After rallying against liberals being "snowflakes" and needing "safe-spaces", Parler ironically enough ended up being just that for the extreme right.
I have seen discussions there from people on both sides of the political spectrum where neither side was downvoted to oblivion, which is more than you can say for most of Reddit.
That's the point: they complain about everyone else except when it happens to them, and then suddenly it's totally just and necessary. As though the reason women, gays, lesbians, transgender, black, mexican etc. communities don't have their own spaces for the exact reason that otherwise they would be brigaded by no end of people who felt just overly necessary to drop in and talk about how they think none of their problems are valid.
/r/conservative isn't ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively, it's ridiculed because it's moderated aggressively by people who continuously argue that moderation anywhere else is an assault on free speech and wholly unnecessary.
Truth isn't welcomed there. For instance, you will be banned for simply stating that Trump lost the election
In contrast, /r/politics claims to be about general politics but most content to the right of AOC/Bernie gets downvoted or deleted.
As Reddit has a user base that comes from the US less than 50%, this might have to do with the fact that the Overton window shifted so far to the right there that the opinions of AOC or Bernie would count as center-right pretty much everywhere else in the western world, with the Republicans being off the charts lunatic extremist right.
But that's not the only relevant dimension of policy:
Culture matters, and they are not remotely rightwing on culture.
The direction they want to move the country in matters, and they definitely don't want to move the country rightward either.
The centrist view, the average American, would be considered a leftist by conservatives. This is why they think they're getting brigaded everywhere. They are. Their beliefs are unpopular.
The only reason the US Republican party is viable while being so far right is structural voting advantages. That's why they've lost the popular vote almost every time for 30+ years. That's why 50% of senators are Republican when only ~43% of the populations votes R.
On the internet where these artificial advantages aren't present it's much more obvious that Republican policy is broadly unpopular, and conservative opinion is the minority. Or more accurately, the moderate left is actually the center, and the average Republican is substantially far right.
But I'll have to disagree, since the comment above me suggests that there are a significant number of non-American Reddit users who lean more left than the average American, skewing the upvoting patterns. I'd argue that there are a different set of "artificial advantages" on the internet, such as that.
And when I browsed r/politics during the 2016 and 2020 election seasons, it was clear that Bernie Sanders was the favored candidate by Redditors. However, more moderate politicians like Clinton and Biden actually won the nominations.
And the popular vote count is a reflection of the Electoral College process...if elections were actually decided on the popular vote, campaign strategies would be focused more on cities than rural areas shifting the results.
But it's also undeniable that the average American leans left. That's why Republicans lose the popular vote in both chambers of congress and the presidency nearly every election. Their positions are unpopular, that's why they get down voted on "mainstream" sites where the user base is large enough to revert to the mean.
And campaign focus outside of urban cores would mean that the average American is even farther left than they appear to be.
Biden is farther right than the average Democrat because he needed to be to win. The structural advantages to Conservatives means the Democratic party needs to run centrist candidates.
In comparison, the same advantages mean the Republican party can still win with extreme right wing candidates. For example, Trump was the first president that never hit 50% approval rating but it was still high enough for him to win and do okay during his second campaign.
If 2/3 of US internet users are left of conservatives, that's why they get downvoted to hell anywhere outside their safe spaces. IMO the crazy moderators on reddit are a result of the left lean, not the cause.
Reddit leaned a lot more right/libertarian before nearly all coservative subreddits were systematically banned under spez and Pao. Spez also enacted more subtle censorship like algorithmic tweaks to keep t_d out off the front page and eventually the creation of /r/popular to keep similarly "undesirable" subreddits from the front page.
The truth means nothing to those that wont listen. The Republican party is a far right monstrosity. The democrats in US are a right leaning party for all practical purposes. Hell, Biden said he would be fine running with a Republican VP.