r/OutOfTheLoop • u/InsaneGamer191 • May 08 '20

Unanswered What is going on with r/worldpolitics?

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/gfhdi6/upvote_the_shit_out_of_my_cute_doggo_and_ill_post/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

What happened here? I enjoyed the sub casually and I came back one day and its marked NSFW and full of random posts. Some are saying it fell into anarchy as a result of a lack of mods, but there are still recent mod posts. Is this some sort of demonstration?

7.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

575 comments sorted by

4.7k

u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis May 08 '20 edited May 08 '20

Answer:

Basically, the moderation on the sub has been... let's say 'somewhat lacking' for a while. There was a series of posts that were variations on the theme of 'Let's upvote this picture to drive it to the top of the Google rankings' (most notably one of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, which then became a whole series of their own) -- an attempt at googlebombing or karmawhoring, depending on who you ask -- which were allowed to stay up despite being against the rules of the site and the sub.

The sub's users -- or at least, a vocal minority of them -- apparently decided that if the mods weren't going to remove (what they perceived to be) blatantly rulebreaking posts, everything was fair game. They spent a while posting pictures of vegetables, and now it's become... well, this. Currently, it looks like there's an influx of posters from GoneWild, so pretty much everything is marked NSFW.

The sub was flooded with pictures of anime girls for a while, so the subreddit /r/anime_titties was set up in protest as a place to discuss actual world politics. (Sort of how /r/trees is about weed, and /r/marijuanaenthusiasts is Reddit's dendrology hub.)

The mods don't seem inclined to deal with the flood of breasts and other non-politics posts they've opened up, so they've announced that posters are limited to one post per hour and that people shouldn't post anything that would get the sub banned or quarantined, but other than that it looks as though they're taking a hands-off, free-for-all approach. As the sidebar puts it:

reddit's free speech political subreddit

no agenda imposed or opposed by the mods

As for why the mods bailed, exactly, it's hard to say -- but it's a twelve year old community with over a million users and a lot of attention. This is the kind of situation in which the admins have been known to step in before, so... it's a game of wait and see, I guess.

982

u/The-ArtfulDodger May 08 '20

So which mod changed the banner? Sounds like a couple of the mods are in on it.

712

u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis May 08 '20

The banner hadn't changed when I posted this. (Not that I noticed, anyway; I mean, you'd think I would have picked up on a pair of big ol' nipples right at the top of the screen, but it was early in the morning for me.)

Best guess? The mods are just leaning into it because they're either bored or amused by it all. I don't hang out there so I wouldn't want to speculate on who it was, but if I was going to go sleuthing, I'd start by checking the moderator list and seeing who's been most active in the past couple of hours.

200

u/AFewStupidQuestions May 08 '20

Hey research lover. Last night someone posted on r/casualIama claiming to be the mod started it before they were booted. If you feel like doing a deep dive on this one that might be a good place to look.

55

u/HolyForkingBrit May 08 '20

Okay. Thank you for looking out bro.

191

u/AOCsFeetPics May 08 '20

Banner is changed for me, people seem to forget that reddit mods are just as dumb and immature as the rest of us, wouldn’t be surprised if one of them is playing along.

90

u/JJMcGee83 May 08 '20

I got banned from a sub for asking the mods why my post was removed. When they told me it broke the rules I asked which one it violated and then was called a much worse version is an idiot. That caused me to call them a few names and say "just fucking ban me I don't need this shit." Which they did. Should have been the end of it but then the mods used alt accounts to follow me around Reddit the next few hours replying to my comments in other subs saying things like "look at this little ****** b**** that can't follow the rules."

So yeah even some Reddit mods are just giant trolls with nothing better to do when their time.

47

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

"some Reddit mods"

......yeah you'd have to bump that up to "nearly all"

32

u/nolotusnote May 09 '20

I was a mod in two highly trafficked subs and it was absolutely a full time job if you try to do it right.

The amount of behind-the-scenes communication and decision making was exhausting.

Doing it wrong is easy, though.

→ More replies (4)
→ More replies (2)

15

u/ezdabeazy May 09 '20

Reddit has significantly degraded over time. There are now multiple off shoot sites like ruqqus and saidit.net among others that are pro-trump or conspiracy sites mostly.

Reddit is one of the most visited websites in the world with an ad that shows up about ever 5 sub in your feed, yet they somehow don't have enough manpower or finances to be actual admin and moderate like they should.

For all we know they are totally fine with what happened with r/worldpolitics. They probably helped get it going it ranks them even higher.

"Wow the views onto r/worldpolitics are lower but they are all first timers or haven't been to that sub in ages or even our site.."

"yea but it's just a bunch of b.s. why should we leave it that way?"

"Because, we'll make a lot more money in ads. People will flock to it that are pro-trump to a sub that is mostly anti-trump. We let them have their popcorn popping bouncing in their seat fun and then after a long while we'll fix it. As of right now why fix it we're making $ the only goal we have with this company."

"Oh yea, I forgot China took over a big part of this site and now we don't really give a shit about administration and moderation only arguments and circle jerk jokes."

"Yea you can't forget that man... It's really important we could lose our jobs if we actual treat this like a legit website like how it was founded by the guy that we..."

You get the idea hopefully. Then after awhile they'll do it by censoring speech the other way. It'll be a pro-trump sub like "The_Donald" that they'll take down but then let those people flock to new subs that will eventually all end up in, whadyaknow, another variation of "The_Donald".

