[kortilla]

As long as you’re okay with politics leaking in. There isn’t a sub of any significant size that doesn’t become a reflection of the leftist echo chamber of the larger community.

Mods can surely delete comments that outright state anything political, but they don’t control the fact that the votes are controlled by the community and the votes favor things that fit in with a particular political world view.

All this to say, a vote-driven platform with an overwhelmingly one-sided user-base is not a great place to host a community.

[esperent]

This is not my experience with the specialized subreddits I follow (mostly reading, health, and tech related, all on the smaller side). However, I have noticed that people who like to label things as "left/right echo chambers" are extremely sensitive to what other people say and often read political intent where none is intended. Could this be what's happening to you?

[kortilla]

> political intent where none is intended. Could this be what's happening to you?

Nope. You’ll notice I didn’t say anything about intent. It’s much broader with entire classes of ideas being oppressed and other bad ideas being accepted with refutations shunned.

[TLightful]

A comment that reveals more about your leanings than anything to do with reddit.

Are you sure you're sufficiently equipped for a discussion about echo chambers and politics? Doesn't appear so. A moment of introspection might serve you well.

[kortilla]

> A comment that reveals more about your leanings than anything to do with reddit.

It can’t be both. Either Reddit is biased and I don’t lean the same way or my comment said nothing about my leanings. Figure out what point you’re trying to make before throwing vague statements out.

> Are you sure you're sufficiently equipped for a discussion about echo chambers and politics? Doesn't appear so. A moment of introspection might serve you well.

Says the person who was incapable of actually engaging in a discussion about echo chambers and instead engaged in a personal attack.

[TLightful]

Personal attack? Try again.

[ABCLAW]

It's more likely that you're sitting on the far end of a normal distribution, and what you see as an enforced echo chamber is just the vast majority of users sitting in the middle of that bell curve doing their thing.

In other words, if everyone is sitting to the left of you, maybe you're just sitting really far off to the right.

[kortilla]

Nope, Reddit’s political bias is very well-known.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/3e897a...

https://social.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/

It’s not that there is anything particular about Reddit that attracts leftists, it’s just dominated by a young demographic that generally skews far left of the wider population.

> other words, if everyone is sitting to the left of you, maybe you're just sitting really far off to the right.

It’s not “everyone”, it’s just a simple majority of the users on reddit, which demographically is sitting to the left of the wider population.

So (setting aside the fact that a two dimensional political spectrums is bullshit) yes, I’m sitting on the right side of the curve in Reddit’s user base. But so are most professionals, parents, etc (I.e. folks over 25). And you only have to be sitting slightly to the right of the median before the vote ratio steam rolls you’re world view.

> and what you see as an enforced echo chamber is just the vast majority of users sitting in the middle of that bell curve doing their thing

That’s literally a fucking echo chamber. A community that has a voting mechanism that reinforces the views of the majority and suppresses anything unpopular with that majority group.

[bastardoperator]

And yet plenty of right wing echo chambers exist there too and have for a very long time. They continue to host communities on reddit which are all, one sided. What exactly are you doing here on HN? Injecting politics, how are you any different than the folks you're complaining about?

[galaxyLogic]

Talking objectively these days is a very political act.

[kortilla]

> And yet plenty of right wing echo chambers exist there too and have for a very long time. They continue to host communities on reddit which are all, one sided.

You’re confused about what I’m saying. I didn’t refute that some group can gather in a special sub for right-wing topics while carefully banning thousands of wider users.

What I’m talking about is hosting a non-political community. The entire user-base of Reddit, on average, is leftist and those views leak into your community in the form of votes against/for particular topics.

> What exactly are you doing here on HN? Injecting politics, how are you any different than the folks you're complaining about?

Again, you’re confusing explicitly discussing politics with the effect of an echo chamber enforced by votes. Do you need me to explain the difference further?