
Trump’s brigade took over Reddit. Now Reddit is changing its rules to stop them - credo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/17/trumps-meme-brigade-took-over-reddit-now-reddit-is-trying-to-stop-them/
======
jml7c5
One thing to note from /u/spez's announcement of the changes[1], which
suggests the impact might not actually be that large:

>Interestingly enough, r/the_donald was already getting downvoted out of r/all
yesterday morning before we made any changes. It seems the rest of the Reddit
community had had enough. Ironically, r/EnoughTrumpSpam was hit harder than
any other community when we rolled out the changes. That’s Reddit for you.
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4oedco/lets_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4oedco/lets_all_have_a_town_hall_about_rall/)

~~~
vehementi
Yeah, this is a pretty desperate nothing article

------
davb
As someone who visits Reddit purely for entertainment, I welcome the changes.

I can't stand Trump. But even if I was a supporter (or the subreddit in
question was for a more amiable candidate), /r/all has been useless for the
last couple of months. It's been swamped with hate speech and spam. I've
stayed away from it altogether, which is a shame because it's a great way to
find trending posts in subreddits I don't subscribe to.

An alternative would have been to allow users to block certain subreddits from
their /r/all (making it /r/almost all, I guess). But this would have been
difficult and confusing for new users and wouldn't help anonymous users at
all.

I wonder if they lost a lot of traffic because of that subreddit.

~~~
radmuzom
Yes. I find it funny how Americans support free speech (at least here; given
general comments and in this thread) when it means the ability to harass
certain groups. If the so called "social justice warriors" were doing this,
there would be outrage by now as to how we were destroying their favourite
online community.

------
thescribe
I feel like this article may be a bit unfair. It sounds like organically a
community wields a large number of votes, and they aren't getting the same
treatment as other communities on Reddit?

~~~
legulere
/r/the_donald is harassing moderators from other subreddits, the moderators
take part in vote manipulation (for which their most active mod was recently
banned).

I actually wonder why the subreddit isn't shut down yet.

~~~
bsamuels
i'm pretty sure reddit couldnt shut down a subreddit dedicated to a
presidential nominee without causing the shitstorm of the century, especially
trump

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danso
I don't understand how r/sandersforpresident didn't also have the same effect
on r/all during Bernie's rise...if there ever was a subreddit that had
enthusiastically upvoting users, it was that one.

~~~
newacct23
As an idiot that fell for the Trump secret political savant narrative I
upvoted every single article without even reading the title on the first 3
pages of the rising section (very quickly because of keyboard shortcuts)
because I believed I was helping the cause. Many others did this.

Don't tell me how much of an idiot I am, I've already judged myself. Luckily I
can say I voted against Trump when I had the chance. Now I'm praying Romney
runs third party.

~~~
mintplant
> As an idiot that fell for the Trump secret political savant narrative

At the risk of veering off topic, would you mind explaining what this meant
for you? I've heard people say sort of similar things before ("he's just
pretending, he'll be different in office"), but never fully grasped the
thought process behind them.

~~~
newacct23
>At the risk of veering off topic, would you mind explaining what this meant
for you?

Well first of all you need to understand I will never vote for Hillary Clinton
so I needed to rationalize voting for the Republican candidate.

Secondly it seemed Trump was addressing concerns people actually cared about.
Money, security, and the bullshit fed to them by politicians in that order. Up
until the Curiel scandal you could have argued the statements made by Trump
were not racist. This actually mattered to me since one of the things I love
about America is that anybody of any ethnicity could emigrate here and call
themselves American. Also some of his positions seemed somewhat rational when
you make them somewhat less extreme. For example, some sort of barrier or
technology that assisted border patrol in their mandate could significantly
curb the problem of illegal immigrants coming into the country and also curb
the amount of drugs coming into the country. I also think there are certain
countries in the middle east that terrorists almost always originate from, so
while I think a complete Muslim ban is unnecessary and unenforceable I don't
think we should be accepting anybody from war torn nations with signs of
extremism.

Him being against the Trans Pacific Partnership and H1B visas and also being
for lowering the corporate tax rate (three things which would affect my family
and I significantly). He got my vote over Hillary.

(also Hillary's anti gun stances are another negative for her)

His "almost reasonable" positions led me to take him as my candidate of choice
after everybody else I wanted was eliminated. I also believed his "almost
reasonable" positions could resonate with voters _if_ he did not make them
more extreme. After Curiel he has been doubling down on his extremist rhetoric
rather than toning it down which has removed any possibility of me voting for
him.

Also it's interesting to note that until Curiel, Trump hadn't made any
significant gaffs. Since then he has _only_ made gaffs such as patting himself
on the back like a buffoon after the Orlando massacre and he only doubles
down. It just serves to make him seem unhinged and not capable of managing a
mcdonalds let alone a country.

------
ddacunha
As a regular visitor of /r/all The_Donald is spoiling the experience. Racism
and bigotry aside, if all posts are coming from the same sub there is a point
to change the rules of /r/all.

EDIT: for typos

~~~
back_beyond
What do you mean by "racism and bigotry aside"?

~~~
trowawee
I think it means that r/the_donald is a fountain of racism and bigotry.

~~~
back_beyond
I understood that. Let me clarify: what are examples of racism and bigotry
that have gained traction? Let's define "gained traction" as 1000 upvotes.
Although, I'm open to a better definition.

------
vinhboy
On a related note, now there is an anti-trump subreddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/](https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/)

It's really interesting to watch the power struggle. It's one group of troll
taking on another. Must be a headache for the admins.

~~~
minimaxir
For those curious, here are the top subreddits similar to /r/enoughtrumpspam:
[http://i.imgur.com/IUuc48Z.png](http://i.imgur.com/IUuc48Z.png)

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researcher7
So censorship is OK as long as it is done to the side you disagree with. (Not
a Trump supporter, but I won't support any censorship.)

------
IndianAstronaut
The front page of reddit now is actually quite pleasant and interesting.
Definitely a huge improvement.

~~~
minimaxir
This did not affect the front page _at all_ , only /r/all.

------
SixSigma
When s4p took over reddit, no-one batted an eye

~~~
hisyam
r/s4p might be little annoying but they didn't:

\- post dozens of pictures of Hillary kissing the KKK in a single day

\- post a bunch of cropped centipede pictures that can be combined when
browsing r/all

\- etc

If they want to promote their favorite politician, I understand but populating
40% of r/all with meme shitposts will make the admins take actions.

