Australia/NZ-specific subreddits, in particular, were always absolutely fucking awful (everything from city subs, to politics, to finance), but this is worse than even during ‘Rona…
For context, this week the Australian Tax Office (ATO) essentially declared war on small (but not big) business, and said that they will use every tool at their disposal to squeeze every unpaid tax dollar out of said businesses, no matter what consequences that has for insolvencies, the economy, and hell, everything that follows that.
I am not kidding when I say that they literally said “Well, if this destroys more businesses than the GFC, that’s too bad.”
In a normal world, such an announcement would have been treated with… At least some degree of disgust, but not on Reddit. On Reddit, people were literally saying they wished that the ATO could employ lynch mobs. In the AusFinance sub (the irony), they were saying they hope small business owners kill themselves over this, because they clearly deserve to…
It’s pretty crazy to me, to see how toxic this discourse has become.
That place is… Well, it’s probably worse than I ever expected it would become, honestly. And that’s just with me lurking, not even wading back in to discussions again…
Well yeah, they spent the better part of the decade banning anyone with right-wing views who stray away from the controlled opposition subs, they filled the admin and moderator positions of the bigger subs with mentally ill degenerates, who in turn banned even more people who disagreed with them on anything. So all that's left are the freaks and toadies.