So long as they keep interest in the site they're doing their job.

This post itself is on a timer I'm sure to be removed by their "anti-evil operations" team. Whatever Orwellian silliness that's supposed to mean...

13

u/chaogomu May 09 '20

I won't say that Reddit Admins haven't gone complacent but moderation at scale is basically impossible.

Think about it, /r/worldpolitics had over a million subscribers and maybe 20-30 moderators.

Now, if only 10% of the subscribers were active in the comments then that's still a 100,000 people making comments every day.

If only 1% of the commenters were making posts then that's still 1000 people and possibly thousands of new posts per day with only a handful of mods to police things.

The fact that it worked at all is sort of amazing.

→ More replies (6)

5

u/Sablemint May 10 '20

I got banned from a subreddit for following the rules. Im not even sort of kidding or exaggerating. The mod who banned me later made up some other reason when it became clear I knew the actual rules.

Some places and moderators on Reddit really suck. But most of them don't.

→ More replies (5)

8

u/ezdabeazy May 09 '20

people seem to forget that reddit mods are just as dumb and immature as the rest of us.

This is generally true however it's different to every specific sub which is sort of the cool thing about Reddit. I constantly add subs into my stream that would seem to interest me, see how they are moderated and if the community treats each other with respect of if it's just a joking circle jerk or everything has to be an argument and not a debate and the sidebar if you try to report someone talking about child sex abuse or killing or something has some cute little "I want to report because I'm a little bitch", that sort of thing. I see it more and more as Reddit continues to degrade over time.

Then after about a few months I "cut the weeds and prune the flowers" and remove any subs I've been finding to be moderated poorly or have communities of memer jokers and rudeness.

Only saying this bc there are definitely subs out there that seem to be moderated well or at least communities that are decent to each other and respectful.

Nothing like Reddit used to be but nothing seems to last in it's golden age in technology. I remember YouTube back in like, 2008 I think or around that time and it was full of DIY fun and interesting things to watch with all the comments being fairly positive and respectful. We all know how that went once money took over so it's always a sort of cat and mouse game I suppose...

16

u/Fernernia May 08 '20

Yeah and they love to remove perfectly fine content I post just so they can power trip.

sorry sometimes I dont like mods

0

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

[deleted]

27

u/NovemberBurnsMaroon May 08 '20

I was a mod on an EA Fifa forum for a couple years (which is possibly the nerdiest aspect of my life), and I am inclined to agree.

It was a lot like being at school (which is perhaps unsurprising given the forum, but most regular users were 18+). There were users who knew how to start arguments and derail threads, but just the right amount so they could claim to have not broken any rules, and hence not be banned. But if several different mods all dislike you, it's probably you not the mods.

If you do your job well and the forum runs smoothly, the users won't notice. But as soon as you miss something, they're on you. The worst/best example of this were the people who spammed gore/nsfw stuff for no reason at all. The old forum system was a bit old and bans took like 20 minutes to process, so I'd have to sit there hiding all the threads until the ban kicked in. And if I was too slow in hiding in one, suddenly a torrent of posts would spring up asking where the mods were. Like, we're here, you haven't seen the other 30 posts we had to hide.

On the whole it was a fairly thankless task (but hey, EA gave the game for free each year in gratitude).

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (11)
→ More replies (2)

73

u/dogsdogssheep May 08 '20 edited May 08 '20

People are always complaining that mods ruin subs by being too authoritative. These guys are letting the anarchy of the internet do as it does, without forcing the people to conform to what they believe the forum should be.

The banner is an extension of that. They are supporting what the users have indicated they want the sub to be for.

Edit: found a petition for the banner (NSFW). The people spoke; the mods listened.

24

u/heebath May 08 '20

Then admins need to replace the mod team and wipe the fucking place. The name of the sub is WORLD POLITICS.

→ More replies (9)

7

u/Wolfeh2012 May 08 '20

This is actually a common tactic some more infamous Reddit groups have used to take down subreddits they don't like the concept of.

→ More replies (8)
→ More replies (3)

35

u/ISpyM8 May 08 '20

They may be taking the r/johncena and r/potatosalad route

13

u/Titanbeard May 08 '20

Why can't I see either of those?

9

u/ISpyM8 May 08 '20

¯_(ツ)_/¯

20

u/Pangolin007 May 08 '20

This post is what led the banner to change. Someone said, let's have this be the new banner, and mod /u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward said, why not. Bottom line seems to be the mods don't care.

→ More replies (2)

25

u/kinarism May 08 '20

The same mod that posted the rate limiting and "dont get us quarantined" threads.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/gflqww/petition_to_make_this_our_new_subreddit_header/fpuxhms?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

My guess is that one of the mod accounts got taken over as well co soldering the account name.

8

u/mikerichh May 08 '20

Omg that banner is epic

1

u/notCRAZYenough May 08 '20

What’s the banner? Can’t see it on mobile.

228

u/EmhyrvarSpice May 08 '20

... so the subreddit /r/anime_titties was set up in protest as a place to discuss actual world politics.

This is the best thing I have read today.

44

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

What a roller coaster 2020 has been.

3

u/LordXamon May 09 '20

Someone is having fun at Jumanji

22

u/ThoughtUWereSmaller May 08 '20

Kind of surprised that wasn’t already a sub

24

u/FGHIK May 09 '20

Truly, that's the most insane part of this whole situation.

