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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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The board is more right wing but a lot of the most low-quality racist users have also left and/or been banned. There are far fewer slurs and there is far less generic trashy racism than there was on Reddit. I’m surprised people don’t remember what it was like to have constant drive-by posting from people unfamiliar with the subreddit and rules who came over from MDE, Opie and Anthony and other DR shitposting subs.

I pretty much never report anything these days. I’ve literally reported maybe three or four comments in the last couple of years here, whereas on Reddit I’d report regularly. You may remember I was highly opposed to the move from Reddit and predicted it would be the death of the community; I have been pleasantly proven wrong.

Arguing that the CRA was unconstitutional doesn’t mean it was immoral or even a bad idea; I think a lot of federal authority is unconstitutional but agree that it’s in effect necessary for the functioning of America as a modern state. But the CRA should have passed as a constitutional amendment given its sweeping constitutional scope.

I'd argue the same goes for the high quality posters as well, at the very least in terms of engagment.

The quality is just down overall, regardless of topic. Perhaps there are less offensive drive by posters but who cares?

Our overall traffic is down, but I think we lost high-quality users and shitposters in about the same proportion. So I don't agree the overall quality is down; we just have fewer posts overall. And this was pretty much inevitable as a result of moving from a very large platform to a very small one.

I was mildly against the move at the time (I think Zorba might have pulled the trigger too early.) That said, it's important to remember why we moved. It was inevitable that we would have been kicked off of reddit eventually, and probably sooner than later. Many of the conversations happening here simply would not be allowed on reddit today.

Speaking of traffic, is there anything in the pipes that might get us more new blood?