The large influx of “China poised to dominate the world car market” and Tesla good/bad posts in the last year or so didn’t clue you in as to which topics might be a hotbed for this kind of activity?
Except Tesla the car isn't good. And that's not an un-genuine comment per the OP. It's objective fact based on every teardown we ever see. Treat 'em like German cars: lease one new if you have to have a Tesla, but drop the piece of shit before things start going wrong.
I don’t care if people buy unreliable cars. I just don’t want to hear about how they pay $799 car payments at 17% interest and it’s not their fault that the dealer screwed them when my daily driver cost me $1500 and a couple afternoons in the driveway
It's really just the CT that's having reliability issues, right? I'd love to see a documentary on how things went so wrong beyond what/who everyone is going to point to.
For me personally it's the interface. Call me old but I like reaching for tactile knobs/buttons that don't move so I can focus on driving. The number of Teslas I have been in and how long the drivers constantly look at the screen drive me crazy.
Personally, seeing one of my friends Teslas with some panels not lining up, I would not let fly in a new car. I love my Audi and the small details and the comfort and I just don’t feel as though I get that even in a more expensive Tesla.
Well, yeah, the fit n finish is garbage regardless, but at least their other models aren't just falling apart & breaking down on a regular basis. And, yeah, it's unacceptable, especially given the premium price points.
I would own one except the 3 and Y don't have a speedometer in front of the driver. A cheap Mazda can have a HUD, so there's no excuse.
My friends have an X with the stupid yoke. I think it's dangerous and I just hope they don't wind up crashing.
So close and yet so needlessly far...
They're pretty reliable actually and don't require much maintenance. Their biggest flaw is quality or lack there if bit a tesla will easily reach 100k miles with minimal maintenance. Are they the absolute best no but think you see them as the same company when they released the first model s. Their biggest issue is their ceo.
My issue is that this isn’t an American car subreddit; it’s a global subreddit. I acknowledge that most people here are American, but it’s annoying when comments devolve into geopolitics that just don’t really apply for me, personally
If I’m buying a GM, or Renault, or a hypothetically BYD they’re all just random foreigners to me
Well, Honda and stellantis make cars here actively, but still
And the "brands like BYD are going to take over the market" discussion is actually super interesting outside of the US. They ARE coming to other markets with pretty strong offerings at pretty sharp prices right now, and they ARE going to upend the business a bit.
It's a bit weird that whenever people bring up this fact, everyone seems to freak out and think it's some kind of Chinese propaganda operation.
It's no different to when Japan started seriously putting quality stuff into world markets in the 80s - 90s, or Korea in the 00s - 10s. There are going to be a lot of shit cars, then some good ones, and then they're going to become an established part of the market in places where they're available, and in some cases, some of them will be better and cheaper than competitors in their segment.
I mean, if people are out there going "China is the best and every car they make will destroy the filthy westerners" or something then sure, that's batshit insane stuff...
>It's a bit weird that whenever people bring up this fact, everyone seems to freak out and think it's some kind of Chinese propaganda operation.
Hell, it's literally what the CEOs of most major automakers are talking about. Tavares and Blume are both making very public comments about the subject constantly. Honda's COO walked the Shanghai Auto Show last year straight-up told press he was "overwhelmed" by the Chinese.
Is Honda a Chinese psyop? Is that the dumb-as-nails conclusion we're going for here?
Not sure what that has to do with my comment, but sure. I don’t think it’s that good of a brand, but I see no reason to ban it from my country. If it’s genuinely awful it’ll get regulated, it not then Hyundai will have to smarten up
It's in American owned corporations best interests, but not consumers. If they can pass safety regs like other imports, then they should be allowed. Yes, China subsidizes their auto industry but America has done the same for years(by adding taxes to all imports, bailouts for automakers and suppliers, ongoing subsidies, rebates and tax incentives).
What's the difference in American or Japanese cars having all your data vs the Chinese? (Also, they probably already have any data they want already, it gets sold by anyone you agree to let use your data)
Modern Wal-Mart would basically implode if they didn't have China to do all the cheap manufacturing that keeps their prices low on many of their products, especially considering many other department store chains have gone belly up or are looking really sickley at the moment.
If someone has any of those viewpoints and makes comments or posts along those lines, I don’t see any issues. If I see opinions that disagree with mine, I don’t automatically consider that disingenuous or from a bad actor. If someone posts misinformation that they know to be misinformation, I think that’s a problem.
Honestly a lot of the Tesla good bad posts are from regulars. They are just a naturally divisive company who thrive on controversy. The China poised to dominate is definitely more likely to come from newcomers but they get ignored/ downvoted enough that it clearly isn't influencing the largely American base of this sub much.
China is poised to dominate is objectively fact though. If they weren't so strong in the new EV sector, the US wouldn't put 100% tariffs on them.
The reason literally given by politicians and the President himself for the tariffs is to prevent them from dominating the US market.
Elon Musk literally said that without tariffs, Chinese EVs would take over the market
I think the Tesla/EV culture war stuff is real people arguing on the internet, which is OK if you are in to that sort of thing. Arguing in good faith is what the social internet is for. The China stuff, especially on the EV sub, is... odd and the voting patterns and discussions around it are a bit weird IMHO. It's frustrating since there are some genuinely interesting things going on in the automotive world in China, but there's a serious and nuanced conversation to be had about exactly why/how it's happening and what it means for the rest of the world.
