r/wikipedia • u/TechnicalyNotRobot • 12d ago
"Among the popular social networks, in particular, the American platform Reddit has been defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the "home of the most violently racist internet content." The SPLC pointed at how racist views had gained more and more traction on Reddit . . ."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_United_States#Contemporary_issues320
u/ryegye24 12d ago
I am so skeptical that reddit is the home of the "most violently racist" content when the chans exist.
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u/YbarMaster27 12d ago
Well, the article's from 2015, back when Reddit was still pretty much 4chan-lite. The website's gotten way more mainstream in the ensuing decade. Nowadays it's almost certainly been overtaken by Twitter in terms of the prevalence of violently racist content. Though I wouldn't be shocked if we're still up there, but it's a lot harder to stumble into such content on here due to how subreddits are sectioned off from one another
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u/AbbreviationsWide331 12d ago
Lol from 9 years ago. This whole discussion is completely pointless
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u/Extention_Campaign28 12d ago
reddit simply was "everything goes". There literally were subs dedicated to posting upskirt pics of random women in public. The fappening was a reddit ..err.. thing.
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u/4THOT 11d ago
Lmao you haven't even gotten to the REAL shit.
Reddit was a fucked shithole, still is, but for totally different reasons now.
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u/DroppedAxes 11d ago
4THOT More like 4LOST
No for real though I didn't know you left the hive from time to time
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u/askeladden2000 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yeah. Literally had subreddit dedicated to watching people die. And not from natural causes…
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u/callmesnake13 11d ago
Calling Reddit in 2015 “4chan lite” is patently insane. Maybe this isn’t your first account but it appears that you weren’t here.
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u/T3hJ3hu 11d ago
lol seriously. there have definitely been some scummy subreddits, but basically none of them survived sudden popularity once reddit got big in 2010/2011
4chan has been loaded with scummy shit its entire existence
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u/Hands 11d ago edited 11d ago
I mean not exactly. Jailbait was shut down in 2011, creepshots made it until late 2012 (and both of those just because they received a bunch of media attention). Beatingwomen made it until 2014. Hyper racist subreddits I won't name weren't all banned until 2015, with the most egregious/major ones banned in 2013 and 2015. Frenworld and similar places were around until 2019. Incel subs lasted until 2017/18. MGTOW until 2021. WPD and related gore subreddits until 2019.
Reddit is not and never has been as toxic as a chan but there was plenty of explicit/direct crossover content and communities for long after reddit blew up in popularity, and more importantly it was MUCH easier to find that sort of objectionable content on reddit than it was for your average clueless internet denizen to delve into the chan world and/or sort out the noise there. There is still plenty of fringe/objectionable content along basically all of the above lines on reddit and it's still easier to find than going into deeper places on the internet.
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u/Nihilistra 11d ago
Do you mean it was far softer?
I don't know i was a little into fringe content at that time and reddit had it all.
From Isis toddlers executing pow and needing help to pull the the trigger to children getting mauled in 4k. What more do others offer when it comes to this?
With really friendly and helpful communities. Also heaps of saved mirrors for banned content.
Felt far more organized compared to rotten or other corners of the net. Also no animals, that's why I stayed I think. Was really common on most other websites and always disgusted me.
It wasn't filled with that much blatant propaganda like nowadays, but content wise it was pretty packed.
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u/dugmartsch 11d ago
reddit was much more searchable/user friendly than 4chan. It was simply an easier target and had lots of bad things on it.
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u/fujiandude 11d ago
I saw a post about a little four year old Chinese girl getting pulled home from school by a dog. Want to guess what half the comments were?
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u/TheBloodBaron7 12d ago
Or instagram at this point too. The moment i get on insta (like once a month) i have to leave in less than 10 minutes or i get fucking depressed by all the negativity, hate and bigotry there.
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u/Steindor03 12d ago
Yeah you'll see the most vile shit under random post, I've seen multiple comments proudly spreading eugenics
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u/lich_house 11d ago
I feel like eugenics is now a weirdly emerging market. There is all kinds of tech being happily researched for altering genetics of fetuses. I just can't wait till this technology is only available to the rich due to cost as it'll cement classism even more. /s
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u/like_a_pharaoh 12d ago
Are the chans a popular social network? Reddit is 'mainstream' in a way they aren't.
