r/GenZ 2d ago

Does it bother you that Reddit Shutdown comments during last nights debate? Discussion

Curious if it bothers you that Reddit shutdown comments during last nights debate. I'm not super sure of how the internals of Reddit work ie did Reddit hide comments or did moderators, I do know a handful of mods control most of Reddit but it was intersting to see a megathread on r/politics with 1800 comments showing 0 comments, even threads on here, r/millenials and numerous other subreddits would show minimal comments of those posted or none at all.

What's the justification for this? Does it bother you?

246 Upvotes

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228

u/Smart_Culture384 1999 2d ago edited 2d ago

Incredibly convenient for Reddit to shit the bed last night…

Edit:

PSA: Reddit is dominated by bots. Everything and anything on Reddit should be considered (insert here) government generated propaganda unless proven otherwise. Nothing you see on this website is what the majority of human beings believe.

If you believe this to be false: describe the colors of an old growth forrest.

98

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

I saw Reddit tweeted they were having comment issues but it only affected debate threads so clearly that wans't the issue. I'm not on Tiktok but heard Tiktok comments went down as well. Regardless of where you stand politically nobody should be for shutting down discussions

48

u/xeio87 2d ago

It wasn't only debate threads. It was literally every sub.

12

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

I was able to see everything but debate or political threads, even if what your saying is the case the timing is suspect

21

u/swiftcleaner 2003 2d ago

I commented on another sub and my comments also has issues being displayed there. It was literally just high traffic

2

u/Far-Fennel-3032 1d ago

The high traffic was probably bots from all sides, foreign and domestic all trying to post all at once and it just broke the site.

1

u/bwoah07_gp2 2000 2d ago

This is the only reason. I don't know why people are so stupid to not realize this.

It was extremely high traffic that caused sidewide issues with new comments being displayed. It wasn't an attempt by reddit to silence people or push a certain narrative like some people here are claiming.

1

u/Stardustquarks 1d ago

The ones arguing this are the same bots that shut the system down

-3

u/Beginning_Ad_4449 2d ago

With modern cloud infrastructure, high traffic is not a valid excuse. If that's what Reddit is claiming, it really means people working at Reddit made the decision to turn off automated server increases last night to give the illusion of high traffic.

It's no secret that Reddit has a severe bias. Lots of people in this sub may not have been around when they deleted all of the right-leaning subs years ago.

4

u/windowtosh 1995 2d ago

More like reddit is a shit website that doesnt care about its users or user experience and hasn't for nearly a decade.

Also "all of the right-leaning subs" were making death threats, brigading other communities, and literally just toxic for the website. And at the same time they did that they also took out a lot of left-leaning subs like ChapoTrapHouse, GenZedong, Fullcommunism, and more.

Ultimately reddit cares about advertisers and their money and having subreddits dedicated to harassing fat people, gun violence victims, or capitalists, isn't conducive for that. And from a revenue perspective, paying for more server time for a half-hour blip of comments isn't worth it either, because they know everyone is gonna come back. Simple as.

1

u/seattleseahawks2014 2000 2d ago

I think it's a sign that they need to be updated. Why censor posts that have nothing to do with the debates unless you're site is a dinosaur?

1

u/ford_fuggin_ranger 2d ago

Reddit regularly shits the bed, friend.

-2

u/AsterCharge 2001 2d ago

“With modern cloud infrastructure”

We got a certified Reddit expert here, everyone salute him.

4

u/xeio87 2d ago

Were you actually comparing the "X comments" displayed at the top of the page vs the number of comments shown on posts? Every post in /new would show something like "5 comments" and if you're lucky you might see one (often none for minutes at a time).

2

u/ford_fuggin_ranger 2d ago

I wasn't. I wasn't in any debate threads or political subs and none of my comments were showing up for about 30 minutes.

Just seemed like a system bottleneck.

2

u/seattleseahawks2014 2000 2d ago

Some of my comments on the debate ones showed up, but some on other subs didn't.

2

u/Sy-lo 2d ago

I was on here and threads that were not about the debate were working for me. Posts in r/miata and r/armwrestling and random shit. I took a bunch of videos for posterity - it was interesting. Couldnt open the comments in any thread about the debate though - even it if had like 3 comments and was just posted.

1

u/Dull-Geologist-8204 2d ago

I avoided everything about the debate and on reddit last night. Surprise I didn't even know there was an issue.

7

u/theucm 2d ago

I had a similar suspicion so I went to a niche hobby sub (warhammer) I lurk in and checked comments on new posts. Basically anything after about 9:30 EST didn't show up until much later in the night.

