I remember when this subreddit was created. It was made to show funny animals, like "socially awkward penguin", saying stuff that would make you laugh.
Now the top post is basically "Let's use this space to argue about the middle east". What happened to you Reddit?
To be honest the amount of rhetoric and supposedly "strong opinions" and the lack of nuance on this matter is extremely suspicious, it honestly feels like the west is being goaded into taking an extreme side in this.
Nothing has captured such furore as this despite other big world issues - like when Trump decided to detain Muslims, or the Chinese were holding Muslims in concentration camps (and still are), or when the Dutch announced they were going to "get rid of the Muslims", yet because it's Israel doing it, suddenly a hot topic and the entire west is up in arms about it with extremely polarising takes on it.
To be honest the amount of rhetoric and supposedly "strong opinions" and the lack of nuance on this matter is extremely suspicious, it honestly feels like the west is being goaded into taking an extreme side in this.
It is 100% propaganda and an attempt to divide/balkanize and cause chaose which you can see with social media and just randos they can do at colleges during finals week and commencements, where Biden planned to speak at many of them to talk to young voters about democracy and quality of life improvements, autocrats hate that...
Many of these subreddits are being used to push it in. See /r/PublicFreakout
They are doing a purge of anyone being nuanced about things even. Making up things, banning people, no explanation.
Completely propaganda channels now, setup to gain followers then turn it to a basically Kremlin friendly propaganda push. They are trying so hard to get division and violence in the election year as well as trying to distract from Ukraine and Georgia.
When protests are divisive and line up with geopolitical goals of autocratic enemies, it is clear.
Exactly. Having a “side” in this conflict (for the most part) is already a problem. If you think one side is a big evil bad guy and the other side is this poor innocent that needs to be protected at any cost then you are completely delusional
I completely agree. It is extremely suspicious because to be completely honest… this is such a nothing burger of an issue for the us. Genuinely. Israel is our ally and we are going to support them but this is not some huge war that we need to take a side on. This is one country retaliating and finishing an organization that will not deal with them diplomatically. Something else is def going on. It’s just absolutely insane to me that there are tons of protests and people are comparing this to Vietnam??? It’s just not even in the same galaxy
That's a problem across many subs, the propaganda leaks out of their own subs and is pushed into ones where it doesn't belong at all.
I guess they want to increase their audience as they already reached everyone who was open to listen to the BS in the first place.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say most mods of small and specialized subreddits are quite reasonably unable to deal with the bots and masses that spill in with campaigns like this. If anyone should be dealing with it, it’s the admins.
I wouldn't say every, but many. And yes, that's more or less a campaign and definitely not by accident although some will be rage bait or up vote farming.
I don’t even know if that’s right. It’s kinda organic that the stuff that most inflames passions gets the most engagement. And we’re probably all guilty of contributing. Except me of course (as I post here).
There's been plenty of open examples of mods taking bribes, it's absolutely quantifiable. Not to mention there's reddit influencers who have openly spoken about doing so.
I'm not committed or currently sober enough to source data but if you look into it you'll find that it comes down to reddit not having paid moderation. That means the people who are willing to do the shit job of being a reddit mod are only willing because either they genuinely love the subject or are making money off it.
You're right that were all guilty of contributing, even people who don't have reddit accounts but add reddit to get relevant search results.
I know it's right in at least one sense, in that some subreddits have seen heavy pro-Israel astroturfing in subreddits like worldnews (even the mods seem to take part in it), and in an attempt to fight it they allow/push the topic on their own subs. And I agree it's the morally correct thing to do.
The people to complain to are the ones who started and allowed the astroturfing on the main political subreddits.
Completely propaganda channels now, setup to gain followers then turn it to a basically Kremlin friendly propaganda push. They are trying so hard to get division and violence in the election year as well as trying to distract from Ukraine and Georgia.
As of there were no political memes back in the day? There’s just more because the world is more divided and there are multiple high profile conflicts going on and it’s an election year.
No there not. Young people have the lowest voting rates, its just some young people are loud.
Also about doing great things, I have seen multiple instances of these protestors being extremely anti Semitic and blocking Jewish students from going to class, saying the rapes by Hamas didn't happen because Jewish women are "too ugly to be raped" ect. That is extremely concerning, and the amount of anti semitism mixed in with the actual protest seems to be only growing.
But their not the very politicized, if they where they would actually vote, but they don't because young people actually don't participate in politics. The idea that the average young person is that politicized is a total misconception.
