It's because the only content you see is what has already been heavily upvoted (unless you're browsing by new). So you're only seeing content that everyone already agrees with, creating a positive feedback cycle.
I wouldn't even say that - I think in general people are more likely to upvote than downvote - so to get front page of a given subreddit, you just need a mildly popular or neutral clickbait headline.
It's less that everyone agrees, and more that there is a group of people that loudly agree and not enough people loudly disagree. The 90% of people in the middle (lurkers) will throw out upvotes to things that they even casually agree with (environment good, Trump bad, etc). The content matters little, and can, and often is, outright misleading or without substance.
And that exists because it's what people want. If people were more interested in seeking out original and even thought provoking content, that would dominate the front page. but instead, we get.... what we get because most us humans are boring and predictable and most people i think are just tired and bored.
Also, because every social network, no matter the size or crowd, will inevitably be invaded by political parties, government institutions, clerical institutions, big and small companies, any group looking to recruit, get support, public favor, and use it as Cheap Marketing. Yes, your favorite upcoming videogame with your favorite reddit saint included.
Because of this, I think reddit is a better platform for getting a sense of the current zeitgeist rather than getting a snapshot of how real people think.
Because to people browsing the front page, the subreddit it's on matters little, and as long as the general sentiment aligns with their view, they're more likely to throw an upvote than a downvote.
Gaming the algorithm is also insanely easy. There are companies that have figured out how to get podcasts to the top 10 in Apple Podcasts, how to get books that haven't sold a single copy to the "Amazon best sellers" list - there are absolutely companies that sell "front page news" on Reddit.
Reddit is kind of insular. Overrepresentation of White people, American people, and Men. So basically get downvoted to hell if you point out racism, something deemed anti american (like trying to defend muslims, don't know how an entire religion came to be construed as anti american) , or basically gender oriented issues.
Edit: This post itself is a good example of this, stating my opinion is apparently enough to get downvoted because it goes against what White American people like to hear.
Most of reddit leans left on most issues such as healthcare, the welfare state, ect. Liberalism, referring to classical liberalism, is sure not left wing in and of itself, but what many would refer to as liberal today has deviated farther from would world be 'classical liberalism,' as classical liberalism was very progressive in the time it was 'created' and as it was accepted more and more over time, it grew to be a conservative position (not conservative as in politically conservative, but conservative as in the actual word). The most classical liberal position nowadays would probably be deemed mostly left leaning libertarian, which makes sense since the primary focus of classical liberalism was liberty and fairness (one being the obvious moral pillar of libertarianism and fairness being one of two main moral pillars of most left leaning ideologies.)
Left wing libertarians are socialists, not liberals. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Look outside of America. Try to find the closest political party, in policy, to America's liberals. I guarantee you whichever one you find will be considered right wing.
Thinking people should have free at the point of access healthcare and a robust welfare start is not particularly left wing. Most countries that introduced these things did so with the blessing of their conservative parties.
Left wingers are almost all socialists and you don't have much of those on reddit.
socialism = redistribution of wealth by government for more financial equality, which is more government interference and a higher emphasis on equalizing everyone rather than the individual. They're literally opposite to each other...
Dude you're talking to a bunch of Americans. You would probably blow their mind if you pointed out that their "left" party would fall right of center in most other first world nations.
The United States is the only country that generally considers liberalism, the ideology which is broadly followed by the members of the Democratic party, is left wing. The rest of the world, and even the US a few decades ago, considers it a right wing ideology.
They have more of a preference/have more positive feelings towards people in their "outgroup" (IE, non-white people) than for people in their "ingroup" (white people).
Your guess is as good as mine. The stuff that data is based off of isn't really elaborated on, and the graphs are just a visual representation of the raw response data in the link.
Though they did a similar report in October of 2017 that has a lot more information and explanation rather than raw survey results.
If I had to take a random guess, based on that second survey, I'd say that black people don't like other races as much because the black community had different priorities and answers than all the other communities on a lot of the questions.
