This isn't that "exciting" of a conspiracy theory but I think it may be of interest to those here so I wanted to share. I had been trying a strategy on Reddit where I pose as a leftist and say a bunch of crazy (but always relevant to the thread) things in different threads like "jail all the unvaxxed" to see what pushback it would get and encourage dissent. I started realizing that I got a lot of pushback, I would post something like this and get a few comments back that were basically calling me crazy, telling me to fuck off basically, etc, the ratio of replies against my comments to those in favor seemed to be like 5-1 on average, so most people clearly thought my comments went too far
I was checking these comments through email though, not on Reddit itself, as they email you every reply you get to my comment. When I eventually went to see the actual replies on Reddit, to see which comment of mine they were replying to, I realized many of the replies against my comment were deleted and there's no sign of it. I found my original comment in the thread and many show no replies, not even showing "deleted" comments. Also I am seeing that often my crazy comments have positive upvote counts.
This level of censorship is even more than I thought it was, they are basically shadow banning many users, at least in relation to specific threads and subs. I don't think any of these users know their comments were deleted but I'm not certain.
I was suspended from one sub for "threatening violence" (in reality it was more like wishing death on the unvaxxed rather than saying anything violent) but it seems other than comments related to violence anything is ok as long as it conforms to a leftist perspective and anything from the right is not ok. I think there's a lot of people on there who think they are "fighting back"against the leftist narrative but in reality no one is seeing what they say except the person who made the original comment. I knew Reddit was evil but I didn't realize the extent to which they are going.
Reddit is LITERALLY OWNED BY THE CHINESE.
No completely serious. Tencent, the major Chinese state-owned based media investment bought a controlling stake in Reddits stock before 2016 and the infamous Ellen Pao fiasco. Ellen was put in charge of the site because she was the Chicom who took over the site after it was bought out. He attempts at heavy handed censorship caused the original core of reddit to go apoplectic and cry out. China responded by firing Ellen, taking the names of everybody who had an issue with the censorship, and banning them. They then carried on hiring extreme Left hardcore Democrats to staff the site, which was about the time Maxwell became a power-mod of the site as well. Yes Gilliane Maxwell was a mod on like 50+ of the most popular subreddits, and she was very active there, banning users left and right for not being with the program.
Since then Tencent has been running reddit as a light version of how the Chinese manage their media: which is blanket bans of anything off-narrative.
Mods over there lock posts from comments the moment a controversy erupts, you will come to threads where 90% of the comments are deleted, and they are constantly removing posts from subs.
And that is before you notice the many, many, many narrative pushing posts being made by accounts that do nothing but post liberal narratives. Absolutely nothing that happens on reddit is organic when its even tangentially related politics. Even their "wholesome memes" board started shit like "My happy face when I wore my mask on my way to get vaccinated today after saving the black people."
The only reason I maintain a Reddit anymore, is the DCS World flight sim community keep several forums that are useful for asking questions about sims, setups, HOTAS gear, and finding people to play with. This is stuff that is so under the radar that nobody cares to mess with it. Which is fine and all.