When did reddit change?

submitted by Barber_Acrobatic from self.GenderCritical

Now I'm not going to pretend that reddit used to be some lovely rosy place, in actuality I think it used to be one of the grubby parts of the internet which has now become oddly puritanical. I was reading through a thread on Dave Chappelle and he seems to have at some point gone from one of reddit's darlings to being frowned at for apparently criticising PC culture (personally I think it was mentioning the trans thing).

It just seems strange that a website that was originally founded on 'say whatever you want' has so quickly swung to the other side of the debate. Half of me is wondering if the purges have meant that it's only the puritans who remain, or if there is something to be said in the rumblings of high profile trans mods.

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[–]ArthnoldManacatsaman 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was most active on Reddit between 2018 and mid-2020 and things really started turning sour for me earlier this year, when COVID-19 was in the ascendant, but before most polities had gone into full quarantine / lockdown.

The US election's somethings-or-other (primaries? caucuses?) were happening and it wasn't looking good for Bernie Sanders. So, Reddit being the left-leaning, young, white, male space that it is, was not happy. Anyone giving Reddit even the most cursory glance would know that Donald Trump single-handedly imported the virus from Gyna and that, had Bernie Sanders been president, not a single American would have died or lost their job. Nuh uh. Not one. Fuck off back to /r/the_donald, fascist.

Then of course George Floyd died and the suburban anarchists really came out of the woodwork. The people who had protested against lockdowns in the preceding weeks and months were merely hicks who wanted haircuts, and their gathering together IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC, KAREN was selfish and risible. The violent protests following GF's death were righteous, they were for justice. What did it matter if black-owned businesses were burned down or looted? Property is not as important as PEOPLE'S LIVES, KAREN. #ACAB

That was the point at which I was really disillusioned with Reddit. Then came the ban wave that saw /r/GenderCritical and its allies banned and that was the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.

[–]NecessaryScene1 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Wasn't there some sort of mass exodus of genderologists from Tumblr a few years ago? (Due to some sort of content crackdown?) Maybe that's something to do with it - them scattering into other platforms like Twitter like Reddit.

[–]lumiosestone 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Yeah, Tumblr banned porn around the end of 2017, so most of them migrated over to Twitter.

[–]Omina_Sentenziosa 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I remember the meltdown, but I don' t remember why Tumblr banned pornography. What' s the story behind it?

[–]candiedDagon 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The Apple app store took down the tumblr app because it didn’t have the appropriate age restrictions. I think that was the main thing.

[–]Omina_Sentenziosa 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So that' s it? I knew it wasn' t because they had a glimpse of intelligence and recognized that porn is degrading, rotten shit, but the fact that it was done over a beaurocratic issue is infuriating!

[–]Camberian 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yahoo bought it.

[–]Omina_Sentenziosa 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

And why did that make them ban porn?

[–]BrendaFricker 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I remember reading at the time that they were not able to moderate it enough and we're not removing child pornography quickly.

[–]materialrealityplz 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

No kidding. I used to wander onto reddit not long after it was made (cause I studied computer science in uni back then and my male classmates would go on it) and I hated it. It was like a step-up from 4chan.

Though, on the one hand, it still has gross porn and is full of men being gross, on the other... it's gone so woke it's crazy. But then, all of society seems to have collectively lost it's mind believing men can actually be women and Trump is president of America. So.

[–]tuesday 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It was like a step-up from 4chan.

wow that's the most accurate description of reddit i've ever heard, seriously.

[–]DifferentAirGC 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

When did reddit change

During USA's presidential election in 2016