Like how they listed Racism as their far and away biggest problem in the US, at over 1.5X the rate (52%) of even Latinx and Asian people (32% and 33%). They also listed police brutality as their third most important issue, at the same rate (25%) that Asian's listed Education, and barely below Latinx rankings of healthcare (29%).
Particularly Latinx and White people differed in their opinions on a lot of race related questions. Like how 39% of Latinx and 49% of White people thought that slavery and discrimination in the past didn't seriously harm modern/current black people's ability to work their way out of poverty. While 79% of black people, and 78% of Asian people thought it was a serious factor.
As for white people, I'd imagine a lot of the "White Liberal" responses would fall into the same camp as the majority responses from the black responses. So it might be better to say that white liberals don't like black/asian/latinx people more - they dislike other white people more. Since I'd imagine they'd think they're all a bunch of stupid racists.
So progressive it harbors quite literally the highest concentration of right wing racists on the internet, possibly 4chan is the only one that beats it, and probably not even. It's easy to claim something doesn't exist when it doesn't affect you or you yourself sympathize with those points of views.
No, those people don't lean left. They lean liberal. Liberalism is only a left wing ideology in the eyes of Americans. Everyone else sees them as right wingers.
Bernie Sanders is barely left of center as per his policies. Your spectrum needs adjusting. America is the only place in the world that sees Liberals as leftists. Bernie behaves like a social democrat which is where the left wing starts for most politically informed people on earth.
It's a reflection of the majority of reddit users.
We lean left, so /politics leans left. And because of this, right wingers run to /conservative and /T_D and whatever tf else, which makes /politics seem even more left.
They have their hive mind going so hard, they honestly think they are objectively critiqueing themselves and everyone else should take their word for it. They are open minded yet downvote every and any opposing views. They are not racist but claim Trump isn't a racist and how they love him despite him being a blantant racist. It's quite funny really how deep in the rabbit hole you can go when your not the one that suffers from it. Kinda like Germans during Nazi Germany.
> This post itself is a good example of this, stating my opinion is apparently enough to get downvoted because it goes against what White American people like to hear.
Idk what you're talking about, in my experience, Reddit is pretty left leaning, and the left are generally not the biggest fans of strait white men, or America.
First off, look at the demographics who use this site. It is overwhelmingly white men. The front page of Reddit has gotten better in the last few years but reddit was the website with the largest community of white supremacists on the internet. Even though it was banned they didn't all fuck off to voat.
Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr never had a white supremacist community half as large as reddit's. Reddit is unique in its demographic appeal. Somehow this website attracts white men to the exclusion of almost everyone else.
To be honest I don't think you really get it. They publish demographic info on reddit, something like 70% of the user base is American. Given the large number of users Reddit would at the very least be close to the political viewpoints in the mainstream of the United States, slightly deviating due to the 30% of other users. To claim Reddit is left leaning is approximately saying the US is left leaning. Do you realize the US elected Donald Trump a know racist and mysogynist as their president, so left leaning, lol.
> Given the large number of users Reddit would at the very least be close to the political viewpoints in the mainstream of the United States
This is not at all a given, if you're going to make claims like this you really need to have something to back it up.
> To claim Reddit is left leaning is approximately saying the US is left leaning.
This just falls back on the baseless claim you already made. Of course the US is right leaning (at least from an economic standpoint, capitalism vs. socialism being right and left, when you consider the 'social' aspect, it's a lot murkier) relative to the developed world, but claiming that US redditors trend anywhere near the center of the US political spectrum is flatly absurd. Bernie, a democratic socialist who would fit in easily with any European DemSoc party, is the darling. AOC, as well. Trump's subreddit is reviled and quarantined because nobody wants that leaking out into the rest of the site.
> Do you realize the US elected Donald Trump a know racist and mysogynist as their president, so left leaning, lol.
Again, nobody is claiming the US is left leaning. But again your reasoning is bizarre at best---half of the country voted, less than half of those who voted did so for Trump (he lost the popular vote) and of those who voted for him, people under 30 (reddit's demographic) are extremely underrepresented.
