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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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It's the money. Campaigns are increasingly expensive by design. That and Citizens United basically made it so moneyed interests never have to worry about grassroots ever again. That's (very tangentially) why the internet is also getting so unpleasant, I think, to poison the discourse. If people were nice to each other all the time, we'd band together more easily. Paid trolls exist for a reason.
On reddit, for my criticism of the Democratic Party, I am often censored on liberal spaces besides r/50501.
I follow the rules always, I cite sources, I am polite, and I am a US citizen. I am not influenced by Russian propaganda (to the best of my knowledge), and I'd like to say I have decent stances; I advocate for nonviolence and human rights, and generally advocate for progress and civility.
The "trolls" (I do my best to always assume good faith) here have nowhere near as much power here on the fediverse as on reddit.
On reddit, once you block someone, it shuts down discussion completely. Users there strategically block after their first rebuttal to prevent any of your responses from showing up and to gain the last word. I often waste time researching and typing a response, only to find out I was blocked and my response is only showing up for me. The only way to get around this is to edit your comments from before they blocked you, and it is very awkward (and usually results in lots of downvotes when you can't properly respond to someone calling you a Russian troll).
If OP blocks you, you get kicked from the thread completely. You can neither see the thread after that point, nor respond to anyone else. Even your comments on the thread are invisible on your user profile (so unless you do voodoo and find the comment permalink, it's difficult to edit your comment with a response).
Mods also abuse automod to trick you into thinking your posts or comments are showing up for others (like setting it to remove everything for a specific user). They do this to avoid accountability when they can't easily explain what rule you broke or when mods censor based on ideological grounds. I also get censored automatically by automod often and find that my posts or comments don't show up randomly - presumably I hit automod filters, but I still worry every single time that my account is shadowbanned.
If automod and the blocking functionality isn't abused, any divergent opinion or perspective gets completely buried by downvotes. Like me pointing out how rigged things are for progressives (it's hard for me to stomach people acting like the Democrats need to move right because progressive policies are "extremely unpopular").
Anyway, moderation has been very fair here to me, I just want others to know that reddit is completely busted for healthy discourse and some of the tricks users and mods use to create echo chambers.
It's a lot of energy to invest in a discourse that is being oppositionally refereed. Under better circumstances I'd say it was laudable, and on Lemmy the effort is certainly less wasted, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe the better part of our energies are better spent on in-person political efforts.
I agree - I struggle a lot with my health, but there has to be something I can do in-person. Our direction needs to change as a society.
any of the news subreddits, adjacent to the main one is very dicey to talk about. and any politics you have to walk on eggshells. there are ways around a blocked person, but it involves making new account to do it. ive blocked someone, and they decided to use another account and complain on the same thread about being blocked.(this prior to the purges of reddit). if you try to report the person, you could be targeted with a ban for "report abuse"
I was warned for reporting (what I view as) legitimate violations of subreddit rules and calls to violence by reddit themselves. I was conditioned to not report abuse.
Add in reddit actioning accounts for upvoting certain content, and it's easy to see that healthy participation on the website is severely chilled, in addition to the website generally being hostile to discourse.
Aaron Swartz is rolling in his grave, reddit is nothing like what it was founded on.
same here, apparently the politics sub will take it more harshely, what you view is legitmate may not what the mods see. it seems they dont like when you are reporting a comment you did not engage in
The problem is that you really can't criticize the DNC without inadvertently endorsing the GOP. It's a fact of life in a two party system.
Maybe if Democrats didn't unquestionably ship weapons to a state exterminating an occupied people, I'd shut up and fall in line. Maybe.
That's a convenient stance for people who love everything the DNC does and want to shut down all criticism.
Sure is useful that we can't call out the people we are required to vote for.
What are you talking about?
I can criticize the DNC, RNC, Dems, and GOP.
I can endorse the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and their DSA National Convention they just held a week or so ago in Chicago.
You see the political spectrum like this:
Dems >---------------< GOP
I see the political spectrum like this:
Left >--------< Dems >--------< GOP
The Dems get hate from both sides, so they want to collapse that by disrepresenting the Left and absorbing the Right. It will never work out for them
He's too far right to understand anything like this. His alt on piefed.world has defended racist institutions and thinks if you call out liberals doing bad policies, you're a Tankie.
He's a dumbass who thinks he knows better.
I'm supremely happy to see you pissed off tankies getting this mad. May your glorious leader someday have an aneurysm.
