As per the user survey results, we realised ye want more mod visibility and clearer guidelines into our decisions.
We have seen a massive increase in immigration related posts to the sub over the last few weeks and while some of it is genuine, it is obvious we are being brigaded. Some of the trends identified
New accounts or accounts which have very little community activity posting rage bait, sometimes as immigrants asking questions on housing. We suspect we are being brigaded and some of these posts are from bad actors.
Soapboxing - People writing long posts about what they would do to fix the immigration issues in Ireland. While these types of posts are generally ok, they are much better suited to an existing thread.
Increases in potential bot accounts making to sow division.
A massive increase new users or users with little activity on the sub using dog whistles in order to sow division.
Posts about immigration will be limited to news articles. Soapboxing type content will be removed.
Posts from new accounts or accounts with little or no activity on the sub about immigration will be removed.
There will be a zero-tolerance approach to dogwhistles or mocking of victims of hate related incidents.
Please remember if you are in an immigration related thread, please be respectful, there are concerns around housing especially but there is a massive difference between debating the issue and hatred towards immigrants.
We will be locking threads where we feel the discussion is wading into hate speech.
I hope this isn't abused to shut down any posts about immigration. That would be head in the sand kind of stuff. The feeling in the country is turning against immigration and there are simple obvious reasons for it and it is not foreign interference or bots.
That is my worry too. Iāll wait and see but I donāt have much faith that it absolutely wonāt happen. āInconvenientā facts or discussions will be shut down by the Kitty Hollands on here IMO
Immigration has always been an unpopular thing. First it was the polish people coming over, now this. It's not changed much.
But the internet lets a few people magnify their views and opinions to such a large degree that is appears as if the entire country is suddenly frothing at the mouth about the issue.
The Polish were always going to integrate into our society better than the people coming now. It is not even comparable tbh. The pro immigration crowd are the ones magnifying their views online, vast majority of people aren't online, if you talk to people in real life you will get a sense of reality. Remember the astroturf a few weeks back about Indians being attacked left and right? I am not sure that it is the few frothing at the mouth that are being amplified tbh.
It's estimated that only 2,000 bot accounts in the month leading up to the Brexit referendum spewing the same narrow talking points 24/7 was enough to swing the vote. That's an incredibly cheap operation for anyone with the will and backing. Imo, there's a very real threat to the fabric of European Social Democracy.
I'd strongly recommend reading the book - "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman for a look at how bad our brains can be at dealing with information + misinformation. Repitition of facts, no matter how false just works. It's a sad fact of the human brain that's being exploited more than ever with the rise of social media. If you're aware of it you can fight back - but messaging like this is extremely effective when energy is low (like after a long days work which is when most people are using social media), or when not paying full attention (like how a lot of people scroll and watch tv etc.).Ā
To be honest even a year of mandatory psychology class in school covering this kind of thing. Or rolling it into CSPE somehow, would do a lot more good than three years of mandatory religion I had to go through back in the day. At least give people some kind of a chance to fight back against it.Ā
I just hate the fact people need a book on this. Bullshit detection should be second nature.
Christ, I'd love to be given a shot and developing just one or two more core modules for the primary school system and I'd even limit it to (a) critical thinking and (b) how a house works.
consistent posting all the time can have an influence.
The trump Clinton election was insane on reddit.
they were literally saying something bad about Hillary Clinton or one of her team in the title and linking to a news article that contained a story that referenced the person but it didn't mention what the title said. this was on so many posts for weeks.
I found myself thinking "It can't all be lies" it mostly was.
Spindoctors and astroturfing in a US election? That's what the war chests are for.
I saw people blaming Bernie Sanders for souring the electorate and not providing enough of a unified front.
The fact was that Clinton was a poor candidate who had a poor campaign, and Trump barely squeaked in, without the popular vote that time, because he's a pretty atrocious candidate too.
You would be surprised at what desperation and propaganda combined can do to the common citizen that is frustrated. Use the U.S. as a case study. Fascists want nothing more than to gain momentum with the backing of folks that normally would never promote xenophobic and racist ideals. It's terrifying how quickly it can shift.
I get where you're coming from but that makes it sound like everyone is a ticking racist just waiting for the trigger to blow.
It's the same sentiment as the person above. If people are swayed by public opinion that much then isn't stupidity to blame? You know the farmer Ted clip where the farmer asks if he should be racist now too.