That isn't to say what did or didn't happen, but I just wanted to point out that it wasn't JUST debate threads.

2

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

I was seeing stuff in other threads but was more focused on new stuff in some of the debate threads which either weren't showing up at all or where "positive" comments were showing up ie should have been 468 comments but 3 were showing

1

u/Reice1990 2d ago

Warhammer is really fun I play warhammer 40k as imperial guard  got quite expensive though 

1

u/theucm 2d ago

I've been meaning to start playing, but at the moment I'm just one of those folks who gobbles up the lore and reads the books. I've been reading the Word Bearers trilogy lately, halfway through Dark Creed, the third one. I'm a sucker for Chaos, Necrons, and Orks, I admit.

4

u/internetexplorer_98 2d ago

It affected other threads. I posted in an unrelated subReddit and couldn’t load any new comments for the duration of the debate.

3

u/Jonnyskybrockett 2001 2d ago

It’s a known issue on Reddit that threads that gain over 30k comments lag the whole platform. It’s been an issue for a long long time… I’m surprised moderators didn’t prevent this in any way…

2

u/bwoah07_gp2 2000 2d ago

My dude, it was extremely high traffic that caused sidewide issues with new comments being displayed. It wasn't an attempt by reddit to silence people or push a certain narrative like you are insinuating.

1

u/powerbackme 2d ago

That’s fucking insane.

5

u/DandierChip 2d ago

Yeah it’s going to be tough to prove it was on purpose but it’s definitely a little questionable

5

u/ralphsquirrel 2d ago

??? What would be their motivation to shut down live debate thread comments? I was in live debate chat for much of the night and I didn't experience any downage.

1

u/bwoah07_gp2 2000 2d ago

Stop saying that.  It was extremely high traffic that caused sidewide issues with new comments being displayed. It wasn't an attempt by reddit to silence people or push a certain narrative like what you're suggesting.

1

u/DandierChip 2d ago

Totally man

2

u/EnvironmentalAd1006 1998 1d ago

Shit am I supposed to know the color of an old growth forest on my own?

1

u/Smart_Culture384 1999 1d ago

It rhymes with reen.

1

u/EnvironmentalAd1006 1998 1d ago

Thanks for walking my dumbass across the finish line. I feel like the blue car in Cars 1 rn

1

u/ralphsquirrel 2d ago

What?? How so?

1

u/Technicalhotdog 2d ago

Not that it matters much, since everyone's talking about it today anyway

1

u/Smart_Culture384 1999 2d ago

Nothing matters on Reddit. The bots post and upvote whatever “they” want you to believe. This website is a shit hole and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

1

u/XJustBrowsingRedditX 1d ago

Well obviously everyone who disagrees with me politically is a Russian plant.

77

u/RogueCoon 1998 2d ago

It's reddit I'm not even suprised.

19

u/Waifu_Review 2d ago

It was like night and day the comments that managed to post during the post lockdown were properly calling out Bidens inability to be coherent and were upvoted a lot then after the freeze were all down voted and the upvoted posts were all damage control narratives for Biden.

11

u/Ok_Remote5352 1999 2d ago

it’s insane seeing the waves of narrative on reddit. threads flip back and forth all day with hundreds of upvotes or downvotes that just appear.

3

u/bwoah07_gp2 2000 2d ago

It was extremely high traffic that caused sidewide issues with new comments being displayed. It wasn't an attempt by reddit to silence people or push a certain narrative like some people here are claiming.

2

u/bwoah07_gp2 2000 2d ago

Their (new) UI sucks, their infrastructure sucks. I've never seen a social media platform have so many outages, and I've been a reddit user since 2019.

4

u/Sy-lo 2d ago

been on reddit since 2011. Never seen softlocked comments that you cannot open like this. It didnt seem like a crash or glitch, the threads were active and you could post, but not open the comments. Comments were not "trying" to load. It was only debate threads. I took a bunch of videos on my phone for posterity of new random posts working, and debate threads in everything from r/youtubetv threads with 2 comments to r/PoliticalDiscussion post with 1,500 comments not opening. Not trying to be tinfoil hat - just telling you what i saw last night as I was investigating it.

69

u/Leo-Libra-Virgoo 1998 2d ago

It bothers me if comments are ever shut down, period. Free speech should be free speech, whether you like it or not.

27

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

Fun fact, that’s still not how free speech works. You do not have free speech on Reddit.

53

u/dorfWizard 2d ago

Only positive messages about my favorite candidate are allowed.

23

u/WindowzExPee 2d ago

And everyone that disagrees with me is literally hitler.

