Reddit, a link-aggregating website that claims to be the “front page of the internet,” has turned into a hotbed for radicalization.
Reddit’s fundamental reliance on upvotes over an algorithm produces an unstable equilibrium in the hands of bad-faith moderators. This creates an incredible echo chamber made up of subreddits, which create groups of individuals who will gladly throw away their empathy as long as they view themselves as a “bastion of good” fighting those who are ontologically evil.
In some rare cases, these individuals reach beyond the keyboard and manifest this radicalization into action.
This article is meant to shed some light onto the unseen world of Reddit, where left-wing users are routinely goaded into increasingly concerning rhetoric and, sometimes, even violence.
How Reddit Works
To understand why Reddit is uniquely suited for this type of radicalization, you will need a basic understanding of how Reddit operates.
Unlike most social media platforms that utilize complex faceless algorithms to curate content for individuals, Reddit is far simpler. Users are given the ability to “upvote” and “downvote” content, which directly affects what other users see. Theoretically, this system produces a true marketplace of ideas, but there’s a catch.
Reddit relies heavily on more than 40,000 volunteer moderators to act as guide rails for subreddits, allowing good faith and positive discourse to flourish. However, Reddit’s moderators wield remarkable power and go largely unchecked, likely because the value these unpaid moderators bring to the platform makes them indispensable, no matter how Orwellian and drunk
