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by stimpson_j_cat 1554 days ago
You're talking about the site that hosted the biggest hugbox for republicans on the internet before it got banned (the_donald). /r/conservative is 50k shy of a million users. White supremacist reddits are a problem now.

Rand Paul was one of Trump's top supporters in the senate during and after his presidency. His ideals are very different than his father's.
2 comments
JSavageOne 1553 days ago
Part of my point is that Reddit's platform leads to intense polarization, which could be alleviated by improving their platform. The default subreddits are hyper-Democrat (eg. to the point where dissent of COVID-19 restrictions was outright banned last year in many subreddits), and the conservative subreddits are hyper polarized in the same way in the opposite direction.

I think many just discuss this as if it's some inevitable human trends or feature of the internet, but I disagree. If platforms did better to reward higher quality discussion and a variety of viewpoints, then maybe there never would've been a /r/the_donald in the extreme form there was.

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dkonofalski 1553 days ago
>Reddit's platform leads to intense polarization

And how is HN not exactly the same in that regard? Any system that distills approval or disapproval down to an upvote and a downvote (like/dislike, thumbs up/thumbs down, love/hate, etc.) is going to inherently generate polarization for any topic. The difference is that you don't come to HN for political takes but it's just as bad as reddit for people spouting incorrect technical information and techno-political opinions.

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adamrezich 1554 days ago
> His ideals are very different than his father's.

would you care to elaborate on this point? I don't see it and instead it seems that the sentence before this one, along with the general "if he's not a Democrat and he opposes Democrat talking points then we hate him" reddit consensus better explains the current reddit attitude toward Rand Paul than a supposed generational change in ideals between the Pauls. I don't see reddit eagerly claiming to support Ron Paul anymore, anyway.

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