16

u/dorfWizard 2d ago

LITERALLY

1

u/uslashinsertname 2006 2d ago

They morph into a freakazoid zombie hitler right before your eyes

19

u/DrunkenVerpine 2d ago

Fun fact, you can look at free speech as a concept versus letter of the law.

1

u/Ok_Finger3098 1d ago

Some of dont support hate speech despite it being free speech. If you want to make a moral argument of free speech, I doubt everyone would agree. If you want to make a legal argument, then I find most would agree that Reddit should not have to support free speech on their platform.

-4

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

Yeah, and corporations don’t have any obligation to follow concepts versus the law, so to act like they would, should, are, or will ever actually guarantee free speech on their platforms is a fools choice.

20

u/DrunkenVerpine 2d ago

Of course. But we should always fight back against that. In today's world, if there is no free speech online or in media, all privately owned, there is effectively no free speech.

Everytime someone says well there's no free speech on reddit it makes me cringe. Yes, you're technically right, congratulations on simping for large corporations and a fascist government.

-8

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

Joy. Because I have a realistic view of reality I’m simping for the corps.

Shut the fuck up. Stop wasting your time on Reddit and go get to work making the society you want. I’ll be over here, in reality, where corporations are neither good or bad.

8

u/DrunkenVerpine 2d ago

I dont know why we're arguing. Im agreeing with you on the law. Are you saying I shouldn't champion greater free speech rights, even if that means just trying to hold the line on existing rights?

-2

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

No I’m saying anybody accusing others of simping for the corps sounds like the dollar store version of Johnny Silverband and should really be more focused on doing better things with their lives.

8

u/DrunkenVerpine 2d ago

Eh, you don't know what I do. I'm just saying when people play the card "no free speech on reddit" you're basically damaging the concept of free speech and by championing it not existing on internet forums is effective supporting restrictions on it.

1

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

I know you apparently like to make pointless comments on Reddit which with such high aspirations for society at large you really should get on with it and wasting time here.

4

u/Tonythesaucemonkey 2d ago

If the government influences a private company, it is a violation of the first amendment.

Edit: worded it bad. undue influence

3

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

So you have proof the government pressured Reddit? I’d be interested to see that.

0

u/FatTonysDog 6h ago

Reddit's canary was killed back in 2014. We can assume ever since then, the governement has pressured reddit.

0

u/JCicero2041 4h ago

So your proof that the government pressured Reddit to limit coverage of the debate is a nothing burger from a decade ago. Yeah, literally any successful data company is pressured to share its data with the government.

If you pay attention to what we were talking about you’d see that has zero relevance.

1

u/FatTonysDog 3h ago

of the debate

I didnt see this part. I was talking about government pressuring reddit to allow or disallow content for political reasons. Overall, they have been doing it since 2014.

Not just 'sharing data'. Its censoring topics, removing users, softbanning subreddits.

0

u/JCicero2041 3h ago

Yeah so like I told the other guy, prove it. Because if you can’t, and again, the thing from 2014 doesn’t count since that’s normal business sadly, then you’re spreading disinformation and should really stop.

Again, the thing from 2014 was about data requests, which any data company gets. I mean proof that the government is (edit: pressuring Reddit to) censoring topics and subreddits and shit.

-2

u/Tonythesaucemonkey 2d ago

I'm not claiming it did, I'm just saying if it did, then it's a first amendment violation.

3

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

Yeah, which is why it didn’t happen.

-1

u/Tonythesaucemonkey 2d ago

Are you claiming that our government won't violate our constitutional rights?

3

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

No, but we both know that isn’t what happened in this case.

ThE guBERmInT TOLD ReaDIT TO CUT DER FEED.

Vs

During a huge political event too many people were trying to use Reddit and it had to reduce bandwidth, which would be why it hit things like the Dr.Disrespect sub, or r/redmenbad , or somewhere like the politics sub, which is one of the largest subs on a normal news day, much less on the first proper debate.

Occam’s razor

1

u/Tonythesaucemonkey 2d ago

lmao I don't believe that the govt had anything to do with it. They have much bigger problems than plebbit

-2

u/seattleseahawks2014 2000 2d ago

It's possible.

2

u/JCicero2041 2d ago

Possible does not equal likely and baseless speculation is harmful to discourse. On the topic of possible, is it a free speech violation if aliens brainwashed the government to pressure Reddit? That’s possible too.

11

u/OddishBehavior On the Cusp 2d ago

The first amendment protects you from government retaliation. Reddit is not a branch of government. You do not have freeze peach here.

