Quo Vadis, Democrats?

[Iormlund]

I don't use an account. I see most stuff on r/popular, not on a personalized feed.

English-speaking Reddit is largely progressive. Right-wing subs such as r/Conservative can only survive by purging over 90% of comments.

[Grey Fox]

I find Reddit to be largely left wing too.

[Zoupa]

Same.

[viper37]

Of course it depends on the sub, but I'm judging from the general leanings in subs that on the surface one wouldn't assume to have leanings.  If you go to neutral subs that are focused on non-political topics entirely, and the off-topic asides that lean politically hard left get constantly upvoted, and reasonable rebuttals get downvoted into oblivion, you can get a sense of the general trend.

If your logged in, you see subs based on your subscriptions first, than other subs based on similar interests.

If you aren't logged in, you will see subs based on what you clicked last time you visited (cookies) + localization (browser geolocalization & language page preference) + what's trending (most views) at the moment.

If you keep clicking on left leaning subs to see what the other side thing, without clearing your cookies every time you close your browser, then it's likely these subs will appear in your front page, logged in or not.

[DGuller]

Of course it depends on the sub, but I'm judging from the general leanings in subs that on the surface one wouldn't assume to have leanings.  If you go to neutral subs that are focused on non-political topics entirely, and the off-topic asides that lean politically hard left get constantly upvoted, and reasonable rebuttals get downvoted into oblivion, you can get a sense of the general trend.

If your logged in, you see subs based on your subscriptions first, than other subs based on similar interests.

If you aren't logged in, you will see subs based on what you clicked last time you visited (cookies) + localization (browser geolocalization & language page preference) + what's trending (most views) at the moment.

If you keep clicking on left leaning subs to see what the other side thing, without clearing your cookies every time you close your browser, then it's likely these subs will appear in your front page, logged in or not.

I don't click on any political subs on Reddit, I think the whole setup of Reddit promotes groupthink by hiding unpopular opinions, and thus makes political discussion worse than useless there.  All of the subs on my feed are nominally unpolitical (except for maybe a Jersey City sub, as local subs are bounds to have a political discussion from time to time).

[celedhring]

Yeah, I don't subscribe to political subreddits (justs sports, movie* and game stuff) but it does have a leftwing slant. Less so in the gaming stuff, though. Those I'd say are markedly to the right of general reddit, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

*Serious movie analysis can be very political, though.

[crazy canuck]

How are discussions about sports left wing?

maybe there is a definitional problem here. For everybody who is saying that the Reddit forms they are reading our left wing, what do you mean by left wing?

Edit: the only Reddit forums I read are related to pc games.  Most of the time the comments are about the games.  The rare times there are any comments of a political nature they are mainly Trumpist one liners.

[The Minsky Moment]

Like CC I've never read a subreddit that had anything to do with politics.

I just took a quick look at the economics subreddit.  It's pretty critical of the Trump tariffs, but it's hard to definitely put that opinion on a left-right spectrum.  Some guy was bitching about how private equity firms ruined skateboarding.  I guess that is left????

[celedhring]

Discussion itself isn't leftwing, but when a political topic enters the discussion, the vast majority of opinions (at least the ones I can see, due to how reddit works), are progressive.

Last notorious example I can think of is when Dallas traded Doncic and the Adelsons were mentioned in connection to the trade. Same with other markedly super-conservative owners of other teams whenever they are mentioned.

Another common example is whenever a player of former player is involved in domestic violence and there's usually a quite significant outpour of support for the woman compared to other forums I frequent. I'd consider this basic decency instead of "progressive slant" but that's where we are.

[DGuller]

A simple example I can immediately think of is in an Indycar subreddit.  This year there was a new driver to the series named Robert Shwartzman, who was originally racing for Russia before switching to Israel after Ukraine war.  The comments like "this guy can't catch a break, he switched his allegiance to not race for a horrible country, only to race for a horrible country".  The reason you can generalize about Reddit a bit more than usual is that you can see whether comments like that get buried under downvotes or get pushed to the top due to upvotes.  You can guess which way such comments go.

[crazy canuck]

Discussion itself isn't leftwing, but when a political topic enters the discussion, the vast majority of opinions (at least the ones I can see, due to how reddit works), are progressive.

Last notorious example I can think of is when Dallas traded Doncic and the Adelsons were mentioned in connection to the trade. Same with other markedly super-conservative owners of other teams whenever they are mentioned.

Another common example is whenever a player of former player is involved in domestic violence and there's usually a quite significant outpour of support for the woman compared to other forums I frequent. I'd consider this basic decency instead of "progressive slant" but that's where we are.

That's the point I'm trying to make. If every day decency is left-wing, then yeah pretty much everything I read is left-wing.

That's why I was wondering how you were defining left wing when you said that Reddit is predominantly left-wing.  I don't see it. I just see people talking to each other about the topics at hand that are relevant to that forum.

[crazy canuck]

A simple example I can immediately think of is in an Indycar subreddit.  This year there was a new driver to the series named Robert Shwartzman, who was originally racing for Russia before switching to Israel after Ukraine war.  The comments like "this guy can't catch a break, he switched his allegiance to not race for a horrible country, only to race for a horrible country".  The reason you can generalize about Reddit a bit more than usual is that you can see whether comments like that get buried under downvotes or get pushed to the top due to upvotes.  You can guess which way such comments go.

How is that an example of left-wing politics?

It is an objective truth that he went from a country, whose leader is charged with war crimes to another country, whose leader is charged with war crimes.

[Razgovory]

He's got a point.  The belief that a country inhabited primarily by Jews is horrible is not a left-right issue.

[Zoupa]

I think respecting human rights is not supposed to be a left-right divide, so I'm not sure how guller saw that and thought reddit is leftist.

Btw is Tucker Carlson leftist now? He think Israel is a terrible country too.

[Norgy]

I'd say Tucker is almost anything except a journalist.