When do you think the manipulation of the internet via algorithms for political reasons began?

[DiscoRodeo]

I did a pretty deep dive on this a few years ago. It happened in 2009 when Reddit hired a democratic operative to basically be a shadow ceo. I don’t remember his name but he was well connected and high up in the Democratic food chain. I think that’s around the time democrats realized how powerful internet control was. And yes, Reddit is dogshit, but it wasn’t back in the day and it was very powerful at that. (My first 500+ upvoted comment was a witty slur about Arabs) It still is in some regards but the people still there are what you’d expect as redditors. If you can control the political board of the “front page of the internet” then you effectively control the entire narrative. That was the beginning. It just snowballed from there.

And for the record I haven’t been on Reddit in 5+ years so don’t assume I’m still a redditor.

>he was a redditor in 2018

I kid, but pretty fair comment on how reddit used to fall in line more with the "pirate bay" era of internet activism and has a pretty fast burn into whatever soy era of activism we have today.

You could see this in multiple ways, from lulsec to anonymous- for example.