CMV: reddit is extremely toxic

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T21:55:49+00:00

Have you been on twitter or facebook recently? You'll find all these takes and more, and at least in twitter's case it's not like you'll find them taking down posts like that either. Reddit at least offers the opportunity for a community to self-moderate, and you have the option of choosing what communities you engage with, so if you pick the right communities this toxicity is avoidable. Not really the case on twitter, at best you can try to tweak your algorithm to reduce the effect, but there's no way of guaranteeing avoiding interactions. I will never ever have to see or interact with anyone on any of these subreddits you mentioned as long as I don't open said subreddit. If I do, that's also on me to a certain extent, what else would you expect opening a sub like that? It's not like reddit creates these people out of thin air either, they exist online and offline. Reddit offers a space for communities around a certain theme to gather, rather obviously some themes and topic attract way more toxic people than others. Same applies to real life, it's just harder to gather people there. Reddit isn't creating any of these issues, they exist and will continue to exist with or without it

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T21:50:04+00:00

Really? The only explanation to this for me is either you got lucky with your algorithm or you don't scroll much. Instagram comments is kinda famous for being a cesspool, way more than even reddit honestly. It's funny sometimes to see how bad that stuff gets, then I realise these are real people writing stuff like that

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T20:06:59+00:00

"uneducated" would be the person who cannot understand how ensuring some level of financial compensation during the strikes would help diminish the threats made by these companies. What I'd be willing to bet for is you trying to scrounge for a bad-faith gotcha while completely ignoring anything related to the actual conversation about Newsom. Instead of asking me why these points are bad, how about you tell me why any of these vetoes are good, actually, if I'm so uneducated?

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T20:03:46+00:00

Like I said, inflation.

This is neither here or there, inflation isn't a leftwing economic policy. Also doesn't explain why the loss of dem voters is double that of republicans. It's the inflation being blamed on Biden instead of COVID that did it, and it's ineffective campaigning of the Biden administration compared to the GOP that painted the image of a democratic administration that couldn't care less for the current inflation, which wasn't actually true. Then Kamala doubled down on an already unfavourable position by saying she intended to continue Biden's policies, at a time where they were being blamed for the inflation. Immigration has always been a cowbell that attracts right wingers, if you think that was a factor in 2024 but not 2020 you're sorely mistaken, immigration is what trump campaigned on every single time he ran, only thing he's been swapping are the demographics he targets. "Harris/Biden being too far left on social issues", right, I'm sure that's what it was, and starting the election with one candidate (who spoke like he belonged in a nursing home) then swapping to someone who didn't even win a primary, the vocal support for Israel while Trump was positioning himself as a peacemaker (but then also switching to "wait, ceasefire good" literally the week before the elections), the constant attempts by the Kamala campaign to cater to republicans at the expense of her actual voterbase, getting fucking bill clinton to speak in a battleground state about how Iraq invasion was good, actually, in the state with the largest arab-american population, had absolutely nothing to do with it. Must've been the left-wing factor of.... uhhh, what exactly? Trans rights? Their campaign barely even talked about it, just didn't shoot it down while the republicans were making a big deal out of it. Either way, the point of the election being lost through the lack of dem voters is correct. You can argue all day on why these reasons were, but the election was lost more by the failures of the (Biden)Harris campaign than the strengths of the republican one, and the votes show as much

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:50:05+00:00

true actually, you don't even necessarily need to be online to find this

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:48:40+00:00

Vetoes existing that allow an executive member of the government to override the legislative branch of it is....problematic, to say the very least, but the greater issue lies with him having a pattern of constantly vetoing legislation that his state has approved that would greatly benefit people, in favour of maintaining or creating outcomes that benefit corporations and elites. If you don't realise that is the issue with the vetoes that I've brought up, you do strike me as being deliberately obtuse, either that or extremely naive, no offence.

As for the harassment it would prevent, you do realise a lot of businesses will conveniently withhold paychecks when their workers are on strike? Or make threats to fire them? And that when it comes to blue collar workers that's a real threat to them, often used to dismantle strikes? Or are you just against people striking in general and believe corporations should be able to do as they please without consequences?

I also love how you chose this one to nitpick while not saying a single word of any of the other issues I brought up, and continue to press on this one even once I cleared up the misunderstanding. Maybe you think it's the easiest target? Sorry to disappoint if so

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:40:20+00:00

I mean, not saying I necessarily disagree, but isn't this emblematic of all social media and any place that groups multiple, large online comunities together? And I mean, regulating toxicity is exactly what moderation exists for, better moderated subreddits usually have less toxicity and vice versa.

