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My memories of the earliest days are very fuzzy, but as far as I can remember even in the /r/slatestarcodex days, this forum always had a noticeable rightist bent, simply in virtue of the mere fact that it allows rightists to speak freely. If you're one of the few places that doesn't subject witches to trial by water, then you're going to attract an unusually high percentage of witches, even if that's not your explicit goal.
That being said, I think we have hit an all time low when it comes to the number of active leftist users, and I think that's due to a couple factors:
I think that the average leftist simply isn't interested in dialogue with rightists. This is evident in how they moderate their own spaces. Frequently when leftists get power, they simply ban (certain) right-wing views. If they don't want to deal with rightists in their own spaces, why would they want to come here and deal with us here? There's a reason that the left has become the party of deplatforming. I think it's pretty straightforward.
Regardless of how open you are to dialogue, it can be mentally draining to be the only one arguing for a certain viewpoint while everyone else is against you. Once leftists start to self-select out of the discussion, more and more of them will start to decide it's not worth staying as they become a smaller and smaller minority, creating a vicious cycle. We also don't have an easy free source of new users because people can't just stop by with their reddit account when they see this place linked on subs like /r/sneerclub or whatever.
Users with unpopular viewpoints are more likely to feel embattled by the general forum atmosphere, more likely to get heated during debates, and thus more likely to get banned. I don't want to litigate the cases of specific users here, but I can think of at least a couple examples of this.
I want to push back on this bit:
The average person is not interested in dialogue with genuine disagreement. Christian forums ban atheists, prolife forums ban planned parenthood apologists, socialist forums ban capitalists, etc, etc.
Do I think left wingers are generally worse about it than right wingers? Yes, but I also would think that.
It's perfectly understandable in those contexts. The vibe shift in my lifetime is nominally non-political spaces taking these stances. I used to be part of several forums with off-topic 'Politics' sections, and despite being consistently lopsided towards the at-the-time Left, the Right was still represented. There were numerous conservative posters whose names I recall to this day after years of arguing with them. Now that type seems to be quickly run out or banished, should I see them at all. There's an autoimmune response where there used to be some tolerance.
I didn't consider /r/pcgaming a 'leftist space'. But make a glib remark in support of JK Rowling and at least the admins reveal it as such.
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