With the level of censorship continuing to escalate on Reddit, its most popular conspiracy community, r/conspiracy, has launched a new independent forum where users can freely post and discuss their ideas without being subject to Reddit’s increasingly strict rules.
r/conspiracy has over 1.4 million members and is the leading conspiracy-focused community on Reddit. It describes itself as “a thinking ground” which hopes to “challenge issues which have captured the public’s imagination, from JFK and UFOs to 9/11.”
Recent discussions on the new forum have focused on topics that are often heavily censored by Big Tech such as the coronavirus irregularities in the 2020 US presidential election.
The new forum, Conspiracies.win, already has thousands of users and functionally, it’s very similar to a Reddit community. Posts can be sorted by “Hot,” “New,” “Rising,” and “Top” and users can comment, upvote, and downvote individual posts.
However, since Conspiracies.win is hosted independently, its posts won’t be censored under Reddit’s far-reaching rules.
Many of the forum’s users are welcoming its creation and noting its necessity in the face of mounting Reddit censorship. Several of these users have described how they were banned on Reddit for discussing a Hunter Biden laptop story which alleged that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter had engaged in a corruption scandal.
The story was published in mid-October, just a few weeks before the 2020 US presidential election, and aggressively censored by several major Big Tech platforms. After the election, it was revealed that Hunter was under federal investigation and this revelation has led to the tech giants being accused of censoring the bombshell story to distort or hide the truth from their users during this crucial pre-election period.
This cross-platform censorship of such a major and influential story highlights why independent platforms such as Conspiracies.win are becoming increasingly crucial for users that want to post, discuss, and spread the word about stories that are subject to a Big Tech blackout.
The censorship of this Hunter Biden laptop story is one of many examples of Reddit’s mounting censorship during 2020. The company has purged discussions alleging possible voter fraud, viral anti-lockdown statements, and more.
The launch of Conspiracies.win follows pro-Trump community The Donald launching its own independent forum, TheDonald.win, last year. In 2016, The Donald was one of the most popular communities on Reddit but Reddit’s targeted censorship killed the community and resulted in most of its users migrating to TheDonald.win.
This trend of popular communities migrating away from Reddit comes as demand for alt-tech platforms that support free speech continues to grow. Rumble is one of several recent alt-tech success stories that’s enjoying a surge in popularity, attracting high profile users, and promising to foster “dialog, debate and opinions.”
