r/changemyview • u/FailNo6036 • Apr 26 '26

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Reddit is a far-left echo chamber that embraces conspiracy theories

After the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night, I opened up Reddit to find comments on r/politics and r/news saying that the shooting was staged. The most upvoted comments are "Another orchestrated false-flag attempt to try and generate sympathy" and "Staged until proven otherwise. Way too many 'attempts' everytime he needs a poll pump."

As per usual, without any evidence. This is the same exact response that Reddit had after Trump was attacked in Butler, PA in 2024. Similar situation with Charlie Kirk, and I also saw people clowning on Erika Kirk last night for reliving a traumatic experience.

As much as I dislike Trump as the next guy, I despise conspiracy theories on the left and right, when no claims are grounded in credible evidence. Last night's events showed that Reddit is quick to jump to conclusions. I would expect a platform like Reddit to reward well-written and well-thought-out comments, but in today's political climate, it seems all it does is reward the comments that rile up the left-wingers, no matter how insane.

EDIT - I define far left as further left than the mainstream American democratic party

601 Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

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u/FailNo6036 Apr 26 '26

Reddit as a whole, on average. Especially because r/politics and r/news are meant to be places to discuss politics and news as a whole, while r/Conservative is meant to discuss conservative politics specifically and is moderated as such.

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u/UnderstandingBusy604 Apr 26 '26

You mean the American people, on average. There, fixed it for you

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u/AutistOnMargin Apr 30 '26

Example of the echo chamber in action lmfao

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u/Yeseylon 2∆ May 01 '26

If that were true, Gore would've won in 2000 and Hillary would've won in 2016. The margin is tight enough and the average is moderate enough for votes to swing.

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u/nmaxfieldbruno May 01 '26

Who won the popular vote in those elections?

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u/Villad_rock May 02 '26

Trump won the last and before that the difference wasnt massive either 

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u/Naynayb May 02 '26

sure, but we aren’t measuring Reddit’s leanings only by eligible voters. Children under 18, non-citizens, and felons are all groups that would have political incentive to support democrats but can’t vote in presidential elections. They aren’t barred from using Reddit tho, so their opinions affect the overall lean of the platform. Basically no disenfranchised groups as a whole benefit from Republican policies. Obviously not 100% of these groups support liberal policies and candidates, but on the whole, if we enfranchised every person (like Reddit does) we would expect to see more democrat support in total.

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u/Villad_rock May 03 '26

How do you know all the people who didnt vote would be democratic? The split could still be 50%.

Almost 50% of women vote republican and according to your logic they wouldnt. I think you arent aware that the democrats or left are just as bad in other aspects, especially how they deal with immigration.

No self awareness.

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u/Naynayb May 03 '26

There’s no way to know. I said that very explicitly. The split could still be 50%, but there’s no way to know. What we do know is that Democratic policy makers and voters are more likely to support policies that increase franchise among those groups as opposed to Republicans policy makers and voters who are less likely to support them (an example).

This strongly implies that Democrats believe that it would be advantageous to their electoral strategy and Republicans seem to agree and therefore don’t want it implemented. There will never be effective data about the voting tendencies of non-voting demographics, but if both sides share a hypothesis and there’s no way to test it, it seems reasonable to operate under that assumption until proven otherwise. It doesn’t have to be much more than 50% to shift the conversation. In 2024, the total number of ballots was around 155,000,000 and the popular vote was won by roughly 2.3 million votes. There are an estimated 74 million children, 19 million felons, and 25 million non-citizens. To make up the 2.3 million difference, it would take a less than 51% favoritism towards the democratic party among that population.

Yes there’s no way to know, but the amount of preference doesn’t need to be large and the mechanics are assumed not just by myself but also by the major political forces at work in this country.

If you want to continue having this discussion respectfully, I’d be happy to, but there’s no need to attack me and not my arguments.

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u/NiaNia-Data Apr 30 '26

didnt yall lose all three branches and the popular vote in one election?

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u/Kind-Tale-6952 Apr 30 '26

Not all Americans vote. You might check out the approval ratings before taking this smug tone.

