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Comment by immibis | Hacker News Reader

Can you provide some examples of what you think left extremism is?

I click /r/pics, and I see a photo of Black Panther protesters holding assault rifles, a pic of Musk and Trump at dinner with the title yapping about the Epstein files, multiple pics protesting ICE and literally labelling them both fascists and Nazis, a photo of Trump's Hollywood star being smeared with "pedophile", some high ranking border patrol officer labelled a "Nazi officer" for wearing a uniform coat, and so on.

I think left extremism is a fair description here; it's at least far left.

You’re telling on yourself here my brother

What I'm actually telling is that I disagree with far left propaganda.

Many of you seem to jump to the conclusion that I'm some sort of hardcore MAGA supporter or far right Trump fan.

In reality, I'm European and arguably only conservative leaning, and I don't like Trump and his erratic trade and geopolitical policy.

Apparently disagreeing with far left politics already often makes me a pariah on the internet. This discussion alone has already cost me like 10 karma, for pushing back on X supposedly being the worst for political content.

Logically, there are only two possibilities here: everyone else is wrong about what qualifies as “far left propaganda” or you are.

It is not "everyone else", but a specific audience here.

Out of those some disagree strongly enough about what is and is not far left propaganda to downvote my controversial opinions.

I can also see that others upvote.

This seems like a “left has a reality bias” thing? These are current, factual events. Maybe they’re not being shared in right wing spaces, but these things are really happening.

These are left extremist takes on current events.

On social media, when I click "Pics", I'd expect photography.

What we see there is political content that distinctly reminds of a publication from a local socialist youth chapter.

Reddit subs sometimes don't match the content you'd expect from their name (some are very hard to decode for outsiders, e.g. femcelgrippysockjail, gangstalking etc). Perhaps pics was once just pretty landscape photography, but what happens with Reddit is that a sub will start to focus on one type of content that the hivemind wants and then the sub will fracture. You have to go find r/lovelylandscapes if that is what you want. It'll be there somewhere. You landed in the wrong sub.

That's not really the issue here. This strong political orientation is widespread across default subreddits including /r/news or /r/europe and affects the Home / front page.

There is /r/photographs and /r/photography for that.

Maybe you want your personal preferences served up to you without having to work for it?

The first has 300k users, while /r/pics sports 33M. The second is for discussion rather than posting photos.

Good that you ask, because that's exactly what I get on X: after liking some photos, I see mostly photography in my feed.

This brings us back to the original topic here: this appears to work well on X, while it is Reddit that pushes politics into my feed via default subreddits.

Those all seem pretty reasonable given the current environment? Are Epstein and his associates not pedophiles? Are minorities not allowed to exercise the second amendment rights the right champions for themselves? Is it unfair to call someone cosplaying for a social media account that regularly posts repurposed Nazi slogans a Nazi?

No, it is not reasonable to constantly spread propaganda labelling Musk and Trump pedophiles and then act like the site wasn't filled with far left propaganda while talking about how bad X is.

The left-wing reality bias strikes again.

Sometimes, when there is conflict, it helps to ask questions to better understand people. In furtherance of that shared understanding, here are some questions you were asked:

> Are Epstein and his associates pedophiles? [0]

> Are minorities allowed to exercise the second amendment rights the right champions for themselves? [1]

> Is it unfair to call someone cosplaying for a social media account that regularly posts repurposed Nazi slogans a Nazi? [2]

0: Only 6% of americans are satisfied with the administration's handling of the epstein affair - https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/18/politics/epstein-files-cnn-po...

1: Only 20% of americans believe there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons - https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx

2: Only 23% of americans believe Hitler was a "good person or an equally good and bad person" or "a bad person who did some good things" - https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-had-some-good-ideas-american...

Sometimes, it is crucial to differentiate a wall of loaded premises from an actual question before you move on to quoting a survey about whether Americans like Hitler.

It seems you might seek a back-and-forth argument where you simply talk past your interlocutor. In my experience, that doesn't lead to understanding. Are you sure you don't want to seek understanding?

We're in a polarized environment, and understanding is the best way to get past that, whereas dismissing* people with which you disagree tends to increase it.

* – from you in this thread so far: dismissing questions as "loaded"; dismissing 3 questions across 3 lines as "a wall"; dismissing differing opinions as "propaganda"; dismissing differing opinions as "extremist"; dismissing differing opinions as "far left"; dismissing differing opinions as "yapping"; dismissing differing opinions as "unreasonable"; etc.

facts and pictures/videos of ICE brutalizing people in Minnesota.

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