The difference is people don’t commit acts of terror because they ate McDonald’s a few times. But people get radicalized into fascism and killing people on Reddit. They also do it on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They also do it in some online games, because fascists target marginalized kids to commit their massacres for them.
OP singled out Reddit but we’re also singling out Facebook or Twitter when the situation calls for it.
Reddit knows these users exist and have their communities, and it took them until 2017 to start doing anything about it. They’ve been on Reddit since at least 2010. All they do is ban them then, in some enlightened centrist way, also ban progressives for standing up to fascists (under newish rules you can’t post anything violent or insult other people on the site, fascists know this and with all their talk about free speech will brigade your post with reports to get you banned).
But I think you lack the proper perspective to understand why Reddit (and other websites) is so problematic, and I’m humbly hoping to present this new perspective. I understand you believe fascists are acting individually and just kinda hang around on these websites. The reality is actually that they are using these spaces actively as recruitment tools. First they open edgy humour groups and boards, and lure “normies” in. People who are lured in by edgy and dark humour revolving around antisemitism, racism, conspiracy theories are already people who are at risk of going further in the rabbit hole. They may also feel pressure in their everyday life and see these spaces as an outlet, where they can be as vile as they want In these spaces they just make jokes about minorities, and sometimes drop references to their own theories, like say using one of their dogwhistles for the “great replacement”. Interested normies who also spend a lot of time on the server then will ask about these things and others will give them youtube videos or articles to start them out. Once they watch them and start believing in the Jewish Question, the Great Replacement, or other conspiracy theories, it’s almost over. They’ll start hanging around deeper websites such as 8chan, and they’ll keep moving deeper. Reddit has a direct hand in this process, but I don’t see Lemmy having one. I believe when propagandising that it’s more important to focus on volume rather than quality. Just repeating your talking points enough will make people believe them. If you can get people to join your community and stay, at some point down the line they will turn to fascism.
This is so prevalent and rationalised that some well-meaning people are not even able to pick up these spaces are actually fascist recruitment spaces, such as r/consumeproduct or r/frenworld if you were familiar with them back when they existed. So we’re not talking about fascists just kinda hanging out on Reddit and saying stuff here and there about how Chinese people are bugs, we’re talking about a wilful effort to spread their ideology of hate. They also sometimes start invading a community and take it over (because normal people don’t want to hang out with fascists) which is great for luring a ton of people in. Imagine if r/knitting, which has say 50k subscribers, was suddenly throwing around fascist dogwhistles or theory. You cast a wide net and that’s 50 thousand people you can reach out if you do it long enough. And of course then the people that are disgusted by these new users will leave and soon you’ll only have fascists. Though in my experience they mostly create their own subreddits and try to pass them off as normie subs instead of taking over other subs.
If you’re interested I wrote some articles on my cryptpad, they go into how fascists use social media (particularly Reddit).
My problem is that Reddit is being singled out and called a hate site because some users on the site promote hate
Then you also understand we can say houses have evil people in them and so we should abolish homes and shelter because it’s a factor of radicalisation. Or, conversely, not do anything and wait until death because it’s impossible to decide. At some point you have to be able to take a decision, and it’s accepted in communist circles (and even some lib circles bless their hearts) that Reddit is a contributing factor to far-right radicalisation. That they also have the tools to fight against it, but they don’t really care enough to do anything. T_D was banned last year, after they had locked the sub and all went to their own website. And this was years after users kept complaining about T_D and how they participated in the Charlottesville rally and other fascist events.
Wow! Thank you for such a long, well thought out comment! I appreciate that you don’t immediately take my comments as an attack, but rather as an attempt on my part to be fair. I admit that I was unaware of those pockets of radicalization in Reddit. I tend to have quite mild subscriptions there for consumption purposes and entertainment.