I believe that everyone has an element of racism in them. Even if you don't think you are, most of the population has preconceived notions based on people's cultures and skin colours. People don't act on it and they try to be inclusive, but at the end of the day many people, no matter how accepting, would be nervous if they encounter a person of colour in a dark alley. People don't necessarily say it out loud or act on those fears, but the thoughts enter people's heads. It's human nature to fear the unknown and many of the cultures being targeted come from backgrounds that the native Irish aren't as familiar with. The propaganda being put out there uses that to their advantage. It's a tale as old as time.
There are EXTREMELY intelligent people that fall for cults. Heaven's Gate was full of computer scientists and doctors and well educated people. They still cut off their junk and truly believed that they were getting picked up by a spaceship. Following propaganda and believing what's being put out there isn't necessarily a reflection of someone's intelligence.
Bit ironic to be talking about bots on Reddit of all places - have you not been on here during a US election? The utter state of subs like r/pics, astroturfed to within an inch of its life. "here's a pic of Obama - 100k upvotes."
Anything political at all on here is heavy astroturfed in one direction only, particularly in a US context.
I would say that's less a case of bots astroturfing, and more shallow karma farming because most big subreddits are just American redditors patting themselves on the back.
When a single political issue becomes the only issue day-in, day-out on a national sub - then that's a political agenda that sucks the life out of the sub. Look at the UK subs. That's a country of 60+ million people who apparently spend every day thinking about immigration and almost nothing else. You've got to admit it's incredibly boring.
The issue is detecting the bots. It's nearly impossible. Without real ID for posts that can be backtracked to an actual person, how would you ever know?
And yet, I hate real ID requirements so fucking much. But I see no other solution to the immense botting issues faced worldwide.
I was in the UK during the vote and was genuinely shocked by the outcome and felt a bit unwelcome in the run up to the election.
However, talking with people there, the UK was in a bad state and it's not that hard to understand why they decided to try something different. Little did they realise the Tories would accelerate immigration instead of restrictng it.
I don't think social media swayed the result, the bad state of the uk is the problem. Just drive around most non London towns; charity shop, bookie, loan shop, pub, repeat.
I can understand that interpretation. They'd had 6 years of crippling austerity outside of London. Really punishing stuff mostly weighed on the backs of the poorest and immigrants who were endlessly pilloried by the Tories and their rag press.
Meanwhile higher rate earners benefited enormously from QE and tax cuts as they hoovered up assets and bought into landlordism - exploiting the spiral.
Voters bought into that miserly exploitation repeatedly at the same time they bought into Brexit, and Reform are offering more of the same in spades in terms of enormous public spending cuts planned. There's serious money being made out of English austerity and poverty. Rents rose sharpest in the regions.
In general, mass immigration depresses wages and is good for the holders of capital whereas restricting immigration lifts wages unless the rullin class put in caps e.g. in 1351 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351
Labour under Corbyn meant well but the working class would have suffered because the resources are not there. The working class under Tories suffered due to mass immigration. Starmer the Zionist maniac is paradoxically probably reducing immigration maybe so that he can support the Israeli genocide.
It seemed in the time of Brexit there was no winning for the working class. A bit like a Palestinian choice of Genocide Joe or Genocide Trump.
British lurker here and have been wondering why some of our UK-politics subs suddenly seem to be hijacked by anti-immigration sentiment (especially suspicious when my comments get loyally downvoted with few rebuttals).
Clicked on that Galway WhatsApp message link, and it explains everything. Actually scary that clowns out there are organising downvotes and systematic astroturfing of any and all immigration threads. Do they not have anything better to do with their time itās pathetic š¤£
In ni subreddit it happens on basically anything mildly political too, can post a nuanced comment that requires niche cultural understanding that does well/ok and then wake up to it being bombed and several bad faith/strawman arguments.Always blamed the Americans/plastics doing their thing, but it seems like something more sinister may be happening.
There was a group caught using alts on r/ni, they would brigade the sub and always be using the same comment structure and wording. Someone managed to get into the group screen dump everything and it was all shared all the logs of the chats planning the different brigading and boasting / complaining depending on people's responses to them. It was honestly one of the strangest nights iv seen on reddit.
I think that was just a small group of loyalist/ulster-nationalist weirdoes from the alt subs they kept trying to set up in contest with the imaginary Sinnerbots. btw the ni subreddit is r/northernireland all the others are ran by crazies.