13

u/armzzz77 2d ago

Thats true in a legal sense, but it’s still disappointing that an American company has such little regard for a core American value

1

u/barkazinthrope 2d ago

Since Milton Friedman the only core American value is the maximization of profit. Any other consideration is "subversive of capitalism".

And here we are!

7

u/Right_Platypus_387 1998 2d ago

Free speech is a concept. That concept is pretty widely practiced in western culture. 1st amendment was not mentioned at all. The user base of a social media platform should definitely hold the company responsible for defying this value and concept. You can't just throw up your arms and go "It is a private company" when they censor to only what the company wants you to see.

-6

u/OddishBehavior On the Cusp 2d ago

It's objectively a private company and they have every right to censor what they like or don't like, even if it's stupid and unfair. There was never freeze peach here, or on any social platform, and we have the freedom to migrate somewhere else if we don't like it.

5

u/Right_Platypus_387 1998 2d ago

I don't get the point in your comment.

-1

u/soul-herder 2d ago

The government and the general populace can stomach arbitrary ass rules about who businesses should be forced to serve, and forced to hire, and who they can’t fire for what reason, so surly we can make it so that the 1st amendment actually applies again to social media

0

u/OddishBehavior On the Cusp 2d ago

Keep huffing that copium, this is how the free market works.

2

u/Yillick 2d ago

I think the server just overloaded from the sudden jump in activity. Y’all gotta stop assuming there is some nefarious intent behind everything. 

3

u/bwoah07_gp2 2000 2d ago

Gosh man, free speech isn't being silenced. It was extremely high traffic that caused sidewide issues with new comments being displayed. It wasn't an attempt by reddit to silence people or push a certain narrative...it was their crappy servers going out again. I've never seen a social media site with so many outages before.

2

u/Sy-lo 2d ago

happened on tik tok, reddit, and X.com too. You saying all these platforms had issues displaying comments all at the same time for the 2.5 hours after the debate ended because of usage outages?

1

u/Sy-lo 2d ago

Also when reddit has usage or traffic outages it doesnt manifest as comment sections that are unable to be opened. It'll at least 'try' to open them, pop down and show the loading icon, or show the "oops!" crashed thread page.

1

u/fractalfrenzy 1d ago

It was a technical glitch, not intentional.

-2

u/TimeLordHatKid123 1999 2d ago

Free speech is one thing, absolutism and just allowing hatemongers to whip people into a frenzy is another thing, and there's actually a term for it: "hate speech", which is NOT protected, and is considered a crime for a good reason. Not only is it just plain cruel and wrong, but it has the tangible effect of driving people to commit hate and violent crimes against the group targeted by said speech.

Unfortunately, the absolutists call you a crazy censorship-loving woke sjw if you try to point this out. Its a bit too inconvenient for the hatemongers, ya see?

0

u/seattleseahawks2014 2000 2d ago

They were censoring subs and comments that had nothing to do with politics or hate speech.

0

u/TimeLordHatKid123 1999 2d ago

If you’re correct about what was getting attacked, then sure that is fucked up, but you can’t blame me for my skepticism when people who whine about “muh freeze peach” mostly do it to excuse blatant hate speech.

1

u/seattleseahawks2014 2000 2d ago

Well yea, I get what you mean.

47

u/Electrical_Hamster87 1997 2d ago

This website was essentially taken over by the DNC in 2016. I’m older Gen Z a lot of you probably don’t realize that it wasn’t super biased towards progressive leftism before then. It was actually right libertarian back in like 2012 and slowly drifted to the current state it’s in over time but the big thing was Trump’s election.

So no I’m not surprised, very few people are going to talk about Biden’s performance after today. It will be back to how great he is, even though it’s clear he’s not calling the shots because he is in no state to. I just wonder who is actually in charge of our country because it certainly isn’t this man.

28

u/Ok_Remote5352 1999 2d ago

agreed. there used to be calls for revolution on reddit. now it’s like a neo liberal mouthpiece.

31

u/Electrical_Hamster87 1997 2d ago

The calls for revolution were mostly always LARPing but I can agree the main subreddits have become very mainstream DNC mouthpieces.

Reddit basically got infested with people who used to use Tumblr when Tumblr got shut down. Things that used to be mocked as Tumblr nonsense went mainstream and now we have mods who remove anything that even seems like an original thought.

8

u/Ok_Remote5352 1999 2d ago

fair. really interesting seeing all these social medias change. twitter used to be ultra left and now it has somehow become the neo conservative hotspot.

13

u/Electrical_Hamster87 1997 2d ago

Twitter always had an active but smallish far right group too. It was basically the only social media outlet that allowed far right ideology (to some extent).

