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Antisemitism on Reddit / Social Media
If you didn’t already know, Reddit.com is a popular social news website that allows its users to vote on what links are interesting or not. These votes determine what news articles rise to the top and what news articles/links get buried at the bottom. Judging by the type of news stories that get the most votes (or “upvotes”), I’d conclude that the majority of Redditors are pretty much left-wing when it comes to politics and social issues.
When a link to a news story is posted on Reddit, that story is given its own comment thread or forum topic. This basically means that Redditors can post comments and have a discussion about the news story in question. Comments posted by users can also be voted upon, meaning that the most popular comments make their way to the top of the thread, whereas the less-favourable comments get pushed to the botton, or even buried, should they get “downvoted” enough times. It is no secret that Israel is a hot topic on Reddit. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find a day when a news article concerning Israel hasn’t been submitted to the World News category… even on a slow day. For the most part, Redditors are highly critical of Israeli foreign and domestic policy, so one shouldn’t be too surprised to see highly-rated comments drawing parallels between the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews. Hey, one might even get to see a few highly-rated comments about “the Jews” controlling the media! Sadly, I’m not even joking about that.
When working out the ratings for user comments, Reddit subtracts the number of downvotes from the number of upvotes a comment has received in order to work out the total score for that comment. The great thing about Reddit is that it doesn’t just give you the the total score of a comment; it also prints out the total number of upvotes and downvotes a comment has received. The thing is, these figures are printed out in the HTML source code and not in plain view. Thankfully, there are several browser extensions that will print out these upvotes and downvotes in plain view, so that you don’t have to waste time searching through the source code for the upvotes and downvotes for a particular comment.
I find that while subtle anti-semitic comments get upvoted, those that are far less discreet with their antisemtism usually (and thankfully) receive more downvotes from the Reddit community than upvotes. However, the question that this blog post will attempt to answer is: How many upvotes have these blatantly anti-semitic comments received upvotes from other Redditors? I mean, if a comment about the Holocaust being a hoax gets 12 upvotes and 17 downvotes, isn’t it still a cause for concern to see that a large enough minority on Reddit agreed with such a statement?
To really get to the bottom of things, I decided to visit the pages of Reddit users who have caught my eye in the past… for all the wrong reasons of course. These are the guys that I often see posting blatantly anti-semitic comments on topics relating to Israel and Jews in general.
Note that the number in orange is the number of upvotes these comments have received from other Reddit users. The number in blue is the number of times the comment was downvoted.
If you think that I’ve just cherry picked comments, you should really use the FireFox Greasemonkey script for Reddit and then visit the Reddit user Johnny_Cash. You will no doubt find scores of these type of comments and see that they’ve been upvoted by a sizable minority of Reddit users. While a lot of Redditors may be quick to point out that being anti-Israel is not the same as being antisemitic, the comments above show that there are a lot of repressed/blatant anti-Semites on Reddit, whatever way you look at it.
Shortly after I published this post, I found out that someone had been posted on the conspiracy section of Reddit. The title the poster submitted it under was:
Clearly, these users need to make anti-semitic comments in order to oppose Israel’s racist policies… Also, I love the way the poster referred to me as an Israeli Hasbara minion, even though I’m an atheist from Ireland who has no emotional or political attachment to Israel whatsoever. But I’m guessing that doesn’t matter to a person so handicapped by their own rampant cognitive dissonance.
The reaction to this article from the r/conspiracy subreddit was pretty telling. It seems that a lot of people on the r/conspiracy subreddit believe that the Jews control the world… the weather… and whatever else you can think of. Here are some of the comments in response to this post:
Occidentalist is actually annoyed at the fact that some of the antisemitic comments I highlighted in this post received downvotes. That comment surprised me until I found out that Occidentalist is a moderator for several white nationalist/pride subreddits. Enough said.
That’s right folks… the Jewish Crime Syndicate. Evidently, judging by the upvotes, 17 people agree with him.
And… that’s a wrap.
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24 Comments to “Antisemitism on Reddit / Social Media”
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Antisemitism on Reddit, Racism, Racist Comments, Anti Israel, Antisemitic comments, Reddit hates Jews, Repressed antisemitism, Antisemitism in social media.
I remember when ‘antisemite’ meant someone who didn’t like jews. Now it means someone jews don’t like….
If saying that the Jews control the world and using phrases such as “filthy jews” doesn’t qualify as antisemitic, then I don’t know what does.
I’m an athiest Jew (aka, I identify with it as a nationality, not a religion) from Australia and I wholeheartedly understand where you are coming from.
I am new to reddit, and while I love it, the anti-Semitism I see really amazes me.
I actually really value proper criticism of Israel, it keeps me well informed and with a critical mind, but some people wildly cross the line of sanity.
to sum up, you basically showed that posts with antisimitic content, will get a minus rating or something close to it. since reddit is based on upvoting to get exposure, reddit, as a whole, is anti anti-simitic.
well thanks for that
I think you completely misunderstood my post.
so, the object of your post was to show that there are people on reddit who are antisimitic?. well, duh.
of course there are all kinds of people here. the relevant question is whether they are dominant, disproportionally influencial, or not.
I never said that they were dominant. I said that a lot of antisemitic comments received a large amount of upvotes. A sizable minority is still a cause for concern.
“a lot of antisemitic comments received a large amount of upvotes.”