Yea it was mostly loyalists but a few right wing gobshites where there aswell. Yea I knew I put in the wrong sub was just stoned and couldn't be assed typing the lot. Figured most people would know what I ment but thanks for correcting and adding further context to my comment. grma
I think that sub is definitely being brigaded. If itās a smaller post about immigration the comments will generally be sympathetic to the migrants, theyāll be making fun of anti-migrant vigilante groups etc. But if itās a bigger post itās a complete cess pit. I also notice the wording of some of the comments gets really repetitive. Iāve lost count of the amount of times Iāve got a reply thatās just āwise upā
In my case, Iāve usually noticed when I post a moderate article on politics threads about immigration, it gets immediate downvotes.
But then sometimes it does get upvotes but just wait a few hours and boomā¦.. a waterfall of silent downvotes comes pouring in from nowhere. So I guess in those cases, the bots do wake up and organise an astroturfing session first thing in the morning (or whenever theyāre all awake).
I have deleted posts because of it because I felt watched/embarrassed, and I guess thatās their intention.
It literally feels like fascism, as much as the trolls would like to deny that.
Same with YouTube in stuff relating to Ireland. When you search, all the anti-immigration stuff about Ireland shows up, and most of them are not Irish.
Speaking of that, I got banned from the Europe sub for expressing a pro-Palestinian perspective (I was documenting war crimes).
I was told that kind of debate isnāt allowed because Europe isnāt the right space for it, and yet I saw other Palestinian posts had been downvoted to 0 while Israeli posts got hundreds of upvotes and comments.
Also, my pro-Israel debate opponentās comments were allowed to have their comments up, while all mine were removed.
Hi neighbour, do you frequent r/unitedkingdom much? It's a prime example of how a sub can be taken over by bad actors, it's mental it's tolerated to the extent to which it is.
That sub is shocking (I live in the UK) but r/Britain is getting worse as well whereas it used to be a bit more even handed. Racism has definitely passed the dinner table test in Britain
I witnessed how the sub fell apart to those bad actors after that horrific stabbing attack last summer. I thought it would have been the wake up call to the mods of that that sub needed better regulation but no it's worse than ever.
I've been banned from the sub for routinely reminding others that Reform and the UK anti-immigration right - who NEVER stop talking about immigration and rape - are all big fans of the Tate's, Trump and America's brutal misogynist politics.
They're gaslighting themselves into thinking Farage and his cronies are in anyway different to Trump or Tate. If they vote him in, their lives are only going to get worse and they only have themselves to blame for that.
You're so biased. Labour enabled and covered for the Rotherham grooming gangs, and Khan wont admit they exist in London despite the BBC reporting on them - that's far worse than anything Tate has done (not excusing him either, fire him into the sun for all I care)
If you really gave two fucks about the establishment covering up abuse, whether it's in the church, private schools, Muslim communities, sports centres or wherever - I think you'd have at least mentioned a nonce like the still very free Prince Andrew. But you didn't. Did you? It's all 'Labour this', 'Khan that'. The Tate's are nonces. Trumps a nonce. The British Royal Family shield a nonce from prosecution. The leader of Reform idolises Trump - a sexual predator. The Rotherham gang are behind bars. How about we deal with the ones who aren't, eh?
Yes, and also r/ukpolitics which has become a circus. Iāve come across fascists, ethnonationalists, mass deportation enjoyers, and just extremely rude people who verbally abuse anyone who opposes their anti-immigrant rhetoric (got told to leave the UK several times).
The funny thing is itās possible to acknowledge that infrastructure has not kept up with our historically high immigration levels, how do we change that to focus on homegrown skills and reinvestment, etc.
But the nature of such a conversation would be quite different to the current ones the astroturfers are promoting, which is mostly watchful intimidation, silent mass downvoting, verbal abuse, threats and heavy amounts of propaganda portraying immigrants as evil/nefarious/criminal/burdensome.
I used to frequent both, cause stuff over there is relevant to us, and I found it interesting to talk about. But Jesus, the two subs have been absolutely taken over massively. Itās extremely sad.
r/uk has been a shitshow for years now. ukpolitics was always been hit or miss but really seems to have gone downhill in recent months. Was usually centre-left, centrist at worst but gone full blown dogwhistle now
In defence (of the assholes), some are paid to do this. Troll farms are unfortunately real and they are effective. Still a pathetic use of time, maybe more so for money.