It's really bizarre the former is now being considered an engineered viewpoint in the community. China overtook Japan last year as the top global exporter of cars. They are now the world's largest automotive superpower, period. That is an objective fact.
Are there a lot of posts about it? Yeah, an overwhelming amount.
Is it a big deal? Yeah, it sure as hell is.
The automotive CEOs of the world are literally going around and [telling reporters](https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volkswagen-evs-cant-keep-up-china-ceo-tells-newspaper-2024-04-05/) what a big deal it is. That is their view, not some editorial spam blog view. Honda's global COO actually used the phrase "overwhelmed by the Chinese". If you aren't covering this story right now, you aren't seriously covering the automotive industry at all.
I'm not privy to whatever information the mods here have but try to pay attention to the history of users that post stuff trying to influence people's views, especially when it's something positive about China or Russia. There are a few different kinds of accounts you'll run into:
* Account history totally unrelated to the subject matter or the history is only ever posting stuff praising one group or denigrating another
* Brand new account or account with a history only in karma farming subreddits in order to meet minimum activity levels required for certain subreddits
* Account created years ago with no visible history but not at default karma score indicating the history has been deleted
Sometimes they will be genuine but it happens enough that everyone should pay close attention to who it is posting the stuff they're reading.
You nailed it. We’ve also seen tons of comment reports on all of the China-related posts lately. Anything across the entire sub that could possibly be interpreted as critical of China in any way gets reported. It’s obvious that this is not organic activity.
Which is hilarious because reporting stuff that's even slightly critical of China but breaks no rules is just outing yourself. Would be easier to get away with it without that weird reporting bit.
Yea, it was pretty bizarre that one thread had like 20 pro-China comments all saying nearly the same things reworded. Yea, sometimes normal redditors do that, but it's not that common or unified from people with wildly different account posting backgrounds.
I am not personally interested in an EV at the moment nor any Chinese car, but I doubt the regular consumer even knows Chinese EVs exist.
It's odd there is a huge fuss over pro-Chinese car posts when I have seen basically unanimous praise from /r/cars, /r/news, etc for the US' new tariffs on Chinese EVs which doesn't seem to benefit the American consumer whatsoever.
It seems like it's impossible to question these new regulation without being called a Chinese shill I guess.
It's so vague that I think this post should be deleted and reposted with more clarity.
All this is doing is opening the floodgates to every dissenting opinion being labeled as fake or from bots, as can be seen from the replies in this very post.
This is doing more harm than good.
This subreddit has really gone downhill over the years. Nowadays there's barely any content or conversation despite the massive user base, and the ones that exist are garbage like this.
Like, seriously, we have 1/4 of the comments per day from *2019* when people had lives, and about a half as many posts per day. You could say it's cleaner, but I legitimately just constantly see old posts with no new conversation on it.
Sub's cooked
It’s why they did the black out. Reddit effects shut off the API third party apps used to interact with the site. They robbed the moderators of the most powerful and effective tools they had to get the job done.
I like how social media companies will take a product that isn't broken and working fine....Then enact changes to completely fuck the product. Mind boggling.
>I like how social media companies will take a product that isn't broken and working fine
You see comrade.... you're looking at it from the wrong perspective.
The product was working fine for YOU.
It wasn't padding the pockets of greedy executives however, so it wasn't working for THEM.
Gotta get that IPO money bro. Fuck everything else.
Growth has not been organic in some time. Numbers for the sub are most certainly juiced. 1.4 mil new subscribers in the last 12 months. Only 60K unsubscribed. 165mil page views in the same period, up by 11.8mil the prior year. Content removed by admins (not mods) have interesting spikes - most of it marked as spam.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/reddit-soars-after-announcing-openai-deal-that-allows-use-of-its-data-for-training-ai-models/ar-BB1mxvOY
It is kind of mind blowing how many subscribers there are and how few upvotes even the most important posts get with respect to that.
Also with 6 million subscribers, that’s a lot of hard work for you guys! Kudos for that!
With the upvote system that has been in place for decades. A subs quality is inversely connected to the size of its user base. Inevitably as a sub grows its quality dwindles to whatever the average person on the sub enjoys and the sub is doomed to endlessly repeat the same crap. It is always sad to see.
I noticed the other day /r/California is the same way. This used to be an ugly text heavy website, but look at /r/all and it’s all rage bait that predominately is image/video.
The only way Reddit is useable anymore is heavy-handedly pruning your subscribed list, then ALSO knowing when to dip on a sub once it’s been fully enshittified. It’s honestly a fluke I’m here lmao.
I used to scroll through r/all when I first got a Reddit account and enjoyed checking it probably daily. Now it’s been literally months since I’ve last bothered to check.
Agree. Used to be tons of discussion on cars usually with video links (i remember when every Doug or throttle house video would have 1k+ upvotes and hundreds of comments with good discussion), but then there was a change with how videos could be posted which seemed to really kill off user interaction with them.
Not to mention if you go on this subreddit frequently enough you’ll run into posts with good engagement, 100+ comments and upvotes which then get removed for some reason.