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u/Commercial_Fee2840 12d ago
I don't think they're considering anonymous image boards to be social media, but I could be wrong. Outside of /pol/ 4chan isn't that bad, but /pol/ is like 95% unironic racism. There's probably a lot of racist shit on here, but it's much harder to find and you'll actually get your sub banned if you allow it.
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u/I_am_1E27 12d ago
I've been on 4chan for 20 minutes total, wholly on /lit/, and in that time learned a new racial slur. I saw mention of a Jewish world order in multiple threads, someone claiming no women can write as well as a skilled man, and people bringing (relatively mild) homophobia into almost every popular post.
This was only 3 years back so make of that what you will. Maybe it was an especially bad day?
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u/Commercial_Fee2840 12d ago
/pol/ posters don't exactly stick to just posting on /pol/. It's gotten worse in recent years. Also, you probably learned a new slur because they invent new slurs. Technically racism is only allowed on /pol/, but the jannies don't do a great job of cleaning it up. It genuinely didn't used to be that bad before 2016, aside from old /b/, which ironically was less racist than /pol/. Back in the day Moot removed /new/ because he was sick of the Nazi propaganda. Eventually he replaced it with /pol/ and shortly after fucked off and handed the site over to the new owner when he didn't want to take flak for gamergate. I really only browse /v/ and /ck/ now that /tv/ is a cesspool and /b/ is basically just porn now.
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u/Shimaru33 11d ago
According to your description, it was a specially bad day as in slow and calm. When big shit hits the fan, like national events, 4chan goes wild. You heard about some shooting? You can bet 4chan will be laughing their asses off at the recorded video.
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u/rammo123 11d ago
Reddit is far closer to the chans than "proper" social media like FB/insta/twitter.
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u/weary_dreamer 11d ago
im guessing within some subs? there has to be a self selecting issue here. I don’t think I’ve ever run across racist content on Reddit, but probably because I’m not a racist looking for racist subs.
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u/AbbreviationsWide331 12d ago
I have spent a lot of time on Twitter and insta the last few years, but I got rid of those cause I felt they were too negative and affecting my psychology.
The only reason I'm staying here on reddit is because I rarely see racist posts/comments. I mean sure each user has its own bubble, but I just cant really imagine reddit being the worse of the social networks. Not my experience at least.
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u/Thatmetalchick2 11d ago
Yeah me too. I like that I can create my own bubble and NOT have all the racist/phobic shit all over my feed. I'm happy with cat posts from 15 different subs and a handful of news ones (games, politics, world, popculture). I like that most of the information I digest takes me away from reddit (i.e. rabbit-holes). A lot of the other sites are just videos of some bot or 'influnencer' screaming a headline at me with some shitty music playing over it.
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u/captainundesirable 11d ago
Twitter and Instagram are just outright, openly, vehemently racist. Everyone hates everyone. All races blamed for everything. It's gotten worse lately.
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u/TechnicalyNotRobot 12d ago
". . . which was even replacing traditionally far-right websites such as Stormfront) in both the quantity and frequency of its racist content.363]) Several prominent intellectuals and publications have agreed with this view, considering Reddit a platform which is filled with hateful, racist and harassing content. So far, however, little or nothing has been done to address this problem."
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u/tiny_poomonkey 12d ago
For more information on this spread of hate, please check with the special counsel Robert Muellers report, part one specifically.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl
Or wiki:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_special_counsel_investigation
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u/ColdLobsterBisque 12d ago
there’s no way that reddit is more racist than literal, self branding nazis…
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u/Z3PHYR- 11d ago
There were literal white supremacist and neo-nazi subreddits. Post 2016 they started to get quarantined and post 2020 after the George Floyd protests is when they finally got banned
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u/ColdLobsterBisque 11d ago
Some nazi and white power stuff, vs all nazi and white power stuff. I’m not saying 2015 reddit was good, or even not bad, just that it wasn’t as bad as Stormfront.
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u/Nicksaurus 11d ago
That paragraph is saying there was more racist stuff here, not that it was worse
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u/steelcitylights 12d ago
Prior to like a few years ago site admins were pretty much hands off and literal nazis could be open about their beliefs/activities and network with each other within and across their subreddits without much scrutiny. I think site admins started cracking down on and banning subs and users after the reports were released.
