I dislike Libertarian ideology, disagree with it rather vehemently, and have probably amassed a fair amount of negative karma on /r/Libertarian over the years... but I still absolutely respected...
I dislike Libertarian ideology, disagree with it rather vehemently, and have probably amassed a fair amount of negative karma on /r/Libertarian over the years... but I still absolutely respected the fact that I could go into that community and ask honest questions and overall receive honest replies (even if I got downvoted in the process). To hear that the subreddit has been taken over by these twats and that they are now banning anyone who dares disagree with them or question their ideology is really, really sad to hear. :(
It's been a long time since I had any regular contact with Reddit, so take my comments for what they're worth. Reddit meta is interesting as anthropology; I expect there's still interesting...
It's been a long time since I had any regular contact with Reddit, so take my comments for what they're worth. Reddit meta is interesting as anthropology; I expect there's still interesting research to be done on how anonymity in a crowd serves as an amplifier and promoter of human psychopathology.
r/Libertarian always seemed like a space for performative ideological posturing, the kind of competitive edgelord-ism that invites authoritarian power dynamics even if the nominal ideology is liberal (in the classic sense). r/Libertarian had motivated enemies, lawless actors, and intrinsic collective defense problems; the increasingly odious fringes just made things worse.
To the extent that r/Libertarianism gained participants through claims of functional problems with democratic pluralism, those same adherents would have been welcoming to other non-pluralist ideologies, however incoherent or destructive.
And that's why I'm not on Reddit. :-) "psychopathology" - mental disorders and maladaptive behaviors You've probably seen "virtue signalling" - it's similar to what I meant by "performative...
Exemplary
And that's why I'm not on Reddit. :-)
"psychopathology" - mental disorders and maladaptive behaviors
You've probably seen "virtue signalling" - it's similar to what I meant by "performative ideological posturing". Think of it as an exaggerated demonstration of identity and membership in a group - "I'm so libertarian that I don't even use public roads!" (not that that's a likely true statement...).
"nominal ideology" - it says it's "libertarian" on the tin, but it actually contains an acceptance of authoritarian rules enforcement as long as it's not done by the already established authorities.
"lawless actors, and intrinsic collective defense problems" - to the extent that r/Libertarianhas rules, there are still participants who break them. The basic nature of r/Libertarian believers means there won't be enough organization (group participation and consensus) to stop internal misbehavior or oppose people outside the group who want to do destructive things.
"functional problems with democratic pluralism" - Democratic pluralism works better than other systems, for more people, but that can be hard to prove, and it's not flawless. Nobody really wants to be subjected to cost and effort without personal consent, even if it's objectively better for everyone. Especially if you're in a minority (say, super-rich people). Do you agree to participate in a political system where other people or groups can make you accept rules that benefit people who aren't you, or like you, or even impose costs (e.g. taxes) on you, even if participation in that system does benefit you in other ways? What if those benefits aren't immediately visible or valuable to you (national defense, clean air, safer roads and food, etc.)?
"non-pluralist ideologies" - as an example, think of white supremacy. Rather than an system which balances the interests of "white" people among all the other potential interested parties (pluralism), you'd describe and endorse a system where the interests of "white" people are paramount over all others. Could be alluring if you're white, not so great for everyone else.
Likewise, with fascism, the paramount authority figure or junta takes precedence over all other competing interests and can exclude those interested parties from participation, rule and punish without consent, etc. If you think that the paramount leader has your interests in mind, can punish rule-breakers and maintain prosperity through order, well why not?
Acceptance of either those examples as an evolution for r/Libertarian(s) is possible because they've already rejected an established order (e.g. liberal, pluralist democracy) for whatever reason, and libertarianism is also showing its flaws.
It's a manifested metaphor for how libertarianism opens the main path for fascism every single time. They decry any action against violent, anti-democractic speech because they think that anything...
It's a manifested metaphor for how libertarianism opens the main path for fascism every single time.
They decry any action against violent, anti-democractic speech because they think that anything can just be debated away. This obviously is meaningless when the opposing group isn't looking for a debate at all, instead they just want to expose their ideals, recruit members, and they just use anti-debate rhetoric techniques (such as firehosing) to weaken the libertarians. This is exactly the way that fascism grows stronger.
If they weren't allowed to post, and were banned from the subreddit when discovered (and if I understood it correctly, the subreddit did have a discussion on whether the fascist moderators should be kept or not, and voted for keeping them), this wouldn't have happened.
For years, Reddit’s most popular libertarian board, r/Libertarian, eschewed formal moderation in a bid to stay true to its ideology’s anything-goes ethos. But over the course of the last several weeks, Reddit users with a history of advocating white supremacy and state authoritarianism took advantage of the open, un-policed nature of the Libertarian subreddit to make it their own.
