Not having lived in Soviet Union, but having lived in a communist system, and am old enough to very much remember it, I think you have a very mistaken idea of repression of free speech in those systems post-Stalin.
So how did it work? It worked by intense social and governmental pressure, whereby expressing a thought that was "forbidden" led to incredibly overexaggerated offense and incredulity that someone could think WRONGLY like this (pro capitalist, anti worker, bourgeois, etc).
In fact, I have to say that over time, living here in Canada, I feel increasingly like that sort of totalitarianism lite is increasingly becoming familiar, where any even very minor dissent in thought is quickly shouted down as racist / transphobic / insert-X-phobic / anti immigrant, anti-whatever, even if said thought may bear no reasonable resemblance to supposed offence.
Not the OP, but a person born in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and with personal recollection of the late Soviet Bloc.
Obviously Reddit has no possibility to throw you in prison or execute you with a shot to the neck, but regarding the things that they can do against free expression of their users, they do not seem to show much restraint, especially if they can get away with it.
On this particular shitstorm, they will be faced to backpedal, yes. People hate pedophiles with passion.
Immature and melodramatic. It is not accurate at all and diminishes the deaths and repression of millions of people because someone disagrees with some websites moderation policies. It is a really regrettable and out of touch way to describe it.
You probably never lived in a Soviet country. Deaths and repression of millions of people weren't the everyday reality. Censorship and self-censorship were.
There is no need to have lived through it in order to point out the absurdity of comparing a social media website to the every day reality of life in ones own country. Censorship and self-censorship happened for a reason, because there were real world consequences. You would have to leave the country and leave behind your life and family to get rid of it. What if you get censored on Reddit? You get kicked off Reddit and go about your life, probably overall happier and with more free time for more healthier pursuits.
There is a degree of exaggeration, I won't argue. Although, it's not that big as it may appear. It's hard to deny that censorship, self-censorship, and cancel culture are on the rise nowadays. Not just on Reddit, but also in many aspects of online and offline social life especially when it comes to colleagues, acquaintances, neighbors and relatives. From that perspective, it's not that far from the everyday life in the Soviet era when people had to pick very carefully what they say and to whom they say it. In certain aspects, it's even worse now because every online communication can be recorded forever and used against the author at any moment for the rest of the author's life. KGB would only dream about such capability.
i guess you're not a conservative, try saying something on reddit which doesn't align with their leftist hivemind narrative and see the reactions.
In fact even moderate liberals on reddit often complain of being attacked and banned for expressing even a slightly different opinion on supposedly politically neutral subs.
it would be fine if it only came from users, one can just ignore nasty DMs and such, the problem is admins and mods are heavily censoring opinions and ban all dissent, so echo-chamber effects are extremely strong.
And it's not only political sub-reddits, the entire site is promoting a particular political ideology in a most "soviet" way possible.
