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Comment by c7THEC2DDFVV2V | Hacker News Reader

part of reddits failure IMO is the way in which shadow banning is used to encourage groupthink.

Its amazing how over the past 12-13 years Reddit feels like it has changed from random site you could get quite different and often difficult opinions about a matter which would challenge you, to now where you get blocked by users (not because of harassment, but just differing opinions), banned on subreddits (because you just don't agree with an often child like simplification/ narrative), mass organised down voting( which leads to further shadow banning across Reddit).

All these things have turned it into a playground of school bullies, and those who virtue signal seeking karma.

Then again, it could always have been that, and I just grew out of it.

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> Then again, it could always have been that, and I just grew out of it.

Nah, reddit really did change dramatically. The last reddit account I had got a site wide ban, I commented on some post I saw on /r/all which had a "from the river to the sea" flair with "Wow reddit admins really letting anti semitisim run wild? That's insane". First got banned by that sub with some toxic remark and then a site wide ban for "moderator harrasment", all while I was asleep. That _finally_ pushed me to no longer visit reddit. A few days later that subreddit got geoblocked in germany for that exact flair.

And I agree with your reading that these people are just bullies, ever since I've started viewing them as that I've finally started to understand their weird behaviour a bit better.

I don't think you can blame this on Reddit alone, as basically all online spaces (and sadly, some offline spaces too) have become incredibly toxic in that they constantly push divisive topics even when many participants would much rather avoid them. It happens even here on HN (covid, twitter, Israel/Palestine) and definitely on Twitter, in any news org's comment section, etc.

The thing that changes is often the exact flavour of the groupthink, but even on Reddit itself, this depends heavily on the subreddit. r/worldnews, for example, skews mostly pro-Israel and is also one of the larger subs.

Isn't r/worldnews the one that Ghislaine Maxwell moderated for a long time? That makes me wonder where a lot of the "groupthink" really originates.

My point is simply that groupthink can vary a lot, from Pro-Israel to Pro-Palestine - it's just a hugely polarising topic.

maxwellhill hasn't posted in over 3 1/2 years...

Yeah but imagine who the other mods are.

To this day I still don't know what I was shadowbanned for. It got randomly removed a few months later.

And it's ridiculous when you make a very high effort long post but then get the whole thing hidden because of the use of retard. Without any indication that it's happening.

You can still find little subcommunities with interesting individuals and subject matter experts. Any default sub is entirely worthless.

You still have to share those communities with the same people who make default subs worthless. The all time low I've ever seen is a post about a very influential person in the modular music space coming out as trans and the top comment being someone grandstanding about how the community was very toxic, meanwhile there were 0 toxic comments in the thread (except that one). Only below that were comments celebrating her achievements and supporting her.

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