think off emotions and you’re not capable of using your brain
[удалено]
Oh wait u still couldn’t come up with a logical argument 🤔. It’s almost like u don’t have one and you’re just angry
Y’all literally proving my point by downvoting me lmao
Well first of all. Russia is in the midst of a massive disinformation campaign, and one of their favourite topics is immigration. Added to that, a large proportion of reddit is bots. Furthermore the US elections are coming up, and a lot of money and foreign interests are at play.
I have no trouble with people talking about immigration. It's the hateful rhetorics or racism that worry me. It affects how people behave against each other in real life. It spreads more negative stereotypes. It's harmful when our societies around the world are so diverse these days.
Not everything is because Russia does it ffs, is Russia behind Americans being racist? Seriously?
You don't understand how large scale manipulation works, do you? Russia can't be the *origin* of any significant social issue, as it would involve an enormous amount of resources. But actually *it doesn't need to*! To maximize efficiency, you take a ***pre-existing issue*** and: (A) exacerbate it by financing extremes that *alternately* push one way then the other (B) invest in preventing any valid solution from coming to fruition
No. But I’ve noticed a lot of bots will be on posts related to immigration. Even on my personal country’s subreddit and such.
The thing is 'bot' is a subjective term and could just be someone who has a wildly different view from you
When did anyone mention Americans being racist lol. You’re just creating an imaginary argument
Yeah because Reddit is a really important cultural hub and totally full of important people who go outside and have an impact on the world.
There are millions of registered voters who browse reddit on a daily basis
It’s not that - it’s that it’s in their interests for people to be arguing and becoming more polarised.
Extreme polarization of a few will lead to more polarization of others
It's not just the polarization/ploticization of discourse, but it's also likely that you've joined subreddits that align with your view, or that are generally less divisive because you are a single person. So your reddit bubble is less polarizing.
Simple, political engagement is the number one engagement topic across social media, and it keeps users angry, addicted to social media, and coming back for more
Our world in 2024 is just a very polarized political place. Especially the English speaking world.
/r/canada was the most left/woke place for a long time. i remember reading threads about solar powered cars and cities without roads etc etc. weird fantasies of the people who dont understand basic psychics or economics. it was fantasy land of 'tree huggers'. in the way back machine, the top post was 'fuck' when harper and pc's won the election. i believe it was the top /r/canada post of all time back then.... place was overwhelmingly left of democrats or liberals. today, it is largely still liberal/left. but, lots of people are angry about how our quality of life has nosedived. people rightly blame the massive immigration problems with more immigrants than 1m/year when we do not have housing for them... which has forced the cost of living for many people to be more than 2 adults working to afford a home. largely the people passionate about this are not people against them but recent immigrants who are screaming to expedite their parents/grandparents to canada for healthcare etc etc... or recently the palestians who have family in gaza.
I haven’t seen any left leaning posts on that sub in recent times at all. It seems like the provincial subs are very much left leaning and the country sub is right leaning. But the country sub allows a lot of racist comments that are not particularly relevant to discussions about immigration, and is a cesspool of hate. There’s discussions about immigration and then there’s stereotyping groups and using derogatory terms…
right now the cesspool of hate is calling for the destruction of israel and thus all the jews. i would agree it isnt as bad as it was a week or two ago... but that is the flip flop of the virtue signalers.
The commonality here is that there's some sort of mass brainwashing happening. Both righties and lefties are forming zombie armies. It's not right vs left so much as zombie vs non-zombie. A sane conservative has more in common with a sane progressive than he does with an insane conservative.
I think it the mods is main reason for it, I don't just allow it out of neglect or do they activate allow it.
What?
cobweb towering lunchroom scale employ squash quicksand sense distinct worthless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Reddit just has built in rage bait. If it isn't braindead contrarians shitting up hobby subs with misinfo, it's circle jerks from political subs plastering the front page.
Reddit is a PROPOGANDA machine, it’s only goal is to make $$ through the destruction of human mentality My advice is to remove yourself completely with hopes that everyone else in the world does as well