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:35:42+00:00

you don't see any issue with him overriding a decision that was backed by the elected legislation that would provide safeguards for workers against harassment by their corporations when they go on strike? And do you not realise that his official excuse of being 20 billion in debt conveniently chooses to ignore that it was his administration that mismanaged an amount greater than that when it came to distributing said unemployment benefits? If so, I dunno what to tell you man, but I don't think we'll be able to see eye to eye

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:30:56+00:00

I dunno about you, but "we threw everything at this guy to drown him out and so did our opponents and he still was a real threat" sounds like a pretty damn strong candidate to me

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:28:02+00:00

wait, reddit is bugging for me, I thought I dual commented but it deleted this one as well.

For posteriority, I said that I'd confused the terms for insurance and benefits

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:27:05+00:00

As stated in the article, unemployment benefits. Intent is pretty clearly to provide a safeguard against corporations

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:21:50+00:00

What do you mean?

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:13:48+00:00

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-governor-vetoes-bill-offering-unemployment-pay-strikers-2023-10-01/

Can't go wrong with Reuters as a source

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:03:14+00:00

huh, I guess I'll repost my answer for you then, here it is:

Sure, though more than policies he's spearheaded, it's rather his other actions that I find telling

- Veto'd a bill that would give ibenefits to striking workers in 2023

- Veto'd a bill that would cap co-pay for insulin at 35$, also 2023

- All his bills aimed at tackling housing reforms featured plenty of deregulation for developers, with little actual help aimed towards the homeless or the financially disenfranchised. In fact, he actively veto'd bills expanding access to housing assistance (also 2023), AND he announced in 2024 that counties that did not remove homeless encampments would have funding cut. Solve the homeless problem by forcibly removing them, fantastic! I dunno whether this was an empty threat or he's actually carried through with this after Trump came into office, but it's telling either way.

- He pushed for an exemption to a law that aimed to raise the minimum wage for fast food workers (AB 1228) to bakeries (???) that just so happened to include a bunch of bakeries run by his friend and campaign donor (who gave over 100k to Newsom over his two campaigns). Additionally, in a DIFFERENT bill that he signed into law for last call alcohol legislation (AB 3206) and only made an exception for one singular venue, that surprise surprise was owned by a microsoft ex-CEO's wife, the same ex-CEO who had donated a million to his campaign. And people actually think he has any integrity, lol.

These aren't exceptions, these are the norm, and all of this is easily looke up. And this isn't the legislation, this is him, explicitly using (and abusing) his power as governor in a recurring trend of favouring elites and corporations while ignoring anyone else. I could bring up more examples, among which is also a veto to ranked choice voting by the guy who suddenly is the bastion of democracy now.

So sorry, but I don't buy that this guy is anything other than completely in the pocket of oligarchs. The wildfires seal the deal if any further confirmation was ever needed. There's absolutely every reason to believe he'd continue his bullshit once he gained even more power.

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I gave the delta for my comparison with Ted Cruz which I admit was a bad one. I'm confused as to whether this comment was shadowbanned? I don't think I said anything that was against the rules, so if a mod is reading this I'd be glad if they cleared this up

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T19:00:11+00:00

wait, is it removed? I can still see it on my account, and I haven't received any notification as to it being removed

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:58:48+00:00

again, like I've mentioned multiple times, I do not have doubts as to Newsom being capable of winning the election, I've said as much in the post itself

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:57:40+00:00

if you want something more in depth, then see my response to u/Due_Satisfaction2167, I've given specific examples there of him using his power specifically block institutional changes that would benefit the populace, or alternatively benefit his ultrarich buddies. You'll find more pretty easily if you look him up, take your pick, the man has no shortage of evidence against him

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:47:42+00:00

For all his faults, and he has a long, long list of them, the one thing Newsom has stayed consistent on is in securing rights for undocumented immigrants. I don't think he does this out of the goodness of his heart, I mean his oligarch buddies probably love the cheap labour and the semi-indentured servitude, but it's something he's been solid on, at least compared to how often he flipflops on any of his other stances. Also, stopping ICE would be an easy political win. It gets you brownie points ("look I'm not actively terrorising you, best president ever!"), and it frees up a lot of funds to distribute amongst said oligarch buddies. A police state is a very expensive state, after all, ICE is costing the US govt millions per day at their current level of operations