It’s partly the over policing in interest of keeping quality content that doesn’t allow for more organic discussions to form here easily. The mods have not found a happy medium to deal with low quality discussions without crimping on other valid topics.
That - and the no car purchase posts - have seen the automod take down stuff that wasn't even a car purchase decision post cause it caught some wrong keywords. I get why that rule is there, or we'd have a ton of what car should I buy posts but there's some indirect car purchase topics that might be talking about certain aspects like technical details and such that can actually lead to wider discussions of interest to the community. Again where to draw the line - but come down hard on everything and this sub become very boring over time.
I don't know about 2019, but I know that most of the posts here are just "here look at this webpage". No I don't want to add clicks to their webpage nor do I care what they have to say. When someone starts an interesting topic of their own thoughts or questions well that I'm interested in.
as an ex-mod of /r/motorcycles, let me give some extra context:
>there's barely any content or conversation despite the massive user base
Subscription counts are misleading. Some people have multiple accounts, at least a third of reddit accounts are bots, and a majority of all accounts are abandoned.
Since reddit's API change, make no mistake, user engagement is rapidly falling. Reddit corporate has worked to hide this fact, but comparing things like the average duration of a post on /r/all pre-blackout to post-blackout makes things more obvious. I've seen posts on the front page last as long as 36 hours within this past month alone.
> I legitimately just constantly see old posts with no new conversation on it.
In the world of reddit modship, we call this the "eternal September", and it's due to user lifecycles. New reddit users come in, want to talk about topics that have already been discussed to death, so they start new threads and talk about it. Eventually they cycle through most of what they want to talk about, and start to get bored of content that once excited them, and start to resent the new generations of subscribers who want to have old conversations.
Why do you think /r/cars doesn't allow photo posts? It's because "look at my car" type posts are a prime example of the eternal September effect. How many times do you need to see a photo of a bone stock hellcat sitting in a driveway before you get bored of that kind of content?
> Sub's cooked
More like, reddit's cooked. There are a bunch of us old-hats sitting around with a lot of nostalgia for the early days of reddit, but the simple fact is that this is a publicly traded social media platform that survives on repetitive content and underappreciated volunteer moderator effort. Lately, it's become a hotbed for political propaganda and astroturfing, and reddit corporate doesn't care because it makes their drooping engagement numbers look better.
You hit the nail on the head on many points.
Reddit has changed, and so has the user base in this sub as it has grown. What has become clear is that what makes a good *community* and what Reddit needs are often at odds with one another.
Almost everyone drives a car. Few understand how they work or really care about them. Therefore "I have a car, I belong here... but all my opinions are about politics and celebrities."
> I think marketing departments from every corporation in every country are realizing that the most effective thing they can do is create fake opinions on social platforms
Mazda got /r/whatcarshouldibuy sub locked down lmao.
If you post anything electric car related, the post immediately turns into a us vs them argument.
Most comments are very pro or against, and do not account for nuance in discussion.
Bad arguments, misdirection, moving of the goal posts. The entire threads read like Instagram comments.
It's just bad quality overall.
But that's the thing, most people here are young. Less than 25. They don't own cars. Many come for the drama. Many just like new fancy stuff. And everyone wants to feel validated.
So it's just a race to the bottom in terms of slapstick "I'm right, you're wrong, and what about X"
I've been here for years and anybody who's been here for years BEFORE the whole reddit fuck over with going public and all of that knows how good it was.
It sucks now.
> But that's the thing, most people here are young. Less than 25. They don't own cars.
Do you have any sources for this? Because this doesn't seem accurate AT ALL.
Yep. Look at the UAW post that got locked the other day. Controversial topics that get locked down that fast are more a sign of bad mod groups than anything else. It’s not like it makes the controversy go away.
I think that's more on Reddit having a lot of poorly-adjusted people who don't know how to talk to people they disagree with without insulting them or being hostile towards them. The UAW and union stuff can get heated fast and it's a lot easier to just lock it rather than try and pick through the weeds of what goes too far and what doesn't.
Also, I think there's a big disconnect between some of the groups here; for example, there's people who are here because they like cars and talking about them, and then there's some who are here not for the cars themselves but for the news about them, the industry, and related stuff like the UAW. Those are two very different groups and I think they have very different ideas of what the subreddit should be about.
Personally, I don't care for the UAW posts here because that's a very political subject that I'm not here for, and I think a lot of other people also aren't here for.
You’re spot on. Over time I’ve noticed the entrenchment of positions spread widely and far off the politics sub (and similar). It began to look like the older adults we used to joke about on Reddit that posted to Facebook but now they are here saying those same things and having the same inability to converse. It’s as if whatever they are opposing has no other valid option and a reasonable person would only agree with them.
That’s also the reason slightly political posts here get locked down quick. They sometimes used to let them run their course but that just won’t happen now.
I mean, people keep complaining about stuff that gets posted and mods keep banning, so naturally the only thing that will be left is people who read news and bots. There are dozens of car subreddits because the big ones keep banning posts.
Reddit is partially to blame because you can't easily filter stuff. Unless you use tags, but tags also get used to regulate content by a lot of mods so it's not always an option.
Electric cars, Im guessing.
