Steel bands tighten around my heart. My knees knock and my vision wavers. But then I remember I'm not on Reddit, and metacanada has not yet replaced the moderation team with pod people.
What measures are in place to ensure the continuing security of our moderation team? If it won't compromise them to tell us.
It might be hard, but they did it. /r/Canada used to be a great community. It was attacked, invaded, and destroyed. This post is tongue-in-cheek, but if there is any significant Reddit migration, I don't doubt that the community really will be attacked.
I observed that crazy transition too. I think the big question was whether it was coincidental/series of unfortunate decisions/mistakes that led to it, or if it was a concerted effort by a group.
It isn't coincidental. I'm afraid I don't have much of a source for this, but back in the day I lurked (out of morbid curiosity and misplaced sense of "know your enemy") on stormfront, one of the earliest and biggest neo nazi online communities.
There I saw a lot of talk about how to specifically target and subvert local subreddits. Their plans were detailed and long, involving very slowly transitioning the subs content further and further right. Local subreddits tend to be easier to subvert than typical subs of their size because they tend to have a less "online", critical audience and everyone is in the same time zone.Lots of people who only show up once a month or so.
The impact of propaganda on a local sub is also much greater than when it is spread out over a more general international community.
/r/Canada was definitely a successful target of their hate and even though they have faded now the damage is still done.
No doubt, I appreciate someone bringing this topic up because as you say, right-wingers will try to sabotage any healthy online community. They do seem to especially target local, provincial/state and national subreddits, which can be fertile grounds for propaganda. I'm pretty active on /r/newbrunswickcanada where there are definitely a ton of right-wing shit-stirrers trying to establish their perspective on issues.
But while moderation is important, the community has to be actively involved in making this space into what we want to see. A big reason /r/Canada sucks isn't only the presence of the /r/metacanada types, it's the absence of reasonable people. I also remember when /r/Canada was decent, and I didn't leave when I first starting seeing fashy takes, because you'll see those everywhere on the internet. I left because eventually I realized most people I could enjoy discussing with were leaving/had already left.
The more one participates in an online community, the more one can attract like-minded people to that community.
I think in the interest of building a healthy community we can acknowledge that the problem is not "people with right-wing views" despite whatever other problems might be fair to blame on them as a block. We're talking about aggressively anti-social people who don't really believe in governance and humanism at all. They appropriate right-wing politics when its convenient but they aren't really political in that sense. They're just assholes.
...so, your typical modern conservative?
I say that slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I do stand by that the people you describe are almost exclusively going to be right-wing.
That's definitely not to say that there's never been any online communities negatively impacted by left-wing politics. I can't even remember the number of subreddits I used to enjoy that have been overtaken by tankies/Stalinists/Maoists/Soviet-apologizers.
I would say that they almost exclusively adopt a right-wing persona, but I don't think that someone who isn't trying to constructively engage really fits on the left/right spectrum. We might have different values, and we might even disagree on what it means to do so, but ultimately we're all supposed to be pulling for the common good. I think that anyone who is not working towards the common good is better described using other terms, so that we don't alienate our allies. A kleptocrat is not left or right. A corporate agent engaging in legislative capture is not left or right. And a bunch of vandals who get a sexual thrill out of upsetting people on the Internet are not left or right.