No leaders in anarchism, dingus.
You're not fooling anybody, you only oppose western powers.
Fuck Russia and it's imperialist invasions.
Fuck China and it's horrid practices of the Ughyers and the citizens are large.
North Korea is a failed state that makes dystopian novels look like paradise.
Stalin was a horrid person, Mao killed too many with the great leap forward, the Kim Il family dynasty is just a kingdom pretending to be socialist until they literally wrote out any pretending of socialism, yet Tankies still defend them.
I have no issue saying this because I don't idolize things that don't care about me. Can you say anything negative about the things you idolize?
You can say all of that but you're only taking specific steps to further their interests in the USA.
So even when I call them out it's not good enough, good to know.
And you didn't call out anyone when I asked you too. So you're just never going to criticize those you idolize, pot meet kettle.
When you post about volunteering for the DNC and working against the GOP I'll believe you're something other than an autboritarian, despite your history of defending Tankies and berating human rights.
When I have defended Tankies and berating human rights? I'll wait for proof.
I've literally called you out on stripping rights of people on your alt.
You think you're even worth my time? I think every witness should just scroll through your comment history if they're curious.
So that's a "I don't have proof" then, gotcha.
Edit: yep, downvote and move on, got it Blue MAGA.
The most third party senators we've ever had was 4, right before the GOP swept every chamber in 2024 and before that in 1941.
We currently have ZERO third party reps in the House. Not a single one.
If you're going to shit on dems then it is imperative that you shit on the GOP harder because if we turn people away from the DNC there is NOTHING left. We're basically splitting our vote up while the Republicans fall in line.
I agree. That's why all Democrats need to endorse current Independents so they can gain back their power, like Zohran Mamdani in New York and maybe Graham Platner in Maine.
But I've been seeing disappointing behaviors from the Dems with that lately. Not just in New York and Maine, but also in Minnesota with how the Dems revoked their endorsement of democratic socialist Omar Fateh. Pathetic.
Right so splitting the vote isn't enough you want it to split even more so that the GOP gain supermajority. Makes sense.
We need a unified front to fight the fascists in office, and parading out the establishment Dems that caused this all to happen is not a winning strategy.
We need new blood that will draw in new voters. And we need to decide who that new blood is before the end of the year so they can start primarying in January.
Oh that makes sense so I guess we need to split the progressive vote, thanks for explaining it to me. /s
Splitting the vote is the exact opposite of uniting the vote
If you demand the vote be united under a new and different banner than the one which reflects 90% of the same policy stance then you're splitting the vote.
I don't. I recognize that the Democratic party is our best bet to move in a progressive way towards the Left.
Mamdani won the Democratic nomination. He's still a Democratic Socialist of America (DSA). I don't see this any different from the Tea Party within the GOP in the late 2000's. We can have factions within the party, but in those factions we need to find unity.
Establishment Dems are a faction that don't deserve to be party of that unity. They seek to undermine material improvements for the working class while letting the billionaires get away with not paying their fair share.
100% the opposite
Lol the mods removed my apology, like they want us to fight.
Keep thinking like this and we'll have Vance 2028.
Kamala Harris out raised Trump. That's why she's now the president.
Only if you don't count Elon Musk buying Twitter and China using TikTok to promote and endorse Trump. If you really add up all of the costs to endorse candidates and not just campaign contributions, Trump probably wins by a margin of hundreds of billions.
🪤
I feel like it's very optimistic of you to think that people suck balls on the Internet because they are paid and not because a lot of people are just generally shitty. I kinda hope you're right even tho that equates to a rather dystopian present. But the more I meet people, the more I realize that people just kinda suck. Like there are some truly abhorrent people out there... and they're multiplying lol.
Had a coworker harping on why its only right companies raise their prices if they can. People can just go somewhere else. Sure, bud. Not even gonna crack at all the shit wrong with that. Defending education is bearing its fruit in multitudes. I'll see you in the precious metal mines.
It's both. The 'Trolls from Olgino' (Internet Research Agency) definitely have been poisoning online debate for over a decade now. I'm old enough to remember that when people were mean on the internet, it used to be an attempt at punch-down humour. These days cruelty is a comedy-neutral norm. That, I contend, is manufactured.
Social media has been flooded by propaganda bots for a while. Also its the old-guard dems were fighting, they are the ones that are colluding with the gop to an extent, both of them needs the same donors, so they cant have every issued fixed, they need to string along the voting base.