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…
This will make it sound like I'm defending the admins, but rest assured that this is definitely not the case.
FPH was modded by trolls. They baited a ban and when they got it, they said they were happy because it resulted in lulz. You have to at least pretend that you respect the admins and their edicts, as hard as it is. This had negative consequences beyond FPH, because it's a ratchet which gets worse every time there is a ban wave.
It likely would have gotten banned at some time. But any delay would have been an improvement, because it would have saved some measure of free speech for just a little while longer.
I wasn't entirely aware of the inner workings of each sub, but I just remember that they were part of the earliest banwaves. I assumed it was because of Reddit admins promoting body positivity and didn't know about the snarky mods. Things were extreme enough at the time that I could easily believe the ban was natural.
My recollection is that they weren't part of a ban wave. It is not exactly inner workings. They were banned after they were doing things the admins told them explicitly not to do. Now, you can argue whether that is good or bad if they are taking a stand on principle.
But if they're just getting their sub banned "for the lulz", as they were (or at least argued retrospectively), I think that is a very bad reason.
Obviously, and sub like FPH is going to have a target on its back. But you can make it difficult or hard for them. They made it very easy.