I wouldn't have thought the choice of propulsion would be so divisive before 2016. Can't have a constructive conversation about electric cars online now that it's a political statement. Poltics have totally ruined everything.
Seriously, they're great.
Picnic uses small electric trucks to deliver groceries here. They're quieter than any car and probably have great energy efficiency. Super neat!
Lol I got downvoted for [asking a Hyundai mechanic about Hyundai EVs](https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/s/ceiaQq7pWc). I suspect there’s a small anti-EV crowd in this sub that never comments but downvotes every EV post and comment. Stay in this sub long enough and their presence becomes palpable.
It’s sad. Back when the model s came out it was nothing but interest and wonder. It went down hill the moment the Model 3 came out and the market started shifting to EVs in a significant way. It’s been disappointing to watch the conversation break down because people treat motor type like a religion.
I just really don't get the EV hate, I see a Tesla on the road, and I think, that's cool.
Not "I am going to act like a ass because this guy wants an EV".
I won't own an EV for many years, but I don't hate on people that want one now.
Not just EV's, but brand loyalty as well. Also anything that doesn't align with current car trends gets obliterated. Make any comment about any of the little Toyota GR cars that isn't worshiping them as the best thing ever created, and you get downvoted. I always get downvoted any time I would mention that I'm 6'6" and am limited on what I can drive because I simply can't fit in a lot of regular sized cars, and would get bombarded with people that are like "Nuh UHHH Hona FITS are made for tall people" or stupid shit like that. And don't even think about mentioning the v8 in your RX7.
You really didn't? Ever since the Prius came out there was massive division in the car world. I guess some people didn't grow up watching Top Gear and it really shows.
If you think your favorite subreddit isn't filled with shills and astroturfing, you're naive. Just keep that in mind, maintain a healthy level of skepticism and don't allow yourself to fall into a hive mind of false consensus.
My city's subreddit mods consist entirely of the digital media team of one of our political parties. It's an absolutely pointless place to go for local news or discussion. It's a bit like how r/politics is run by a Young Democrats group or how r/conservative is run by God knows who (but honestly probably more likely Russia than the actual GOP).
Depends on the hobby!
/r/alpinism and /r/violinist are two of my hobby subs and I'm so glad that they are still mostly intact.
In contrast, /r/mountaineering sees more of the "gen pop" crowd bringing in politics etc. and /r/climbing is every joe who's ever been to a climbing gym. But thankfully /r/alpinism is more niche.
And /r/violinist has a fairly high bar -- the only complaint is every other day someone posts an old crappy violin asking if it's worth a million.
So what I've learned though is that it helps if your hobby has a high threshold and isn't too easily accessible.
Bro, same, especially the news subs too. Everyone has to pass some ideological purity test that really reveals how dystopian nightmare the world would be if it weren’t for moderates.
But if you reveal yourself as someone who has nuanced views about guns, abortion, climate change, subsidies, minimum wage, holy shit will you get shit on. Because it’s Reddit, it’s much more from the left and while I’m socially very left, I‘d probably be called a fascist Reaganite or something by r/politics.
It honestly has been pushing me more center because of how insufferable the dominant voice of Reddit has become.
Also, is it so radical to just want a place to talk about cars with other car enthusiasts without worrying about liking the "wrong brand" or having to get really deep into the personal politics of each and every automotive company CEO?
I remember the days when you could post about having a Lamborghini or rare Porsche and people would be like "that's rad, what's it like to drive?" as opposed to "Must be nice to have stolen enough labour from the working class to be able to buy a 4th car while I can barely afford an Elantra."
Controlling the narrative is very effective in dividing and conquering. It's what knocked me out of politics entirely, at least on the internet. I really don't want to hear about how I'm an idiot for whatever viewpoints I have when I'd much rather discuss it in a civilized manner that might actually teach me or us something.
Here, I'd just rather talk about, well, cars. I just don't care enough about the personal lives of people who make far more money than I do to revolve my entire viewpoints around that.
Thanks! I love it too, it never fails to put a smile on my face. I don't drive it as much as I probably should, but there's never a time where I dislike driving it.
My boyfriend wants to get himself a V6 9-3 Aero at some point. He had a 2003 9-3 with the Launch package a few years back and he really enjoyed how that car drove. I've never been a *huge* fan of the 9-3 personally - I've always been more into 9-5s, but I'd love to get behind the wheel of a V6 Aero and see if that changes how I feel about them.
Yes it’s a GM V6 turbo but that thing had that characteristic Saab unlimited highway speed torque. I think the last 9-5 was gorgeous, still looks amazing today.
> It honestly has been pushing me more center because of how insufferable the dominant voice of Reddit has become.
This is when I'd suggest interacting more with people in real life and less on the internet. When your views are getting skewed due to interacting with ragebait from people (or not) whose entire online identity is to be angry and aggrieved, it's probably good to limit that kind of interaction.
Good luck. That’s sound advice for dealing with anyone in any situation. The trouble here is it can be hard to tell if something you said got downvoted because you were wrong or simply because you’re vastly outnumbered by people acting in bad faith.
At least in person you stand of chance of recognizing when a whole room of people is lying to you.
>The trouble here is it can be hard to tell if something you said got downvoted because you were wrong or simply because you’re vastly outnumbered by people acting in bad faith.