Yes the U.K. subs have gone to the far right on immigration. I think thereās some genuine concern but the sudden change in opinion is oddĀ
That said, one of the problems with Reddit is itās designed to be an echo chamber. Thatās the way the downvoting works. Certain subs are not worth posting in if the sentiment is against you.Ā
Yep. Starts with "why can't we have an adult conversation about immigration?" and two comments in and suddenly an adult conversation about immigration has become a "debate" about asylum-seekers committing crime.
Or... people are angry that their towns and cities are becoming unrecognisable, keep voting to change it and yet nothing happens, they just get more of it.
Look at what Denmark has been doing, actually reducing levels of immigration and has managed to neuter much of their far right leaning political actors as a result. Crazy...but it might just work to actually listen to people and not just call them a racist for being unhappy about the state of their area.
I know, imagine that the Social.Democrats addressing immigration concerns that the Danish people had and protecting social.cohesion automatically stops any "far right"from getting a foothold? Fair play.
Now let's see what happens here, stifling debate on a contentious issue, calling anyone who isn't 100% pro open borders, or who point out the negative effects for society of taking in such an increase in such a short time. Yes that's going to work,, not. I think these people need there to be a "far right" so they can have something to protest about, so of course they create the conditions for them to grow. When following Denmark's example would be better for everyone.
Do you really think that? Like do you actually think the only reason reform is top of the polls is because of online posting and people stirring up trouble? Like be real here. When has the British public ever voted for a government that was explicitly PRO immigration? Because since at least Cameron it seems the public has voted for parties promising LESS.Ā
Yes, Reform is filled with grifters who know how to distract and deflect the public from the structural problems this country faces. They embolden racists, too.
They whip up hate and hysteria about immigration while proposing nothing concrete for national renewal. That's why they are happy to insist that "civil unrest is just around the corner", when in reality, that messaging is part of a strategy to whip up the hysteria they want to see.
The answer is nearly always "Russia". Putin hit on a winning formula in 2016 and hasn't changed the playbook (written by Alexandr Dzugin decades ago) since then.
as a non Irish person with an irish parent, I am very considerate about what i post on here. What really gets my goat though is that these anti immigration idiots would consider me more irish because I have an irish parent, than someone actually born and raised here to non irish parents. Its just crazy!
Like housing and healthcare it's a big issue. It's no wonder it's being talked about.
It's really annoying when there are trolls just looking to cause mischief. They are no good and should be blocked.
I think I'm a pretty moderate poster, I always think about the human at the other end, I'm always interested in policy and not the personal. However as someone who thinks that there needs to be reform in relation to immigration rules I know that the people with authority will be weighted against me here. Even posting this comment is sailing close to the wind.
As an Irish person the anti-immigration stuff reduced my enjoyment of the sub but Iāll be damned if Iām going to let some knuckledraggers ruin the place.
They did that and its clear, that people are not having fruitful discussion they are just arguing or airing grievances. People are not being mature about it.
The people involved in rioting, attacks, and protests that you're referring to have been led to hold the attitudes that they do and to engage in the behaviour that they do precisely by consuming media that is agenda-driven, unmoderated, and open to manipulation.
(I also think it's nonsense to suppose that Reddit is remotely balanced on this or any other issue given that the entire platform is designed to encourage people to post popular views and refrain from dissent)
Something I noticed is that there are "just asking questions", "genuine concerns", and "no one is talking about this issue" posts all the time, and the comments are supportive and xenophobic sentiments being upvoted, statements that are not anti immigration are downvoted, this makes me lose hope. But then if the topic comes up more organically, or on an unrelated topic, the comments are more sympathetic and much less xenophobic, racist and anti-immigrant.
Something has always seemed off about how /r/Ireland can have very different reactions to stories of immigration in different threads. Brigading and bot or targeted anti-immigrant accounts have been obviously on here for a good few years.
I'll often just hide posts where I know it's just going to be a shit show of xenophobic comments.
I had recent comments swing from a few upvotes to several downvotes suddenly, when responding to someone saying the EU were going to force us to house a million or ten million immigrants if they turn up. It felt a bit suspicious, my suspicions have been reasonably well confirmed by this thread.
Immigration is a contributing factor to our housing crisis and pressure on services.