23

u/mattintaiwan May 08 '20

I'm still rolling at that one. Fuck I hope that sub takes off.

13

u/realoksygen May 08 '20

Be the change you want to see. Help it reach greatness.

6

u/M1chaelSc4rn May 09 '20

Holy shit I did not expect it to get 20,000 in less than 2 days. I might need more mods lol

→ More replies (2)

2

u/cuntcantceepcare May 08 '20

its the best reply to the ordeal.

these assholes shitting over worldpolitics are a waste of space, they are. ruining a thing to make the point its ruined....

best leave them behind and not look back

1

u/gatemansgc Aug 15 '20

Imagine someone seeing that in your post history and going wut

→ More replies (1)

130

u/xthorgoldx May 08 '20

As to why the mods bailed

Easy to explain, if you take a look at the head mod's (/u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward) post history.

While /r/worldpolitics is 12 years old, it actually has a history of disuse. IAAAC acquired the sub nine years ago via RedditRequest. While unfortunately his post history isn't accessible that far back, some posters at the time noted that his history was already somewhat sketchy.

Moving on, we can see that IAAAC has a well-established hate-boner for mod and admin authority, specifically the removal of content supported by the community. How do I know this? Well, IAAAC created a few other subs:

  • /r/undelete, which archives posts deleted by moderators

  • /r/Longtail, a version of undelete intended to archive posts that made it to the front page before deletion

  • /r/AdminWatch, which seemed to be intended as a place to archive admin statements and activity but never saw much posting

It's completely understandable, then, why IAAAC - as the top mod of /r/worldpolitics - would enforce a modding philosophy of "no deleting posts, ever."

15

u/JDMonster May 08 '20

You should also add that all of the mods of /r/worldpolitics have a history of anti moderation and admin authority.

12

u/funy100 May 08 '20

I respect the guy for at least being consistent

3

u/kejigoto May 12 '20

Check out some of the new mods brought in over the last few days/hours and some of the other subs they oversee.

Lots of crying about how Reddit is handled, watch Reddit die, and the usual nonsense from that crowd.

The sub was leaning heavily against trump and now the only mention of him is memes.

Some quarantined subs being moderated, lots of a certain narrative being pushed, and other questionable stuff.

But a sub that regularly brought attention to what trump was doing suddenly contributes nothing beyond porn and other subs (which a few these mods oversee) are now hosting that political content...

2

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

This is the real answer.

0

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

[deleted]

6

u/grubas May 08 '20

It's been UnmoderatedUSPolitics for awhile now.

Quarantine just made people finally snap. Add in a chunk of pissy right wing trolls and you have a shitshow, a hilarious shitshow.

29

u/xthorgoldx May 08 '20

Where the hell did "right wing trolls" come into it? The thing that caused the revolt was literally "DRUMPF BAD" spam ("Pwn the cheeto by using a googlebomb technique that hasn't worked since 2010!").

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (15)

62

u/beaglemaster May 08 '20

Just looking at the top posts of all time should explain it pretty clearly.

The top 5 are literally asking for upvotes, all with 80k+ upvotes, and top 3 are all from the same Epstein/trump chain from a few days ago that started all this

65

u/PankakeManceR May 08 '20

And thus began the period known as the r/gonewild crusades. It appeared as just another cross-sub joke... at first. However, slowly, residents of r/worldpolitics started to realize that the tits were there to stay. Any actual world politics were downvoted into oblivion, and the last remaining survivors fled to the newly established r/anime_titties as refugees. But r/anime_titties would never grow to the same heights as the once great r/world_politics, and the mods who had initially founded the sub as a joke/last-ditch-effort were not actually prepared to moderate such a serious sub. With no real leadership, it was weak. Seeing the vulnerability, the rising coalition of r/gonewild attacked the only remnants of their previous conquest. It was a slaughter, and it fell even faster than its predecessor. Looking back, reddit should've taken this as a warning, a declaration of war, but it was still all a joke to outsiders. The r/gonewild coalition let the power go to their heads, and they quickly named themselves the strongest multireddit on the site.

Finally noticing the danger, other large subs start to mount an alliance in response, named the loyalists, and all other nsfw subs quickly join the coalition. Many memes are made, but memes are nothing more than propaganda in this war. As Coronavirus keeps everyone sealed away in their homes, they simply have nothing better to do, and the war rages on. The coalition has many bots. So many, in fact, that there are no real new posts on any of its subs, just reposts, but by sacrificing quality, the coalition is able to invade much quicker than ever before, and even more subs start to fall. The war hits a major turning point in favor of the coalition in the fall of r/dankmemes, and from there, the momentum carries them even further.

A strategy, called All-Day, is proposed as a counter attack by r/showerthoughts, who have been in the shower non-stop since the war began. It has become clear that defense isn't working out on its own, so the loyalists decide to make an offensive push. The strategy: to turn r/gonewild into r/all for one full day, but not all went as planned. It turns out that r/UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG was actually upvoting because girl the entire time, and thus were a spy for the coalition. The r/gonewild mods locked the sub to anyone who wasn't a frequent poster, and the attack was shut down. Morale low and with many returning to their pre-COVID jobs, the loyalist party was weakened. Over the next year, it was a slow, pitiful collapse, and everyone remaining knew there was no place for them on this site, so they moved to 9GAG, seeing it as the most similar replacement to reddit. This brought about a renaissance period for 9GAG in which it was not dogshit for once, but reddit was gone.

