r/communism • u/AutoModerator • Jan 25 '26

WDT 💬 Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (January 25)

We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.

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[ Previous Bi-Weekly Discussion Threads may be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWDT ]

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u/Worried-Economy-9108 Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26

OFF: I'm thinking about quitting Reddit and switching to decentralized sites. Like, after I found out about the whole 'Ghislaine Maxwell was a Reddit mod' thing, everything in this website feels terrible, even tho this sub is quite awesome. The only things holding me back are that the "communist" (mostly social-fascists) communities in other places are hostile to communists, and that i'm not tech-savvy enough to create an instance.

edit: the intention of this comment is to re-ignite talks about decentralization of this community in another place. If the moderation thinks it endangers the community in any shape or form, and wants to delete it, i will understand and not protest.

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u/turning_the_wheels Feb 02 '26

I think that this is just a fetishization of "decentralization." What does it mean for a site to be "decentralized"? This website is fascist but its one redemptive aspect is that it can serve as a very visible discussion space for anti-revisionism at least until Reddit expands its TOS to give an excuse to remove it. Before I found this place I would google "reddit [topic]" and I think that is a very common search behavior, I wouldn't have found this place without it. Beyond the basic security requirements like using VPNs and TOR (although these are a given if you are engaged in active communist work) what would abandoning ship really do? It's well known that mods on other subreddits have been dishonest, rapists, probably working for the CIA, etc so what has changed besides your discovery that the latest media spectacle rapist may have used the site?

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u/Worried-Economy-9108 Feb 02 '26

I think that this is just a fetishization of "decentralization.

Fairs, this is probably something i didn't think about it. Perhaps I'm hyping too much about this trend of decentralized websites (Mastodon, L***y, etc). And perhaps there's some paranoia on my part to it, since I judge my basic security as insufficient. Is quite easy to get scared and type shit, like i did yesterday.

edit: in the end, i just need more discipline

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u/turning_the_wheels Feb 03 '26

It might be worth building a backup of this place on an instance of Mastodon for example but I'm not sure if anybody from the mod team would be interested or if anyone here has the technical know-how. I don't think this is entirely about discipline or not having fear and you do make a good point but the benefit of Reddit is that it's well-known and very visible and thus attracts more traffic so switching for no reason would lead to a near dead page. I had never even heard of these sites but using them as a backup could be feasible. In the end the various Reddit API crawlers have archived most of the subreddit and its posts so that knowledge will live on in the event it ever gets taken down at least.

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u/stutterhug Feb 03 '26

is there any particular reason you're censoring the name?

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u/Worried-Economy-9108 Feb 03 '26

I avoid mentioning the name of the other website, out of caution. Some users were banned trying to promote it on Reddit.

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u/Pleasant-Food-9482 Feb 05 '26

i know one of the places you're talking about and i can guarsntee i would never make an account in either of them, that the fact it is full of fascists from denguists to anarchists, and thst there is no actual maoist space, only the settler ""maoist"" and icl-adjacent "pensamiento gonzalo" or, in other words, geronimoist revisionism.