Longtime users believe the moves are part of a far-right digital coup.
The new cadre of moderators have swiftly instituted strict rules they say are necessary to keep out trolls, undertaking mass bans of dissenting users. While the new moderators have written that they’re banning liberals and leftists whose positions are counter to the group’s, longtime libertarian users of the group say they’ve been caught up and believe the moves are part of a far-right digital coup targeting r/Libertarian.
The new cadre of moderators have swiftly instituted strict rules they say are necessary to keep out trolls, undertaking mass bans of dissenting users. While the new moderators have written that they’re banning liberals and leftists whose positions are counter to the group’s, longtime libertarian users of the group say they’ve been caught up and believe the moves are part of a far-right digital coup targeting r/Libertarian.
Some users are still pushing back against the leadership changes. But if the takeover is successful, it would give far-right users control of the largest libertarian subreddit, whose 261,000 subscribers make it one of the internet’s most popular libertarian communities.
The moderators’ changes came two weeks ago, after a group of leftists users from the r/ChapoTrapHouse podcast subreddit had allegedly “brigaded” r/Libertarian. (“Brigading” is a Reddit term for when outside users come into a group to troll it by downvoting posts.) One of r/Libertarian’s moderators, Reddit user rightc0ast, and new moderators that rightc0ast brought on between December 6 and 7, argued that they needed to tighten the group’s laissez-faire rules to protect it from outside trolling.
“Hello, /r/Libertarian,” new moderator JobDestroyer wrote on December 8 in a now-removed post announcing the new rules. “We are implementing a massive overhaul of the existing rules system. There are many reasons for this.”
In the post, JobDestroyer detailed a list of new restrictions barring trolling and “off-topic” conversations, and threatened to ban anyone believed to be posing as a libertarian, but were secretly on the left.
“We are implementing a massive overhaul of the existing rules.”
The subreddit’s users, along with posters in other libertarian subreddits like r/LibertarianUncensored and r/LibertarianPartyUSA, immediately decried the changes as a departure from libertarian ethos while calling attention to the background of users behind the change.
To expand on this, a reddit admin was testing out a voting system that would allow users to set subreddit policy. The voting system used weighted votes based on "community points" which were...
The moderators’ changes came two weeks ago, after a group of leftists users from the r/ChapoTrapHouse podcast subreddit had allegedly “brigaded” r/Libertarian.
To expand on this, a reddit admin was testing out a voting system that would allow users to set subreddit policy. The voting system used weighted votes based on "community points" which were automatically given out (presumably based on activity and karma).
A couple /r/ChapoTrapHouse users who were also active in /r/Libertarian (because Left-Libertarian is a thing) found out they had so many community points that they could swing the result of some votes singlehandedly, and called for a left-lib voting bloc. That's what prompted /u/rightc0ast to go off about "brigading", which led to all this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/a1ki20/introducing_community_points_for_subreddit/ Hmmm... I wonder where they got the idea of reputation and weighted voting from? Leave it to reddit...
To expand on this, a reddit admin was testing out a voting system that would allow users to set subreddit policy. The voting system used weighted votes based on "community points" which were automatically given out (presumably based on activity and karma).
Hmmm... I wonder where they got the idea of reputation and weighted voting from? Leave it to reddit to try and implement it based on such a one-dimensional metric as karma though... with predictable results.
Interesting reading. I used to read /r/Libertarian from time to time - it would sometimes have quite good discussion in the comments, even if the posts themselves tended to be fairly low quality....
Interesting reading. I used to read /r/Libertarian from time to time - it would sometimes have quite good discussion in the comments, even if the posts themselves tended to be fairly low quality. I had noticed that the quality of discourse seemed to have declined on the last couple of times I had visited the sub, so I'm not wholly unsurprising to hear of this coup.
However entertaining, when a subreddit degenerates into 50% funny meme posts, it's just not worth the time. I don't know how much more can be said about a political ideology than usually comes up...
However entertaining, when a subreddit degenerates into 50% funny meme posts, it's just not worth the time.
I don't know how much more can be said about a political ideology than usually comes up in its first few years of discussion. There has to be a law of diminishing returns on novel and useful contribution when there's little real world data being gathered.
I dislike Libertarian ideology, disagree with it rather vehemently, and have probably amassed a fair amount of negative karma on /r/Libertarian over the years... but I still absolutely respected the fact that I could go into that community and ask honest questions and overall receive honest replies (even if I got downvoted in the process). To hear that the subreddit has been taken over by these twats and that they are now banning anyone who dares disagree with them or question their ideology is really, really sad to hear. :(
It's been a long time since I had any regular contact with Reddit, so take my comments for what they're worth. Reddit meta is interesting as anthropology; I expect there's still interesting research to be done on how anonymity in a crowd serves as an amplifier and promoter of human psychopathology.
r/Libertarian always seemed like a space for performative ideological posturing, the kind of competitive edgelord-ism that invites authoritarian power dynamics even if the nominal ideology is liberal (in the classic sense). r/Libertarian had motivated enemies, lawless actors, and intrinsic collective defense problems; the increasingly odious fringes just made things worse.