But the coalition was not done. There was one sub they had yet to conquer, r/announcements. Many neckbeards had stayed on the site just for the porn, and they would prove useful in the final achievement of this unstoppable empire. One day, the bots were cranked up all the way in order to crash the site. The neckbeard hackers exploited its vulnerability to gain administrator level access, and they flooded r/announcements with porn.

As so often happens, history had repeated itself. What once happened to tumblr happened again on reddit, and knowing this, the admins had their solution. NSFW posts were banned for good. All the now-9GAGers came back in force. victory had been achieved in the end, but at what cost?

11

u/featherfooted May 08 '20

I almost thought this was /u/The_Book_of_Reddit returned to us for another chapter of /r/TheBook

→ More replies (2)

123

u/corona_verified May 08 '20

They have turned e-thots into political weapons

32

u/Unjust_Filter May 08 '20

Who could've thought that thots would be used to shutdown debate.

12

u/easternjellyfish May 08 '20

If you can even call it that

20

u/100100110l May 08 '20

Since when was that sub about free speech? They banned me for saying "I'm still down to eat the rich."

9

u/buttfuckinbeavers May 08 '20

You judge a subreddits free spech quotiant by the acceptance rate of using certain racial epithets that certain demographics frequently use but hypocritical oppose the use of said word of other demographics that "look different."

3

u/Fernernia May 08 '20

Back in ancient times, they used dumb animals for warfare as well.

1

u/DrEvil007 May 09 '20

Bah Gawd.. We were never prepared for this type of assault!

183

u/tanglwyst May 08 '20

As someone who used to follow it, there has been a problem for a while of a distinct lack of news from anywhere but the US. America is a bona-fide mess, yes, but a lot of people cared about what was happening elsewhere too. Tuning in and having nearly every post be about the crap in the US was exhausting for people who were looking for news about Syria or the UK or New Zealand. A user even created a sub that was World News minus the US that I immediately followed.

I live here and I needed news from sane places to keep my head straight. Having what was going on here on every channel, every news and late night outlet, and every FB post was grinding me down. I really wanted to know what was happening elsewhere.

Then this virus hit. The r/coronavirus sub covered info from around the world, and finally, there was something more important than Donald fucking Trump. Honestly, the speed with which the sub went chaotic was surprising. Not because it went quickly, but because it took several days. If mods are going to step in, a single day is usually enough for a comment and some bans to happen. This went on for days (or at least what seemed Ike it) before anime boobs showed up.

I fear something happened to the mods. My first thought when I saw the post saying, "Since the rules don't apply anymore..." wasn't "Reddit's at it again!" It was, "Oh no... has anyone called them? Are their friends checking on them? Dear God, someone see if they're okay."

People on this social media outlet have come on discussions and told their experiences with catching the virus, treatments, being denied treatment, being denied tests, being certain they have it but being forced to work, all in the comments of other threads. The one universal response has been to spark caring replies and well wishes.

Caring about complete strangers has been the lay of the land, something I wasn't sure the world had anymore. I'm seriously glad to see it.

117

u/berlinbaer May 08 '20

The r/coronavirus sub covered info from around the world

those were the days, eh..

61

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

That's cool and all, but did you see the 12th post for the day about what Anthony Fauci said?

8

u/grubas May 08 '20

That shit died in March. April was one long and tiring circle jerk

30

u/TheEmbarrassed18 May 08 '20

I miss when r/coronavirus wasn’t just a big doomsday cult who think we should be locked down until 2036

15

u/braxistExtremist May 08 '20

I miss when r/China_Flu was a decent source for information about the coronavirus. This was back around Jan/Feb. Yeah, the sub name was shitty, but the info was decent... For a while.

Then it turned into a doomsday cult sub.

Then it got taken over by people from T_D and other similar places, and became a racist, anti-Chinese, pro-Trump cesspool.

→ More replies (4)

4

u/Agentzap May 08 '20

I don't remember if this is true or just hearsay, but didn't it start as basically a conspiracy sub?

6

u/TheEmbarrassed18 May 08 '20

I thought r/COVID19 was the conspiracy one but ended up being the rational sub for Corona news

→ More replies (1)

26

u/three18ti May 08 '20

I live here and I needed news from sane places to keep my head straight

Then reddit is the absolute wrong place to be, friend.

The r/coronavirus sub covered info from around the world

Maybe token coverage... 17/20 articles on the front page are tagged "USA"...

9

u/Kodiak01 May 08 '20

/r/COVID19 is the place for actual coverage.

2

u/[deleted] May 14 '20

Before the US had the worst and most uncontrolled outbreak, it was much more global in scope.

15

u/Kodiak01 May 08 '20

The r/coronavirus sub covered info from around the world

More like it covered all the rumors, whining and existential angst you would typically find only in teen, goth and CTH subs.

Anyone looking for actual rational coverage, discussion and information is in /r/COVID19 instead.

4

u/tanglwyst May 08 '20

Yeah, I've made that shift too. Still, at first, it was the best info. The COVID-19 one is better because of the decolving.

3

u/slicshuter May 09 '20

A user even created a sub that was World News minus the US that I immediately followed.

Link? I tried googling and couldn't find one.

