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Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests

312 points · 408 comments · p-s-v

  1. sliqqq · · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, yes, yes! I'm so happy to see this trending on Hackernews! Reddit has been an echochamber for simple, naive opinions, and people who avoid going deep into the problems of the world. Radical censorship by the mob.

    In my experience, literally every thread or comment that even just questions the "big narrative", the opinion of the masses, is downvoted, banned or even deleted by mods or the mob.

    Example: Germany is breaking apart politically due to the uncontrolled mass immigration topic, resulting in landslide wins of a far-right political party. I want to hear opinions of the voters, the protesters, the undecided, of everybody regadless of their position, but somehow, you will not find their voices on reddit. Like they dont exist.

    1. foofoo4u · · focus · HN ↗
      Oh, they do exist. And they do comment their thoughts on immigration in the German subreddit. I know because I was one of them. I expressed a reasonable statement that culture will change as a factor of massive immigration from foreign nations to Germany and that we should ask as Germans or people of the West if that is something we want. And guess what? I got banned instantly from the German subreddit. So the fact that Germany is socially tearing apart and we are seeing large movements to the right, but yet the discourse of right-wing opinions being absent from the German subreddit is not a coincidence. It's missing because that is intentional by the moderators. The moderators don't allow any discourse that challenges the approved narrative. And this is a very good example of why polling Reddit to get a sense of cultural views is actually a bad idea because the moderators shape out a world of their own that is not reflective of the real world views.
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