Interesting insights into how controlled the narrative is in /r/canada on Reddit. One of the things that struck me was that there’s no self posts in /r/canada unlike many other countries’ and provinces’ subreddits. It would be nice if we differentiated ourselves here on Lemmy with more self posts
Nobody rational was in r/canada for years before the reddit exodus. It was a neo-con, hyper-partisan, white nationalist echo chamber.
I recall /r/onguardforthee being the de facto Canadian subreddit. And then we all left when spez fucked eveeything up.
I left r/canada even before I left reddit. The final straw was when I saw links to a report from Citizen Lab, a very respectable Canadian research group at U of T, about a foreign government interfering in Canadian affairs, getting deleted for not being “relevant to Canada.”
I got banned for archiving a conservative politicians leadership campaign website and publishing it when they started telling lies about their policy positions.
‘Not relevant’
My final ban came when I pointed out a known white supremacist was saying racist stuff. They temp banned me, a mod (a different one, the white supremacist one) challenged me to explain it, and then fully banned me when I didn’t reply, which I couldn’t do… Because they banned me.
On that subreddit, racist shit was okay but calling something racist was not.
On that subreddit, racist shit was okay but calling something racist was not.
The world in microcosm
yup. I’ve seen it too.
How dare you not salute us when we tied your hands behind your back!
<3 Citizen Lab
Hasn’t r/canada notoriously been a mod-dictatorship shithole for years now?
I never spent any notable time there, but I remember seeing meta-conflicts there spill out onto the front page on a pretty regular basis.
Literally had a self-professed white nationalist on the mod team and as far as I know still does.
Is ham sandwich still there?? It’s been ages since I’ve been on /r/Canada, was taken over a very long time ago.
Yup, getting reported for saying anything remotely left-leaning or calling out far-right hate speech pretty much results in a permanent ban.
and this is the problem with reddit (and sites like it, including this one): Create a sub / community, add your mod crew and wait for people to show up. Years later, the original mod team might not have the best interests of the current population at heart. Or you get “overton window creep” where overtime, the moderators shift in political stance from the original intent.
How can a site ostensibly representing a nation the size of Canada have a limited mod team appointed by who knows who? There is no moderation oversight on reddit. Or lemmy.ml. I think Beehaw has some of that, but not sure how far that goes.
Back in the day when stormfront was relavent, they had organized attacks on location subreddits. They tend to be easier to take over than general interest subs and have an outsized influence on politics. /r/canada was the crown jewel of this strategy.
Ah…
Yes - now it all fits together.
I remember those days, but I wasn’t on Reddit then.
decades I think
This is why r/OnGuardForThee was formed. Not that I’ve been to either in the last year.
I think it’s a fine idea that requires a certain degree of community and camaraderie that I’m not sure exists in the Lemmyverse yet.
As a group, we’re good at sharing articles - often stuff that makes us mad (and there’s plenty of that to go around) - but less good at just…hanging out and shooting the shit.
I don’t know what the solution is aside from, “be the change you want to see.”
I listened to this yesterday and it mirrored my own findings after a couple of years of studying r/canada’s posts and moderation quirks.
Not mentioned in the article were the banned subreddits from a few years past. r/metacanada was the canadian equivalent of r/thedonald from the states and was full of hate speech and the worst of the alt right conspiracy theories. Many of those users are still on the site.
the weirder thing is the smaller regional subreddits across Canada being overrun with russian disinfo.
all of this very much led to my abandonment of reddit as a platform.
And yes, there are left-leaning subreddits like r/onguardforthee but do you really want to be on the same site that allows the kind of abuse and brigading that exists on other, more “mainstream” subs? I couldn’t stomach it.
name me a Canadian subreddit that ISN’T run by mods that staunchly control the narrative. /r/Toronto is just as bad if not worse although leaning in the opposite direction and is one of the primary reasons why I decided to fully embrace lemmy.
the mods of /r/toronto are just so damn terrified of potentially stirring any kind of pot. Anything that is pro-palestine is quickly locked and you can’t comment on it. pro israel is open for discussion. anything relating to homelessness in Toronto is also promptly locked. questions about Toronto? removed. countless photos of sunsets or rain or fog, yeah those can pass. Hell they even at one point curbed posting about any sort of crime that took place in the city.
If something doesn’t paint the city in a positive light or doesn’t fit the mods narrative it’s removed and you’re promptly banned.
name me a Canadian subreddit that ISN’T run by mods that staunchly control the narrative
Not just limited to Canadian subreddits, it’s all local subreddits and basically all that are over 10k people. Niche hobby subreddits are basically all that’s left that’s still ok for actually discussion.
And quite honestly, Lemmy kinda sucks too mostly because the userbase isn’t that large and politically leans significantly left of the average IRL (Reddit, other than some select (mostly American-based) subreddits also leans left of average, but not as far as Lemmy) so it’s very much an echo chamber.
left of the average IRL (Reddit, other than some select (mostly American-based) subreddits also leans left of average, but not as far as Lemmy) so it’s very much an echo chamber.
That is a non sequitur.
r/NiceVancouver.
25k+ users, we do practically zero moderation. Surprisingly it’s pretty damn civil and great.
/r/waterloo was good and /r/kitchener was a fascist spawning ground.
as someone who grew up in Cambridge…yeah the kitchener subreddit doesn’t surprise me. I’ve looked at it a few times and was like “yup, that’s Kitchener” I mean hell if those fuckers were allowed to commit a purge on the homeless encampent across the street from the go station they’d jump on that without a moments hesitation.
Kitchener has always been a cesspool of hate even when I was a kid in the 80s/90s. The only, literally only, reason we’d ever drive to Kitchener was to go to fairvew mall, toys r’ us, or futureshop.
It has more to do with the respective moderation teams than the respective cities, I think.
/r/toronto is a lot like /r/ontario that way, though /r/ontario it’s a little more hit-and-miss, depending on if you hurt a right-winger’s feelings that day. Normally it leans left, but if you say something even slightly risque (other than cheap jokes about Doug Ford) and someone gets their nose out of joint, it’ll get you banned.
I managed to a few days ago, comparing Doug Ford to the protagonist from Denis Leary’s song Asshole. That got me, in no short order, a Reddit Cares email (which I report, because those really are the lowest form of harassment) and a ban for a day alter when, I suppose, that same right winger caught flak for abusing Reddit Cares.
The time defore that was a suggestion that “things won’t improve in Ontario until the rich are afraid for their bank accounts, or the lives”. That got me another Reddit Cares message, which I complained about, and, yup, another ban.
My local sub (/r/Peterborough) is remarkably level-headed. I’ll give it credit.
/r/Canada’s a whole other level, though. Yikes.
Interesting observation as I hadn’t noticed that myself.
how could you miss it? All of the posts are rage baity news articles and the commentary is all super sketchy.
