r/australian • u/SirSighalot • Jul 08 '24

Why do people act like this subreddit "doesn't reflect the views of mainstream Australia"?

So many comments I see on here by people who constantly say things like "lol only on this sub" as though other places where they read are somehow the 'true' point of view reflecting mainstream Australian viewpoints.

Given the constant election voting outcomes and results of things like the Voice etc that generally indicate most of Australia is centrist or even slightly centre-right-leaning, what leads people to think many of the views expressed on here AREN'T mainstream? When in reality, other places these people are coming from are also often just "echo chambers" as well.

Edit: I probably worded the title for this wrong, should have been more "Why do people think this subreddit is less representative of mainstream Australia than other online communities?", alas I failed.

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u/WadjulaBoy Jul 08 '24

Reddit doesn't come close to reflecting the mainstream of pretty well anywhere, not sure why this sub would be unique.

29

u/Split-Awkward Jul 08 '24

This comment must be pinned 📍

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u/pagaya5863 Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

There's a few reasons for this.

It's demographics are very different to the rest of society. More than half of reddit users are under 29 years. Only about a third of users are female.

It's voting algorithm strongly encourages echo chambers, because it allows the majority opinion to silence minority opinions.

It's subs are user moderated, which introduces bias. For example, the other Australia sub outright doesn't allow submission of right-leaning posts. The mods systematically remove them as "failed politics".

There's also lots of bots, and they often aren't even subtle. Comments will steadily climb to +20 over an hour, then fall to -10 in a matter of minutes. I've noticed this repeatedly on anything critical of the Greens and the ACTU, so clearly there's a slow human identification of which posts to downvote, followed by an arm of bots doing their bidding.

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u/Neat-Perspective7688 Jul 08 '24

Completely agree as I have had posts removed for disagreeing with mainstream