Reddit banned any subs to the right of Mitt Romney years ago.

1

u/Random_Imgur_User 2000 2d ago

Realistically it just needs a legitimate competitor. There's nothing else exactly like it widely available.

6

u/Tonythesaucemonkey 2d ago

A large swathe of the Reddit is still right libertarian. PCM, greentext, wsb and other subs which still have the 'spirit' of reddit is still quite lib right

4

u/Electrical_Hamster87 1997 2d ago

I think some of Reddit is but the bots aren’t.

When a post of Biden eating ice cream or Trump looking stupid gets 100k upvotes on r/Pics I don’t think that those are actual people. I just can’t imagine giving that much of a shit every day even when it’s not election season. Yet those are how the main subs are, it’s all propaganda all the time.

4

u/Tonythesaucemonkey 2d ago

eh the biden eating ice cream pic went hard, and became a great meme.

3

u/[deleted] 2d ago

Too many bots on the website. Reddit knows their website is dying, dead internet theory and all that. I swear at least half of the down or upvotes are done by bots

3

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

Didn't they cause the free speech guy to off himself?

2

u/EVOSexyBeast 2d ago

It’s because reddit got more popular so it came in line closer with public opinion. No longer is reddit just PC gamers and white men in tech. It’s also more global now not just US.

1

u/[deleted] 2d ago

Woah don’t say anything negative against Biden this websites lord our god

1

u/soul-herder 2d ago

Yea, fueled by staggering levels of censorship that so called “liberals” support rabidly and justified by “ITS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY THEY DONT HAVE TO FOLLOW” nevermind the total anti-Americanness of it all

Obligatory fuck u/spez

-1

u/MV7EaglesFan 2d ago

2016 the whole internet was alt-right, edge lord shit show. What are you even talking about?

-4

u/Trusteveryboody 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah, I used consider this site left-leaning, now I would consider it Leftist.

IMO, r-teenagers is one of the most reasonable places (of at least a big subreddit) if you DO NOT get to Hot. If you get to Hot, that's where things might go wrong. Feel like that's when the rest of Reddit will start too.

I was hypothetically on reddit in 2017ish....and back then I wasn't really afraid of saying what I actually think. These days (again HYPOTHETICALLY), I just know what to say and ESPECIALLY what not to say.

Twitter is my favorite social media, although Reddit would be if it was like Twitter. You can get the White Supremacist (and this isn't just 'name calling' but ACTUALLY a White Supremacist on that site), or you can get way on the other side of things as well. All you need to do is comment on the right stuff, and that's what your homepage will turn to. And I never would have used twitter before such was the case, and that's also why it's so "right" now...because no other social media is so allowable (I don't really count 4Chan).

7

u/Electrical_Hamster87 1997 2d ago

4Chan is really only porn, there’s nothing else on 4Chan. It might have used to be something but that was years ago.

2

u/Waifu_Review 2d ago

Reddit isn't Leftist its middle class capitalist liberal. Middle class capitalist Republicans think it's "Leftist" because they glitch out at the mild tokenism the DNC has with LGBTQ people, and the thought that they are just puppets for the same wealthy oligarchs that Team Blue work for makes them scared and angry.

3

u/Trusteveryboody 2d ago

I guess I can get what you're saying, but- I would consider the stances I so often see Leftist (that can probably be debated, but that's my stance).

The average redditor probably isn't doing anything extreme besides talking.

4

u/Electrical_Hamster87 1997 2d ago

Most of Reddit considers themself socialist, it’s not my fault you move the post further left every year to point out how actually everybody is far right except you.

-2

u/Waifu_Review 2d ago

No, they don't. Reddit is mostly middle class capitalist het white males who shit the bed at the thought of class solidarity because capital convinced them mommy and daddy won't be able to buy all their video games if fast food workers have insurance or daycare provided. They'll give tokenism for minorities and het women then throw a tantrum about any policy meant to equal the playing field.

20

u/stopblasianhate69 2d ago

You are overthinking this lol. It was just high server traffic calm down

6

u/Kind_Committee8997 2d ago

This^ i couldn't even view comments from earlier that day that weren't related to the debate.

1

u/draker585 2d ago

I was able to read many posts from before the debate, but if I looked at anything new it showed empty.

1

u/-doe-deer- 1996 2d ago

Mighty convenient

2

u/shuriflowers 2005 2d ago

this was my impression as well.

0

u/bwoah07_gp2 2000 2d ago

The fact I scrolled so far for this correct answer is sad, and a reflection of our society as it currently is.