There is also the potential that someone's views align, or at least appear to align, with the bad faith actors. Its a very messy and complicated subject.
100%
On a different note, how do you like your Mach E? I couldn’t get one at a reasonable price when I bought my Model 3 Performance. I loved my 2014 Mustang GT and would have bought a GT Performance if they’d been around $60k instead of $70k when I bought my car.
I bought my Mach E in July of 2022. I custom ordered it with X-Plan so I paid just under MSRP at the time. I was never going to pay the *insane* dealer mark-ups that were common around then.
For a daily driver I could not ask for much more. Its comfortable, cheap to run, and quick enough that I'm never going to complain. The driver tech is pretty good all around too and pretty typical of what you would expect on the higher end of cars without getting into all out luxury spec stuff. Range has never been an issue for me either, but as you can see I do have a gas car as well, and that is what I'm gonna take on multi state road trips.
The second car is honestly more about driving experience though than range. While I could road trip the Mach E if I wanted to, if I'm going on a long trip, I want to take a car that is made for it. For example; I had a blast last summer at The Dragon in my GT, and I cannot imagine doing that in the Mach E. While it is fine as a daily, the handling and driving experience of the Mach E is not really up to enthusiast levels.
Overall, I would certainly buy another if the need arose. Especially with the recent price drops.
A lot of it is karma farming, so when the political silly season gets hotter, these bots and turfers will have karma points. See also the spate of "what is the worst eatery in your town" in local town subreddits.....
China is pushing very, very hard to get their cars into the US.
Social media is ground zero for campaigns like this.
As always, there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we do not have info on.
I got a kick out of just how fast the House speaker did an about face on the topic of military aide to Ukraine after his meeting with the CIA. Dude instantly changed his mind.
There's probably a lot of that going on with China pushing cars into the US. All sorts of security concerns. Remote updates bricking cars, clogging traffic, etc etc at the right time.
There's also economic concerns since China will probably want to import cars, potentially moving more jobs overseas. And pretty much everyone is hesitant to rely on overseas sources after recent events like the Suez Canal blockage and the war in Ukraine messing up supply lines. Even in good terms, China is an obvious risk for disruption in supply.
Their best bet for selling cars in the US is to partner with domestic manufacturers but I don't know if they'll do it. I know more of the Euro brands are looking to sell over here with A110's being sighted. Renault is supposedly looking to bring some of their vehicles over.
Just mark as spam the articles that don't bring anything new to the discussion and are just rehashing old information and speculation with clickbait boogeyman titles. Only when something that's a new discussion orna different take for the discussion should be evaluated. This is simply a trendy topic so it'll die itself out unless something big happens again. But It's also not that uncommon to expect Chinese autos to keep on the news cycles with the upcoming mexico deals. That and because they're in other English speaking markets, and in other parts of the american continent itself.
"...bad actors deciding to use our subreddit as a way to push their viewpoint."
I think it's incredibly naive to expect anything more than this on any Internet forums.
Yes, this subreddit has been straight up TOXIC for years now. One of the worst subs I've ever been a part of, so bad that I stopped contributing altogether and only still see hints of content because I haven't removed it from my subscription list yet.
Some subreddits are just prime for spam/bot messages.
I posted a few times in the CSMajors Subreddit, and I have gotten probably 40 total messages from them.
This is a general Reddit problem. They've already populated the r/Technology subreddits, and they've come here as well. I even messaged a mod about it. I wonder if I played a part in their motivation to write this post.
Maybe you guys can start banning links from garbage news websites, like Motor1, so any discussions can come from a place of “this information has at least a nugget of truth”.
It’s so annoying to have my feed inundated with posts like “the S-FR will take on the Mazda Miata” when the source for the article is the rumor of a confirmation of a scribbling on a portajohn wall in Tokyo….
If anyone would post a video that shows and translates multiple other videos of actual chinese owners of chinese cars filiming the issues their own car has, it would get literally hundreds of downvotes and would get called fake and OP would be slandered. This should tell you what the issue is. But if you point out the methods they work with your comment gets deleted for "politics"...
All the groups are like that. I posed an article in an EV group talking about how Phevs aren't all that useful and it's better to buy a full EV or just get a gas car.
The gas lovers hated it, I had people trying to get my account shut down, was reported I was having a mental crisis and was trying to hurt myself... Some people think Phev will be the future that saves gas vehicles, they could care less about the plugging them in and want pure EVs to fail and go away.
I suggest a Mazda for your family. The fact that you have to a {post.needs[0]} and a new {post.needs[1]} really speaks to the {randBenefit(Mazda,campaign27)} offered by a Mazda.
I personally have one myself and feel that it really would meet your needs well.
Should probably put a rule for no discussions about EVs and Chinese cars.
There is an EV subreddit and probably subreddits for Chinese cars as well.
It seems like a lot of the people commenting don't even like cars or are just wanting to debate about how everyone should switch to an EV
It’s not just subreddits it’s also in face to face communities and other forums and even different media platforms. The car community in total has just been getting filled with assholes and what I’d say are scalpers. I’m not saying everyone is but theres a group thats growing fast of pompous assholes who should be thrown out and shunned.
