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I won't contest that racism and bigotry existed on reddit. It definitely did. I also experienced and saw kindness and acceptance. Saying Reddit in its entirety is racist is really no different that saying everyone is racist. And not everyone and not everyone on reddit is racist.
Reddit (the platform) banned us for celebrating a guy who killed slaveowners, that's why we call them
.Who was the guy you celebrated?
John Brown
it's about the platform and the majority membership, not a judgment of every community that exists there. there are quite obviously cool corners on reddit, but the platform as a whole defends bigotry as free speech, at an admin level.
It does seem like the admin level is an issue when it comes to reddit and racism. This is easier to observe as there are fewer admins than users. I do want to see some kind of data to be convinced it is the majority of people on reddit. I only have my personal experience to go on. I remember fondly how conservatives bemoaned that reddit was dominated by liberals. So from my personal experience the racists were the minority. I could be wrong though, because I don't have political census data on redditors.
I remember fondly how conservatives bemoaned that reddit was dominated by liberals.
Tories have also complained since the beginning of time about how the BBC has a supposed leftwing bias, and no amount of slandering leftists by the BBC has dissuaded them of that. Conservatives just want to feel persecuted.
They do have a persecution complex, I'll give you that. =D
yeah its a joke making fun of a large portion of reddit
you're giving real "all lives matter" vibes with this response
They said elsewhere that they're autistic. The need to be exact and truthful when people generalize something like a community is something i identify with. Its why I dont really love the stormfront joke myself, just go along with it for community peace. This person to me is clearly well intentioned and is an example of the dunk impulse going too far because I think they're trying to do right.
ETA: Actually I got them mixed up with another user they never said they were autistic. But I still think they are well intentioned.
Their further response to me tells me they aren't well intentioned.
Ah damn, I misplaced my faith.
its okay to believe the best in people, can't fault you there
We aren't going to tolerate intolerance in this instance. I personally don't have a problem with communists. But I do have a problem with authoritarian communists. If you think me making this distinction is acting in bad faith, then you might run into more issues than just me here.
I personally don't have a problem with communists. But
Sounds like you have a problem with communists, or do you think that the country with the biggest army, police force, and imprisoned population (disproportionately of racial minorities) is somehow not authoritarian?
We have a federal presidential constitutional republic or FPCR in the US. It has three branches of government at the federal level that ideally work as checks and balances on each other. Then there are many subordinate state governments that act as a means of delegating responsibility for the federal government. Our representatives in federal, state, and local governments are democratically elected and ideally should represent the majority of the population. We the people rule in America. The US is not without its flaws, but we are a democracy.
The PRC has the same three branches of government, including a President at the head of the executive branch, and a constitution that lays out their roles (more thoroughly than the US does the power of the judiciary), and it also holds direct elections for municipal offices. Neither country directly elects its President, as the PRC has elected officials vote and the US has the Electoral College say "just trust me bro" before giving the election to the other guy half the time (based on elections this century).
The US is not without its flaws, but we are a democracy.
We literally had a bunch of unelected people in robes declare the president, just over 2 decades ago.
Our representatives in federal, state, and local governments are democratically elected and ideally should represent the majority of the population.
ideally should is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence- They don't. Local governments are often dominated by landlord interests, as well as homeowners- that's often accomplished by systematically disenfranchising renters.
Again, the unelected people in robes declared that money is speech, not only swaying elections but allowing influence to be bought directly. How is that a democracy?
You seem to be conflating the concept of 'democracy' with the freedom to spend money however it may hurt someone else structurally. That's pretty authoritarian if you're someone without money.
The Supreme Court has numerous issues. For starters, they aren't elected so they aren't beholden to the people. They have minimal ethics guidelines so they can accept bribes from billionaires. They don't have term limits, so they are effectively 9 kings and queens. The electoral college allowing two presidents to win their first term without the popular vote and the Senate giving conservative states over representation has allowed conservatives to capture the court. edit: typo
These compounding issues are destroying our democracy. If we don't fix these issues we will not have democracy. The Supreme Court is already stripping rights from people, it's only a matter of time before Republicans win back the Congress and the Presidency. If the Republicans are still controlled by fascists then and we haven't fixed these problems we are going to be trouble.
ideally should is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence- They don’t. Local governments are often dominated by landlord interests, as well as homeowners- that’s often accomplished by systematically disenfranchising renters.
