#r/The_Donald

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alex Kaplan at MMFA:

Google and Apple’s app stores have been hosting an app for Scored, a message board site dedicated to hosting far-right forum TheDonald — which was previously banned on Reddit and rebranded as “patriots.win” after January 6 — and other far-right forums pushing extremism and conspiracy theories. The site, which researchers have called “an alternative Reddit platform that shelter[s] banned fringe communities,” is supposedly owned by the lead moderator of TheDonald who apparently “made the site” for the forum.

TheDonald originally began on Reddit as “r/The_Donald,” with the subreddit dedicated to supporting Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent presidency. It was known for spreading and promoting far-right misinformation, conspiracy theories, far-right campaigns, bigotry, white nationalism and white nationalist events, and calls for violence that violated Reddit’s rules. Reddit officially banned r/The_Donald in 2020 but many of the subreddit’s users had already moved to another site, known at the time as “TheDonald.win,” which became the home of what was called the “.win” communities. After the January 6 insurrection, which TheDonald was used to help coordinate, “TheDonald.win” rebranded as “patriots.win.”

In early 2022, an administrator on the “.win” communities’ central hub site announced that “going forward, we will be known as Scored” instead of .win. “Doggos,” who is TheDonald’s apparent lead moderator and seemingly “made the site” for the forum, claimed on the message board that “I own Scored,” and advertised donations to Scored as “supporting this community’s existence.” The announcement on the communities’ central hub site also noted that “in the short term, our focus is on … working on our Android and iOS apps.” Media Matters has now found that since at least 2022, both the Google and Apple app stores have carried “Scored Communities.” The app leads users to numerous far-right forums, including TheDonald, which has continued to push extremism, rampant antisemitism, and racism after being banned from Reddit, as well as calls to violence. (Doggos has said that TheDonald on the app has “a little bit more content-level censorship due to app store policy.”)

Google App Store and Apple App Store are hosting an App called Scored to host far-right forums that were banned from Reddit, such as Patriots[.]win (formerly r/The_Donald).

[chariotofgod]

the phenomenon of an individual needing to "condone" or "condemn" everything really interests me when hits a critical point like this. maybe it results from a misunderstanding of what 4chan was/is. as if you can condemn 4chan as a homogenous culture and not at least as heterogeneous as tumblr is.

there are fascists, terfs, and libertarians who are here or were popular on here who participate in a lot of the same linguistic and cultural rituals as the progressive part of the site. some of these individuals even being critical in its cultural development. does it make any sense to "condemn" Tumblr as an entity because of this?

like obviously we can point to 4chan as the root of a lot of misogynistic and racist subcultures that now permeate the American and European Right. but then like. the origins of SCP, creepypasta, the growth of furry culture, the inception of the MLP fandom (as filled with paranoid homophobia as it was, which is obviously hilarious in retrospect), and even the standard formats for how shitpost punchlines are delivered all come from there.

they don't have their fingers in so many pies "for some reason???" it's because 4chan was a diverse and complex culture group that defined the early internet.

the continued treatment of it as "fringe" or "a place that's so scawy to visit :(", i think, creates a sense that whatever cultural products we decided to keep from 4chan were deviations from rather than products of its culture.

there are obviously a lot of problems with this. one being that it creates a lack of critical evaluation of 4chan's cultural exports (not that i'm rushing to categorize them as morally good or bad, just that it's important to consider).

another being a lack of perspective on why and how marginalized groups tended to thrive within the space in spite of its hostility towards.. everything (a kind of countercultural edgy nihilism which was not *inherently* reactionary, but definitely a response to 2001-2008 American and European neoliberal positivism).

anyways. you spend two seconds on a board that's not /pol/ and you quickly find an overarching paranoia around "redditors" who invaded after 2016 when r/The_Donald was shut down. there's a marked difference in the website's culture post-Trump, when the fascists on /pol/ (who i don't think you could call a majority) forged an alliance with Trump-aligned redditors.

pretty much any "oldfag" on the website is extremely resentful of this change. you could not take pity on them in a "where did you think such edgy nihilism would lead?" sense, but it also makes it quite clear that the website's earlier dissonance between anti-social behaviors and pro-social politics was not an accident. and while i would not want to adopt early 4chan's philosophy full sale, i do think there are things to learn from it.

whatever. post over. kisses, mwah, xoxo. 💋💋💋

[imeverywoman420]

You know that transition phase between awake and asleep. Well my brain just flashed images of like 2016 r/the_donald and 4chan groypers being into gossip girl and seeing it as political symbolism.

One of the few things i remember seeing was a comparison to carter baizen and the jewish global elites?? Like i saw them say (((carter baizen)))???

i need my brain to show me more of this dimension

[datasoong47]

Hunh, always wondered where "based" came from

Based comes from the slang basehead, a term from the 1980s to describe people addicted to freebasing cocaine, a method which makes the drug smokable. The term basehead became synonymous with the crack epidemic that swept the United States at the time. Over time, calling someone based was a way of saying that they were a crack addict, or acting like one, especially in West Coast street slang.

In the way slang things go, people acting eccentric or abnormal were labelled based. At least that’s what seems to have happened with quirky West Coast rapper Brandon “Lil B” McCartney. In reaction to people calling him based, Lil B decided to redefine the term. In 2007, his group, The Pack, released their debut album, Based Boys. In a 2010 interview in Complex magazine, Lil B described his new definition of based: “Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do.”

It’s not clear when Lil B started calling himself Based God, but by 2011 that nickname was firmly associated with him. Eventually, a cosmology of Based God (or BasedGod) emerged, referring to becoming a sort of higher power that Lil B could access, allowing him special abilities, such as the power to curse basketball player Kevin Durant.

