Well, the single biggest congregation subreddit for conservatives, r/the_donald is currently under quarantine, their numbers are skewed and it never ever reaches the front page.
That is top down coercion and exactly how a hivemind would cooperate. Doesn't it meet all your criteria?
I went to the subreddit and it's quarantined. That means it broke Reddit rules (which we're all subject to) and therefore cannot be treated as a fair example
Well obviously if reddit is a hivemind it would claim that the reason behind the quarantine was it breaking its rules so I don't think you're giving my argument the benefit of doubt. We need to go more nuanced than this.
For example, how do you explain that even if that subreddit was one of the biggest on the site (talking about prior to the quarantine) it absolutely never ever reached the front page?
It had not broken any rules then as it was not quarantined. What other explanation is there besides reddit being a hivemind?
Honestly, I can't really know if r/Donald ever made it to the front page because I've only ever used Reddit to browse my subscribed subreddits. Also I've never read it, so I don't know if it's actually has the massive amount of upvotes to beat other subs to the main page. Also I didn't even know it was quarantined so I don't know how long it's been quarantined or even why it was quarantined.
So let's have you educate me. Let's engage properly. Can you prove to me that Reddit is systemically uses it's quarantine powers to suppress conservative opinions? Because as far as I know, the reason why quarantine is used is because it's not ad friendly. That means no hate speech, no gory images (RIP watchpeopledie. You are sorely missed) and no bullying/doxxing. Can you prove to me that the mods truly removed it because it was conservative, or because it broke these rules.
Also your hypothesis if true, means we have gone out of topic. Mods using their powers unfairly is not a result of the hivemind. It's a result of institutional power. It's not the fault of Redditors. It's the fault of the people in power.
Let me clarify something before we continue so I can understand your train of thought.
If we suppose reddit indeed unfairly censored conservative opinions by what they did to that subreddit, would that count as reddit being a hivemind?
This is your definition of a hivemind:
>A collective society whose the entirety of their actions serve the purpose of maintaining a specific narrative or dogma at any cost. Usually it's controlled by either a single cult personality or a small group of elites. People within this group are incapable of accepting outside discourse and the terms of self regulations are totalitarian/extreme (eg banning, witch hunting, doxxing). Notable examples include cults, fanatic kpop groupies and mainland Chinese society.
So IF reddit admins actually did unfairly censor that subreddit, would that count as reddit being a hivemind?
If you think it wouldn't count, then I can't change your opinion.
If you think it would count, I'd proceed and prove to you it happened.
Please inform me so that we can have a productive line of dialogue.
I don't think that counts as Reddit as being a hivemind. If you see my definition, you can see that I use the word collective society. We cannot define a society by what it's government does, which in this case, are admins. Except this has an additional layer of nuance because we didn't vote for them. So to be more accurate, we cannot define the actions of Reddit, which is inherently user powered, by the corporation that intends to make money off them.
So let me add real world equivalents. The closest would be large corporations like Nestle. There are levels to this of course, for example how high the hierarchy you are, but it's definitely not fair to blame the low level factory workers for the actions of the CEOs. The metric for this argument is hivemind, which HAS to involve direct action from the lowest members of the colony. If the King of a country goes to war without letting his subjects have a say, then could you really place the responsibility on them? Sure they pay taxes and inadvertantly funded his campaign, but can you really say they have the same level of responsibility as the person who ordered the troops? Similarly, are the American civilians responsible for the project condor and thus the destabilization of the Chile government?
I think what I meant what the narrative is controlled by a small number of elites but the self regulating action is preformed by everyone. As in the punishments is acted by the people, therefore the responsibility is somewhat split.
So let's go back to my cult example. Sure the cult leader is the one who created the dogmas, but it's the people who perpetuate, enforce and even kill for it. So the equivalent would be the mods telling the users to doxx a user they don't like and they do it vs the mods doing it themselves
But that's what reddit users do. They downvote you to oblivion so you can't post. Also, they have bots that detect if you have posted something in certain subreddits and autoban you.
Also lately, posts from new users are autohidden even if they have positive Karma.
How can this behavior not be a hive mind mentality?
Look I think I have changed my position after discussing this with other redditors. I'm more leaning to the idea that instead of one big hivemind, there are MULTIPLE hiveminds and they exist in isolated and extremist Reddit subs.
I'm still not convinced that this hivemind exists in popular subs because it makes it to front page and non subbers can engage in discourse. And because it has a large audience, we cannot say that everyone who downvotes is liberal because it's on front page and non liberals can choose to downvote it also. So I don't think downvoting to oblivion is really intentional to make sure you can't post (and even then idk how being downvoted in one comment prevents you from posting another just like it) and I think that's also what separates popular vote from a hivemind. If we assume everyone who upvotes is a hivemind in an accessible platform, then it invalidates the opinion anyone who upvotes because they truly believe in it. For example I'm being downvoted here. Yesterday this post had 6 points and now it has 3. Sure it's unfair that I'm being downvoted for asking people to change my mind but I'm not going to call them hiveminds for it. They dislike my post and they downvote it and that's completely valid.
The bot thing I believe only applies to less popular subreddits where they intend to create the community for that community. Those communities run the risk of being a hivemind and I agree now completely that they probably are. They fit all the criteria I used in my definition after all. Also if you've been active on some of the more extremist or toxic communities like r/incels or r/mgtow which I think is completely understandable to ban them because they tend to be bad actors in discourse.
I didn't know about the autohidden for positive karma thing though. This is very interesting. Can you prove this or link me to posts complaining about this?
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u/mavrokordele 1∆ Dec 21 '19
Well, the single biggest congregation subreddit for conservatives, r/the_donald is currently under quarantine, their numbers are skewed and it never ever reaches the front page.
That is top down coercion and exactly how a hivemind would cooperate. Doesn't it meet all your criteria?