I've been on Reddit since at least 2007. I've not seen any swing in political views. I think it's just that the sort of people that use Reddit are the sort of people who are typically more left-wing.
I'm just glad we have social networks which are left-wing to bring balance to the system.
Reddit has been in a state of hysteria for the past couple of weeks. You’re right that the overall leaning hasn’t changed much, but it was never this crazy, even during Trump’s first term.
It’s a nonstop barrage of nazi labels, overblown news, and comments that “hint” at more direct involvement and violence.
It's so weird that I've even started to doubt whether most of those comments are from real people.
I'm not sure why you're surprised. Reddit has always been left leaning and progressive, and they were making a lot of noise about Trump his first term, especially with the Mueller investigation.
Now you have a huge trade war going on, he keeps threatening the soveriegnty of multiple long time allies, a billionaire has extensive access to government data (the same one that did that nazi salute), along with ICE being ramped up all in the first couple weeks of his term. Our president also ran a crypto scam that made him billions right before his term started. He also keeps joking about running for a third term and is challenging a 150 year constitutional law on birthright citizenship with an executive order. Even you have to admit that this is a lot going on compared to anything we've seen before.
I think that the issue with what's happening on reddit is that it's hard to know what's real or what's not. I think that there is a lot that this administration could be criticized for but the criticism has to be precise and targeted, such that most of the energy goes to the topics that are important.
A lot of comments and energy were expended there. Everyone talked as if it were the end of NATO and that the U.S. was abandoning Europe. In reality, it was just a 20% reduction in force (which was the first sentence in the linked article).
On the flip side, the trade war with Canada deserved heavy criticism—and luckily, it was well covered (I count that as a win).
From the list you just shared, I don't really have a good sense of the relative severity of each and I think it's because there is no place where these topics could be discussed (even HN isn't immune as you can see from one of the comments below)
An alternative take on this is that the opposition doesn't really believe that anything extraordinary is happening and hence there is no strong response outside just some press releases.
I personally tried to follow all the news for a week. I tried to read the articles and research what was shared on reddit. Oftentimes my interpretation of these news wasn't nearly as dramatic as what reddit was aligning on. At the end, I figured it's too much work to double check every single piece of news, so I just stopped using reddit for some time.
There are more ways to get news than reading reddit tho. I still get exposure to the "big" events through HN or simply by talking to my coworkers, and those conversations tend to be a lot more meaningful and nuanced than what I'd normally get on reddit.
Not getting every single detail of a story as it develops isn't really a big deal to me and, I'd also argue that following these news on reddit won't really make you more informed (I already shared one example where the news was discussed but the conversation was entirely off from the reality). Reddit only makes you feel more informed, but that doesn't mean that you actually are.
That's an understatement. Death threats aimed at these young DOGE tech nerds flooded Reddit and Bluesky. Reddit even shut down a popular subreddit to stem the tide.
This is simply incorrect. There was no "flood." There were a very, very small number of isolated comments that I spotted and they were removed and/or downvoted.
I truly despise people who gaslight the way you are right now. Musk did two very blatant Nazi salutes and us right now illegally accessing the US federal payment system. These are unprecedented actions and a strong response to them is hardly "hysteria".
It used to be very libertarian (big on free speech, etc) but has since shifted substantially liberal, including much warmer attitudes towards the use of violence.
In 2010 Reddit was center-left, with a high degree of variance between subreddits.
Today it is a far-left echo chamber in most large subreddits.
The process of change was gradual. Like all echo chambers it is a result of distillation, with marginal moderate users progressively leaving in response to seeing the shrinking frontier of acceptable discourse.
Early Reddit had a philosophically libertarian majority (or at least, a significant percentage) and a demographic of mostly STEM-oriented, bookish, nerdy dudes from 18-40. Ron Paul was a popular political candidate. "Socially liberal, fiscally conservative" was a common refrain, although in 2008 that usually meant supporting gay marriage and wanting legal marijuana. People were skeptical of big corporations and big government alike, but had genuine belief that technology was changing the status quo in positive ways (remember when Google was a startup and "Don't be evil" felt earnest). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unpopular, but a big chunk of the criticism focused on ways the PATRIOT act invaded individual privacy and the wastefulness of DHS spending. Open source software and filesharing were discussed as philosophical stances and acts of resistance against entrenched powers. Race and gender were rarely discussed as being particularly important.
Writing this made me realize not just how different Reddit was, but also the issues of the time and the ways they were thought of and talked about. It's almost hard to map onto contemporary parties, policies or issues.
I'm just glad we have social networks which are left-wing to bring balance to the system.