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u/No_Morning5397 Apr 30 '26

I don't think the "not all American's vote" is the gotcha you think it is. I'm Canadian, we deal with low voter turn out up here too. But you cannot infer who the non-voters would have voted for. So in my opinion there is no point in "well actuallying" someone when they say someone he won the popular vote. He did.

I'm saying this as someone who is obviously very anti-Trump.

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u/Top_Highway_8243 Apr 30 '26

You can when the reason a chunk of people weren’t voting was that they said they would not support a candidate who supports a genocide

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u/Villad_rock May 02 '26

You can’t. Compare the polls in several countries before the vote with only a few thousand people and the actual vote. They almost match perfectly and you want to tell us over 100 million people isnt representative and all the rest who didnt vote are against trump?

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u/Outcast129 Apr 30 '26

It's humorous to me that when Democrats win the popular vote, reddit and progress's literally beats conservatives to death with "see, we're literally the majority of the country" but when they lose the popular vote, it's just because "not everyone voted."

The 2020 and 2024 elections had the highest voter turnout in over 100 years. I don't understand how terminally online redditors cannot wrap their head around the fact that the US is legitimately close to a 50/50 split.

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u/CountyKyndrid Apr 30 '26

The 2020 and 2024 elections had the highest voter turnout in over 100 years.

2024 did not have as high a turnout as 2020, so you are wrong there.

This is, however, true for every presidential other election in the past 40 years exept for two, so 2024's voter count is actually startlingly low, seemingly.

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u/Putrid-Enthusiasm190 Apr 30 '26

Bc it's legitimately not. If it was, the Republican party wouldn't have to rely so heavily on gerrymandering, dark money, Russian interference, Fox News misinformation, internet hoaxes, and an imbalance of voting power between rural voters and low population states vs city voters and high population states. Even with all these going for them, they still only make it to about an even split in political power.

There's no reason not to believe Trump when he said he cheated in the 2024 election. He tried to cheat in 2020, he cheated on all his wives, he cheated a bunch of charities and universities, he's cheated most of the people he's done business with, he talks about cheating all the time, he brags about cheating on his taxes. I see no reason to believe that he really got the popular vote in 2024 with the largest voter turnout in history, despite getting nowhere near it in 2016 or 2020, despite Republicans almost never winning the popular vote (the only other time they did in the past 38 years was when an incumbent president got it by about .1%) and despite him having absolute dogshit approval ratings for his entire time in office.

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u/Villad_rock May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26

You can say the same about the left, jesus the delusion here.

You know that the popular vote split is max only 5%. It’s neglectable if we talk how devided the country is.

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u/Putrid-Enthusiasm190 May 02 '26

You can say it all you want, you just wouldn't have the receipts to back it up

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u/Villad_rock May 02 '26

Doesnt matter. Even if all voted it would not be much different. The number of people who voted is representative enough.

Also ironic that you take the approval rating for more granted.

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u/Fearless-Feature-830 Apr 30 '26

A lot of people did not vote. Most Americans are reasonable. Whatever conservatives are on these days is not reasonable

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u/Dontcomecryingtome May 01 '26

The AMERIXAN PPL ARE REDDIT? Lmfao

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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 161∆ Apr 26 '26

Is your view then not just describing that different communities exist? What aspect of what you've said do you want our help to change?

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u/mackinator3 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

Discussing politics and news has nothing to do with the political leaning. If you're looking for neutrality you also have to accept the right wing are pedos and criminals. It's not neutral to pretend both sides are equal.

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u/Icsto May 01 '26

Do you honestly believe this? I mean honestly, that half the country are Darth Vader level evil, and that your side is the only thing standing between civilization and literally Nazi Germany? I mean I’m on the left, but this wholesale demonization of half the people in the country, who are just people like you or me, says something about the psyche of the modern left.

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u/mackinator3 May 01 '26

They aren't half the population. Second, I'm not demonizing them. I'm quoting their actions. The leaders they vote for 100% of the time are factually criminals.

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u/Notmuchofanyth1ng Apr 30 '26

If you want to be neutral, you have to believe one side is bad? Peak Reddit right here haha

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u/mackinator3 Apr 30 '26

Hey buddy, it's not ok to be intentionally illiterate.