0

u/puppiesunicorns1234 2d ago

This. It happened on tiktok too and wouldn't be surprised if it was all platforms

19

u/Hydra57 2001 2d ago

I think the political bots started swarming in a bunch of subreddits and Reddit basically shit the bed

10

u/Deep-Watch-2688 2d ago

The censorship and botting on this platform over the last handful of years have definitely gotten out of hand.

2

u/[deleted] 2d ago

When a website is dying they gotta do something to make it look alive. Even in massive massive subreddits, I always see the same people commenting and posting

8

u/Astarions_Juice_Box 1998 2d ago

Reddit, Tiktok and Twitter all basically shut down last night

2

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

Twitter seemed fine, I heard tiktok shutdown comments, that one is interesting as they would seemingly want conflict and chaos

5

u/00rgus 2006 2d ago

No lol, idk if your trying to imply that there is some conspiracy to hide people's opinion happening on reddit and not that considering it was such a big night the servers were just acting slow and weren't showing comments

-2

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

Convenient

6

u/00rgus 2006 2d ago

Ig it's also convenient when instagram or discord goes down on a random Wednesday afternoon too

4

u/JimJohnman 2d ago

Dude just speak your mind.

The whole "Hmmmmmm, why isn't that very ~convenient~ 🤔🧐" thing you're doing is just annoying.

3

u/astronauticalll 2d ago

I mean the comments were restored super quickly though?? Like who is this "convenient" for? It's not like it stopped people from talking about it. The comments were down for a couple hours, site wide, because of high traffic. As soon as the comments were back up people got back to posting all their opinions as normal. I'm just lost on what kind of impact you think this possibly could have had

7

u/kadargo 2d ago

The bots were out en masse last night.

6

u/AugustusClaximus 2d ago

In pretty sure r/politics is like 80% bots.

4

u/OldNegotiation1991 2d ago

not a real predicament i gave that much thought to, but thats just how i am, you know, nonchalant type steppa

3

u/GoldieDoggy 2005 2d ago

It happened literally everywhere on reddit. Not just the debate subs. It started before the debate, as well. Y'all need to use your brains for once, PLEASE. They were not censoring you. If that were the case, they wouldn't have even tried to fix it and it wouldn't have effected EVERY subreddit. Pretty much all comments made within like a 10-hour time period were missing. The ones before that were fine.

They didn't shutdown comments. They had a bug that made what they call "comment trees" disappear. It has happened MANY times in the past, including about a year ago.

-1

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

The timing of the "bug" was odd right? And after all we've learned about the DOJ, FBI, CDC telling social media companies what to censor after the past couple years isn't it reasonable we can at least question it?

3

u/astronauticalll 2d ago

a surefire way to test a site limits is to have a ton of traffic flow through it in a short timeframe. Hmm I wonder what could have happened yesterday that would have made a lot of people log on to reddit wanting to comment things 🧐🧐🧐

Like please be so for real, the "odd timing" is a side effect of higher than usual traffic. It's a bug that's happened before, it's a bug that'll happen again.

2

u/GoldieDoggy 2005 2d ago

It really wasn't. It started beforehand, and what benefit would they have when they literally let all of the comments show up again a few hours later? They're not preventing you from commenting your conspiracy theory, they're not preventing new people from commenting, and it affected EVERY sub. Not just posts about debates.

3

u/SlickRick941 2d ago

Well of course they did, it has been known to manipulate discord in favor of far left politics for years, going back to at least 2015. Not surprising at all

2

u/RadarSmith 2d ago

And yet shockingly, people are discussing the debate all over reddit, in ways that certainly aren’t favorable to Biden. Like you are, here.

Go look at r/politics . That’s the main topic of discussion today, and its not flattering at all.

Reddit got a tummy ache last night because of the vastly higher than usual comment traffic, not because Biden shat the bed at the debate. Reddit wants to sell ad views/clicks more than anything else, so a slowdown last night was definitely not what they wanted.

2

u/astronauticalll 2d ago

I mean it wasn't intentional, pretty much all the subs were having issues with it yesterday. My guess would be the debates caused high traffic that broke something.

Not quite sure what there is to be "bothered" over, other than a mild inconvenience. Comments are clearly back up today, it's not like people were only gonna talk about the debate when it was happening.

2

u/VZ5-S117 2000 2d ago

The comments on TikTok weren’t loading for me last night either

2

u/lil__squeaky 2d ago

It wasn’t surprising at all, considering 67% thought trump “won”. Reddit has gone downhill into a progressive cesspool just look at r/politics . Theres nothing wrong with not liking trump but if you dont believe he is the second coming of hitler himself out to kill all gays, Arabians, blacks and anyone not white and christian your seen as the scum of the earth and a pos.

