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Comment by ShivShankaran | Hacker News Reader

The biggest of them all is Reddit. We will know few years down the lane how much of Reddit was astroturfed by the US government given that reddit directly hired ex government officials for their director level positions

Almost all of Reddit home page is now either subtle advertising or outright propaganda

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If Reddit is a major player for astroturfing on behalf of America or the American government, it's going very poorly. There is probably no easier way to reach the front page than to assert that America is incompetent or evil.

What do you think social media is? People post because they want you to buy into their brand. This isn't just companies. They want you to know who they are so you will buy their books, attend their show, or drum up support for them in whatever domain they are trying to advance in.

I think it used to be better. However, any form of independent media will inevitably be seen as a threat which the rich and powerful will try to tame and exploit.

If you could create a form of media which had some kind of immunity to this I'd like to think it would be pretty huge but honestly, I dont think its possible.

We keep hearing this and I keep being called a robot on reddit. I dont know man, some people have weird opinions, some facts are displeasing and journalistic incompetence does the rest.

Reddit is particularly tricky to manipulate one single way because it is compatible with completely opposed political groups cohabiting. So what you call manipulation that you dislike can just as well be compensated by an exageration on the opposite side in another sub.

The only thing reddit cannot do is appeased, neutral discussion but that s true of many groups where opposing sides meet.

>is compatible with completely opposed political groups cohabiting

I don’t know what you mean by compatible here, but cohabiting opposed political groups was certainly not my experience on Reddit

Unsubscribe from the default subs and follow subreddits that interest you. There is a subreddit for almost every mutually incompatible viewpoint conceivable.

Reddit is a long way off from its prime but there’s still a healthy diversity of opinion there. Just not in /r/news.

/r/anime_titties/ (underscore _very_ important here) is a good source for non-US news.

They specifically ban news from US, India and China so they won't dominate the content.

> They specifically ban news from US, India and China so they won't dominate the content.

???

India : https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/z3dhr9/meta_...

China : https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/z3datt/uk_ch..., https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/z3fgka/major...

US : https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/z3hoy3/us_ir...

This is just the first page.

> 2.3.1 The number of paragraphs with more than a passing reference to the USA, China or India in any capacity should not exceed more than 50% of the article.

If you want to get really political there is almost no subreddit where you can talk about "opposing views".

Reddit outright bans and then shadow bans the admins with any opposing views.

Oh yeah, I can see what views you call "really political".

I will lay out my views here

"who are the mysterious gold buyers who bought 300 tons of gold",

"who are the mysterious buyers of oil ships to keep russian oil float",

"is the rest of the world gradually dumping USD",

"does the Ukraine-Russia war have any chance of peace"

"Europe did not really want to be involved in the Ukraine war but did so only due to immense pressure from US"

"Why would Russia blow up it's own pipeline?"

"Are most of the non western world turning against IMF and USD global reserve"

I really don't need answers to these since the last time I asked one of this in here I was suspended for a week.

There are subreddits for you, like https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/

Especially due to "Europe did not really want to be involved in the Ukraine war but did so only due to immense pressure from US"

Yeah, "immense pressure from US" when you see your closest neighbors being killed by russian butchers.

I seriously doubt that the Reddit admins have any grudge against asking “is the rest of the world gradually dumping USD?” or many others of those questions. Maybe it’s the way you ask it?

There are definitely things that you can’t say on Reddit. But these questions are quite tame.

This is why I specifically mentioned homepage which is the curated subreddits. Worldnews and news are basically almost 100% propaganda channel for the US government

There is no homepage. It depends on what subreddits you subscribe to and if you go to /r/popular or /r/all you can't really blame me for that.

There absolutely IS a homepage. The one you see in an incognito window

Sorry if my sentence came off as blaming you. by "homepage" I meant the default page of reddit when you are not logged in. larger subreddits like worldnews is practically a petridish for reddit algorithms to push western narratives.

Have you considered the possibility that some western narratives might be upvoted because they're popular with the (mostly western) audience of Reddit, and not because governments are manipulating the site?

Nobody blames you for anything. He is just saying that reddit is seeing a lot of propaganda.

And if you point it out, you get banned.

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