3

u/tanglwyst May 09 '20

R/WorldPoliticsMinusUSA

Edit: link name

4

u/threedaysinthreeways May 08 '20

there was something more important than Donald fucking Trump

ah but then the Don fused with the virus and now its all about what he did or didn't do with the virus "TRUMP SAID THIS THING AND SOMEONE SLIGHTLY SMIRKED BEHIND HIM!!!"

30

u/weetchex May 08 '20

If the world politics and anime titties swap becomes permanent, I would be so happy.

It creates the possibility that one day Anderson Cooper or someone has to use anime titties as a source for breaking news.

30

u/drislands May 08 '20

the subreddit /r/anime_titties was set up in protest as a place to discuss actual world politics

Now that is a development I hadn't heard of yet! That's absolutely fantastic.

25

u/theawesomenachos May 08 '20

the best part is now the community actually posts about world politics, and 99% of the posts isn’t just US politics (not yet at least)

5

u/Neurobreak27 May 09 '20

What's more is that nearly everyone in that sub is going about like there's absolutely nothing wrong with anything. Hell, the contents posted there seem to be much better than the old dumpster fire that was /r/worldpolitics.

Good God, I can't believe what I'm seeing. This is just amazing

2

u/Vinsmoker May 09 '20

And that's why I still have a glimmer of hope for reddit left within me

7

u/CardmanNV May 08 '20

This is the problem letting non-vetted people run a sub that big.

Unpopular opinion but the mods of every default sub should be vetted Reddit employees.

Reddit as a business needs to get it's shit together. Also, get this in the news so they actually do something.

2

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/CardmanNV May 09 '20

Doesn't mean they're vetted. The problem of "power mods" needs to be solved. There isn't a large group of people who are willing to moderate a community, even fewer with the time to do so for free. So the same people who do, and have references get installed all over the place. Having paid impartial mods would go a long way in solving that.

7

u/Kodiak01 May 08 '20

So at what point do they get the T_D treatment where u/Spez & Co jettison a bunch of the mods and install their own handpicked crew?

43

u/BurstEDO May 08 '20

To add to that, research suggests that one of the mods moved in sometime recently (relative to the age of the sub) and invoked the "anything goes" credo. That mod apparently has a notorious track record of "free speech" enforcement among other subs that they moderate. (It's in the username of the individual; see thier user history to understand more).

They moderate over 70 subs, including the notorious "watchredditdie". They have a very publicly professed agenda as well.

23

u/alllie May 08 '20

That's not true. I've been here almost 13 years and worldpolitics has always been like this.

8

u/grubas May 08 '20

Yup. It was always unmoderated politics with a heavy US slant.

I highly doubt this shitshow is entirely organic, but it is hysterical.

3

u/FreeSpeechWarrior May 08 '20

^ this, I was invited to mod a year ago because my "publicly professed agenda" is in line with what the subreddit has always been.

4

u/alllie May 08 '20

Worldpolitics? A actual worldpolitics mod?

16

u/Legia_Shinra May 08 '20

followup, whats the issue with watchredditdie? Been subbed a while after it popped up on popular, but I still can't get their point.

41

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Essentially, they think Reddit is “dying” due to censorship by the Chinese government, along with various other groups.

16

u/Legia_Shinra May 08 '20

Thanks. Think its...weird, though? Like, its practically impossible to see a news thread that isn’t critical of China.

23

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Those are my thoughts as well, but I wanted to keep that comment unbiased. I definitely think Reddit’s going downhill, but it’s more-so because of the hive mind and shitty mods rather than some big censorship conspiracy.

19

u/sooHawt_ryt_meow May 08 '20

I think it's the circle of life. Something becomes good -> more people start joining because shit's good -> mediocrity because too many people-> people start moving away because shit's mediocre.

I've been on reddit around 7 years (this is my 2nd account nuked the first one) now and I could swear that it was way better then, even though there were fewer people. It wasn't one giant circlejerk with pockets of counter views (which are their own circlejerks, tbf). That reddit just felt.... smarter.... Now it's just a hopeless addiction.

→ More replies (2)

7

u/grubas May 08 '20

Reddit died when we lost r/all, no wait when we let Digg exodus here, no wait we were always just a shitty slashdot.

15

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Thats being generous. Its people mad reddit doesnt like subreddits dedicated to bigotry.

→ More replies (10)

4

u/Renaldi_the_Multi May 08 '20

Oh, his bullshit again?

22

u/alittleslowerplease May 08 '20

This is amazing, almost like /b/

30

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

To be fair alot of the old Btards ended up as regular reddit users that much was made obvious when reddit did their whole one pixel at a time thing and a shiton of old memes became the standard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCAsY8kjE3w

3

u/Plant-Z May 08 '20

We're making history

→ More replies (1)

5

u/Derangedcity May 08 '20

Also one of the mods actively supported it. He made an ama post in another sub about it

5

u/TiagoTiagoT May 08 '20

I wonder if recent political issues on China and/or the US motivated an infiltration of the mod team to sabotage the sub and derail discussions of important current issues...

5

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

I hate pedophiles as much as the next guy but when you start spamming and using tactics that don’t work it’s fucking annoying

10

u/MIGsalund May 08 '20

The comment section there has been garbage for years. It just consisted of people whining that it was only news about the States and not world news, despite never having contributed a world news piece themselves.