I tend to stay away from the radical extremes altogether. I recognize that you and Maud’Dibber are pro Communism. I have very moderate (Centrist) views on the conservative/ liberal political scale, which I see that you don’t smile on. My ultimate goal is to see hyper partisanship ended and everyone get along. I know it’s a naive dream, but there it is… 🙂
Well, I mean, we are on lemmygrad which is a communist (marxist-leninist mostly) Lemmy instance :grimacing face:
I don’t think it’s naive or utopian to think that people can get along. But I think we will only all get along in communism, which is above all a classless society. There is not much in common between workers (such as I or probably you too) and bosses. Bosses exploit our labour to make a profit (that’s mathematically the only way profit can exist in the first place) and to some extent they realize this. So by the very nature of the capitalist system, it’s impossible for us to get along because why would I let another human being steal the fruits of my labour? And you see this in everyday life when your boss wants you to stay after work and put in some overtime but you kinda want to go home and see your family but you can’t really refuse because you need a job to pay rent and food. These are irreconcilable class contradictions and they are fundamental to capitalism.
That’s also why partisanship exists in the first place. As a worker who sees his revolutionary potential (which is basically understanding my role in our current class society), I am a communist. I couldn’t be a conservative because what would I gain from that? I have no class interest in being one. Conservatives are mostly very rich business owners, and they enjoy success in politics (not just in the United States) because neoliberalism is de facto the current leading economical theory and they can convince voters we need more of it when things start fucking up. They got the money for this, it’s not a problem. They’re also the dominant class, and we see that even social-democrat parties have a bourgeois character, meaning they often act in the interest of business owners. Everything is political, and class interests influence politics in everyone.
We see that class contradictions exist in state society and do not exist in stateless societies (of which there are a few examples today, in some tribes) and so we believe that class (which is decided by your relation to the means of production, it’s not the middle class or upper-middle class) doesn’t have to always exist. And we will finally be free and equal when class society stops existing.
“Well, I mean, we are on lemmygrad which is a communist (marxist-leninist mostly) Lemmy instance 😬”
Hehe! Fair enough. I’m new (to the whole Fediverse) and hadn’t even subscribed to any groups yet. I think I just saw the OP’s post on the main page because I had “All” instead of “Subscribed”. I know that there is a lot of crap on Reddit (as well as nearly every other social site), and felt that Reddit was being singled out (which I felt was unfair). I don’t think I’m actually on Lemmygrad, but I was able to see the post on the main page. 🙂 I don’t know—I’m just trying to get things figured out. 🙂
The difference is people don’t commit acts of terror because they ate McDonald’s a few times. But people get radicalized into fascism and killing people on Reddit. They also do it on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They also do it in some online games, because fascists target marginalized kids to commit their massacres for them.
OP singled out Reddit but we’re also singling out Facebook or Twitter when the situation calls for it.
Reddit knows these users exist and have their communities, and it took them until 2017 to start doing anything about it. They’ve been on Reddit since at least 2010. All they do is ban them then, in some enlightened centrist way, also ban progressives for standing up to fascists (under newish rules you can’t post anything violent or insult other people on the site, fascists know this and with all their talk about free speech will brigade your post with reports to get you banned).
But I think you lack the proper perspective to understand why Reddit (and other websites) is so problematic, and I’m humbly hoping to present this new perspective. I understand you believe fascists are acting individually and just kinda hang around on these websites. The reality is actually that they are using these spaces actively as recruitment tools. First they open edgy humour groups and boards, and lure “normies” in. People who are lured in by edgy and dark humour revolving around antisemitism, racism, conspiracy theories are already people who are at risk of going further in the rabbit hole. They may also feel pressure in their everyday life and see these spaces as an outlet, where they can be as vile as they want In these spaces they just make jokes about minorities, and sometimes drop references to their own theories, like say using one of their dogwhistles for the “great replacement”. Interested normies who also spend a lot of time on the server then will ask about these things and others will give them youtube videos or articles to start them out. Once they watch them and start believing in the Jewish Question, the Great Replacement, or other conspiracy theories, it’s almost over. They’ll start hanging around deeper websites such as 8chan, and they’ll keep moving deeper. Reddit has a direct hand in this process, but I don’t see Lemmy having one. I believe when propagandising that it’s more important to focus on volume rather than quality. Just repeating your talking points enough will make people believe them. If you can get people to join your community and stay, at some point down the line they will turn to fascism.
