We’re going to need to participate on normie platforms like reddit in order to get more users & content here. We’re also going to want to have a place on reddit (and elsewhere) where some of our content can thrive and become more accessible.
Apparently, Facebook is already marking our URL as spam. I’d imagine reddit will follow if not already. So we can’t just dump links onto every marginally left-wing space.
Let this be a thread to spitball some ideas.
I see both as effective. We can directly influence those other communities to be less infighty and toxic and also bring people from more infighty places to a forum less focused on cultivating edgy identities and more on common ground praxis.
I don’t remember the chapo sub (and its derivatives) ever being as obsessed with maintaining ideological rigidity as all the subs for specific ideologies that spun up in it’s absence.
Tbh I’m not sure if it’s a natural consequence of the good generic lefty subs getting banned or an actual op to keep the left divided and weak. We need to be cautious to avoid that happening here too, but I think we’re well-suited to resisting that because we’re basically a reddit clone dedicated to anti-capitalism and general left discussion. As long as mods share those values and keep the bullshit to the flavored corners of this site, I think we’ll be fine.
I have a half-assed plan for that if you’re interested.
I am! That’s why I created this thread. We should probably make a comm for this specific type of stuff. It’d be nice if this was something we collectively thought about after this thread has gone stale.
Here’s my half-assed plan. It’s based on how people take over subs already.
- We form several groups/cells to perform different jobs.
- One group needs to create/maintain reddit accounts. These accounts will need to be aged and gain karma organically.
- Another group plans targets. Which subs to hit, what to do there, where to direct our upvotes/downvotes, timing of posting, etc
- Yet another group infiltrates target subs and acts as organic new users. This group has to be very disciplined because they will be engaging places like r/neoliberal, as someone new to politics. They will build trust and slowly, subtly start picking away at the targets. Very restrained sea-lioning. Just being curious. Getting people to explain themselves. Posting on-topic content to build trust.
- We use our dummy/raid accounts to boost the organic accounts when needed.
- We work our way into mod positions on target subs. Then we start to influence sub policy.
- We use our organic and dummy accounts to make new subs. Think of how many lib subs were created since 2015 and how big they gotten. If we had mods in there early on to steer the subs, we’d be in a better place now. So we should try to anticipate that for 2024/2025.
- We use our dummy accounts to manipulate existing leftist subs away from infighting and petty shit. We get them more radical and push them to chapochat. We recruit people for our agitation brigade.
- We keep all this activity behind closed doors, only letting in those we can trust. We don’t want a chud or lib seeing all this because they got curious and came here. We use signal, discord, whatever else to plan and carry out our plans.
- If all this is done correctly there will be in a much stronger position on reddit in a couple of years. Yes it’s slow, it takes time, but it has a high chance of working. Afterall, that’s how influence campaigns are carried out on reddit anyways. I’ve seen completely new people come into a sub and single handedly become mods in almost no time. They’re very methodical about it.
- Once we have enough power, enough mods, enough subs, we push back against reddit itself. We start opening up the throttle and pushing shit to the front page. Except unlike T_D, we’re too big to average out. It’s not just one sub doing it, it’s many. We take down power users and break up reddit’s cohesion.
- It may be helpful to do a community gilding fund. It sucks to give money to reddit, but they have all those shitty gildings now so we could gild lots of shit very cheaply. Gilding is part of what protects influence campaigns on reddit. They’re less likely to squash us if they’re making money and it seems organic enough.