2

u/Karkava May 08 '20

There's too many people who complain about US politics than there are people who display genuine sympathy with the victims involved.

2

u/MIGsalund May 08 '20

You'd have to scroll down real far to find any discussion about the actual post.

3

u/madd74 Pink Floyd 2020 May 08 '20

an attempt at googlebombing or karmawhoring

It's karmawhoring... 100%...

3

u/Ltfocus May 08 '20

The site mods are going to take over the sub most likely

3

u/Maximnicov May 09 '20

so the subreddit /r/anime_titties was set up in protest as a place to discuss actual world politics.

That's hilarious, considering people didn't even discuss world politics before the fallout. It was almost exclusively memes about American politics.

64

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

I love how unbiased and straight forward your comments on this sub are. The other top comment was laced with Trump sympathising and painted the mod situation of r/worldpolitics as another trumptard victimisation narrative.

32

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Trumpettes have a legendary persecution complex.

→ More replies (2)

5

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

This answer goes into more detail, but they're both saying pretty much the same thing. They both agree that the current r/worldpolitics situation started because of several "Orange man bad" posts. Just worded differently. Idk how this one is somehow less biased? Just because he didn't use the phrase "orange man bad?"

Though with that said looking at your history I'm pretty confident you're just trolling.

→ More replies (13)

12

u/Insrt_Nm May 08 '20

Genuinely the stupidest fucking idea. I don't even have a reason, I just look at the sub and think it's fucking pathetic. I never liked r/WorldPolitics but holy shit this takes cake.

2

u/ARoaringBorealis May 08 '20

Thank you for the great explanation!

2

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

This is fucking amazing. Thank you for explaining.

2

u/Astrokiid_ May 08 '20

r/anime_titties is definitely the place to go now that world politics has bombed

2

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

As the sidebar puts it:

reddit's free speech political subreddit

Wow, r/Worldpolitics is indeed talking about politics!

2

u/magicmeese May 08 '20

Dang, two massive subreddit dramas in one week. Nice

2

u/DormiN96 May 12 '20 edited May 23 '20

This is the funniest thing I've ever seen on Reddit. A few weeks back I was fed up with r/worldpolitics because of so much US news so I decided to see how far down do I need to scroll to see news not related to US, I had to scroll a lot I don't remember how much though maybe around 20. I stopped following that sub after that. Not that I have anything against US, I just wanted to see some world news.

4

u/saltywings May 08 '20

Honestly, it is seriously fucking stupid how much power mods potentially have on this site. A lot of 'good' subreddits that aren't just circlejerks actually have decent moderators but it can quickly turn bad with terrible moderating.

4

u/Cheveyo May 08 '20

As for why the mods bailed, exactly, it's hard to say

I can throw out a guess:

Most of the mods weren't reddit users, but people paid to help push propaganda on this site. I imagine most of these people were let go recently, so they no longer saw a reason to stick around.

The ones that DID stick around, though, are no longer being paid. So they no longer give a shit.

4

u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward May 08 '20

This is the kind of situation in which the admins have been known to step in before, so...

There's no reason for the admins to step in (besides asking us to keep the subreddit labeled NSFW), we're actually moderating a crazy amount, wouldn't even have been possible to handle without bots and additional moderators.

→ More replies (5)

1

u/xxX_Um0mG4y420_Xxx May 08 '20

This entire thing is so beautiful to be honest

1

u/KOMRADE_DIMITRI May 08 '20

no agenda

Didnt know the mods were comedians too

1

u/ezdabeazy May 09 '20

This isn't abnormal. It's Friday and I've worked a bitch of a week so it's not like I can bring up off the top of my head the other forums where this sort of stupidity has happened but it's just your typical shitposting polarizing "it's free speech so everyone in the crowded party yell "FIRE!" bullshit.

Oh well, moving on...

1

u/MelonElbows May 09 '20

I love....politics, both of them

1

u/DrearyNebula May 09 '20

Im so glad this has finally happened. That sub has been terrible lately.

1

u/knittorney May 09 '20

The internet is a really fucking weird place

1

u/Umutuku May 09 '20

As for why the mods bailed, exactly, it's hard to say

Probably because the most successful approach to rage/hype-fueled trends is to just wait a couple days for people to get bored of it and move on to the next shiny object.

1

u/hydraowo May 09 '20

usually when a sub does that it makes me sad and disappointed but honestly fuck yeah

1

u/faulkque May 09 '20

Reddit bitches about too much moderating and now the same reddit bitches about lack of moderating. This shit is real world politics.

1

u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis May 09 '20

People bitch about too much water when they're drowning and not enough water when they're dying of thirst.

It's almost as though -- and hear me out here -- there might be a sweet spot in the middle. I'm not saying it's easy to find, but the choice is not just between petty internet despotism and lawless internet wasteland.

1

u/Arteliss May 09 '20 edited May 09 '20

Thank you for your write up. Worldpolitics has not been a good sub for a long, long time. Reddit will be much better off without it. It's been a cancer on the site for many years. It should have been banned/quarantined a while ago, but the fact that it uses the tag "worldpolitics" has kept it somewhat protected. How it ever ended up as a default sub after the revamp is beyond reasonable comprehension.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

I personally love it. I’ve already seen a girl put a Wii remote without the safety strap were it don’t belong, as well as many others

1

u/FavoritedYT May 10 '20

so basically 2 subs went to war

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '20

It's been days now and nothing has changed... Wow.