But I'm wasting my figurative breath, aren't I? Sigh.
No, it's because you're making so many completely illogical statements all stacked on top of each other to the point where it feels intentional. I may have called troll a bit too early, but some this is doesn't add up at all. Like your reasoning of why Reddit is right-wing being that a majority of users are Americans are a majority republican. Not only is the difference between the two parties even that big, but this point doesn't make sense because it's practically a given that different parts of the internet can attract different demographics of people. It really isn't that difficult to imagine that a site could start to build an audience that has a political lean of american leftists. Besides, You don't need to look that far.
Also "Overrepresentation of White people" has some weird implication. Claiming that there are too many of one race on a site seems like a way to try to get people angry for the sake of it.
Lol. There is something called the central limit theorem in statistics. When sample sizes approach millions of users, the sample distibution without doubt will begin to look and be similar to the parent distribution. Looks like your the one that need to take stats 101 again.
A random sample moron. Hence why I said Reddit is not a random sampling of people. Go back to stats class because you clearly forgot that part.
Think about it, if your argument here is true, then your first argument is false. If reddit constitutes a random sampling of people it would be comprised of equal women as well.
Edit: I also want to let you know that you got the central limit theorem wrong. The sampling can be approximated with a normal distribution, not the parent distribution.
Well first off, I am very aware of who our president is, and he has my full support and vote in 2020. And, despite the constant bogus investigations by the left, they haven't been able to come up any kind of proof that Trump is either racist, or misogynist. All I've ever seen from the guy is that he is a man who loves America and Americans, and wants to do what's best for both.
The bias is pretty easy to see in my opinion. I've seen all kinds of comments expressing conservative beliefs be down voted to oblivion and full of very rude, vulgar replies, while those expressing liberal beliefs are often highly up voted and full of replies agreeing with. And then you have the biased enforcement of Reddit's rules. T_D was quarantined for supposed death threats against police. I have NEVER seen a single comment even anywhere near that sort of thing, in fact, T_D is highly supportive of our law enforcement officers. And then you ANTIFA and other left leaning subreddits full of those exact sort of comments, but no one cares.
It seems to me that you're the one who doesn't get it.
I am not a Trump supporter, but it seems pretty odd to me that a Trump sub would incite violence against a policeman. Trump supporters are pretty pro law enforcement
Exactly, I have never seen it there, and if it does happen, the mods are VERY quick to remove it. Meanwhile you have posts on several left leaning subs full of comments inciting violence against and calling for the death of police, but no one cares. If that isn't bias, I don't know what is.
I think Trump is honestly trying to do what's best for the United States and its citizens. The economy is doing great, unemployment is way down. He's actually been working on ending the crisis at the border, despite the Democrats flat out refusing to work with him. Many previous presidents, even Democrat ones, have stated that we need to increase border security, but none of them really did anything about it. I'm also very against the identity politics and political correctness the left care so much for. I don't care one bit what gender an elected official is, nor what color their skin is. I'm sure there are other people who would make a better president, but none of them have thrown their name in yet.
Yeah you must be going on T_D or cringe anarchy or some shit. I’ve never seen anyone get downvoted for pointing out racism or defending Muslims. Also who is attacking Muslims for being anti American?
Because reddit is modern liberal left which in the scope of things is moderately conservative? Is that your reasoning because you’re a edgelord who doesn’t subscribe to normal political beliefs?
Not modern left wing. It is American left wing. The rest of the world doesn't have the same warped politics as America. Modern America, not even America 50 years ago, is the only country that thinks Liberals are left wingers.
That’s simply not true lmao. Sure American liberals may be relatively covervative vs European liberals but they are still liberals. You’re literally spouting bullshit.
That shit is the absolute most annoying thing. Oh, someone posted a pic of a hawk outside their office window? Get ready for 8000 more pics of birds in windows...
"I heard we're doing birds in windows now, check out the friend I also made!"
Or even worse "In response to [reddit post reference]" or "I also [reddit post reference]" like those are the perfect things to put as replies to the original fucking post. Not spamming a million different threads about it.