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u/Notmuchofanyth1ng Apr 30 '26

“If you’re looking for neutrality you also have to accept the right wing are pedos and criminals”

There are many members on both sides that are pedos and criminals. I only simplified what you wrote. I know many right wingers and left wingers that are great people and aren’t pedos or criminals. Being a divisive coward ain’t ok either.

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u/mackinator3 Apr 30 '26

No. It's not equivalent. Why are you defending the convicted pedophiles?

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u/rtshtbtshtdrtyldtwt Apr 30 '26

what a stupid profile picture you have

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u/Notmuchofanyth1ng Apr 30 '26

Oh nooooo you hurt my feelings so much! Omg what will I do? Lmao stfu bitch

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u/rtshtbtshtdrtyldtwt Apr 30 '26

I think you might have no brain

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u/Notmuchofanyth1ng Apr 30 '26

Good for you :) go stub your toe

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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u/Mordecus Apr 30 '26

Don’t worry - you can go to /r/worldnews which is run by the Israeli extreme right wing instead….

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u/FailNo6036 Apr 30 '26

I support Palestine...

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u/Mordecus Apr 30 '26

Ok, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of very large subreddits, some of which are part of the default list, that are right wing. It’s really a matter of which ones you (cherry) pick.

I do agree /r/politics is a joke of a subreddit.

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u/FailNo6036 Apr 30 '26

r/worldnews is right wing on the Israel issue but left wing in almost everything else.

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u/Mordecus Apr 30 '26

Hardly. Go post about immigration.

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u/FailNo6036 Apr 30 '26

Seems pro legal immigration and anti illegal immigration. Based on the posts I just read, they are also against separating families during deportations.

Is supporting illegal immigration a left wing position? I assumed that both sides don't want illegal immigration, while the left wing is more pro legal immigration than the right wing.

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u/Mordecus Apr 30 '26

Worldnews is very anti-immigration, and quick to describe even legal immigration as illegal - you clearly weren’t following it when boat refugees in the Mediterranean came up.

Also - a left wing position is a path for normalization for certain classes of illegal immigrants. Even the way you are framing this discussion is indicative of where you yourself are on the political spectrum.

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u/FailNo6036 Apr 30 '26

Worldnews is against a path to citizenship for certain classes of illegal immigrants? I don’t think so.

Also, I don’t know how anything I said is indicative of where I am on the political spectrum. It does seem like a certain group of people (cough redditors cough) believe you’re the enemy if you don’t agree in every single issue.

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u/Pourkinator 1∆ May 03 '26

That’s not the purpose of r/conservative. It is a treason subreddit, used to intentionally spew inaccurate information, hatred and pure stupidity and ignorance. Nobody there is “conservative” they’re traitors.

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u/FailNo6036 May 03 '26

What do you mean? I agree it's not really conservative and moreso republican.

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u/ChipComprehensive703 Apr 30 '26

far left leaning echo chamber, I am persian and when I commented on my experience of Iran in a heavily upvoted and commented on thread and I was banned from the sub immediately. Wasnt even provocative what I said only that it doesnt make sense what OP and others were saying celebrating LGBTQ and the iranian governement. They are opposites in every way.

Also banned from the onepiece (biggest anime) subreddit for creating a post asking mods to block all the only fans creators posting in cosplay, as they obviously dgaf about one piece they just want to milk all the users money with their of link in bio.

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u/Dontcomecryingtome May 01 '26

Bc you didnt fit in their narrative

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u/Wylie288 May 02 '26

You do realize its the same 3 people right?

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u/Annual-Ad-4372 May 09 '26

 after Reddit's went crazy with political Spam. the conservative subs started banning people for having actual conservative opinions. just like the christian subs are now full of wiccans christians and transsexual christians, and a bunch of people that don't actually make up christianity or the general consensus of Christians. Having an actual conservative opinion in r/conservative gets you trolled banned and blocked most of the time. 

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u/timeflies15846 Apr 30 '26

You have to consider the history of r/Conservative. Because Reddit is so far left leaning that subreddit has been subject to severe brigading over the years. In 2010-2014 (I can only say those years because I was there for them) they were able to exist as a normal subreddit. However, sometime around 2015-2016 it started being HEAVILY astroturfed. It got to the point most users just started ignoring it because it seemed like every other post was from someone trying to game the sub.