Yeah, rent is way too expensive. Another reason for socialism to the pile. edit: spacing
You might run into more issues than just this thread by casually tossing out the "authoritarian" label like you did on Reddit where the groups in question couldn't defend themselves
I think you'll find that goes both ways. We can defend ourselves too. You are not on Hexbear. This is Blahaj.
Defend what? I don't think the parallel you want to draw works quite as well as you think. My point is that Redditors can cast stones in their ignorance at people who they would struggle to string a whole sentence together to describe without buzzwords because they know jack shit about what those people actually think. Western communists are typically quite familiar with the ideology of liberals.
Defend what?
ourselves
they know jack shit about what those people actually think
I'm interested to learn more about what those people actually think.
Western communists are typically quite familiar with the ideology of liberals.
I'm not sure how they can be if they think everyone to the right of them is a liberal.
The cotton workers and the train workers should seize the means of production via their democracy. If they don't have a democracy, they should perform a revolution to establish one.
Referring to a revolution by the people as authoritarian is like saying the oppression of a king is freedom. It doesn't make sense under closer observation. Using force to achieve freedom does not invalidate that freedom. Once the revolution has been won, the people rule themselves. Any authority over them is a temporary construct of their own making that can be removed and replaced.
It goes without saying all lives matter. It needs to be said that Black Lives Matter. I am aware racism exists on reddit. I'd love to see a survey or study that indicates a majority of people are racist on reddit.
I'm not convinced that calling reddit predominantly racist is based on actual sympathy for people of color. There is a competing reason I can think of why someone would want to discredit reddit however. They tended to moderate against authoritarian communists, people who are notorious for their support of governments that committed genocides against minorities.
It is true that there are plenty of people who use reddit that are not racist (setting aside the idea that everyone who lives in a racist society, which we in the west do, has at least some internalized racism). Some people on reddit even actively fight against it, to their credit. That said, as a platform, both in terms of the people who run and administrate it, as well as the larger majority mass of users, definitely tends towards racism. This can be seen in all kinds of ways, from admins always siding with
of racists over bipoc to the frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of the "orcish hordes" that dominates in every popular subreddit (and the silencing of those who offer even the mildest criticism of it), to the understandable yet very telling rabid defense of the privilege so many of them insist they earned when it is nothing more than old fashioned white privilege. You seem to agree that reddit is bad for its corporatist bullshit and its laser focus on profit at the expense of people. We agree. But that alone is inherently systemically racist for sociological reasons that I'm assuming you're aware of, given some of your other comments. For all these reasons, it is hardly an overreaction or unfair to refer to reddit as "a racist website."As for "authoritarian" communists, all I'll say here is that I hope you can learn to seriously, genuinely question a lot of what you have learned from what amounts to an ocean of propaganda deliberately spread for decades (even over a century) to demonize any successful socialist revolution. I'd encourage you to ask some of us "tankies" in good faith about some of that propaganda in other appropriate threads.
I definitely did see popular subreddits that would display racial biases to black people. They would bad mouth a black person doing something in a clip and then the next day defend a white person doing similar things. It didn't happen that way every time, but it did seem like it happened that way more often than not. Also, there does seem to be a valid argument in that systemic racism asserts itself in instances of corporate greed like we've seen from reddit. In the sense it's probably white people who are going to benefit from the enshitification.
At the very least I'm hoping we can have good faith discussions about progressive topics. IRL I typically talk to people more conservative me, so it is interesting to talk to someone coming from a different end of the political spectrum.
Damn, I really had faith you were well intentioned. I'm disappointed.
Honestly I don't even know why you're here if you're so happy with Reddit's moderation policies.
We moderate tankys here too. Welcome to 196.
I'm mad at the corporate take over of reddit. The shitification if you will. edit:typo
I wonder why a website that has been taken over by corporations (it was pretty much always corporate, but I agree its gotten worse) would aggressively silence communists, I also wonder if they would perhaps promote certain narratives about the enemies of the west. I also wonder why someone who is anti-corporate would support that.
Believe it or not, I really want our communities to get along because Hexbear is aggressively pro-trans.
We love our trans comrades
I won't contest that racism and bigotry existed on reddit. It definitely did. I also experienced and saw kindness and acceptance. Saying Reddit in its entirety is racist is really no different that saying everyone is racist. And not everyone and not everyone on reddit is racist.
reddit is full to the brim liberals and liberals are at best fascist enablers, at worst - especially when foreign politics are involved - they are fash-lite, consciously or otherwise
hence the stormfront joke