Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by vsssk 1990 days ago
You can go to /r/conservative right now, and write any crap you want. You're conflating the notion of deplatforming with the notion of a place having a certain political leaning.

I can go comment liberal ideas on Breitbart and immediately be shouted down as a commie CCP bootlicker and be blocked. I guess by your logic that means liberals are getting deplatformed too!

1 comments

> You can go to /r/conservative right now, and write any crap you want.

You chose the worst example. /r/conservative has been getting brigaded since before this election. One of the reasons for which /r/thedonald was quarantined in 2019. I know because everytime a big news from US get published in my country national papers, i used to open several subreddits in order to hear both sides of the story.

> I can go comment liberal ideas on Breitbart and immediately be shouted down as a commie CCP bootlicker and be blocked.

The same happens on the other virtual side of aisle. And it's not something unique to the US. I'm not American, but in my country the political discourse has been polarized the same way, with one side accused of been Putin's puppet, and those voting for them being accused of being fascists, and the other side now getting accused of being on China's payroll and getting called comunists.

The side controlling the biggest subreddit in my country, is the same that believes in the "russian puppets" story.

If you post from your personal account about some scandal that is on the national newspapers regarding the side they believe in, people start scraping your profile searching for information in order to dox you, and start sending you private messages insulting you.

If you post by using a throwaway because you don't want to risk receiving death threats just for having a different opinion, they start with the usual "this account is new, it's a russian propaganda troll".

The moderators delete threads and comments about arguments that damage their side, and if you politely ask for an explanation for the removal they insult you, ban you and mute you.

They got to the point that when some polital topics became damaging to their side because of huge mistakes that were made, they banned those topics with the excuse that "they bring brigaders and propaganda accounts".

This is not something that's only happening in right leaning echochambers.

And I don't think that this is something that helps keep an healty political discussion.