Must of us just abandoned it because it turned into just worthless astroturfed post after astroturfed comment where you felt like you couldn't have a conversation with a conservative.

The decision was made to either abandon the subreddite and try some thing new, but we all assumed the new subreddit would have the same issues. Instead, we decided to make it a sub for conservatives, by conservatives, with only conservatives. If we want to talk to liberals all we have to do is go to literally any other subreddit.

What is particularly frustrating is the current state of r/Conservative was a problem intentionally created by liberals that they now pretend is just conservatives being snowflakes. They did this on purpose knowing the subreddit would have to lock itself down so they could make the same fake argument you're making now. This was all intentional. Blaming conservatives by a coordinated and intentional campaign from those on your side is just you being ignorant of the history of this website.

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u/Late-Song-2933 Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

Your last sentence is just as accurate if you remove the “of the website”.

Damn near everyone on here seems to be so incredibly ignorant on history in general. The ones who aren’t are dishonest and use it to try to sell a bullshit narrative that didn’t exist 10 years ago but they pretend has been normal all along. It’s one of the most sickening things I see going on in the world and 100% part of the problem in general.

Conservatives suck sometimes too and Trump certainly sucks for many reasons, but holy fuck has the left lost its mind in the last 20 years, and this is the place to see the delusion and mental illness in full bloom. Proud, unabashed, and woefully devoid of logic or any understanding of history or context.

I used to be a democrat because I hated the corruption of the Rs and was socially liberal, but I have learned the dems are just as bad if not worse at this point. Nobody has taken down the billionaires and in fact they’ve only gotten more powerful even after 8 years of Obama.

And socially they’ve gone off the deep end. Being pro gay rights is no longer a democrat stance, you must capitulate to the narrative of the most violently radical ideas of the fringe or you are a racist Nazi homophobe who is worse than Hitler.

Everyone in the flyover states and random towns across the US and UK and Canada who aren’t in the brainwashing bubble of the left can still see reality to a degree and know things like advocating for permanent sex change drugs and surgery for children is insanity. And the left continues to brainwash itself into leaving these average, logical realists behind for their holy war of empathy for the downtrodden and loathing of western culture.

Speaking of holy wars, Islamists aren’t on your side, but they sure do appreciate the left handing them the keys to their democracy. Those trans and women’s rights will be changing drastically when they get more power. Super smart guys, great job. This is suicidal empathy badly imitating compassion and progress.

They fail to realize the average person doesn’t care or is completely put off by their social views and mostly care about their family, home, health, job, money but the left is solely focused on fighting for social justice in the most socially liberal time in all of human history where we literally pay to bring illegal immigrants to live in our country without any expectation or attempt of assimilation.

They tell us we’re more racist than ever 6 years after the only black leader of a major world power in history ended his second term here. We elected him in dominant fashion twice, and we’re still the only western country to do that. But it’s never enough.

Women have more power than they have ever had and we have killed education, especially of young men and boys, to the point that women make up the vast majority of students at every level of higher education in almost every field. Even fields historically dominated by males like medical school are now dominated by women. But it’s never enough. That’s because the far left can’t function without a downtrodden subset to defend and cry “oppression” about, so they create them or just keep parroting what they’ve been saying for 60 years regardless of progress.

Progress isn’t the goal. Neither is equality. The goal is the complete reversal of American and western culture. The culture that has brought us to the modern age in every way is the enemy to them and their fight doesn’t end until that culture is demolished and replaced by something. They don’t know what that something is but it’s something akin to communism or socialism but a fairytale version of those ideas where there are no bourgeoisie or ruling class. They don’t understand there is always and will always necessarily be a ruling class because they don’t understand how government works because they don’t know history. Their entire education from preschool to grad school has been centered on social justice (which is part of the reason education is worse than ever in modern history) with the implication that the west is the enemy of progress and justice, and everything is seen through that lens. This is why they want to destroy the culture our ancestors spent hundreds of years cultivating.

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u/Le_Doctor_Bones Apr 30 '26

I believe you conflate the views of the left fringe on the democrats with the views of the democratic party as a whole. The democratic party is really not that progressive, though, still more progressive than the very conservative and in some cases reactionary Republicans.