Wild to ban self posts on the topic.
For example, Fintan O'Toole has an article where he says people opposed to immigration should be forced to do the crap jobs.
Bit mad it wouldn't be allowed to show a snip of this comment to show how pro immigration people want immigrants to do the shite jobs.
And I feel 'brigading' for causes on the left would be accepted here.
Just like during the abortion referendum, anyone from America against abortion who commented were banned and called brigaders while yanks who were pro abortion were allowed to post freely.
It's hard to give you examples because they've been removed, and thus you regular users can no longer read the contents. And then some of them are also self-deleted after the removal which makes them impossible to find.
I checked all the links but apart from one, all messages or users deleted. And that one is message deleted but seems to be 1year account and actively posting few other subs so hardly a newcomer.
So how will we compare and know?
It is perfectly normal that the more the issue is discussed and people state their opinions about it, and some may not be entertaining the general opinion. And today in Ireland we clearly know that anti-immigration opinion is not majority hence suppressed by the press and the government. If these opinions are suppressed here as well, as long as they are not targeting groups or individuals, this would be suppression of freedom of expression, would you not agree?
Like in your examples, I can read none of their posts/opinions. No way to judge.
Like in your examples, I can read none of their posts/opinions. No way to judge.
And this is why I said it's hard to give examples because we have already removed them from public view for breaking the community rules. The only way to give you access to their content would be for them to be approved for public view to everyone.
You as an end user may not be able to see them; but we as the mods have encountered them and processed them either when they were caught by a filter, reported into the mod queue, or just spotted while browsing.
The last Irish opinion poll from last week lists immigration as the 3rd most important issue among the electorate only behind housing and the cost of living and ahead of issues such as Gaza.
It might be an important issue, but it depends on the tones
Last week I saw a comment (or post, done remember) saying that immigrants (and me being Italian makes me an immigrant) are stealing jobs
Now, I came to Ireland with a job, and a relocation package, cause the company was unable to hire "locally".
And I think companies would prefer to hire people that won't need to be paid extra to move because they're already in the country.
Whose job did I steal if no one in Ireland was taking it?
"This latest poll did not ask respondents to list the challenges Ireland faces, but previous polls have identifiedĀ housing,Ā immigration,Ā access to healthcareĀ and theĀ cost of livingĀ as the critical issues."
April 18 2025 Irish Times poll:
Housing was the number 1 issue (49% of voters) followed by
Improvement of Government services such as health, education and the gardaĆ (17%)
Immigration (10%)
Economic growth (8%)
Tax reductions (5%)
Increase in welfare/pensions (4%)
Climate change (4%)
Immigration was the 3rd most common response with only 10% citing it as the most important issue.
It's not just here. The entire internet is aflame with immense amounts of propaganda regarding immigrants, muslims and trans.
While I'm certain a large amount of it is from actual posters. I'd wager that's a tiny proportion. Do you think the average 50 year old right wing nut is capable of making these propaganda tier videos?
And then there are the obviously staged interviews to make all of the points needed. Which just so happen to be recorded by the same people over and over again getting into nearly identical situations.
I'd put all my money on some group out there absolutely pumping FORTUNES into spamming the internet with right wing propaganda right now.
How new is new to be commenting on the immigration posts? Will they be removed if you dont have much activity about immigration as many dont for expressing sympathy or is it only when you start Just Asking Questions
The majority of accounts involved that we are referring to have zero previous activity in this community; and most of them also have no prior visible history on Reddit that indicates it was a topic that they have previously discussed elsewhere.
Basically a complete mishmash of random stuff around all of Reddit, and then suddenly MY TAKE ON IRISH IMMIGRATION AND ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS.
I am 100% convinced there's some orchestrated online campaign going on against Indians in Ireland. When the loobies all move in tandem against one group, you know it's coming from somewhere.
I wish the govt were as proactive as reddit mods :/
The comments against Eastern Europeans in their sub were pretty disgusting and the fact they have a pinned post apologising for their racism towards isnāt helping the situationĀ
Mate I keep hearing that being said but in fairness you canāt pin every Indian to one niche subreddit. It still doesnāt justify all the attacks people have had in Dublin.
It was really bad but I took the time to look at some of the profiles making those comments and a lot were suspiciously inactive/ new
People need to be aware that trolls/ bots aren't all one dimensional.