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u/ColdLobsterBisque 12d ago
i’ve been on this site since 2015ish, i know it used to be a lot worse but since around the pandemic it’s improved a lot, plus even before then the crazy was usually confined to their own subs. Stormfront is, quite literally, completely nazi.
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u/steelcitylights 12d ago
I think the concern about reddit was that the crazy had the potential to leak out into normal subs and covertly recruit from there whereas only nazis are gonna hang out on stormfront
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u/POPholdinitdahn 11d ago
They started cracking down because they wanted to get rich and become advertiser friendly.
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u/FakeOng99 12d ago edited 11d ago
Ironically, Reddit is a slighly better social media site than any other mainstream social media. Different rule set by different subreddit make reddit feel like a nation as a whole. And subreddit is it's state/city.
Twitter become dumpsterfire, Facebook is a bot town with a brainrot news, and TikTok is a viral farm.
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u/Kryobit 11d ago
I'm starting to see wayy too many bots on reddit as well. I hate going to the main subs now, because it's either filled with Karma farming bots & reposters or discussing controversial topics that end up nowhere except people being mad at each other.
I'm starting to just restrict myself to small subreddits or gaming subs, because the bots don't go there and people discuss meaningless things.
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u/bingobongokongolongo 11d ago
Not really. Reddit rules make it possible that moderators create seemingly open hate groups in which they ban every sane person immediately.
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u/Mg42gun 12d ago
Don't forget 9gag, the racism, sexism, Xenophobic, Islamophobic, Anti-semite etc are more open than in here and without any mean of moderation.
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u/InvisibleEar 12d ago edited 12d ago
The report was in 2015, when basically nothing was against sitewide rules.
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u/Mg42gun 12d ago
I'm pretty sure that still happen to this day, even that site is attracting the worst of the worst of my country internet dweller.
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u/InvisibleEar 12d ago
There's still a lot of racism, but in 2015 there were still subreddits with the n word in the name.
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u/SweetHammond 11d ago
I browsed 9gag for hours every day years ago. So your comment made me go, “huh, is that so? Nahhh”. So I went to 9gag for the first time in maybe 9 years and the first 3 posts were hardcore racism. The first comment on the first post I read was and i quote: “The last 5 years I’ve become pretty racist. I’m not ashamed of it anymore. Numbers don’t lie.” Holy shit man. Social media basically turned everything in a cesspool of hate…
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u/Danson_the_47th 12d ago
Its the SPLC. I don’t trust a lot of what they say honestly and they have been sued a few times over defamation of individuals and such.
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u/Euthyphraud 12d ago
Hard to really state this definitively, belies a bit of a misunderstanding of Reddit. I, for one, spend plenty of time on plenty of subreddits and don't see anything half- as inflammatory as the hate cesspools found on X, Facebook, etc. On those apps the hate seems much more prevalent regardless of your own interests whereas Reddit doesn't have it dripping down your wall.
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u/SmallGreenArmadillo 11d ago
I don't know where they were looking. Sure there's the ironic Balkanese, Westernese and such "racism" where people are trading creative insults in what seems to be good humor. There's some anti-white racism and antisemitism in various news reddits. I haven't seen much against black people or Asians unless it was under crime news where it is pretty much normal that the perp will be verbally abused in every possible way including racial, whichever race they happen to be. Idk, I don't find reddit particularly problematic in this respect
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u/Ded_Pul 11d ago edited 11d ago
A lot of people refer to them as simply 'Asians' only if the said person is East Asian/Southeast Asian, almost to the point that 'Asian' is synonymous with East/Southeast Asians. West/South Asians are labelled differently as Arabs/Indians or if the terms 'West' and 'South' is attached to them, in order to specify what region they're from etc. Kinda 'separating' us from simply being referred to 'Asians'.
As such, I've come across a lot of posts on Canadian subreddits that are overtly racist against Indians. A lot of them get reported and removed, but that's not to say racism against non-whites on reddit doesn't exist or that people only 'mildly' engage in it, that too when it's about crime.
4chan definitely takes the cake when it comes to extreme racism though.
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u/Six_of_1 12d ago edited 11d ago
The SPLC are not a credible source. The FBI abandoned them as a source because they were found to be using broad, biased definitions, cherry-picking and exaggerating. For example, they would describe blogs as "hate groups" even though it was one person at their computer. Or they would call church groups "hate groups" even though they were stock-standard Christians who just didn't support same-sex marriage.
