Like I said, it’s just some raw data. Process it however you see fit.

It also says there is 145 people online - Does that mean roughly 2/3 of active users vote stuff to hot? ~100 people holding up a niche community with a fraction of those the posters themselves.

For this, it’s important to remember that’s the number of people online at that very moment, but the vote count is persistent. Any number of those upvotes could have come from users who aren’t online presently, but had been online an hour or two prior. ~66%, in this case, is not the actual amount, it’s just the upper bound.

I always baselessly suspected that Reddit fluffs up the numbers to make engagement seem like it is much greater than it is, but this is 1000x smaller than the sub count suggests.

It’s possible, and very plausible, that they do this, but it’s much less plausible (though still possible) that they do it to that degree.

Again: just giving numbers. Make of them what you will.

For perspective:

r/GothStyle has 159k subscribers, r/tarot has 306k, r/cycling has 348k, r/rpg and r/political humor have 1.5m each, r/ExplainLikeImFive has 22.3m, and r/AskReddit has 41.4m.

Make of that what you will. I’m just giving numbers.

Did you remember to include a gif of a hardhat worker with a sign saying “caution: this site is under construction”?

So it’s about the size of a smallish-medium subreddit, then?

Edit: 10% of the size of r/rpg. Or about half the size of r/tarot.

I would define authoritarianism as a form of social organization based on submission to authority. When the ruler of a nation exerts their authority, the people of that nation are expected to submit to that authority, as subjects of that ruler.

Totalitarianism is an extreme form of authoritarianism, in which the authority is concentrated to one individual, or a small council of individuals, with all dissent forcibly removed. These are your blatant dictators, like Mussolini or Stalin.

you’re usually expected to use your authority at least to: maintain the rule of law, [etc]

That’s exactly what I’m saying. The “rule of law” is a submission to authority, and a ruler needs to use their authority in order to maintain that submission. The only people who would seek out a position that requires them to do that would, necessarily, be authoritarian. Someone who was anti-authoritarian would reject such a position.

and believe you can improve things in that position (not for some gain, but for the sake of it)

But that’s just it, though. How do you expect to “improve” things from that position without using the authority the position grants you?

Acting on your own preconceptions is not the only way. You can have proper discussions with the representatives of your people, and not suppress social media voicing other opinions.

I think you might be mistaking authoritarianism for totalitarianism. Authoritarianism doesn’t need to go to the extremes that you see with totalitarian dictatorships. Authoritarianism can be just something like banning guns, or drugs, or abortions, or LGBTQ+ people.

You remember when people were putting up their own static “front page” to the web? I mean, because the web was still small enough that individuals could still reasonably curate their own little corner of it? It was like if Reddit was just a little cottage tucked away in the English countryside, instead of some massive metropolitan bus station.

More precisely, they’re popularity contests where the prize is a powerful position of authority. Of course power-hungry authoritarians are going to compete in that contest.

Who else would try to be elected into such a powerful position? I mean, why else would you run, except to exert your own authority?

Go ahead and try to fantasize about what you would do in your first week as the elected leader of your nation. Would you be tough on crime? Restrict access to guns? Criminalize transgender people? Criminalize people who want to hurt transgender people? What about war, or taxes? There’s really no way to do the job without being authoritarian.

Edit: Shit, I was hoping the whole downvote-to-disagree mentality stayed over at Reddit. If you disagree, fine, but at least contribute something of substance to engage with.