Of course, if Reddit were a fascist regime, it'd be a pretty terrible one: a place where you could keep a ticker of open revolt in real-time as rebels occasionally march to the central plaza to confront the machinery of alleged fascism. The rebels are advancing on r/politics, sir. The military is holding out at r/books. Shelter in place. But the most meaningful battle on Reddit has already been fought, and the results are right in front of everyone's face. The algorithm wins.


jilax:

The author seems to have missed that this most recent outrage is not about the allowance of hate-speech (which is very much alive on reddit, just as much as it was when Ellen Pao joined as CEO. In fact, none of the worst ones have been closed. Check out /r/coontown /r/European /r/AntiPozi, etc) it's about the intentional steering of core features towards commercialisation. Things like making AMAs more controllable by the Celebrity/Public Figure hosting it, letting Companies push their products more heavily disguised as regular posts, etc.

Vocal redditors don't want this. The average user might not care all that much, but the "Vocal minority" as Poe entitled them, are responsible for a majority of the good content. If they are driven away, reddit is going to plummet in value.


posted 3210 days ago