I’m convinced the rightward swing is from people leaving. I imagine it’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop, too. I wouldn’t mind sometimes or even often being the underdog in a thread, as long as occasionally you could score a small win here or there. But when every comment is just going to get down voted to Hades, it becomes pointless.
It also just makes sense that people who are temperamentally conservative are both more likely to be politically conservative and be slower to abandon ship from a dying platform.
is from people leaving
Nah, the reason is that for the past ten years, discussion have become more and more toxic. Reddit launched a campaign against GOP outlets a couple years ago. This was absolute bullshits mainly because they ardently protect PRC propaganda subs calling for genocide and crypto-fascist subs. And that’s without accounting for islamist, ultra nationalist etc. Mainly because US court will only care about garbage like promoting Jan 6 in term of hate speech. Things that relate to the US.
The thing is that our favorite left wingers at reddit are… usians, and like every left wing usians who isn’t racist, they are ethno centrist. When look for problematic subs I am certain they look for subs in english. I would even bet they only look at subs moderated and created from U.S or maybe Canadian territory. They catch some brits from time to time but speak Spanish and you can explain how a good thing it is to genocide the Yezidis.
So moderate people left, from both side of the political spectrum and now only insane people remain. But no problem said reddit ! We just have to market ourselves as a place of free speech allowing controversies.
