- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Summary
Elon Musk privately pressured Reddit CEO Steve Huffman to address content moderation after publicly criticizing Reddit on X for banning links and allegedly hosting violent content.
Shortly after Musk’s messages, Reddit imposed a 72-hour ban on the “WhitePeopleTwitter” subreddit, citing violent content, and deleted a thread Musk highlighted.
Reddit denies external influence but acknowledges evaluating reports seriously.
The controversy stirred discussions among Reddit moderators, some mocking Musk as a “giant baby.” Musk has not commented on the situation.
It was legitimately funny, when it was still a joke. The memes were good. There was no way that idiot was going to be a serious contender. It was all in good fun.
At least until someone would say, “you know this is just a joke, right?” Any kind of self-awareness was banned within seconds. Now I don’t know if you’re familiar with volunteer moderators, but it’s pretty rare that they catch that kind of volume 24 hours a day within seconds.
I fully believe there were state-level troll farms operated by a hostile foreign government moderating that subreddit.
… and now they’re applying that to the entire site.
I know the UK sub took a hard right turn shortly before the election and it was almost an overnight change
Honestly, I don’t think Lemmy, or any other anonymous social media can really counter this. Outside of heavy moderation in the opposite direction, anyway, which doesn’t feel great.
It’s just too easy for hostile governments to spin up as many dozens of accounts as they need to argue against you, argue on your side (but badly), and simply just drown you out. It doesn’t take much of that for real people to retreat. Why would you post an opinion that you know is going to immediately get shit on by a dozen “people”?
hostile govt, mainly russ can steal or just make hundreds of acct at a time, they also easily evade reddit bans to spam.
west coast subs also got astroturfed by the right, the way they act is a goody two shoes type of comments.
City and state subs tend to be really bad, I guess because if you’re looking to influence people it’s an obvious place to start. I swore off my city subreddit after a barrage of “this is it, I’m done with the Democrats” after the local George Floyd riots knocked over some statues that were about equality. It was probably astroturfing but beyond frustrating either way.
my west coast one got turned into a conservative subs. when people were asking about things like jury duty and fare evasion/traffic tickets, they all act lik oh you shouldnt done this or that, you should know better.
Russian trolls do take over subs, even buying them if they can’t trick their way in. Its been going on for years, but they used to target the most relevant for their misinformation. They probably widened their goals to any popular subs by now.
conservatives subs being the obvious one. WOrldnews is co-opted by israeli trolls mostly. i see them leak into pics alot so i just report them. r/politics is half and half.
They’re here too. I try to call them out, but it’s easy to see the bias here too - I just got banned for doing so and for complaining that one of them called me dumb. Apparently asking where someone is from is not allowed here either.
So yeah, seems like at least some of the mods here are fine with Russian propaganda.
That would not surprise me in the slightest. Drumph had a lot of help, starting with those fucking “actors” who cheered him as he descended the golden elevator. He certainly didn’t get there based on merit LOL.
MSM, SOCIAL media practically made him on the news 24/7 for the last, the only time people had clarity from his madness was when mr luigi shot the CEO, and the MSMs and social media was freaking out that the class war is finally gaining attention against them, then they reorientated themselves and the masses were re-distracted again.