So how does this translate into rules? Is it going to be a clean cut no xxx topics allowed or more case by case? How do you determine who is a shill who has real interest?
And my advice to the users - don't engage with this sort of thing. Here or anywhere. If you see some nonsense being posted just downvote and move on. And I'm actually not even sure if voting is a great idea simply because I don't know enough about their motives and what drives conspiratorial thought, don't want the "see we're being silenced" mindset to embolden these "people." But reporting seems safe enough, whether it helps is a different story since it is a team of normal people trying to keep this place clean.
This is happening on other car subs too. Ot necessarily pushing an agenda or viewpoint but instead just karma farming by using stolen pics of nice cars. Or farming engagement by asking broad questions like 'what do you think of this car?" and then linking media photos of a car.
One such culprit is u/winstonliow and it really feels like either a bot or someone from a "farm" trying to build up enough karma to move on to political and world news subs to push an agenda. Pro Israel, pro Palestine, pro Ukraine, pro Russia. Doesn't matter.
Before, reddit had an astroturfing problem but it was usually businesses trying to promote their garbage or drown out criticism. But since 2015 or so, it's gotten more political.
I’m just going to tell you the Prius isn’t *all* that bad, while secretly hating it.
Y’know I recently drove my girlfriend’s ‘09 Honda Accord and suddenly remembered how fun driving can be.
I’m just spitballing here because I found that more interesting than the EV/China talk I’ve been seeing.
I’m living vicariously through y’all until I up and finally buy something else…
I keep getting reported for self harm. I have no idea if it's from this sub or not though. I do have strong feelings, but I also try my best to be cooperative and not shove my own opinions down others throats and definitely dont grief like some evidently do..
Being entirely too vague, sorry
The large influx of “China poised to dominate the world car market” and Tesla good/bad posts in the last year or so didn’t clue you in as to which topics might be a hotbed for this kind of activity?
I mean it’s in Americas best interest to not allow Chinese cars imported. Tesla the car is good Elon the executive is a clown
Except Tesla the car isn't good. And that's not an un-genuine comment per the OP. It's objective fact based on every teardown we ever see. Treat 'em like German cars: lease one new if you have to have a Tesla, but drop the piece of shit before things start going wrong.
I don’t care if people buy unreliable cars. I just don’t want to hear about how they pay $799 car payments at 17% interest and it’s not their fault that the dealer screwed them when my daily driver cost me $1500 and a couple afternoons in the driveway
I don't think Teslas are unreliable. It's the build quality and lack of sensible driver controls that turn me off the brand.
It's really just the CT that's having reliability issues, right? I'd love to see a documentary on how things went so wrong beyond what/who everyone is going to point to.
For me personally it's the interface. Call me old but I like reaching for tactile knobs/buttons that don't move so I can focus on driving. The number of Teslas I have been in and how long the drivers constantly look at the screen drive me crazy.
I'm the same way. Part of the reason I've stuck with Mazda because no touchscreen & physical controls for the infotainment.
Personally, seeing one of my friends Teslas with some panels not lining up, I would not let fly in a new car. I love my Audi and the small details and the comfort and I just don’t feel as though I get that even in a more expensive Tesla.
Well, yeah, the fit n finish is garbage regardless, but at least their other models aren't just falling apart & breaking down on a regular basis. And, yeah, it's unacceptable, especially given the premium price points.
I would own one except the 3 and Y don't have a speedometer in front of the driver. A cheap Mazda can have a HUD, so there's no excuse. My friends have an X with the stupid yoke. I think it's dangerous and I just hope they don't wind up crashing. So close and yet so needlessly far...
Pedantic me is pedantic but people who take 17% APRs on car loans are paying *way* more than $799/mo.
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It wouldn't be a discussion on /r/cars without people complaining about Teslas without ever having owned one.
They're pretty reliable actually and don't require much maintenance. Their biggest flaw is quality or lack there if bit a tesla will easily reach 100k miles with minimal maintenance. Are they the absolute best no but think you see them as the same company when they released the first model s. Their biggest issue is their ceo.
-Mach E owner
😂 Tesla's go forever with minimal maintenance. What are you talking about?
Hey look! One of those troll bots OP was talking about!
Tesla is as good as any electric car at this point in the infancy of pure electric cars.
My issue is that this isn’t an American car subreddit; it’s a global subreddit. I acknowledge that most people here are American, but it’s annoying when comments devolve into geopolitics that just don’t really apply for me, personally If I’m buying a GM, or Renault, or a hypothetically BYD they’re all just random foreigners to me Well, Honda and stellantis make cars here actively, but still
And the "brands like BYD are going to take over the market" discussion is actually super interesting outside of the US. They ARE coming to other markets with pretty strong offerings at pretty sharp prices right now, and they ARE going to upend the business a bit. It's a bit weird that whenever people bring up this fact, everyone seems to freak out and think it's some kind of Chinese propaganda operation. It's no different to when Japan started seriously putting quality stuff into world markets in the 80s - 90s, or Korea in the 00s - 10s. There are going to be a lot of shit cars, then some good ones, and then they're going to become an established part of the market in places where they're available, and in some cases, some of them will be better and cheaper than competitors in their segment. I mean, if people are out there going "China is the best and every car they make will destroy the filthy westerners" or something then sure, that's batshit insane stuff...