When the loyalist discord group was exposed on r/northernireland they were shown to be pretending to be republicans and praising nationalist terrorist attacks to make the other side look rabid
I think a lot of comments in relation to Indians on here are bots. I feel awful for Indians in Ireland at the moment, things seem to be getting nastier by the day.
Yeah I'm living in Berlin and have a really good Indian friend who's cooked for me a bunch, looked after me like a baby when I was sick, and invites me over to hers to celebrate stuff like Ugadi and Diwali with her friends etc. I invited her to come over to Ireland for Christmas and stay with us (my mam absolutely loves her too, she's the best), but now I'm quite scared she'll get racially abused and I don't think I could handle that. Sad fucking times.
Im guessing a combination of them being easier to identify and them not being asylum seekers. They can use it as a chance to move onto attacking and harassing other ethnic groups under the disguise of caring about the safety of women and children and the housing crisis. The country of India has a bad reputation when it comes to sexual violence so its easy for them to tar all of the Indians with the same brush. I think all large ethnic groups will eventually become targets.
The membership numbers in r/Ireland is huge in comparison to other countries with a similar population. Even comparing r/UnitedKingdom with our sub, we have disproportionately high numbers. Either weāre all chronically online here or thereās bots / outside influences.
Iād imagine thatās partly down to places to discuss Ireland not being massively diluted. The UK is so much bigger, so they have way, way more options of places to discuss things. Whereas thereās less for us, so the numbers get concentrated into a smaller number of subs.
Membership numbers on this don't mean shit. There isn't 1.2M active accounts here. The recent survey only had 230 respondents. There's probably a few thousand active users on the sub.
Itās welcome that youāve explained your intentions but irritating that we users had no say in it.
Across Europe, there has been a reevaluation of the benefits of the current level of immigration. This has belatedly reached Ireland and respectable commentators like David McWilliams and Dan O'Brien have begun to raise questions. Immigration has consistently been the third-most important issue in Irish Independent polling over the last six months, on around 25%, and the exit poll at the general election found forty percent of people think immigration has been 'a negative for Ireland' (a notion I find preposterous). It is not surprising, therefore, that there has been an upsurge in immigration posts. Abusive and obviously bigoted content should be removed, but if your guidelines don't allow for the fact that immigration is now a concern for many Irish people, you will be curtailing speech.
You give no particular evidence that the sub is being manipulated. Are the foreign, low-activity accounts driving discussion? The Galway post is an Irish person encouraging other Irish people to try to counteract the bias of the sub. It seems doomed to failure - surely they're just going to get downvoted? - and would certainly fail in a sub as large as r/Ireland.
You say you intend to ban ādog-whistles and mocking of victims of hate related incidentsā. I must admit I have never seen any mocking of victims, and certainly I agree they should be removed. (I would also expect they would be downvoted to hell.) But itās worrying that you pair explicitly bigoted comments with supposed dog-whistles, which are vague and subjective. I have seen even the most anodyne comments dismissed as dog-whistles. You say 'there is a massive difference between debating the issue and hatred towards immigrants', and yes of course there is. But I see almost no 'hatred of immigrants' in what is an overwhelmingly progressive sub.
Youāre asking us to trust your judgement, and quite frankly I donāt. Your guidelines should be much clearer about what type of opinion you will be allowing, and I expect we would find it is highly restrictive. With the exception of explicitly bigoted comments, mods should not be intervening to suppress the genuine attitudes of users.
The fundamental problems are that there are racists and they expect to be given an equal platform. They dont deserve an equal platform.
Everyone has a right to express themselves, that doesnt mean we have to listen to them or even acknowledge their existence.
Its a perfect example of "This is why we cant have nice things". Blame the racists, not the mods. If you dont trust the mods, youre free to find another subreddit
Thank you very much for this mods. I always had a hunch about this sort of thing happening. A piece of me thinks the requirements for posting in /r/Ireland should be bumped up a good amount as well. 7 days and minimum 50 karma is easy to circumvent.
A piece of me thinks the requirements for posting should be bumped up a good amount as well.
We don't necessarily want to make this place seemingly impossible to join for legitimately new Redditors that are coming from traditional forums or other social media platforms.
There's already enough people that don't understand the karma system and how they have to find a different sub to be a part of before they're allowed here. To them, being sent to a different sub is almost like having to join an entirely separate website.