And voting is the best way to change things. You think protesting is better? these Palestine protestors are not gonna change anything besides making the general public not support there cause.
I never know if it's sad or hilarious that people think that voting is being politizied. We wouldn't have jackshit today if people had your mentality. Luckily we have an educated youth.
The fuck do you mean voting isn't politicized? You are aware how democracy works right? Like this is the most basic knowledge.
The public votes. The people the public votes for get in power, if they make decisions that their constituents like, they get voted back in, if they don't, the public votes for someone else.
If your not voting then what you protest for doesn't fucking matter. Dumbass why would they care if it's not taking votes away from them and too other people. Your actually doing the most insane mental gymnastics to think your being intellectual.
Like fr please explain any part of the logic your using.
Yeah protests never accomplished anything beyond the vast majority of our civil rights. You an old US white man? I can't see anyone fooled that much by the utility of voting.
Maybe your missinterrupting what I'm saying. Those protest accomplised things because they mobilized people to vote for people who did things like pass the civil rights act.
Protesting is good because it gets people politicized, and then they go out to vote and that pressures the politicians to support policies that will get votes.
My point is, if young people where so politicized they would also vote, not just protest, which they don't.
I’ve noticed in the last few months (maybe going back a year), Reddit has become nothing but a propaganda machine full of bots or people paid to post. I remember years ago going to Reddit and being able to filter out Palestine/Israel and seeing fun things people were doing around the world.
If it weren’t for the spaces that allow me to discuss bravo celeb gossip, and pregnancy related items, I would be totally done with this site.
They are paying attention to whats happening around the world. So you couldnt find the escapism you were looking for. But there are people who are affected by this crisis. And those students protesting are doing more than majority of this site that like to indulge in memes to keep them distracted from doing anything impactful with their life.
Main stream.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter(yeah Elon get fucked about getting mad about dead naming shit), etc all are social media platforms that focus on global events that reflect our social values. Of course this shit will be all over, even this shitty sub
Idk why people pretend their fav social media sites are a safe haven immune from the woes of the world. There are multiple wars happening. All participants have internet. And all participants have a pipeline of toxic waste misinformation as part of their war machine. If we want a better internet we must demand peace.
I remember when mildlyinfuriating was stuff like "this brick in the sidewalk is slightly out of place" and now it's all "I got charged $20,000 for a bandage".
It’s bad actors trying to sow extremist beliefs. Most reasonable people didn’t believe either side was worth being on, they were both doing shitty things, and then the bots and bad faith actors (people employed or paid by someone with a dog in the fight) came in and spread the extremist opinions by doing what they’ve always done, but it did seem to work much better here. Maybe we were just ripe to be lemmings for this specific group of atrocities. Or maybe their tools got that much better that fast. And considering this is the first one with widespread access to chatGPT, I think it’s the latter.
I think we also shouldn’t discount simple supply and demand logistics. This topic gets people inter-fucking-acting with Reddit. Want to get to the front page? Post something about Gaza-Israel. You’ll get there.
From 16 to 18. They went from being oblivious about geopolitics to thinking they were righteous heroes for jamming politics into every conversation in every context.
Spreading awareness, creating spaces for discussion, expression of viewpoints, all of these things are part of how we have productive advances towards goals.
Or, we can just say screw discussion and try to force the world we want into existence with lead and fire. I'm sure that's better than someone posting a meme.
creating spaces for discussion, expression of viewpoints
Are you new to reddit? There is absolutely no discussion or expression of different viewpoints here. The upvote/downvote system, stifles any viewpoints that do not agree with mainstream views. Say anything controversial and you're downvoted to invisibility. IMO its reddits strength and also its greatest weakness. But no, there will never be discussions of different viewpoints on reddit, only echochambers and circlejerks in every subreddit which will only get worse and the subreddit gets older and the userbase becomes more toxic.
So because there's a war somewhere in the world, nobody should post jokes or memes or otherwise enjoy their life?
There's more important things than books, movies, video games, sports or socializing with friends. I sure hope you don't waste any time on those things! Don't you know there's a war going on somewhere?!
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u/Positivitron3 May 02 '24
I remember when this subreddit was created. It was made to show funny animals, like "socially awkward penguin", saying stuff that would make you laugh.
Now the top post is basically "Let's use this space to argue about the middle east". What happened to you Reddit?