How come the majority of the anti-semitic comments you show have zero or negative points. If you wanted to show that anti-semetic comments are receiving mass amounts of upvotes, maybe you should have chosen comments with lots of upvotes. What a concept, eh!?!?
… I think I addressed this in my post.
Is it possible to say anything negative about Israel and /not/ be accused of racism or antisemitism? If so, please provide me a list of the complaints about Israeli behavior that are acceptable so that I cannot think wrongly in the future. I like to keep all my paperwork in order.
It’s worrying that some people can’t comprehend the fact that using phrases such as “filthy Jews” and saying that the Jews control the media is antisemitic. You can be critical of Israel without actually making baseless claims about the Jews as a whole.
Filthy Jew trying to control the internetz just to be able to hoard more of your Jew gold
I find it hilarious that people go to this article attacking people who are anti semetic and get all defensive “oooooh critizising israel isnt anti semetic!” Did you people ever read the article or did you just look at the title and just assume they were automatically talking about you.
“antisemtism usually (and thankfully) receive more downvotes from the Reddit community than upvotes”
I don’t see a problem here.
The fringe of reddit anti-semites remains in the fringe because the reddit upvote/downvote system is working to keep them there.
Still. A large minority of upvotes is still a cause for concern. Some of the comments above even have positive scores.
I’m jumping in VERY late here, and I apologise for that. I understand your point that even a sizeable minority is a little…disconcerting, but I think there are some points that you are missing.
I don’t think anyone is surprised that there are anti-semites on Reddit, or that there are those who will support anything Israeli/Jewish without question. They exist everywhere. But when you point to a sizeable minority, you are actually referring to a sizeable minority of those who voted. there is always a shit-ton of people who read but don’t vote one way or the other. I cannot prove it, but I would wager that in the general Reddit community, most people would disapprove of a blatantly anti-semitic statement, as opposed to an anti-Israeli policy statement (see for example http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/f4r9a/dae_find_that_when_they_post_anything_the/c1daodl – That comment at the time of writing is at 36 upvotes to 175 downvotes).
When you are looking at subreddits, it is obviously going to be a different story. You are looking at posts in /r/conspiracy and are surprised that there are nutbags in there? Many of the people who frequent those subreddits already hold frankly ridiculous beliefs and are just looking for positive reinforcement.
Matt Taibbi has a piece in Rolling Stone where he says this, and it reminds me a lot of what happens on reddit when you call someone out for being anti-semitic:
‘After nearly a year of talking with Tea Party members from Nevada to New Jersey, I can count on one hand the key elements I expect to hear in nearly every interview (…) They are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill “cracker babies,” support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Barack Obama’s birth certificate.’
Likewise on reddit, it’s always “Oh I called them all filthy Jews and sure I spread ancient canards about Jews running the banking system. Sure I maintain that what they really want to do is exploit and kill every goy they see. BUT DON’T CALL ME AN ANTI-SEMITE…ZIONIST SHILL!”
Then I get annoyed and reply, as I have done to Johnny_Cash, and then I get accused of being a Jew. Something along the lines of “Nice try…JEW.” I try to get frustrated at being Jew baited, but it’s more like something out of an absurdist stage play (my whole family going back as far as we have records for is Catholic on both sides.)
You can find flaws in any online forum. Some are just perpetually dumb. Some are full of groupthink. Reddit’s biggest flaw is its self-righteousness, and its distorted sense of itself as a dignified gathering of enlightened intellectuals who are above the nasty pedestrian fray of the Internet. It meditates rarely on its own fallibility, and its failure to recoil in horror at its own tendency to turn into a (bespectacled, collegiate, and “hip”) mob of angry villagers with torches and pitchforks takes a lot of the shine off for me.
I like reddit – I’m on there for a reason. But it could be a lot better. I have no particular reason to be sensitive to anti-semitism. I’m not Jewish religiously or ethnically, and have no Jews in my family by marriage or otherwise. At present, I’m not even sure I have any Jewish friends (though I used to). But if the not-so-subtle morph from anti-Israel sentiment to anti-semitism is as obvious to my semi-redneck middle-American self as it is, I cannot even imagine what it is like to be an actual Jewish person on reddit.
Jews should know that there are those of us who don’t really have a dog in this race other than wanting to see people treat each other humanely, and definitely notice the way things have been going.
And as I’ve said before, even if you can’t muster up the best reason to be opposed to anti-semitism (your humanity and your desire to see others treated justly), you should know that anti-semitism is a canary in the coalmine. Where it flares up, bad things for everyone tend to follow.
Thank you. It’s pretty depressing to see those comments get as many upvotes as they did. It’s good to know that people like you exist, rather than just hoping you exist.
You are cherry picking though. It’s not surprising that people in the conspiracy subreddit believe in conspiracies. It’s nor representative of reddit as a whole
I know this is an old post, but FYI the upvotes and downvotes are false to hinder spammers, the only true thing is the actual score. The actual comments probably have much less upvotes than that.
source: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/eaqnf/pardon_me_but_5000_downvotes_wtf_is_worldnews_for/c16omup.
Man, I came here to say that too… also too late.
Supporting the argument without any statistics doesn’t prove a thing. And after all, people are free to say whatever they want ( the 1st Amendment).
And my criticism of their antisemitism also falls under the 1st Amendment.
Wellllll…mmmmm….kinda…who cares if 150 or so of the hundreds and thousands of people who visit reddit hate Jews? Plenty of people hates blacks and women there…and I am both! To be honest, I don’t really give a shit. Why do you?