2

u/TrashManufacturer 1999 2d ago

Was it intentional? Reddit has gotten to be quite shoddy in terms of performance and user experience without the additional pressure of two old geezers yelling, or in joes case mumbling, at each other for 90 minutes on National Television as well as YouTube

2

u/EvilDarkCow 1998 2d ago

I don't think it was debate related, just a Reddit hiccup. I posted in a local sub asking about places to get my car worked on, and I was getting lots of comments, but I couldn't read any of them beyond the notification preview. It would just be a blank page.

2

u/SpecialMango3384 1997 2d ago

They said Reddit had a cold…

2

u/GoldenDisk 1d ago

Reddit switched to being unabashedly pro democrat establishment during the 2016 election with ShareBlue. Even if Reddit didn’t do this, the army of unpaid internet janitors with god complexes would do it manually in their subreddits. You are best off just remembering that Reddit isn’t real life 

0

u/Trusteveryboody 2d ago

Idk, but this is why I like Twitter. Elon openly said he would not disallow (in defiance of CNN).

2

u/astronauticalll 2d ago edited 1d ago

He quite literally bans people who annoy him lmao but sure okay

And even your god king Elon isn't immune to a server outage, which is what happens when you get high traffic like yesterday

0

u/Competitive-Dig-3120 2d ago

Reddit is known for being an echo chamber and very anti free speech, I’m not surprised

1

u/[deleted] 2d ago

Reddit is libby heaven and iFunny/4chan is a racists wet dream. All social media is echo chambers with a few real people and thousands of bots to validate whichever side is in the majority

1

u/Reice1990 2d ago

Nope I was busy watching the debate without any commentators or chat 

I really enjoyed it liked that trump was well behaved It felt like election night of 16

1

u/IllustriousBreak3996 2d ago

noticed TikTok doing the same it was weird

2

u/Jkid789 2d ago

Reddit is extremely liberal leaning, and they probably didn't want any slander on Biden. We all knew how that debate would go pretty much.

1

u/ObservantWon 2d ago

Big tech trying to protect Biden and the Dems. Not surprising.

1

u/seattleseahawks2014 2000 2d ago

I was more confused as to why comments that I made that weren't political at all were saying wow such empty and then I checked them this morning and they were fine. Wtf??

1

u/Madame_Raven 1997 2d ago

No, because I was masturbating during the debate. Like, in my bed, flicking the bean, not mentally masturbating like everyone who watched the debate.

1

u/draker585 2d ago

Duh. They silenced people so that Biden being completely incoherent wasn’t the primary talking point. It’s also incredibly interesting how even PoliticalCompassMemes, a place that has a strong right-wing bias, only has posts about “both sides bad”. Ain’t very often there’s a site-wide astroturfing campaign like the one we’re seeing today.

1

u/JestersWildly 2d ago

It's a private company with a private agenda. They can do whatever they want until they're found guilty of contributing to election fraud.

1

u/-FalseProfessor- 1997 2d ago

They didn’t shut down comments, the servers were just melting from all the traffic.

1

u/OpportunityCareful75 2d ago

Reddit is super liberal

1

u/silentprayers 2d ago

More than the fact that there even was a debate between Trump and Biden at all? No. This series of events is really just one slap in the face after another.

1

u/Tradersglory 2d ago

Didn’t notice but yah

1

u/JoyconDrift_69 2005 2d ago

Huh? All I was doing during the debate was playing Donkey Kong Country so I had no idea this happened last night

1

u/The_IRS_Fears_Him 2002 2d ago

Now I wait to see Reddit turn on Biden too after deepthroating him for years AHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

1

u/AssumptionOk1679 2d ago

Only approved pov’s allowed, gate keepers.

1

u/SeawardFriend 2002 2d ago

Fr what the f happened to the internet? TikTok shut off comments, so did Reddit. I don’t doubt that there’s more social media that did the same…

1

u/ClockSpiritual6596 2d ago

They locked down any comments daring to point the truth about the candidates.   Why can we have more candidates to choose from?

1

u/Dissendorf 1d ago

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

0

u/Local-Record7707 2d ago

I don't let shit get to me. I became VERY nonchalant. Bahaha

1

u/haikusbot 2d ago

I don't let shit get

To me. I became VERY

Nonchalant. Bahaha

- Local-Record7707


I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully. Learn more about me.

Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete"

3

u/Local-Record7707 2d ago

A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us
I'll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxideAnd no alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
Silent, silentThis is my final fit
My final bellyache withNo alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises, pleaseSuch a pretty house
And such a pretty gardenNo alarms and no surprises (get me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises (get me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises, please (get me out of here)

0

u/Low-Transportation95 2d ago

Nah cause I don't care abput usian politics

0

u/TomBanjo1968 2d ago

Why are you guys even watching this stuff?

The last thing this country needs is The Average Reddit user voting

-1

u/Informal-Bother8858 2d ago

no one is getting their mind changed on reddit, the moderators work for free, theres no problem with the site shutting down a bunch of people arguing with eachother preemptively, half the accounts are political bots anyway

-1

u/MustangEater82 2d ago edited 2d ago

Just wonder what else they do to filter info for someone's narrative to you.

-1

u/konchitsya__leto 2002 2d ago

Yeah lol but what can you do about it?

-1

u/TheFinalZebra 2d ago

of course not, its run by evil leftist totalitarians

TRUMP 2024, THE DNC WILL FALL!!!!

-1

u/Commissar_David 2000 2d ago edited 2d ago

Unfortunately, Reeddit hasn't been a bastion for free speech and discourse for a long time. All the mods of the more political subreddits are of the same political leanings and believe that they are right in everything. They also feel comfortable shutting down opinions that do not align with their own. Hopefully, none of them run for office or else we'll be really screwed as a nation.

They can censor the opinions of many, but they cannot censor what actually happened that night. Biden lost the debate pretty hard. It's to the point where some in the DNC are considering replacing him with a more fit candidate.

I'd also like to say that Kennedy did pretty well last night as well. Instead of exclusively attacking his opponents, he actually talked about America's problems and how he will solve them. Which is something that was missing from the CNN debate.

-1

u/Salty145 2d ago edited 2d ago

I did find that weird. Thought it was just me

3

u/astronauticalll 2d ago

It was site wide

-1

u/Rare_Cobalt 2004 2d ago

Yes they blatantly interfered with free speech in favor of a obvious side

1

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

A lot of people who are okay with stiffling speech will say free speech only applies to the government which legally speaking is true but i agree id like everyone to have free speech pretty much all the time anywhere

-1

u/peachcraft4 2d ago

I think they were probably trying to prevent an online war and it doesnt bother me. at the end of the day no matter how much people rant and choose sides on this platform, nothing fucking changes unless you go out and act on it.

0

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

Who cares though, its online, people have online wars over what the best burrito place is or the housing market or any number of other things

3

u/peachcraft4 2d ago

exactly who actually cares that reddit may or may not have prevented them from posting about their political rage from last night? there is other platforms if you really want to or even this wild thing called protesting.

1

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

If a social media site had an "outage" when Jan 6 was happening you'd have a meltdown

1

u/peachcraft4 2d ago

in that case- ignorance is bliss

-1

u/Amazing_Leek_9695 2d ago

I played with my dick while watching that debate, to be honest.

0

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

Doing the same right now ;)

-3

u/Wide-Grapefruit-6462 2d ago

Russian bots gonna Russian.

4

u/Right_Platypus_387 1998 2d ago

Are they here now with us? Do you see them?

-5

u/SoulOuverture 2d ago

moderating it would have been hell, I don't blame them. Mods are unpaid volounteers. Probably 90% of the comments would have been bots anyway.

Besides, I can predict the discussion in 90% of subs since Reddit users are overwhelmingly anti-trump: people being annoyed at biden's shit performance and trump's lies

-8

u/miletharil 2000 2d ago

In a way, I didn't mind at all. I think accidentally -- or on purpose -- giving everyone a chance to "sleep on it," is great. A lot of comments are given in the moment will be completely lacking in substance, mostly just puerile attempts at edgy humor, or outright rage bait.

Do I think that the discussions being had today will be that much better? Probably not, but maybe just a tiny bit. I think we're all -- in the deepest recesses of hearts where we're the most honest with ourselves -- going to have to admit that last night's debate was a farce, no matter what your political leanings are. Just two old men, barely able to communicate ideas, much less a political platform for the next four years. If they weren't both politically powerful, they'd both be in luxury retirement communities, playing golf and yelling at their TVs.

It's an awful time to be an American, but a great time to be scared and angry. Increasingly, its what we're best at, and that's sad.

7

u/thesuppplugg 2d ago

Why have anybdiscussion at all about anything

-1

u/miletharil 2000 2d ago

Oh, we're going to do that, even if there's no point. If we didn't, sites like reddit wouldn't even exist.