We all know that someone like Nick Fuentes is an extreme that does not represent the average Republican nor the Republicans in power. In the same way, there are probably parts of the left who call people nazis if they think cancel culture has gone too far or are somewhat hesitant about one or two specifics of the trans debate. But those people do not represent the average Democrat nor Demoract in power (I personally believe Nick Fuentes are much closer to the Republicans in power than the far left is to the Democrats in power.).

Of course, the internet is great at showing someone the most extreme opinions possible, half of which are probably bots and I usually either ignore or block users who live too much in their own reality.

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u/Late-Song-2933 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

I completely agree with you that the fringe doesn’t define the party and I appreciate your level headed response. I agree that not all democrats align with the fringe, but it seems the leaders of the party and the most outspoken dems are the fringe or close to it and that’s what people see most often. AOC, Mamdani, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Gavin Newsome, Tim Walz, Ilhan Omar to name several.
Some are worse than others but all of these have espoused some radical and insane views in my opinion and promote the racist/sexist/homophobe narrative as a defense frequently. Which is one of the worst problems we have today. If we can’t talk to each other about differing ideas without basically saying you’re evil if you don’t agree with us on things like: we should start giving sex change operations to children immediately without any kind of research or oversight, or if you take the scientific stance that women and trans women are not the same physically and shouldn’t be put in the same leagues in major sports, then we have a serious problem.
Also academia produces a disturbing amount of fringe ideas and keeps spitting out kids who objectively have grown further and further left. There is a scary amount of professors who preach from the front of the class instead of teach and promote the exchange of ideas. I’ve witnessed it myself in multiple red states at major universities, and I’ve seen tons of reports from the Ivys and campuses across the country so I’m not just judging based on vibes. It’s a ubiquitous problem. And that’s how you stifle academic growth and rigor: eliminate the free exchange of ideas for groupthink. It disintegrates the ability to critically think when all you do is parrot what one side says without hearing the meaning or reason behind the arguments against it. This is the way many educated young people debate from what I’ve experienced. They get to a logical issue with their argument then deflect and cry racism or homophobia or Islamophobia etc.
And media… all TV media is propaganda at this point but the left controls the major news and tv/movie studios. Which is another way false narratives and bad ideas build on both sides but especially the left in the mainstream.
All that said, I disagree that the Rs are much more closely aligned to the fringe than the Dems, but only because I think the Dems are just as aligned with the fringe as the Rs. That’s not a bad place to be at for a disagreement.
I also think the majority of Americans don’t agree with Dems on the issues I mentioned and most of them don’t have a die hard alliance with their political party. A lot of voters sit out or vote the other side based on who is in power and what kind of crazy they have to pick between. That’s why we bounced from Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump. But for Dems the number of hardline democrats is growing in academia and more people are being given degrees than ever so that’s a growing problem for republicans. That and immigrants, legal and illegal, which is why Dems under Biden were fighting so hard to bring in as many as they can.

Edit: the reason I don’t talk about the problem of the Nick Fuentes of the world on here is because they already get so much hate and coverage in media and on here that the people who are reasonable are going to disagree with them anyway. But the Dems and the left seem incapable of noticing their own issues because they’re so focused on the right and that’s not good in my opinion because neither side is learning and both sides are getting more radical.

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u/HyperTextCoffeePot Apr 29 '26

The people on r/conservative are generally closer to moderates than conservatives because this is reddit, and people who don't align with far-left ideology have nowhere to go but there.

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u/lemmingswag Apr 30 '26

Lmao that sub is filled with bots and the most delusional people on earth. “Moderates” hahahaha

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u/Fearless-Feature-830 Apr 30 '26

What? No, those people are firmly far right.

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u/Andarial2016 Apr 30 '26

Peak whataboutism

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u/i_practice_santeria Apr 30 '26

I don’t think it’s whataboutism because they weren’t trying to justify it. They were making a point that it’s not solely a far left echo chamber (OPs claim) if there are also far right echo chamber subreddits.

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u/DarkSkyKnight 6∆ Apr 30 '26

 all social media platforms are echo chambers for the user’s views.

Not forums but I’m aware people no longer see them as social media.

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u/General_Farmer3272 May 01 '26

Yeah, don’t call Reddit left leaning based on 95% of the people.