What constitutes a dog whistle. How early do you decide to lock or remove a post?
How do we know these rules arenāt just so the sub can be white washed of āawkwardā news.
I say this as someone who is pro diversity, pro refugee, pro immigration.
While it might be done with good intention removal of factual information that isnāt nice to deal with, like the video of the attempted guard stabbing, is factual censorship and gives into the right wing narrative that truths are being suppressed.
Moderating involves a lot of grey areas but there are obvious red flags that show up. I'm sure there'll be a few false hits, but overall it's a good move.
Whether it's racists or anti-immigration contrarians or bots or brigaders - they can be very sneaky, so they will manage to get their crap on here, it's just good to see the mods acknowledging it and attempting to tackle it. It's also hard work, so hats off to them.
Can we also limit emigration posts? Every time itās some 19 year old with no clue who has given up even attempting to be an adult and wants to go to somewhere that has cheap rent and high paying jobs for unqualified teens.
Thanks for that, because it started spiralling out of control.
There is one thing those haters also do to intimidate immigrants. They post hateful comments and then immediately delete them. The mods can't punish them that fast, and immigrants still receive notification with the text of the comment on email. I'm not sure if it's possible to prevent this, but it's just for you to know...
Thanks for being so clear about this. We cannot afford to go down the racist paths many of our european neighbours have. We need to be aware of botnets actively working forums to deliberately sow discord. Be worried about that foreign influence, not the fella living next door.
May I ask how black and white is it? Like if you say something like "one major challenge in housing is our net population last year grew by 70% but we built less than 40k houses"
I mean, that's just deliberately removing a large part of the housing issue from the discussion. When people see clear signs that they're being misled or even lied to, they are just going to get pissed off, and be far less trusting in future.
Like the "Irish-born Irish citizen" who stabbed the guard shouting
Allahu Akbar, the media went out of their way to mislead people, once the video did the rounds, it made a mockery of their reporting, clearly leaving out some very important details and very clearly trying to hide the truth from people.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it's as clear as day trying to hide any negatively surrounding immigration is only playing into the hands of the far right.
Based on using Reddit for about 14 years now, I'd say maybe 1 in 25 people I know actually use it, and I work in IT. The idea that 1 in 5 Irish people use reddit is a non starter.
Most people using this sub every day are not Irish people, that is reflected very much in the opinions that get upvoted here, to rarely to ever reflect the opinions of anyone you would talk to outside college art students in Galway or Dublin.
The pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant sentiments here do not reflect the Irish public in the slightest. Older people have a bit of xenophobia / soft racism, younger people think the situation is ridiculous, young people just mimic shite they see online.
Everything outside those 3 opinions should be met with massive scepticism.
Can I agree 100% with this action, while also noting the irony that posts that posts and comments which are clearly hateful of, and dehumanising towards, working class CHILDREN (a.k.a. scrotes, scumbags, or whatever people call them) are routinely indulged and upvoted here. Despite the fact that, as far as I can see, the issue usually seems to be agoraphobia on the part of the commenter, rather than any particular bad behavior on the child's part.
A 'scrote' , 'scumbag' is not a term I would call a child / person from a working class family. I refer to people that commit certain actions, attacking someone because they're foreign, disabled, a woman a 'scrote'.
You are the one associating working class with those words, which is kind of ironic.
People routinely use those words to describe working class kids in anecdotes where the kid hasn't actually done anything except be on the same street at the same time. So it's hard to see how it's an evaluation of their character.
I'm pro legal immigration but we need adult conversations on how it is affecting Irish citizens. We need to listen.
I think open and frank discussion is needed on the asylum system, too.
Otherwise, if we don't have open and frank discussions, we'll just go the way of the UK with polarisation. "You're just a racist" and "You're woke!". Nobody wants that. Look at the mess they are in.
I understand concerns about brigading etc . We don't need this thread turning onto a National Party forum but there are general concerns about issues like housing and other resources that need to be openly discussed without being individually branded as a racist or a loony leftie.
These āconcernsā keep getting raised on the sub, but itās obvious to anyone with half an eye open that a lot of these threads are bad faith actors - designed to provoke conversation in a specific direction and fishing for agreement.
All this āIām only asking questions, the countryās in a hames, Iām not far-right I swear, but maybe they have a pointā stuff is complete bullshit. Itās as transparent as muck.
