Welp, I typed out a response in that r/self post that was on all but is now locked. So fuck it, this seems an appropriate thread to put it in anyway:

This is really what I have more of an issue with than anything. I can handle more or less civil disagreements on politics, policy, philosophies and so on. I'm a scientist so having intellectually honest disagreements with people is pretty regular for me and it is almost always civil and productive/thought provoking.

But T_D is really the absence of any of the above. There is no space for polite disagreements on their sub (their rules, that's fine I suppose) and often with the frequent users of that sub in the wider reddit-sphere. And it's really not so much that I care about that, though I think it is not good for public/private discourse which is essential to a functioning representative democracy. It's that T_D just utterly dominates, and has been dominating, the r/all page and COMPLETELY dominating the r/all/rising queue for many months now. And it's just fucking constantly rehashed memes, all caps exagerrated titles, lots of fake/dubious stories, and always constantly spamming these intensely inbred insider phrases like BTFO COATS CUCKS PEPE WEAPONIZED AUTISM SHILLARY KILLARY ABSOLUTE MADMAN BUILD THE WALL LOCK HER UP HIGH ENERGY....etc

Hell, the people in that sub can knock themselves out for all I care. If they think all of that formulaic shitposting is fun go right ahead. Don't even ban it. But maybe just remove it from all? While we're at it, just go ahead and remove politics from all, and any other candidate subs for good measure. If Reddit can't handle civil political discourse (whether the problem is the users or lack of moderation, who cares), maybe just remove overtly, purely political subs from all/defaults and if users want to participate, they can seek out those places.

But I read somewhere in that r/self thread that T_D doesn't exist without r/all, and I tend to agree. I don't think that sub is half as active without its ability to brute force its posts to all and rising. If the posters in that sub just really like their candidate and their internal discourse/content, well then what is really lost by removing T_D, along with all other political subs, from r/all? We can then end all of this controversy about vote manipulation, algorithm altering, and (probably, maybe, hopefully?) the toxicity which has been the environment on this site for 6mo-1yr.

What is really odd now, though, is that if you browse the rising queue as the OP in this post has done, what used to be about 90% T_D for the last many months is now T_D but also the complete clone subs (in both tone, style, and content) for Trump-like far right candidates in other countries, notably in Germany, France, and to a lesser extent Canada and the Netherlands. How are the German and French T_D clone subs suddenly occupying so many places in the rising queue? Seriously, less than 1k subs on r/the_schulz, less than 200 active on the sub, and it has 20% of the posts on rising at any given time? It's just really odd; just consider that r/dota2 (random example) has 300k subs and ~5k active users and no posts in either all or rising, and you might see a post get to all once or twice a month if that.

But I'm sure the site admins will not do anything sensible, if anything at all besides more r/all algorithm fuckery.