More about how some subs ban the hell out of dissenting opinions.
Look how r/politics morphed in the last 6 or so years. A few regional subs I frequent are the same way and are completely unrepresentative of the actual region. The Alberta (Canadian province) sub for example is basically just a bunch of kids who've never left home that think communism is a great idea lamenting why the rest of the province does want to leave their homes. It's such an un-representative sub it's actually hilarious, these days I basically only go for the Covid updates.
Yes, some subs are OK, I mean, Reddit's model is that each sub is its own world and moderators can more or less do what they want. But on the whole, HN has more (respectful) dissenting opinions versus Reddit's most subs are echo chambers and the rest are anarchy.
Look at the discussion thread Dang waxes poetically in and note that he doesn't moderate several significantly more flamebait-y, political comments that happen to be on the others side of the political fence.
Yes, Dang misses some, but I think the idea is that some posts fall through the cracks but if you routinely break the rules, you're going to eventually get flagged/banned. That way, we avoid a lot of false positive flags/bans that would otherwise be unjustly punished on Reddit.
I feel fairly strongly that r/politics is fine the way it is. If you sort by controversial, you're still free to peruse uncensored dissenting opinions. Sure, there may be some astroturfing and sure, the articles may be cherry-picked, but the sub overall is welcome to healthy debate.
Contrast this with r/conservative, where > 50% of threads are locked to members only where membership is gained by demonstrating that you only express right-wing opinions (I'm not making this up). Even further, you can still be banned as a non-member for expressing views too far outside right-wing orthodoxy. r/politics seems like a shangri-la for political debate in comparison.
> I feel fairly strongly that r/politics is fine the way it is.
> Contrast this with r/conservative, where > 50% of threads are locked to members only where membership is gained by demonstrating that you only express right-wing opinions (I'm not making this up).
Did you frequent r/politics circa 2016? There was a very obvious point when Bernie supporters and Trump supporters alike were driven out, and where all views essentially became pro-Clinton and pro-establishment overnight.
Before that, it was a place that was pretty inclusive of views from the whole spectrum.
