• ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      I won’t contest that racism and bigotry existed on reddit. It definitely did. I also experienced and saw kindness and acceptance. Saying Reddit in its entirety is racist is really no different that saying everyone is racist. And not everyone and not everyone on reddit is racist.

        • ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          It goes without saying all lives matter. It needs to be said that Black Lives Matter. I am aware racism exists on reddit. I’d love to see a survey or study that indicates a majority of people are racist on reddit.

          I’m not convinced that calling reddit predominantly racist is based on actual sympathy for people of color. There is a competing reason I can think of why someone would want to discredit reddit however. They tended to moderate against authoritarian communists, people who are notorious for their support of governments that committed genocides against minorities.

          • It is true that there are plenty of people who use reddit that are not racist (setting aside the idea that everyone who lives in a racist society, which we in the west do, has at least some internalized racism). Some people on reddit even actively fight against it, to their credit. That said, as a platform, both in terms of the people who run and administrate it, as well as the larger majority mass of users, definitely tends towards racism. This can be seen in all kinds of ways, from admins always siding with freeze-peach of racists over bipoc to the frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of the “orcish hordes” that dominates in every popular subreddit (and the silencing of those who offer even the mildest criticism of it), to the understandable yet very telling rabid defense of the privilege so many of them insist they earned when it is nothing more than old fashioned white privilege. You seem to agree that reddit is bad for its corporatist bullshit and its laser focus on profit at the expense of people. We agree. But that alone is inherently systemically racist for sociological reasons that I’m assuming you’re aware of, given some of your other comments. For all these reasons, it is hardly an overreaction or unfair to refer to reddit as “a racist website.”

            As for “authoritarian” communists, all I’ll say here is that I hope you can learn to seriously, genuinely question a lot of what you have learned from what amounts to an ocean of propaganda deliberately spread for decades (even over a century) to demonize any successful socialist revolution. I’d encourage you to ask some of us “tankies” in good faith about some of that propaganda in other appropriate threads.

            • ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 year ago

              I definitely did see popular subreddits that would display racial biases to black people. They would bad mouth a black person doing something in a clip and then the next day defend a white person doing similar things. It didn’t happen that way every time, but it did seem like it happened that way more often than not. Also, there does seem to be a valid argument in that systemic racism asserts itself in instances of corporate greed like we’ve seen from reddit. In the sense it’s probably white people who are going to benefit from the enshitification.

              At the very least I’m hoping we can have good faith discussions about progressive topics. IRL I typically talk to people more conservative me, so it is interesting to talk to someone coming from a different end of the political spectrum.

        • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          They said elsewhere that they’re autistic. The need to be exact and truthful when people generalize something like a community is something i identify with. Its why I dont really love the stormfront joke myself, just go along with it for community peace. This person to me is clearly well intentioned and is an example of the dunk impulse going too far because I think they’re trying to do right.

          ETA: Actually I got them mixed up with another user they never said they were autistic. But I still think they are well intentioned.