Reddit Has Become a Battleground of Alleged Chinese Trolls

Reddit has been rife with brigading and manipulation for years. At this point, it's been this way for longer than it was an idyllic place to discover cool nerdy stuff. This is precisely why there are so many very active and hyper-strict moderators now. Not all, of course. It depends on how much "heat" the community contains and how much the subject matter attracts. They have to act like police in bad neighborhoods, because that's just the reality of the place.

Throughout the 20th century, the Eastern Bloc had to deal with western media eroding the narratives of their society. Now, it seems that the tables have turned through social media. But instead of creating images, stories, and music of the wealth and richness of life brought by self determination, it's far more effective to simply sow chaos and jam our society's means of information exchange.

EDIT: We are in years numbered such that they appear widely in science fiction. In objective terms, we are doing better than we ever have in all of history. In 2019, we need to embrace the normal. We should be suspicious of the lurid and the outrageous. We should be skeptical of the accusation and the conspiracy theory. In 2019, these are all the viral pathway to easy money and influence. We need to start looking at these things like we now look at the products of medicine shows. Not all of these things are necessarily bad. However, we always need to be mindful of the incentives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

There are still some good ones, but they tend to be smaller and rarely political. For instance, r/homelab is still pleasant. (Though it might inspire negative effects on your credit cards)

Conservative readers might be surprised at this, but I find /r/stevenuniverse to be quite tolerant and accepting. I've even called out sexual-orientation based identity politics there and had some substantive discussions. Other times, I've been downvoted to oblivion, though. There is some activist brigading there, but the general culture of the place seems to reflect the culture of the show. (Politically left, but if you are a good person who accepts others, we will accept you. You won't be judged by how you were made, rather by the quality of your relationships.)