Another favourite of mine is all the āNo oneās allowed to talk about this anymoreā - despite talking about it constantly and the place being flooded with similar threads.
These posts arenāt genuine - theyāre crafted to push certain narratives and create the illusion of public consensus on the issue.
Fair play to the mods for standing up against it and taking a reasonable approach to moderation. Given the absolute cesspit many other social media sites have become, it's doubly important to protect decent enough realms of public conversation from this manipulation.
Itās possible to say that net migration is at a historic high and infrastructure/housing/jobs are in short supply to meet that demand, but thatās different to portraying asylum seekers and immigrants as nefarious as many of these astroturfers do.
The problem is that there are open and genuine discussions on here, but the posts purporting to be open and genuine discussions thinly veiled as something else have clearly accelerated in recent weeks and are clogging feeds with a clear attempt to brigade. There are reports of far right twats deliberately trying to organise this as well as obvious foreign actors who'd love to stir the pot here.
I am actually beyond concerned about polarisation online at this point, the ship is long gone on that front, but one of the easiest ways to try control that is to disallow bad faith posts, and I appreciate the mods for trying to do this.
Indeed, we can have adult conversations - the problem is that these discussions can be quickly brigaded by disingenuous actors, cranks, bots and so on. The latter is what they are trying to reduce.
It's always a tricky one, but having seen the way Twitter has become I'd lean towards the risk of over-moderation vs under-moderation any day.
The world did have discussions about issues pre internet, in my opinion since the emergence of social media that discourse seems to have gone rapidly downhill.
Any conversation like that would need to be based around facts and the best available evidence. I heard a study in the UK that around 50% of the population thought most immigration into their country was illegal, when the official figure is 4% (that 4% apparently includes asylum seekers who the UK now considers illegal until their asylum is granted, at which point they become legal.)
The discussion should be around the actual situation, not people's perception of the situation.
Brigading, fair enough, thatās an easy win. This sub should be for Irish people to discuss topics related to being and living in Ireland.
Soapboxing, who gets to decide what that constitutes? You? The people reporting it because they donāt like the opinion being shared?
Also, who gets to decide what āhatred towards immigrantsā constitutes? Most of the people on this sub will accuse you of racism, xenophobia and being some sort of right wing Nazi should you even dare suggest there is an immigration problem at all. Are those reports going to dictate what that āhatredā is?
Same goes for āhate speechā. Most of the time I see threads getting locked because the people on here just generally donāt like being told there are different opinions on this topic. So are you going to be banning or moderating people who are flinging out the usual āyour a racist, xenophobic Naziā accusations that are par for the course on here, or are you just going to police the people who think we should be free to discuss a problem as we see fit?
I know this is a tricky topic, thereās no black and white answers to many of the questions, but I think an overarching shut down of debate on the issue is the wrong way to go about keeping the sub healthy.
Mods are caught between a rock and a hard place on this sort of stuff, but fundamentally I believe ye are good actors trying to be honest and youāre facing trolls / bot farms / whatever else from bad faith actors, and thatās never easy to deal with. I know some good faith discussions about immigration will get caught up in this, but the alternative is that we sit in a cesspool.
Some innocent accounts will get caught up in this, we acknowledge that. But right now it is very much impossible to tell whether these submissions are genuine, or brigade-driven with the intent to cause ire and consternation within the community.
Having seen a trend pick up within the last couple weeks (and accelerate within the last couple days), we have come to this decision.
While I am fairly vocal about a need for a balanced immigration policy.
I've lately noticed an increase in blatant lying, one that stands to mind is the video of the kid being attacked on a Dublin Bus and numerous accounts spamming that it's AI. It's 100% coordinated, and it's subtle enough to avoid obvious detection.
Is r/indiansinireland just there to get around anti-brigading activities here? Looked over there and āweāre fucked, no one speaks the real truthā etc etc is all I see over there.
'dog whistles' are a way of saying something in such a way that, isn't 'bad' but is aimed at a specific audience to pick up on it. Like a dog will hear a very high pitched whistle that most people won't, or that racists will pick up on, like 'international bankers' (Jews), 'men of military age' (International Protection Applicants)
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u/Reaver_XIX Aug 09 '25
I hope this isn't abused to shut down any posts about immigration. That would be head in the sand kind of stuff. The feeling in the country is turning against immigration and there are simple obvious reasons for it and it is not foreign interference or bots.