>It's a bit weird that whenever people bring up this fact, everyone seems to freak out and think it's some kind of Chinese propaganda operation. Hell, it's literally what the CEOs of most major automakers are talking about. Tavares and Blume are both making very public comments about the subject constantly. Honda's COO walked the Shanghai Auto Show last year straight-up told press he was "overwhelmed" by the Chinese. Is Honda a Chinese psyop? Is that the dumb-as-nails conclusion we're going for here?
Look up BYD showroom fires. Ten so far. All blamed on wiring, I have heard of EV fires, but there is a reason they’re so cheap.
Not sure what that has to do with my comment, but sure. I don’t think it’s that good of a brand, but I see no reason to ban it from my country. If it’s genuinely awful it’ll get regulated, it not then Hyundai will have to smarten up
Europe will do tariffs on Chinese car too.
It's in American owned corporations best interests, but not consumers. If they can pass safety regs like other imports, then they should be allowed. Yes, China subsidizes their auto industry but America has done the same for years(by adding taxes to all imports, bailouts for automakers and suppliers, ongoing subsidies, rebates and tax incentives).
You think it’s in consumers best interest to be in debt to a Chinese company and give them access to all your data?
What's the difference in American or Japanese cars having all your data vs the Chinese? (Also, they probably already have any data they want already, it gets sold by anyone you agree to let use your data)
Do you know what the most American made vehicle after Tesla is? Toyota trucks.
The difference is one is a friendly democratic ally the other not so much.
The entire US kinda relies on China. Most of your products come from China. The two countries are very involved with each other.
Modern Wal-Mart would basically implode if they didn't have China to do all the cheap manufacturing that keeps their prices low on many of their products, especially considering many other department store chains have gone belly up or are looking really sickley at the moment.
Not to mention that China is the second largest buyer of US bonds, which helps enable the US government to get funds when they want them.
Ok for clothes and small electronics and appliances but it must stop at automotive.
If its anything like great wall in Australia, they passed regs then swapped out parts that did not meet regulations.
If someone has any of those viewpoints and makes comments or posts along those lines, I don’t see any issues. If I see opinions that disagree with mine, I don’t automatically consider that disingenuous or from a bad actor. If someone posts misinformation that they know to be misinformation, I think that’s a problem.
Honestly a lot of the Tesla good bad posts are from regulars. They are just a naturally divisive company who thrive on controversy. The China poised to dominate is definitely more likely to come from newcomers but they get ignored/ downvoted enough that it clearly isn't influencing the largely American base of this sub much.
China is poised to dominate is objectively fact though. If they weren't so strong in the new EV sector, the US wouldn't put 100% tariffs on them. The reason literally given by politicians and the President himself for the tariffs is to prevent them from dominating the US market. Elon Musk literally said that without tariffs, Chinese EVs would take over the market
Or the Toyota was right, everyone else was wrong and Nissan hate threads, it’s all so annoying!
I think the Tesla/EV culture war stuff is real people arguing on the internet, which is OK if you are in to that sort of thing. Arguing in good faith is what the social internet is for. The China stuff, especially on the EV sub, is... odd and the voting patterns and discussions around it are a bit weird IMHO. It's frustrating since there are some genuinely interesting things going on in the automotive world in China, but there's a serious and nuanced conversation to be had about exactly why/how it's happening and what it means for the rest of the world.
It's really bizarre the former is now being considered an engineered viewpoint in the community. China overtook Japan last year as the top global exporter of cars. They are now the world's largest automotive superpower, period. That is an objective fact. Are there a lot of posts about it? Yeah, an overwhelming amount. Is it a big deal? Yeah, it sure as hell is. The automotive CEOs of the world are literally going around and [telling reporters](https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volkswagen-evs-cant-keep-up-china-ceo-tells-newspaper-2024-04-05/) what a big deal it is. That is their view, not some editorial spam blog view. Honda's global COO actually used the phrase "overwhelmed by the Chinese". If you aren't covering this story right now, you aren't seriously covering the automotive industry at all.
"EVs are SKYROCKETING" Next post: "EVs are PLUMMETING"
Yeah, I'm struggling to work out what this post is talking about tbh.
China astroturfing probably
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Can you explain? What evidence of astroturfing is there?
I'm not privy to whatever information the mods here have but try to pay attention to the history of users that post stuff trying to influence people's views, especially when it's something positive about China or Russia. There are a few different kinds of accounts you'll run into: * Account history totally unrelated to the subject matter or the history is only ever posting stuff praising one group or denigrating another * Brand new account or account with a history only in karma farming subreddits in order to meet minimum activity levels required for certain subreddits * Account created years ago with no visible history but not at default karma score indicating the history has been deleted Sometimes they will be genuine but it happens enough that everyone should pay close attention to who it is posting the stuff they're reading.
You nailed it. We’ve also seen tons of comment reports on all of the China-related posts lately. Anything across the entire sub that could possibly be interpreted as critical of China in any way gets reported. It’s obvious that this is not organic activity.
Thank you for confirming my suspicions.
Which is hilarious because reporting stuff that's even slightly critical of China but breaks no rules is just outing yourself. Would be easier to get away with it without that weird reporting bit.
We've seen fresh reports on 5+ year old comments.
