>“It’s one of the founding principles of Reddit to foster [political] discussion,” Huffman said in the call with reporters.
Ironically, /r/The_Donald highlighted a key flaw in reddit's system: moderators.
Moderators in reddit's sub vary from being totally absent to all-controlling. /r/The_Donald's mods were at the very far end of the controlling spectrum. For example, back in the early days of the sub, before Trump was even elected, one of their posts showed up on /r/all (Anything highly voted on any subreddit can show up there). Somebody was gushing about "The Art of the Deal". I replied to them that they should check out some of Tony Schwartz's other books and was immediately banned from /r/The_Donald for life. The post in which I said this was removed. People went on gushing about the brilliance of Trump.
Moderators on reddit are not selected or paid. They "volunteer". They have absolute control over who posts and what is posted in their sub. There is zero transparency. Users can't see what moderators are doing. The end result is that a sub is as biased as it's moderators. The thing is, reddit subs are like communities. People who post in a sub regularly get upvotes for conforming to the sub's biases, downvotes for struggling against them, and see only what the moderators let them see. Pretty soon their views conform to those of the moderators. /r/The_Donald allowed some pretty crazy people to polarize a lot of other people who were probably a lot more balanced in their political views before Reddit came along.
For this reason, I no longer post in or read Reddit's political subs. Most subs seem better than /r/The_Donald, but you simply don't know what the mods are doing to shape your views. Personal experience has led me to believe /r/Canada also has some really bad moderators right now, and you can see the tone of that sub gradually changing over time. It's simply unacceptable to place this much trust in people who are totally anonymous.
So, where do I get my political news from? Newspapers. I read several sources distributed from left-centre to right-centre on mediabiasfactcheck.com's ratings. Dead tree media may have corporate biases and a host of other problems but, at least, you can begin to get a handle on who they are and what their biases are. Also, by removing the upvote system from the mix, you don't have meaningless internet points serving as both carrot and stick to make you subconsciously conform.
Bottom line, Reddit is for cat gifs and people smacking each other in the nuts. It is not a safe place to get your politics from.
