I left reddit about 2 years ago before the oct 7th attacks, so I never really saw the reaction over there. I didn’t expect it to be like lemmy, reddits always been a bit islamaphobic and quick to take up US state department propaganda, but I assumed by now though that since most on there are liberals under 50 that theyd be somewhere around “not a genocide, but Israel is committing atrocities and a ceasefire would be good.” on the issue
But someone was calling out reddit in a thread about the flotilla being bombed and I looked into it and the thread on worldnews was full of denials and calling it a false flag. Looked more into worldnews and every thread on the issue is full of zionist saying things along the lines of “anything is justified to get rid of the evil terrorists hamas” or downplaying the atrocities.
Is this just a worldnews issue? Is it the mods over there? Is there some other sub with more pro-palestine news that split off? Has it been like this for the whole conflict?
Bot propaganda accounts me thinks. Flood the zone with bullshit and no one can figure out what’s true.
Reddit has been purging all non-authoritarian users and perspectives for years now.
Remember when /r/the_donald got started as a joke and spun out of control
I was very surprised at how reddit got so right wing. Ask me in 2015-2018 and I would have never seen it coming.
I thought the writing was on the wall for a very, very long time. Reddit has a sordid history with donors, content, and the suppression of non-popular opinions. It has been a death by 1000 cuts. I’ve had a reddit account since before there were subreddits, and I can say it’s not even a husk of its former self despite being many orders of magnitude bigger. What was once a prized resource for most any bit of information or niche is now pig slop fed to the masses by bot armies.
I think at the time I was blind to a lot of the astroturfing and content manipulation going on. I just read liberal comments and thought it was a progressive liberal space. But it soured and flipped.
So realistically, disinformation campaigns have been poisoning Western social media since probably around 2013, maybe even earlier - that’s when I became aware of it. I noticed it crept into reddit’s public space little by little. So it’s not like it would have slapped you in the face. But one day, there it is, and you’re not quite sure how it got there until you look at the path behind it.
When I first joined Reddit, maybe around 2009-ish, give or take a couple years, I remember there being a pretty sizeable libertarian/Ron Paul crowd there.
That’s not to say they were like the modern maga/alt-right lunatics,I think the reddit-libertarians of that era probably would have hated maga bullshit
But there’s a definite path from that to the crazy shit we have now.
And there was always some crazy people there, one of the first subreddits I remember checking out was /r/conspiracy, I’m an enjoyer of a good conspiracy theory, I don’t believe them except for a few relatively mainstream ones, after all, who doesn’t have a favorite theory about the Kennedy assassination? But I noped out of there really quickly because holy shit those people actually believed the shit they were talking about.
And with all of the corporate bullshit they’ve had over the last few years driving away people who haven’t been brainwashed, I’m not surprised that the users who are left are completely insane.
I guess at the time I didnt see libertarians as a threat. They were just dumb nerds who thought something as stupid as privatizing roads was a good idea
I’m sorry, but most of the comments here are actually out of the loop.
The answer is “it’s worldnews”. It’s the only main sub that has as many pro-Israel opinions. Yes, there are other international news subs which are much more pro-Palestine, the biggest probably being anime_titties (not a joke). So part of the users that would be more vocally against Israel have left indeed (or might have).
I’m not sure it’s the mods, but I’ve seen cries of censorship from people both in anime_titties and Conservative accusing the worldnews mods of being biased against them, so who knows.
As for your last question, worldnews is actually now much more critical of Israel that it was in the first months after October 7th. You can regularly see pretty scathing criticisms of Netanyahu in general, and doubly so when they commit war crimes like from recent memory that “double tap” bombing that killed 20+ people that even Israel recognized as a “tragic mistake”.
That’s what I have seen after reading very regularly the comments on worldnews on that conflict for quite a few years now.
Also, on the flotilla thing it seems debatable that Israel did anything, since the Tunisian government itself denied it (source). And they are no friend of Israel.
Thanks for the actual reply.
Also, on the flotilla thing it seems debatable that Israel did anything,
It happened again last night, so it’s pretty unlikely it was just an accident with a flare or cigarette. BBC is also confirming that it was a grenade as they found the casing on the deck. Unless you want to go full skeptic and say they set off a grenade on there own boat for attention, this was most likely Israel.
As for Tunisia, they could’ve just not seen it, if the drone is small enough then radar probably couldn’t pick it up, and its not like they’re actively monitoring the port for drones. Even if they did detect it they may not reveal that because it shows they can’t defend there own airspace. It’s not like they can retaliate or appeal to the UN, especially after Qatar they’ve proven Israel can bomb whoever they want and get away with it.
World news is the one that is full on Zionist fanatics (even now, their “critism” of Israel is entirely token, when it exists at all). But plenty of other subs have genocidal Zionism as either a common position or a dominant one.
Reddits ‘top’ subs are run by the same circles of small moderaters and flooded with bots. It sorts posts and comments with algorithms.
I’m sure plenty is real, but the sentiment is manufactured. And I’m sure smaller subs are more pro-palestine to the extent they don’t get shadowbanned.
I think that Reddit/Lemmy style communities are incredibly easy to rig in a couple of different ways. If you care, you can work your way into a mod position pretty easily and then start to subtly mold the conversation. Reddit is pretty easy to flood fake votes into. And, of course, anyone can make any unlimited number of accounts and say literally whatever they want to. So, if you want to start an incredibly profitable business, you can just do that all day and sell your services to anyone who wants to spread pro-Israel (or pro whatever) messaging. I think more than a little handful of people have already done this, Reddit is one of the biggest targets in the world for it.
Like about two years ago? I felt an obvious change, and the imperialistic Western narratives were being pushed constantly since then. At this point I’m thinking that the West is a test God put on the rest of the world, for reasons I don’t understand. 😔
Reddit is a horrible place
Who thinks Spez would turn down Israeli state money to tune an algorithm and bots
Nah he does it for free.
Younger people are even more likely to support violence against Muslims citing “they are transphobes” in my experience.
I have a few opinions on the religion of Islam. None of those opinions would EVER justify bombing unarmed civilians. It’s like any other religion, it has some extremely outdated beliefs if you follow it to the letter, but it can also just be an extremely normal belief system. It’s like bombing and starving Mexico and saying that it’s okay because they’re Catholics.
It is not so different here too.
The Euro-American colony of Israel bombs another sovereign country. Crickets here on lemmy.
A POS right winger gets shot, every thread and community discussed it as if a world leader had gotten shot.
Nah, people here still have hearts and are better guided, and it’s rare that anyone feels bad for that guy from all the things I’ve seen posted today. Lemmy might be the best of the West, NGL… which probably means it’ll stay small.
Bunch of right wing extremist there. Pretending other then them is terrorist.
