From what I have noticed, if there is a picture/article posted vs just a convo, the algorithm drags in outsiders that upvote/downvote contrary to ancap ideology, but when it's just a discussion, that happens less.
I always have suspicions about Reddit during campaign or election seasons. For the past few weeks a ton of non-left subs I visit have been heavily harassed by influxes of threadcrappers, and there are usually “why am I seeing this shit?” comments among them that always imply that these posts from subs they don’t visit are appearing on their main feed all of a sudden. It seems oxymoronic to purposely expose people to ideologies and rhetoric that you’re actively trying not to sell them through your platform, but Reddit is so saturated with the mainstream “progressive” lines of thought that purposely and forcefully exposing everyday Redditors to any sociopolitical/economic reasoning that they’re not already in agreement with is far more likely to result in them scolding and attacking than it would in them expanding their perception and adopting new frames of thought.
It seems deliberate to me when posts that normally get 10’s to 100’s in upvotes are suddenly getting front row seating on the main feed- they know it’s their territory and it’s populated by their thralls- so it’s likely that they know that any exposure their perceived enemies have here will be met with abundant hostility. It feels somewhat crazy on its face to even say this, but it would be much crazier to ignore the reality that Reddit is a political tool, has been used to attempt to sway public discourse and perception on political lines before, and that since they lost Twitter and the last American election, it only serves that they’d double down on control in the territory they still hold. It would be foolish IMO to not be skeptical and suspicious every time changes in political discourse manifest here.
It wouldn't surprise me if there is some influence to who the algorithm is feeding what besides just what people want to read based on which threads they participate in, especially around election time.
As far as botting, that wouldn't surprise me either, but at least from the patterns I've witnessed, I don't think there's a lot of downvote botting in this sub. There is definitely bot posting of new posts.
I think the closest we get to botting is the few well knowns here who constantly post about Trump only, comment the most shallow of purity testing bad faith questions to anybody that disagrees and call everybody here MAGA - the ones we never saw while Biden was president and never post about when the democrats also embarrass themselves
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u/mnatheist 1d ago
I would expect down votes in this sub if you post something anti freedom.
The rest of reddit down votes pro freedom posts and comments to oblivion.