Reddit is a case study in the inorganic hostile takeover and imposition by a left-wing minority upon a grass roots platform. They subjugated it by force, and used every excuse, every hypocrisy, every form of algorithmic and obfuscation to enforce a political hegemony and cement the echo chamber, and had to do it
against the majority of the userbase until they could attain self-reinforcing majorities. The_Donald was by far their most active and popular community, and how did they suppress it? By accusing it of violent threats. Perhaps some small number of Trump supporters who did make threats, but immediately stopped by active moderators. But perhaps the actions of left-wing agitators trying to get the place banned. We'll never know. We will know that other subs for years thereafter not only piled on pages of tens of thousands of uncensored violent threats, but openly encouraged and supported by the mods. A few instances I found examples so direct, specific and imminent that I personally passed it along to the FBI
I've in the past probably gone through 50+ burner accounts on Reddit. To give an example, a week ago I had the admins ban one at the IP level because I left a message in the /r/politics sub stating something to the effect (admin deleted post, can't get exact text) of;
"Pretty much everyone left and right agrees trans people should have every freedom to live their lives and identify as they want, up until they infringe on the protected spaces and privacy of others. Nobody cares what you do in your bedroom, just when you follow an 8 year old girl into a bathroom"
that got the site admins going after me personally;
Meanwhile this is what I get from like 30 seconds of scraping the sort-by-new comments in /r/pics. They're talking about some random 19 year old kid interning for Elon;
https://i.imgur.com/ZnP2HNP.jpegI think Reddit is worth discussing. Its quite the opposite parallel story to Twitter. All Elon had to do to turn Twitter into a right-wing website was remove the heavy handed moderation and let people post organically. A free internet shakes out in a way he supports. To turn Reddit into the demented violent liberal echo chamber it is today, they had to work to drive away everyone who isn't as subversive and resourceful as I am.
I don't even have a problem with the posts in that picture. Morally they are wrong, and if you are a member of that community and you see those posts without telling them why they are morally wrong, I think your complicity is also morally unacceptable.
It's always better to let stupid and immoral people say whatever they want, and then explain why they are stupid and immoral. If no one in any given community is willing to stand up to stupidity and immorality you end up with a stupid and immoral community, but this may also happen if, through censorship, you don't give anyone the opportunity to stand up against it.
There is a big difference though, obviously, between statements like "somebody should kill that guy" and "I'm going to kill that guy" or "I will pay someone to kill that guy", both of which should be met with legal action.