I joined reddit on the tailwind, so it was all echo chamber, we hate newcomers, gatekeeping, automod frenzy, too many rulebreakers, too many rules, etc I could be wrong, but thats what I imagine it used to be like.
I joined reddit on the tailwind, so it was all echo chamber, we hate newcomers, gatekeeping, automod frenzy, too many rulebreakers, too many rules, etc I could be wrong, but thats what I imagine it used to be like.
Nope. Reddit in the early days was a place for free speech. I had a 15 year old account till I left. After about 2016 Reddit went full-Orwellian. And Lemmy.world has carried that tyranny forwards very faithfully. Just try and speak out against the narratives and you’ll be silenced quickly. That’s not what early Reddit was like AT ALL.
When people say “free speech” I tend to hear “call of duty lobby”. In the early days of reddit, my experience is that it was mostly just tech people talking about PC builds and sharing Top Gear clips (how I discovered Top Gear). And of course, it was very easy to find abuse groups, fatpeoplehate, watchpeopledie, 4chan, etc.
I don’t recall this mystical free speech bastion, because I don’t think I see the concept the same as you. Sure, in the early days of the internet it was easier to be an anonymous abuser, but I have always avoided those communities… and the reason they disappear is… they’re not popular places. They just collect butt heads until the butt heads think, " Yeah, everyone thinks like me! I’m a free thinker!" (In the limited scope of the butt head group)
But I mean, the majority keeps eradicating those spaces. At some point if your population continues to be sprayed with bugspray, maybe consider if you are a bug.