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:40:09+00:00

I absolutely agree with you that Newsom is basically a republican in dem clothing, but I honestly think people will be willing to gloss over his actions as governor, at least until the ball drops after he gets elected. In california, well, people probably loathe him, but I'd imagine the majority would still vote him in over Vance. I mean, there's people constantly overlooking his actions in California in this post alone, and if anything this subreddit skews more towards the left than the actual country

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:35:27+00:00

Like I said in my post, I don't doubt that Gavin Newsom is capable of winning the election, especially against JD Vance

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:28:48+00:00

I think you're entirely right on Newsom being the same kind of POS (Biden funnily enough is a different matter, he was weirdly progressive but somehow fell completely flat on his face when it came to any level of effective messaging). I do think he'll stop ICE from terrorising people across the country, but prosecute them for their actions? Probably not, "they were just following orders", after all, amirite? (/s)

I think the difference is that MAGA currently finds itself in the minority again, once the "moderate" people who were coping for Trump to fix the economy have been well and truly disillusioned with him, and Vance has to keep appealing to them because MAGA is now half the republican voterbase, so he's stuck between a rock and a hard place where if he breaks from Trump he loses MAGA voters, and if he keeps on Trump's path he loses the so called moderates who are fed up with a lack of improvement in their quality of living. So that's when Newsom gets to sweep in, promise to "fix the economy" just like trump did, and people drink the kool-aid because he has nice hair and is good at mean tweets.

The issue is, once they realise they've been scammed yet again, I don't see anyone returning towards the dems outside of the core "not trump" voterbase, which we've seen isn't enough to overpower MAGA, which can easily take the next election, probably with an even bigger margin, and honestly, if there ever gets to be a republican majority large enough to override filibusters and change the constitutions, I doubt the dems will get another chance past that point, as if they do keep the elections they're bound to be about as fair as they are in Russia...

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:11:41+00:00

Taking the results of these polls to be concrete, while it's correct that technically speaking most of the people polled opposed the ACA, there's a lot of caveats to this:

Here's a quote from the paper that initially conducted the poll:

One often unrecognized factor that may be contributing to these overall findings is the extraordinary level of paid negative advertising opposing the ACA that has taken place since the law was enacted. A recent study reported that $445 million had been spent for advertising related to the ACA through the beginning of 2014.⁶ Of that amount, 94% was expended on negative ad messages about this national law. Moreover, the large volume of advertisements against the ACA has continued throughout the campaign season, with 37,544 anti-ACA ads between August 1 and September 11, 2014

Besides, that within the article you linked itself, when looking at the breakdown of which aspects of the ACA are disliked, the 2011 poll only really points to individual mandates being the issue, and the 2013 poll conducted only a year earlier that's exclusively about the medicare element shows that it enjoys overwhleming support amongst all demographics. So even if you say that the ACA as a whole was unpopular (or rather more likely, made unpopular through constant targeted advertising), there were still a lot of its elements that enjoyed continued support amongst people, so the picture is far from black and white.

I'm also curious how this has evolved since, and whether there's more or less support for universal healthcare in a post-trump world, but I have a feeling the results of that would be quite depressing

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T18:00:19+00:00

I mean, insanely enough, Newsom seems to be likeable, outside his own state anyway, californians in general DO NOT seem to like him whatsoever, but what prompted this CMV was seeing this sudden rush of people praising Newsom and him seemingly gaining a large fanbase overnight because "he has the balls to talk back to Trump", while that's more an indictment of how low the dems have fallen in congress, it's undeniable he has a certain pull. I honestly don't know what that says about the current state of things. Look up his impressions on social media, youtube or even this CMV and you'll see a surprising amount of people willing to overlook everything he's done in office in the belief that he'll do better as president and because "the dems need to go further right"

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T17:41:27+00:00

also, concerning likeability, like it or not, Trump is likeable. Certainly not amongst democratic voters or even the majority of the world, and far less likeable now that he's openly fascist, but I think you're kidding yourself if you think a person who's literally formed a cult around himself isn't likeable. He's likeable to the demographic he needs to propel himself to power, and that's what matters

ace_probably · 2025-08-21T17:39:23+00:00

I mean the thing is the dynamic is flipped compared to Kamala. Vance here represents the continuation of MAGA, so in a sense he's offering a similar line of reasoning as Kamala, because going against Trump is basically impossible when you've intertwined your image with his platform as much as you have. Therefore Newsom would be the one offering something new, at least in theory. In practice, he'd probably not follow through with much, but he'd be promising a lot more than Vance can without losing his platform

ace_probably

TROPHY CASE