To the extent that r/Libertarianism gained participants through claims of functional problems with democratic pluralism, those same adherents would have been welcoming to other non-pluralist ideologies, however incoherent or destructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccoj5lhLmSQ
I'm not going to lie, what you just said went way over my head. :P
And that's why I'm not on Reddit. :-)
"psychopathology" - mental disorders and maladaptive behaviors
You've probably seen "virtue signalling" - it's similar to what I meant by "performative ideological posturing". Think of it as an exaggerated demonstration of identity and membership in a group - "I'm so libertarian that I don't even use public roads!" (not that that's a likely true statement...).
"nominal ideology" - it says it's "libertarian" on the tin, but it actually contains an acceptance of authoritarian rules enforcement as long as it's not done by the already established authorities.
"lawless actors, and intrinsic collective defense problems" - to the extent that r/Libertarian has rules, there are still participants who break them. The basic nature of r/Libertarian believers means there won't be enough organization (group participation and consensus) to stop internal misbehavior or oppose people outside the group who want to do destructive things.
"functional problems with democratic pluralism" - Democratic pluralism works better than other systems, for more people, but that can be hard to prove, and it's not flawless. Nobody really wants to be subjected to cost and effort without personal consent, even if it's objectively better for everyone. Especially if you're in a minority (say, super-rich people). Do you agree to participate in a political system where other people or groups can make you accept rules that benefit people who aren't you, or like you, or even impose costs (e.g. taxes) on you, even if participation in that system does benefit you in other ways? What if those benefits aren't immediately visible or valuable to you (national defense, clean air, safer roads and food, etc.)?
"non-pluralist ideologies" - as an example, think of white supremacy. Rather than an system which balances the interests of "white" people among all the other potential interested parties (pluralism), you'd describe and endorse a system where the interests of "white" people are paramount over all others. Could be alluring if you're white, not so great for everyone else.
Likewise, with fascism, the paramount authority figure or junta takes precedence over all other competing interests and can exclude those interested parties from participation, rule and punish without consent, etc. If you think that the paramount leader has your interests in mind, can punish rule-breakers and maintain prosperity through order, well why not?
Acceptance of either those examples as an evolution for r/Libertarian(s) is possible because they've already rejected an established order (e.g. liberal, pluralist democracy) for whatever reason, and libertarianism is also showing its flaws.
It's a manifested metaphor for how libertarianism opens the main path for fascism every single time.
They decry any action against violent, anti-democractic speech because they think that anything can just be debated away. This obviously is meaningless when the opposing group isn't looking for a debate at all, instead they just want to expose their ideals, recruit members, and they just use anti-debate rhetoric techniques (such as firehosing) to weaken the libertarians. This is exactly the way that fascism grows stronger.
If they weren't allowed to post, and were banned from the subreddit when discovered (and if I understood it correctly, the subreddit did have a discussion on whether the fascist moderators should be kept or not, and voted for keeping them), this wouldn't have happened.
To expand on this, a reddit admin was testing out a voting system that would allow users to set subreddit policy. The voting system used weighted votes based on "community points" which were automatically given out (presumably based on activity and karma).
A couple /r/ChapoTrapHouse users who were also active in /r/Libertarian (because Left-Libertarian is a thing) found out they had so many community points that they could swing the result of some votes singlehandedly, and called for a left-lib voting bloc. That's what prompted /u/rightc0ast to go off about "brigading", which led to all this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/a1ki20/introducing_community_points_for_subreddit/
Hmmm... I wonder where they got the idea of reputation and weighted voting from? Leave it to reddit to try and implement it based on such a one-dimensional metric as karma though... with predictable results.
This isn't a new thing: Stack Exchange & Stack Overflow have been using reputation and weighted voting for nearly a decade.
Thank you for the additional background!
Interesting reading. I used to read /r/Libertarian from time to time - it would sometimes have quite good discussion in the comments, even if the posts themselves tended to be fairly low quality. I had noticed that the quality of discourse seemed to have declined on the last couple of times I had visited the sub, so I'm not wholly unsurprising to hear of this coup.
However entertaining, when a subreddit degenerates into 50% funny meme posts, it's just not worth the time.
I don't know how much more can be said about a political ideology than usually comes up in its first few years of discussion. There has to be a law of diminishing returns on novel and useful contribution when there's little real world data being gathered.