The re-invented based, as a signal of power and swagger, was picked up by the alt-right/white nationalist community online in the 2010s. In 2014, during a controversy over female video-game reviewers known as Gamergate, conservative commentator Christina Hoff Sommers was referred to as Based Mom for pushing back against criticisms that video games and their culture are sexist. Since then, referring to alt-right or right-wing conservative figures as based has become a sign of approval in online social-media forums like the pro-Trump subreddit, r/The_Donald.

Who uses based?

Being based is a core part of Lil B’s brand, and so it’s no wonder he—and his fans—are all about that based life. In this hip-hop subculture, it’s all about being a based God—someone with “maximum swagger, a mansion, sports cars, wonton soup, and the inherent ability to fuck your bitch,” as one user on Quora put it. Not sure if the wonton soup bit is universal, but we think the point is that you can have whatever you want.

A catch phrase for Lil B fans is Thank You Based God—a sort of tongue-in-cheek conflation of a sincere thanks to God and an expression of Based God fandom. It even has its own acronym: TYBG. This catchphrase is a popular meme, typically shown over image macros of someone crying dramatically.

On the other side of the spectrum, alt-right, white nationalist, and other Trump supporters online have, incongruously, adopted based for their own purposes. They routinely post on forums like Reddit with headlines describing someone whose actions they approve of as based (e.g. “Based Boris Johnson refuses to apologize for saying women in burkas look like letterboxes.”).

In 2016, Slate writer Ben Mathis-Lilley perhaps best summed up this strange turn of events with based, worth quoting at length:

“So what we have here, then, is a word that was created amid an addiction epidemic in urban communities being adopted by bigoted fans of a presidential candidate who was demonstrated unprecedented contempt for, and ignorance of, said communities.”

[boundingfeather]

starting to realize that very few people on here understand the culture of reddit

most of its userbase is fucking trash. We are talking about the website that spawned /r/the_donald, /r/nonewnormal, /r/fatpeoplehate (which people will STILL say they miss), and so many more

like there was a site wide protest because reddit hired a person who got caught helping her dad sexually abuse children. she also, coincidentally, happened to be trans. reddit proceeded to fire her, and for a good week after most of the LGBT+ subs were on lockdown because they were flooded with so much hate. Transphobia is still very normal on reddit.

so keep in mind when you're making posts about how cool redditors are that /r/196 and /r/vexillogycirclejerk were very much an exception to reddits culture.

[gaiusgoose]

Shocking development ig. Tbh I think I might like it here better then Reddit. For starters r/The_Donald never existed and then the fact y’all tumblr natives are crackheads about niche fandoms, this is good

despite staff's recent changes, we're... winning??????

[steamedtangerine]

This huge Reddit thread evokes imagery of war-torn survivors picking through the rubble and trying to piece together what the Hell happened on that site from 2015-2020.

Most of what is sensibly posted is fairly accurate.

Anyone who was "fighting the goof fight" on Reddit at that time, will find it worth their while to read what is being discussed.

[bishonenknife]

'r/The_Donald' Fagen fandom takeover, Steely fans rev up your motor scooters

[gusty-wind]

C h a m o r r i t a @Cham0rrlta

13h··/g/The_Donald

This is presented as humor, however we’ll be seeing more of this as people reach their limit. The bad guys are about to find out.

[liatkolink]

The same platforms that allow outright fascists to thrive will then ban you for harassing them. This is not hyperbole, BTW. I was perma-banned from Reddit over harassment, which was targeted at Zionists denying genocide and it was yelling at them or annoying them at best. And the "harassment" concern is bullshit when they allowed r/The_Donald to thrive for several years, and to this day, you see people cheering for genocide in common subs like r/WorldNews.

I was just informed by Tumblr that a neonazi with a swastika pfp saying "Jews are my enemy", is in fact NOT against Tumblr's Terms of Service so they wont be removing the post. I guess theyre too busy removing Gazan fundraisers and transwomen's blogs. This fucking website.

[arcticdementor]

And vimeo apparently banned PV as well? Honestly this feels like the most coordinated effort to suppress one video I have ever seen. It’s really unbelievable. Youtube bans it, vimeo bans it, bitchute refuses and is in turn banned from reddit. Reddit simultaneously quarantines T_D while discussion of the video dominated their front page. Talk about a Streissand Effect this is just convincing me that video was 100% accurate and probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google manipulating algorithmic results.

“anonacc175g”

[news24fresh]

Reddit bans ‘The_Donald’ forum in crackdown, Twitch suspends Trump’s channel

Reddit bans ‘The_Donald’ forum in crackdown, Twitch suspends Trump’s channel

[ad_1]

Social media site Reddit said it had shut down r/The_Donald, a forum used by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, on Monday as it announced changes to its content policies.

Chief Executive Steve Huffman said in a post that communities and users that promoted hate based on identity or vulnerability would be banned. He said Reddit was banning about 2,000 subreddits, the majority of…

[irlwakko]

okay but on a serious note maybe dream promoting not taking your meds to his fanbase of largely young and impressionable teenagers is maybe not good actually

[asimplecabbage]

[catboy-jesus]

Funny how Reddit LGBTQ+ spaces are remarkably free of exclusionists, aphobes, transphobes, queerphobes, truscum, and battleaxe bis. It's almost as if most LGBT+ people want to be inclusive to others in their community and when a forum is properly moderated those people are pushed out and banned.

[canthaveapiewithoutcoolwhip]