I should have asked what is "advertiser friendly" as opposed to not advertiser friendly.
I mean, advertiser friendly websites do better because people who like to make money using websites participate and drive up engagement. Shocker!
On this website, the "advertisers" are software development firms.
This entire line of argument is weakly defined if not started in bad faith.
update: I get where the OP is coming from now -- more oriented towards concern over consumerism and astroturfing, less concern trolling over politicization etc...
> what is "advertiser friendly" as opposed to not advertiser friendly.
This is a good question, as it gets to the heart of the conversation IMO. Thinking here, things that are advertiser friendly would probably both trigger a strong sense of identity (which can be exploited by advertising campaigns) without alienating other groups. Many conservative viewpoints push for limits to identity, seeing diversity of viewpoints as antithetical to what makes a good life, hence why many conservative viewpoints aren't as monetizable.
That's just me thinking out loud. If you see any flaws in my thinking or have any better theories, I'd be happy to read them.
> advertiser friendly websites do better because people who like to make money using websites participate and drive up engagement.
This is called astroturfing, and embodies what I consider to be the worst of Reddit. It provides people with a sense of community, but in reality it's just corporations trying to push a narrative to make money.
My conversation was started in good faith, btw. Not to say that my logic was/is flawless though.
They don't just ban subs randomly for the most part, they've slowly been changing reddit rules to make the site more advertiser friendly. So yeah, most of the below broke reddit rules, but not when they were created, they got banned shortly or immediately after a rules change, AFAIK. I think /r/thefappening was banned without a rule change, and I'm not sure what rule it broke at the time.
Figured. Those are all either promoting illegal behavior or existed to spread porn of non-consenting people. I am fine with reddit being hostile to that.
From what I gather there were regular posts that facilitated illegal gun sales. /r/gundeals was banned and brought back after 90 days when mods and admins/legal got on the same page about what rules were needed and would work.