Tl;dr: have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?
I logged out of my reddit account a while ago but still browse some subreddits without logging in and have recently noticed more far-right rhetoric in general. I’m curious to know if others have seen this trend or, even better, wrote about it or documented it. Some examples I noticed were r/sweden and r/exmuslim. These are two communities I used to frequent often and both of them now have descended into more upvoted far-right rhetoric of the “deport them all!” caliber.
I have a feeling (from my own experience browsing these communities) that such content used to be quickly addressed and downvoted, and both of those subreddits don’t tend to ban people on the fly nor overmoderate. Sometimes I see threads with the same title (likely posted by the same person) on both the subreddit and the corresponding lemmy community where the difference in opinion and the general political leaning is obvious.
So, not to succumb to my own biases, have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?
It’s a total guess, but my theory is that people on the right are tolerant of enshittification and may even find it appealing, while the rest of us just leave. This seems to be the case with Twitter, so maybe Reddit is following?
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I reached my tolerance of how shitty the Reddit feed has become pretty recently and I’m on the anti-authoritarian side of things so it’s an interesting theory.
majority of the users who left were probably tech-inclined or left-leaning, then add to that the loss of moderators and what remains is piles of shit.
I hate to be the one to say this, but Reddit has always had a major issue with reactionary, hivemind politics and it’s only gotten worse over time. This isn’t new by any means.
It’s always been bubbling in Reddit. My guess is that the recent loss of mods has probably allowed for alt-right mods to replace those who left, which is affecting what is presented in general.
I think the demographic of lemmy is more of the people that fled. Which means on average the site would of shifted a bit right and less in love with Linux. The few times I’ve poked my head in there the last couple months it’s been for sure less well moderated. Which means a lot more hate speech and right wing bullshit.
The potential shift would be caused by the API changes, so a bit too recent for studies to get any meaningful conclusion of.
That said, I don’t think that the user demographics changed so much yet. Sure, lots of mods and tech-inclined users migrated out, but those were a small minority in Reddit anyway. Instead I think that the “alternative right” (i.e. neonazi - let’s call a duck a duck) in the site are getting a bit louder, as the ones kicking them out are not there any more.
In the future however I do think that you’ll get a change in demographics in the site, as the neonazi going rogue will make other people leave.
What if the neo nazis keep it diluted and watered down enough? I don’t see how “mild Nazi content” would make people leave, especially since they may have accepted it as part of Reddit. Maybe by the time they leave, UX on lemmy apps would have improved and they can transition more easily.
I think that diluted Nazi content would still make some people leave. Just not as much as otherwise would.
And odds are that they wouldn’t. They think that they have some mission like “redpilling” the “woke” and the “normies”; they want proselytism for exponential growth.
Nah it’s always been that shit, it’s just a lot of people have jumped ship leaving less to dilute the outright pedo-nazis who frequent the place.
have there been any writings, surveys, or studies
If this is your core question, I suggest putting it somewhere up top; people will get halfway through your post, find something they want to respond to, and just respond without realizing you’re not looking for anecdata.
But no, there’s nothing like that as far as I know. And I feel this sort of thing would get a lot of play from ex-redditors, so I agree with the other guy that recent shifts would have been too recent to have been analyzed.
(As far as anecdata goes, I’ve always found subs that focused on a location instead of a topic had a more prominent conservative presence, as location subs bring out a lot more fierce rhetoric as people feel they’re defending their homes from perceived threats.)
Just checked mine.
Normal, small town resonable political posts next to, “This womann canadate has a plan to undermine your safety” and a badly conpressed photo
“r/sweden and r/exmuslim” lol.
Yes?
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Red means more REDdit ads and stuff. They are more likely to give me money.