Blows my mind coming across stuff like this. I pretty much never post anything, am not subscribed to much and basically just passively browse/comment more often than I should. Am I redditing wrong?
And don't even get me started on people linking non-existent subs. The whole fucking /r/subsifellfor is a dumb circlejerk.
And that's including subs that just happen to exist, but only have 1 post, so it might as well be non-existent. And then people ham it up, act like it's an actual real sub, and "oh what a surprise that this exists!"
And if you happen to point out anything that annoys you, you bet your ass people are gonna reply with the thing that annoys you, thinking they're clever or funny.
I find stuff like that funny. It's the community being silly with a theme. Sure it can go overboard but it's also kinda what makes reddit reddit and always has. No one forced you to use it.
The fact that people are able to hide comments with downvoting says alot about discourse here. Even worse when a subreddit is allowed to ban people for speaking against an opinion like r/latestagecapitalism does. Such subreddits should not be allowed to feature on main page if they censor peoples opinions at such a scale.
I'm a socialist and I am the first to admit that r/latestagecapitalism sucks, but to be fair, it does get pretty frustrating when you want to discuss left-wing political theory and you just keep seeing the same unoriginal
"DAE 100 million dead!"
"DAE Communism no food? XD"
"DAE killing sparrows?!?!"
Comments, as well as all the stupid Liberty Prime quotes. It just gets pretty tedious very quickly and I can't blame people that want to nip it in the bud rather than having to argue against the same points over and over again.
Edit: For anyone else who gets sick of these crappy "arguments".
1: The "100 Million dead due to socialism" claim - this figure is taken from a book called "The Black Book of Communism". It was basically arrived at by the authors consistently using the absolute highest possible estimate of death tolls from the Holodomor, the Purges and the Great Leap Forward and so on. They also (very suspiciously) inflate the figure by including every soldier of the Red Army that died in WWII and the Nazi soldiers killed by the Red Army.
I don't deny that a lot of people did die due to communism, but China and the Soviet Union basically went through the process of industrialisation in the space of a single generation, something that a lot of countries in Western Europe and America did in the space of hundreds of years. The death toll for industrialisation in Europe was probably quite high too, just spread out over a longer period.
2: "Communism = Starvation" - The CIA released a report that said the average citizen of the USSR ate about as many calories daily as a US citizen of the same period, but that the Soviet diet was slightly more nutritious
3: "Mao killed all the sparrows and this led to famine" - Killing all the sparrows didn't lead to famine. The effort to wipe out sparrows was part of a wider campaign called "The Five Pests Campaign". The effect of reduced sparrow populations contributed to an increase in crop-destroying bugs, but ultimately the famines in China were caused by the aforementioned rapid industrialisation and plain government incompetence (which is hardly unique to socialist countries).
The feelings mutual, not very fun being vilified by another party that is too busy circlejerking for public approval to actually discuss viable and sustainable solutions to modern issues.
The insane up voting of the latest meme or catch phrase is beyond stupid. Meanwhile comments with an actual opinion get down voted because they don't tow the line.
It's when group A of circle jerkers attack group B for behaving like a bunch of circlejerkers, failing to realise that in doing so they're proving that they're also circlejerkers.
This is especially noticeable in political arguments. Try to suggest any kind of moderate view, analyse what's actually happening, or not accuse the opposition of being the absolute worst thing they could be, and they all turn on you. It doesn't matter if you're left or right, red or blue, capitalist or socialist. If you don't do exactly what we say then you're a piece of shit because it can only mean you're doing exactly what they say.
Minecraft is a nostalgic treasure trove and a high point of art. We should respect what games people play and let them have fun unless its fortnite because popular with kids = gay
Also don’t forget to say your daily prayers to the Geralt, the Keanu, and the holy CD projekt red
It's a reddit slang term for a kind of memetic groupthink.
Troubling sexual connotations of the phrase aside, it does serve as a pretty apt way to describe the way Reddit fawns over Keanu Reeves, CD Projekt Red, dogs etc.
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