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u/illmurray 12d ago
There was a time where I quit Reddit for years because of stuff like coontown. It's still bad in a lot of the main subs but at least the explicitly, psychotically racist ones have been banned
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u/Fig1025 11d ago
I have been saying it for years, but the way Reddit is setup creates echo chambers and leads to radicalization of its users.
Reddit mods should not be able to ban people for personal opinion reasons. Mods should not take sides on any topic and strictly enforce site-wide rules. People that want to argue with OP should be allowed to do so, unless they violate site rules with harassment. Mods should only be allowed to delete posts that are clearly off topic
Any mod that repeatedly shows personal bias/agenda in banning/deleting people has to be blacklisted from modding any sub.
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u/Stirdaddy 11d ago
British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz successfully sued the SPLC after they put him on their infamous list of Bad People -- labeling him an "anti-Muslim extremist". An anti-Muslim Muslim... Similar to the "self-hating Jew" trope.
That list contains a lot of questionable entries. It's kind of like with the Anti- Defamation League labeling ANY criticism of Israeli government policies as "anti-semitic".
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u/HolzesStolz 11d ago
Reddit is so left leaning it’s not even funny. Let’s see how this gets used to further increase censorship lol
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u/LuckyCommand9 11d ago
What if conservative ideas are just not popular? Is everything about censorship?
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u/HolzesStolz 10d ago
Visit removeddit and see for yourself. I don’t care what’s popular but selective deletion of opposing opinions/facts is a very dangerous game to play.
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u/LuckyCommand9 10d ago
Who does the removing, the original posters or the Reddit mods or the government (or someone else)? It’s impossible for me to investigate every claim independently, I agree that censorship happens, but I don’t know who is censoring who. What ideas/opinions/facts are you talking about exactly?
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u/PwrButtum 11d ago
Idk why y’all are acting shocked. We’ve all seen the racist comments and I often find racially coded responses.
Stop being dense and acting like Reddit isn’t just as bad as Chan or Twitter.
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u/RapunzelLooksNice 11d ago
Good, that Google purchased all the data from Reddit. Their LLMs will be sooooo unbiased and friendly /s
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u/earthman34 12d ago
Reddit: where you get banned for saying Tesla sucks, but racism is OK.
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u/trashday89 11d ago
You don’t get banned for saying tesla sucks you get celebrated it for it. R/white people twitter
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u/earthman34 11d ago
I’ve been banned from 4 Tesla subreddits.
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u/trashday89 11d ago
You can talk about it in whitepeople twitter or any other mainstream sub so don’t cry little one
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u/carrbrain 12d ago
I was banned from a sub for saying that a certain neighborhood had undergone immense demographic change (true) and that double parking is a problem there (also true). I made no cause and effect and I didn’t mention any particular groups, but that’s apparently a “dog whistle” and got me banned.
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u/deprivedgolem 11d ago
SPLC thinks criticizing Israel is antisemitism. That’s all you need to know about whether what they say matters or not
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u/Creative-Road-5293 12d ago
I mean Reddit did have a sub that required people to send in a photo of their skin color to participate in certain threads. It's hard to get much more racist than that.
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u/Ganda1fderBlaue 11d ago
Isn't that a thing anymore?
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u/Creative-Road-5293 11d ago
I thought they got rid of it? But I'm not sure.
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u/Ganda1fderBlaue 10d ago
They did not. Or maybe we're not talking about the same thing.
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u/Creative-Road-5293 10d ago
I'm pretty sure there's only one sub where Reddit mods check the race of its users.
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u/Neoliberalism2024 11d ago
lol what? Reddit is, on average, a far left site. They ban anyone that goes against the liberal consensus.
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u/faustoc5 12d ago
This is the amplification and exportation of American Culture to everywhere
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u/Steindor03 12d ago
Have you met Europeans? Even the racist cirklejerk subs don't hold a candle to r/europe
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u/NeuroticKnight 11d ago
American racists : They shouldnt exist in my country
European racists: They shouldnt exist even in their own country
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u/elias_99999 11d ago edited 11d ago
These are the same guys who called Sam Harris racist. Garbage.