This is so prevalent and rationalised that some well-meaning people are not even able to pick up these spaces are actually fascist recruitment spaces, such as r/consumeproduct or r/frenworld if you were familiar with them back when they existed. So we’re not talking about fascists just kinda hanging out on Reddit and saying stuff here and there about how Chinese people are bugs, we’re talking about a wilful effort to spread their ideology of hate. They also sometimes start invading a community and take it over (because normal people don’t want to hang out with fascists) which is great for luring a ton of people in. Imagine if r/knitting, which has say 50k subscribers, was suddenly throwing around fascist dogwhistles or theory. You cast a wide net and that’s 50 thousand people you can reach out if you do it long enough. And of course then the people that are disgusted by these new users will leave and soon you’ll only have fascists. Though in my experience they mostly create their own subreddits and try to pass them off as normie subs instead of taking over other subs.
If you’re interested I wrote some articles on my cryptpad, they go into how fascists use social media (particularly Reddit).
Then you also understand we can say houses have evil people in them and so we should abolish homes and shelter because it’s a factor of radicalisation. Or, conversely, not do anything and wait until death because it’s impossible to decide. At some point you have to be able to take a decision, and it’s accepted in communist circles (and even some lib circles bless their hearts) that Reddit is a contributing factor to far-right radicalisation. That they also have the tools to fight against it, but they don’t really care enough to do anything. T_D was banned last year, after they had locked the sub and all went to their own website. And this was years after users kept complaining about T_D and how they participated in the Charlottesville rally and other fascist events.
Wow! Thank you for such a long, well thought out comment! I appreciate that you don’t immediately take my comments as an attack, but rather as an attempt on my part to be fair. I admit that I was unaware of those pockets of radicalization in Reddit. I tend to have quite mild subscriptions there for consumption purposes and entertainment.
I tend to stay away from the radical extremes altogether. I recognize that you and Maud’Dibber are pro Communism. I have very moderate (Centrist) views on the conservative/ liberal political scale, which I see that you don’t smile on. My ultimate goal is to see hyper partisanship ended and everyone get along. I know it’s a naive dream, but there it is… 🙂
Well, I mean, we are on lemmygrad which is a communist (marxist-leninist mostly) Lemmy instance :grimacing face:
I don’t think it’s naive or utopian to think that people can get along. But I think we will only all get along in communism, which is above all a classless society. There is not much in common between workers (such as I or probably you too) and bosses. Bosses exploit our labour to make a profit (that’s mathematically the only way profit can exist in the first place) and to some extent they realize this. So by the very nature of the capitalist system, it’s impossible for us to get along because why would I let another human being steal the fruits of my labour? And you see this in everyday life when your boss wants you to stay after work and put in some overtime but you kinda want to go home and see your family but you can’t really refuse because you need a job to pay rent and food. These are irreconcilable class contradictions and they are fundamental to capitalism.
That’s also why partisanship exists in the first place. As a worker who sees his revolutionary potential (which is basically understanding my role in our current class society), I am a communist. I couldn’t be a conservative because what would I gain from that? I have no class interest in being one. Conservatives are mostly very rich business owners, and they enjoy success in politics (not just in the United States) because neoliberalism is de facto the current leading economical theory and they can convince voters we need more of it when things start fucking up. They got the money for this, it’s not a problem. They’re also the dominant class, and we see that even social-democrat parties have a bourgeois character, meaning they often act in the interest of business owners. Everything is political, and class interests influence politics in everyone.
We see that class contradictions exist in state society and do not exist in stateless societies (of which there are a few examples today, in some tribes) and so we believe that class (which is decided by your relation to the means of production, it’s not the middle class or upper-middle class) doesn’t have to always exist. And we will finally be free and equal when class society stops existing.
“Well, I mean, we are on lemmygrad which is a communist (marxist-leninist mostly) Lemmy instance 😬”
Hehe! Fair enough. I’m new (to the whole Fediverse) and hadn’t even subscribed to any groups yet. I think I just saw the OP’s post on the main page because I had “All” instead of “Subscribed”. I know that there is a lot of crap on Reddit (as well as nearly every other social site), and felt that Reddit was being singled out (which I felt was unfair). I don’t think I’m actually on Lemmygrad, but I was able to see the post on the main page. 🙂 I don’t know—I’m just trying to get things figured out. 🙂
FWIW the thread turns up on frontpage of lemmy.ml too. That is where I am and where I saw it.
It doesn’t. The default view is local, not all, since most servers want their front page to be only their curated content.