Steel bands tighten around my heart. My knees knock and my vision wavers. But then I remember I’m not on Reddit, and metacanada has not yet replaced the moderation team with pod people.
What measures are in place to ensure the continuing security of our moderation team? If it won’t compromise them to tell us.
I think in the interest of building a healthy community we can acknowledge that the problem is not “people with right-wing views” despite whatever other problems might be fair to blame on them as a block. We’re talking about aggressively anti-social people who don’t really believe in governance and humanism at all. They appropriate right-wing politics when its convenient but they aren’t really political in that sense. They’re just assholes.
…so, your typical modern conservative?
I say that slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I do stand by that the people you describe are almost exclusively going to be right-wing.
That’s definitely not to say that there’s never been any online communities negatively impacted by left-wing politics. I can’t even remember the number of subreddits I used to enjoy that have been overtaken by tankies/Stalinists/Maoists/Soviet-apologizers.
I would say that they almost exclusively adopt a right-wing persona, but I don’t think that someone who isn’t trying to constructively engage really fits on the left/right spectrum. We might have different values, and we might even disagree on what it means to do so, but ultimately we’re all supposed to be pulling for the common good. I think that anyone who is not working towards the common good is better described using other terms, so that we don’t alienate our allies. A kleptocrat is not left or right. A corporate agent engaging in legislative capture is not left or right. And a bunch of vandals who get a sexual thrill out of upsetting people on the Internet are not left or right.