It is well known that many internal people at Reddit loathe with all their being the idea that Reddit has been used this way for Donald Trump. Think serious young social justice types with the San Francisco expectation of deference to their ideas arising from techno-capitalist success. Many of them must be saying something to the effect of: what the hell is wrong with us, letting this happen on our freaking website??
Moreover it is well known now that the tech barons of Silicon Valley are quite cozy with the idea of cooperating with the Establishment to control the narrative on their platforms. It is after all, hate speech, we're talking about, right? Trump is a racist xenophobic misogynist, after all. What's not to ban? In any case, Hillary is their candidate all the way.
I can't pretend to know what is going on inside Reddit, but the pressure there must be enormous lately to "do something about this." A European anti-immigrant subreddit was "quarantined" last night (a drastic move that limits access from the general public). Many are expecting this or something like it to happen soon at /r/The_Donald (which drives increasingly enormous traffic numbers to the site lately).
But it's too late. The damage has been done. The wheel of history has turned. We will never go back to this:
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| USA Today July 10, 2015. It was the summer of 2015 when the 2016 presidential race picked up in earnest. The 150th anniversary of Appomattox had just passed. America had just re-enacted the Civil War as a live historical postmodern psychodrama. Everyone was cheering the Confederate flag coming down. We didn't know what else was about to end. |
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