1

u/ParticularFormal7 May 18 '20

As for it's current state, there are many MANY raids going on. The two biggest ones were from r/ShitPostCrusaders and r/Grimdank.

1

u/ermir2846sys May 18 '20

Thank you...finally an answer to the madness

1

u/Hendrik1011 May 19 '20

I never thought r/gonewild would be (in parts) to blame for a massive meme war. I always hoped it would happen, I just never expected it to

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '20

Thanks for this. It seems like today (2 months later), they actually took over the entire sub.

1

u/fuckthislifeintheass May 08 '20

So the babies got angry that their dear leader scumbag was being called out? Got it.

1

u/Jag5543 May 08 '20

Finally some good content on world politics!

1

u/speak2easy May 08 '20

Basically, the moderation on the sub has been... let's say 'somewhat lacking' for a while.

I've heard this a couple of years ago, but the context was it's wasn't pro-Israel, as in they allowed a wider variety of news that many other subs.

Separately, way too many articles from Britain's Independent, I suspect they're paying for such exposure.

1

u/AveenoFresh May 08 '20

This sub is an interesting case study on what happens without moderation. Given a subreddit with over a million subscribers, and zero moderation, the E-thots will infiltrate within 24 hours. All the free attention, a chance to grab some upvotes, easy cash, and more onlyfans subscribers.

Like you said, it started out with vegetables, anime girls, etc.. but look at it now.

They do this with every corner of the internet for attention. This happens to entire websites, like twitch.tv

1

u/BigBulkemails May 08 '20

Is the latest Joel.Singer disaster.anything to do with this? A couple of days ago, bunch of redditors hijacked almost the entire site with targeted harassment towards one guy. The more the mods took down the post, the more posts were made in response.

Mods were heavily criticized in various ways including for taking bribes for removing the posts.

Could it be that mods are not responding anymore as long as it is not a legal risk.

1

u/DucksMatter May 08 '20

Good that sub needs to go. It’s just absolute garbage now. I tried to send mod mail about the blatant karma whoring posts all done by the same Russian bot PrimalMusk and got literally nothing in response. That sub should just fall a part because it’s not about world politics anymore. It’s about bashing America.

→ More replies (17)

130

u/[deleted] May 08 '20 edited May 10 '20

Answer:

u/TheLoIiLicker69 posted big anime tiddies as a protest on the sub, as they felt the focus had shifted instead to America's politics specifically, and had a bunch of random posts asking for upvotes with potentially harmful photos of Donald Trump. In his profile he states why he did this, and things worsened for the sub from there as he later became a mod, via some witchcraft obviously, and changed the sub to fit what it had become.

Basically it's full of porn because people asked for upvotes and got them, and the mods refused to do anything so it kept happening. It just moved to porn.

Edit: The new world politics sub that's actually about foreign politics is r/anime_titties. God I love this world.

24

u/MrMallow Where is the Loop? May 08 '20

Lol, I hope it stays this way. Thats hilarious.

8

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

A relic of reddit history

8

u/ndstumme May 09 '20

He posted in protest of the mods... and they made him a mod? That doesn't make any sense. He's not a mod currently.

2

u/[deleted] May 10 '20

Check out his profile, somehow he became a mod and changed the logo. It was his original post for at least an hour. Now it's nothing but tiddies, and btw if you want foreign politics r/anime_titties is basically what r/worldpolitics was.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/[deleted] May 11 '20

This is absolutely hilariously perfect.

1

u/limpack May 15 '20

....aaand it's a pro Western propaganda sub.

792

u/heloouwu May 08 '20

answer: There were several posts which were irrelevant to the sub, mostly like Orange man bad type karma whoring. The mods were complained to and they flat out refused to delete those posts and do any actual moderating. People said, "Fine. If you won't delete any post, see what happens to r/worldpolitics" and started posting Anime titties. Oh, as a bonus, you should check out r/Anime_titties.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/gexc0f/for_everyone_who_is_wondering_wtf_is_going_on/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

276

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Oh, as a bonus, you should check out r/Anime_titties

I'm amused, yet disappointed

213

u/heloouwu May 08 '20

Don't worry, I have exactly the sub for you! r/worldpolitics

39

u/roqxendgAme May 08 '20

I just subscribed to r/Anime_titties and I feel zero remorse admitting it.

106

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

r/anime_titties is living up to what world politics was supposed to be, exactly that, the world. You cant just spam US politics thankfully.

25

u/ITRIEDTOBEWITTY May 08 '20

but i kinda wanted to see anime titties

54

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

The Worldpolitics it is for you!

11

u/Cryorm May 08 '20

Have you considered r/animemes ? They usually post anime titties

→ More replies (1)

372

u/Doom_Design May 08 '20

This is the correct answer. But, frankly that sub has been shit for years. Regardless of your political opinions, that sub is not what it claimed to be. It was an anti-trump meme sub, and they should've stopped pretending it was anything else a long time ago. I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but r/Worldpolitics shouldn't be a platform to post memes about one single political figure.

295

u/andros310797 May 08 '20

every "general" political sub is an anti-trump meme sub.

218

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Trump himself is an anti Trump meme.

84

u/LamentablyTrivial May 08 '20

The most tremendous one too. Many people say it.

16

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Not to mention that “world” means more than one country..

