Tl;dr: have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?
I logged out of my reddit account a while ago but still browse some subreddits without logging in and have recently noticed more far-right rhetoric in general. I’m curious to know if others have seen this trend or, even better, wrote about it or documented it. Some examples I noticed were r/sweden and r/exmuslim. These are two communities I used to frequent often and both of them now have descended into more upvoted far-right rhetoric of the “deport them all!” caliber.
I have a feeling (from my own experience browsing these communities) that such content used to be quickly addressed and downvoted, and both of those subreddits don’t tend to ban people on the fly nor overmoderate. Sometimes I see threads with the same title (likely posted by the same person) on both the subreddit and the corresponding lemmy community where the difference in opinion and the general political leaning is obvious.
So, not to succumb to my own biases, have there been any writings, surveys, or studies on the political composition of Reddit shifting in large communities?
The potential shift would be caused by the API changes, so a bit too recent for studies to get any meaningful conclusion of.
That said, I don’t think that the user demographics changed so much yet. Sure, lots of mods and tech-inclined users migrated out, but those were a small minority in Reddit anyway. Instead I think that the “alternative right” (i.e. neonazi - let’s call a duck a duck) in the site are getting a bit louder, as the ones kicking them out are not there any more.
In the future however I do think that you’ll get a change in demographics in the site, as the neonazi going rogue will make other people leave.
What if the neo nazis keep it diluted and watered down enough? I don’t see how “mild Nazi content” would make people leave, especially since they may have accepted it as part of Reddit. Maybe by the time they leave, UX on lemmy apps would have improved and they can transition more easily.
I think that diluted Nazi content would still make some people leave. Just not as much as otherwise would.
And odds are that they wouldn’t. They think that they have some mission like “redpilling” the “woke” and the “normies”; they want proselytism for exponential growth.