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Comment by Gareth321 | Hacker News Reader

Mine's older than yours and I don't know what you mean, the DNC targeted reddit? Dramatic shift? Reddit started far left (being focused on science and tech) even horse-shoeing to the point where it attracted a big Ron Paul fan base. There was an r/obama before users could make subreddits.

It's been heading right or center-right ever since the_donald (2015), r/conservative, etc have gotten so huge, if there's been any political shift.

Do you really think you'd regularly see white supremacist content on reddit in 2006 as often as you do now?

They're referring to Correct the Record, which flooded the site with fake accounts to push narratives that supported the US Democatic party.

It was really obvious when something unexpected happened, like that video of Hilary collapsing and having to be pushed into a vehicle during the presidential campaign - for several hours the sockpuppet accounts didn't know what to say so comments from regular users started making it to the top again.

(Quick edit, had the wrong organization in mind before)

Thanks for citing something! I've been a casual Reddit user since ~2008 and felt very lost in this discussion.

In case anyone is in the same boat as me, heres an article on the subject: https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-pac-spends-dollar1-mil...

That was an SPAC in 2016, OP said "the night of the DNC primary in 2015." I was there for the CTR debacle, the SPAC hasn't existed since 2016(?), do you think they're still funding accounts?

The DNC primaries started in early 2016, so they're definitely misremembering part of the timeline. If we go by "primaries" and not "2015", then they probably are remembering CTR - it lines up almost exactly to when they started.

And yeah, it's probably not them but it definitely feels like something is still going on. In the Chicago subreddit, for example, on anything that touches a politically-charged topic, the comments and votes will be exactly opposite what they might be on a different day.

>It was really obvious when something unexpected happened, like that video of Hilary collapsing and having to be pushed into a vehicle during the presidential campaign - for several hours the sockpuppet accounts didn't know what to say so comments from regular users started making it to the top again.

Same thing happened after Trump's 2016 election win. For a day or two, it was possible to post something non-leftist to /r/politics without having it be mercilessly downvoted; as if the shills were awaiting orders.

> It's been heading right or center-right ever since the_donald (2015), r/conservative, etc have gotten so huge, if there's been any political shift.

Wait - you seriously and unironically believe reddit has become _more_ rightwing in the past 7 years?

I'm not who you're replying to, but this has been my experience in some communities I enjoy while I've had the opposite experience in others.

For example, I used to love /r/conspiracy which is now rather overrun with a particular kind of conspiracy theorist and I no longer feel welcome.

Speaking from the gut I'd say more communities have slid to the left than the right, but nearly all of my communities have been more politicized and it reduces the amount I use the service considerably.

My account is 10 years old. I have noticed no shift. But I do not subscribe to any of the popular subreddits, I only subscribe to niche subs, which is clearly the best way to use the site and avoids the issue of political nonsense getting in the way of enjoyable conversation.

/r/politics has definitely shifted from “OMG Ron Paul It’s Happening Narwhal Bacon!!!111!!” to dominated by progressives, but I think you’re seeing it through rose tinted glasses. After all, /r/atheism was also a default sub.

/r/all is populist as ever, but Reddit as a whole has simply fragmented. For politics specifically, non-progressives just live outside of /r/politics. Neoliberals tended to hang out in /r/political discussion, Trump supporters in /r/the_donald, neoconservatives in /r/tuesday, etc.

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