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by JSavageOne 1554 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.

1 comments

>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.