Like many young people of my generation, I have basically grown up on the internet. It is not uncommon for me to spend multiple hours each day mindlessly scrolling on my phone. So in my quest for the next piece of content I could consume on the internet, it was only natural that I would eventually find Reddit. My account on Reddit is over 6 years old at this stage, and within this period of time I have been active on the app. It has changed drastically for the worse, and this past week on this site has only accelerated this trend.
Now, hating on Reddit is nothing new. It is a social media platform that receives a lot of hate in general. It is very clear to anyone paying attention that the overwhelming majority of Reddit users are left-wing progressives. Basically, every popular subreddit is eventually dominated by people of this political persuasion. Now, that in itself would perhaps not be a problem.
If like-minded people wished to form communities where they can engage in discussion with one another, that is perfectly fine. However, over the last few months especially, it feels like Reddit is transforming from a place which is dominated by left wing progressives to a place where that sort of world-view is the only world-view that is accepted. And that is in large part due to the way that Reddit communities are moderated. Rather than Reddit itself moderating its content, it is up to members of the community to self regulate.
Moderators on Reddit have more and more taken it upon themselves to ensure that any kind of dissenting points of view are not tolerated. Pretty much any popular subreddit eventually becomes overrun by this sort of overly-censorious of moderating, which just leads to a terrible user-experience. And due to the fact that Donald Trump has been re-elected President of the United States, this trend has been accelerated dramatically in the last few weeks and months.
For example, I used to be a frequent visitor of the Generation Z subreddit r/GenZ. The subreddit used to be dominated by discussion around things that people in Generation Z would be able to relate to. Things like media that we grew up with or discussion about relationship dynamics in our generation, and I found the community to be very engaging. On the Gen Z Subreddit there would be discussion about politics, and surprisingly you would find that there were many people of very different political persuasion that engaged in discussion in the community.
I remember a debate on the Gen Z subreddit on the topic of abortion. A poster had stated that the only reason anybody would be pro-life was because they are misogynists who wish to control women’s bodies. In the comments under the post, there was push back as people explained that most people who are pro-life were because they believed that having an abortion is taking away a human life. Obviously, abortion is a highly contentious issue, but I was surprised to see the diversity of opinion and the attempt to understand both sides of the argument.
This was not the only example of this, either. During numerous discussions about politics, it always felt like there was a real diversity of opinion on the Gen Z subreddit. However, as the subreddit continued to grow, and the recent US election came closer and closer, most of the posts on the Gen Z subreddit became overwhelmingly political. And all the posts were overwhelmingly on the side of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. It seemed as if all the other viewpoints had just magically disappeared.
Eventually, it seemed like every post on the Gen Z subreddit was about the US election. And there was serious push back against the overly political turn of the subreddit, however those complaints would fall on deaf ears. I remember an interaction of a German Reddit user complaining that he is not American, therefore he is not interested in only seeing things about American politics all the time. However, his complaint was dismissed because stopping Donald Trump was apparently important for the whole world, not just America.
Eventually I would unsubscribe from the Gen Z subreddit as I became burned out with all the posts about how terrible Trump is and how amazing Kamala Harris is. However, these sorts of posts began spreading all across Reddit. I increasingly found myself unsubscribing and muting so many subreddits I had previously enjoyed. No matter what kind of subreddit you are on, even if politics has nothing at all to do with it, if it becomes popular enough it would eventually become overrun with politics.
While the overwhelming majority of Reddit users are left wing, it was difficult to believe that many of these posts were from real people. People have long spoken about bots infesting Reddit, and the period before the election definitely felt like that was real. Every post and every comment just felt too similar, like some kind of giant hive-mind, all the same talking points would be repeated under each post. While many people understand that there are bot farms that operate on the internet, these sorts of posts still can have a massive effect on people’s perceptions.
For example, because of Reddit, I was completely convinced that Donald Trump was going to lose the US election. If you spent time on Reddit prior to the election, it would be difficult to be drawn to any other kind of conclusion. The support for Kamala Harris just felt overwhelming, even more so the disdain that so many have for Donald Trump felt like it would ensure that he had no chance at winning the election. So you could only imagine my shock to see him go on to win all 7 swing states and the popular vote.
Perhaps the only moment of self reflection among Reddit users came after Kamala Harris’ election defeat. I saw many commenting that they had been influenced, like me, to believe that it was impossible for Trump to win, because that had been the consensus spread on Reddit. However, that moment of self reflection would not last, as every subreddit would eventually revert to the constant bashing of Trump and his supporters.
The re-election of Trump has made the site become increasingly unbearable. This week alone, I have seen the word fascist and Nazi being thrown around on pretty much every single subreddit on the app. After Elon Musk made a hand gesture during a victory speech that looked like a Nazi salute, a campaign to ban links to X/Twitter spread across the entire site. Even entirely non-political sites would then engage in debate about whether to ban Twitter, or whether the hand gesture made by Musk was indeed a Nazi salute.
One would think that African subreddits would be immune to this sort of thing, however, American politics has even managed to infest many African subreddits as well. For example, I had to leave r/Nigeria after I simply became burned out with all the posts on Donald Trump that have become so common. Where it would follow the typical trend of Redditors going on long rants calling Nigerians who like Donald Trump stupid or ignorant, and the rest of the subreddit would join along in the insults. As opposed to rather, you know, talking about Nigeria, the country the sub is actually supposed to be about.