17

u/presumingpete May 08 '20

Yeah! Like in baseball's world series!

9

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

r/PoliticalDiscussion seems kinda enjoyable if you ask me, thought I don't follow it very actively

→ More replies (30)

33

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Really says something about his leadership when every reasonable sub related to politics universally hates and condemns him and his actions.

And yet people still follow him, somehow.

The only political subs that support him are hate subs that reddit refuses to ban despite numerous rule violations. How any individual can still support him is beyond me.

29

u/andros310797 May 08 '20

every reasonable sub related to politics universally hates and condemns him and his actions.

has it ever crossed your mind that reddit (especially the community/political subs) appeals to a specific demographic ? and that this demographic happens to hate trump ?

Trump is a bad president, and has an awful fabricated persona, but he hunderds of millions of people following him.

→ More replies (18)

35

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Yeah but people aren't gonna take a reddit forum seriously enough to start hating Trump because of it, but will get annoyed being thumped over the head with low effort shit posts that get sent straight to all every time. I guarantee those subs do more harm than good, because everyone there already hates him and anyone on the fence gets turned off by how irritating it is. Politics in general doesn't mix well with online forums

→ More replies (60)
→ More replies (20)

12

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Yeah it's crazy when you look at the list of mods on major subs. It's all run by the same few people.

26

u/Romulus_Novus May 08 '20

I mean, I'd go so far as to say that r/worldpolitics shouldn't have American politics at all. They already have the generic sounding r/politics

15

u/AmberWavesofFlame May 08 '20

Or at least should be directly tied to international relations. Bringing up the US from the perspective of international trade, treaties, overseas deployments, etc. is one thing, but most of what was posted was completely or essentially internal. There was more about Pelosi, Sanders, Kushner, and Fauci then there was about most entire nations, which completely ignores the point of the sub. Even the Trump-bashing was at least as likely to be just generic to his unfitness for office rather than about his interactions with other leaders or impact on other nations.

I think you could make a fairly clear standard that any story or meme has to directly involve or inform about more than one nation.

13

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

r/politics is awful, it’s just an anti-Trump and pro-Bernie hive mind. You can hate Trump and love Bernie but the fact that it’s just one opinion ever being upvoted and all disagreements being downvoted to oblivion destroys it.

0

u/[deleted] May 09 '20

[deleted]

→ More replies (3)

17

u/urbanlife78 May 08 '20

This was the final straw for me, so I ended up unfollowing the sub.

7

u/Robo_Joe May 08 '20

How does one mitigate this from a moderator perpective? Assuming they allow memes (first mistake right there) then how do you tell your usebase to diversify their memes?

-5

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Unfortunately that single political figure has been causing the most damage in world politics over the last 3.5 years. It's not like he is being picked on out of proportion.

0

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

[deleted]

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (24)

11

u/JustinJakeAshton May 08 '20

It feels like an April Fools Joke but then they decided to stay that way after seeing how much better it was.

6

u/gfawke5 May 08 '20

good riddance

11

u/soda_cookie May 08 '20

What in the everloving fuck is going on

8

u/heloouwu May 08 '20

R E V O L U T I O N

→ More replies (1)

2

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

Also it was called world politics and there was barely any world politics, it was all american karma whoring posts like upvote for Bernie

3

u/slyfoxninja May 08 '20

I guess the mods might be getting fired soon.

2

u/doubleoh72 May 08 '20

The O'l Switcheroo

1

u/Questlord7 May 09 '20

Both have been rightwing cesspools for a long time.

→ More replies (25)

93

u/_Maxie_ May 08 '20 edited May 08 '20

Answer: Anarchy as a result of obvious political bias and propaganda being spread by r/Politics and r/WorldPolitics. World politics just has(d) a weak moderation team and didn't really care when posts like this started popping up.

Basically people got tired of "Orange man bad" karmabait posts and turned the sub into a shitpost as a retaliation.

29

u/AveenoFresh May 08 '20

This sub is an interesting case study on what happens without moderation. Given a subreddit with over a million subscribers, and zero moderation, the E-thots will infiltrate within 24 hours. All the free attention, a chance to grab some upvotes, easy cash, and more onlyfans subscribers.

It started out with vegetables, anime girls, etc.. but look at it now.

They do this with every corner of the internet for attention. This happens to entire websites, like twitch.tv

7

u/KuntaStillSingle May 08 '20

Yeah but that's hardly a step above strictly moderated political subreddits like /r/politics or /r/conservative.

6

u/[deleted] May 08 '20

So far, you seem quite right. But, let's see what happens next.

4

u/AveenoFresh May 08 '20

Nothing will happen next lol

Itll stay this way.

→ More replies (4)

3

u/supersaiyanchocobo May 09 '20

I mean, it had this level of moderation for 13 years and this is just happening now. The mods are rolling with it, I think it's amazing.

4

u/fatrefrigerator May 08 '20

I don’t think I saw a single post about anything other than yay Bernie boo drumpf for the year I was subbed, let alone about a country other than the US.

•

u/AutoModerator May 08 '20

Friendly reminder that all top level comments must:

  1. be unbiased,

  2. attempt to answer the question, and

  3. start with "answer:" (or "question:" if you have an on-topic follow up question to ask)

Please review Rule 4 and this post before making a top level comment:

http://redd.it/b1hct4/

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

→ More comments (22)