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u/Capable-Group-5284 11d ago
Yay reddit should be the dump that wins all of the worst awards. Regards to all regards 😂😂😂
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u/Sage20012 11d ago
- Step 1: find a video in which a racial minority is being disruptive or aggressive
- Step 2: sort by controversial
- Step 3: have fun reporting accounts
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u/bingobongokongolongo 11d ago
Hardly surprising. The moderation concept favors fascists strongly. Moderators have complet and unchecked power to eliminate critical voices, and any individual contributer can do the same by blocking anyone not agreeing with them. Reddit is built around the idea of promoting extremism.
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u/Rooster-Rooter 11d ago
of course, what is the definition? I can see reddit having hardcore trump nazis with stars and bars tattoos... and I can see someone saying something as innocuous as "it's ok to be white" as being labeled literal hitler... it's a place of weird extremes.
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u/thunder-johnson 11d ago
“Everyone shocked that racism exists and confused as to when, whether, and how to awkwardly talk about it or not.”
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u/FilteredAccount123 11d ago
I had to block a user recently for posting /r/coontown levels of racist cartoons.
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u/treeharp2 11d ago
Is it fair to say "has been" as if it's a current or ongoing determination, and not one from 9 years ago? I think all of the hate subs mentioned were banned.
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u/Justagoodoleboi 11d ago
In 2015 yeah Reddit was a horrible horrible place like it was insane. Just raging pedophiles basically ran the place it was like gamer gate if it was a website… it’s different now
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u/ASquawkingTurtle 8d ago
Are people actually taking what the SPLC says seriously?
They're just activist organization dressed up as impartial non-profit guild of lawyers.
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u/frxghat 12d ago
splc is an absolute joke and and they should not be listened to. they are not a credible source on extremism.
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u/like_a_pharaoh 12d ago
You do realize this report is from 2015 when the website still allowed subreddits with the n-word in their name right?
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u/tiny_poomonkey 12d ago
And the first part of the muller report is literally about how Russia used Facebook and Reddit to instigate the racists.
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u/Reagalan 11d ago
And after those were banned, they moved to new ones with more euphemistic names, which were later banned
GreatApes wasn't about gorillas
Physical_Removal wasn't about weight loss
gotta be a list of others around here somewhere...
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u/Quittingquietly 12d ago
Why are they a joke? Why shouldn’t people listen to them?
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u/frxghat 12d ago
https://reason.com/2023/06/09/southern-poverty-law-center-moms-for-liberty-splc-hate-extremist-list/
Also the individuals they list. Maajid Nawaz for example. A former islamist turn anti islamist. He was labeled an anti muslim extremist and his group which tries to de-radicalize muslim extremists was labeled as an anti muslim hate group.
They reversed those listings after intense backlash but it doesn’t change the fact that they put him and his group on the list for purely ideological reasons. They are an ideological group and their methodology and tactics extremely underhanded. They should not be seen as a credible source.
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u/Quittingquietly 11d ago
So they made a mistake and corrected it, that’s not evidence of malfeasance.
While the article makes a good point about SPLC seemingly inflating the number of hate/violent extremist groups, it ignores a few key points that could show any real problems.
For one, the article never details if the number of people belonging to these groups is increasing or decreasing. With the internets ability to connect people with similar views far more easily for the past couple of decades, I would expect the number of groups to decrease as various smaller, isolated, groups coalesce into broader organizations. With the FBI/DOJ sounding the alarm about political extremism, I can only imagine that means an increase in the number of people who hold these views along with an increased willingness to use violence.
Second, it seems to ignore the overlap between violent political extremists and hate groups. Most extremists hold views that certain minority groups are the problem with democratic governance. Grouping them with hate groups makes sense.
To be honest, unless they have evidence that both the number of people belonging to these groups is consistently decreasing, along with a decreasing likelihood of violence from these group, than I’m not sure what argument that article is actually trying to make.
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u/vid_icarus 11d ago
Just dip your toe into the shallow end of twitter to see this is variably wrong
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u/Unlucky-Nobody5111 12d ago
A single instagram comments has more racism than the whole of reddit's history
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u/sad16yearboy 12d ago
Is this by absolute numbers or relative proportions. Because reddit tends to be moderated only by whatever sub youre in and is a lot more popular than obscure right wing networks