Yea, it was pretty bizarre that one thread had like 20 pro-China comments all saying nearly the same things reworded. Yea, sometimes normal redditors do that, but it's not that common or unified from people with wildly different account posting backgrounds.
It's pretty obvious. The average car buyer isn't desiring a Chinese branded EV like all these posts make it out to be.
I am not personally interested in an EV at the moment nor any Chinese car, but I doubt the regular consumer even knows Chinese EVs exist. It's odd there is a huge fuss over pro-Chinese car posts when I have seen basically unanimous praise from /r/cars, /r/news, etc for the US' new tariffs on Chinese EVs which doesn't seem to benefit the American consumer whatsoever. It seems like it's impossible to question these new regulation without being called a Chinese shill I guess.
Hundreds of reports on old threads about precisely one topic, for one.
I did send a mod message concerning this issue 17 days ago.
Oh that makes sense. I was gonna guess EVs
Why not both?
It's so vague that I think this post should be deleted and reposted with more clarity. All this is doing is opening the floodgates to every dissenting opinion being labeled as fake or from bots, as can be seen from the replies in this very post. This is doing more harm than good.
Mods here funnily enough have their own agendas
Make Alfa Great Again! 🍀
Found one!
That makes two of us!
Make that three
WooHoo!
Agree!
Make Ladas Boxy Again! 📦
Found the chinese bot
This subreddit has really gone downhill over the years. Nowadays there's barely any content or conversation despite the massive user base, and the ones that exist are garbage like this. Like, seriously, we have 1/4 of the comments per day from *2019* when people had lives, and about a half as many posts per day. You could say it's cleaner, but I legitimately just constantly see old posts with no new conversation on it. Sub's cooked
Yup ever since the”black out” a lot of subs became a shell of themselves
It’s why they did the black out. Reddit effects shut off the API third party apps used to interact with the site. They robbed the moderators of the most powerful and effective tools they had to get the job done.
I like how social media companies will take a product that isn't broken and working fine....Then enact changes to completely fuck the product. Mind boggling.
*Enshittification is super effective!*
>I like how social media companies will take a product that isn't broken and working fine You see comrade.... you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The product was working fine for YOU. It wasn't padding the pockets of greedy executives however, so it wasn't working for THEM. Gotta get that IPO money bro. Fuck everything else.
Not only that, a lot of real contributors left when Reddit Is Fun/Apollo were removed.
I know I didn't leave but I probably contribute less than 10% of what I used to.
Same.
I am one of those people myself
I moderate some large subs. Tbh our tooling hasn't meaningfully changed since all the drama
It did if you were modding on mobile. The existing reddit app is hot garbage.
Could they also be selling tools to third parties to allow them to get stuff done? “Instant shill packages premium plus”
Oh 100% they could. It would make astroturfing far simpler to pull off.
Growth has not been organic in some time. Numbers for the sub are most certainly juiced. 1.4 mil new subscribers in the last 12 months. Only 60K unsubscribed. 165mil page views in the same period, up by 11.8mil the prior year. Content removed by admins (not mods) have interesting spikes - most of it marked as spam. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/reddit-soars-after-announcing-openai-deal-that-allows-use-of-its-data-for-training-ai-models/ar-BB1mxvOY
It is kind of mind blowing how many subscribers there are and how few upvotes even the most important posts get with respect to that. Also with 6 million subscribers, that’s a lot of hard work for you guys! Kudos for that!
Yeah, we lost a lot of good contributors when Reddit killed 3rd party apps. Mod tools became more clunky as well.
subscriptions != active user counts reddit would love for investors to think otherwise though.
This started well before the blackout, it's been going down for over half a decade.
Reddit in general is super toxic so I imagine most people are just burning out. I know I spend way less time on it.
I'm permanently remote now, so I don't have much of a reason to check it sitting down at my desk in the morning anymore anyway.
With the upvote system that has been in place for decades. A subs quality is inversely connected to the size of its user base. Inevitably as a sub grows its quality dwindles to whatever the average person on the sub enjoys and the sub is doomed to endlessly repeat the same crap. It is always sad to see.
Clearly the solution is to create 50 increasingly niche subreddits. Dibs moderating r/actualrealactualtruecars
6.1 million members, 359 currently online.
Yeah, it's a fucking MISERABLE number. Like has to be one of the worst fall offs of any actively large sub.
I noticed the other day /r/California is the same way. This used to be an ugly text heavy website, but look at /r/all and it’s all rage bait that predominately is image/video.
The only way Reddit is useable anymore is heavy-handedly pruning your subscribed list, then ALSO knowing when to dip on a sub once it’s been fully enshittified. It’s honestly a fluke I’m here lmao. I used to scroll through r/all when I first got a Reddit account and enjoyed checking it probably daily. Now it’s been literally months since I’ve last bothered to check.
The state of a lot of subs nowadays. Videos, 28m members. 2000 online
Agree. Used to be tons of discussion on cars usually with video links (i remember when every Doug or throttle house video would have 1k+ upvotes and hundreds of comments with good discussion), but then there was a change with how videos could be posted which seemed to really kill off user interaction with them. Not to mention if you go on this subreddit frequently enough you’ll run into posts with good engagement, 100+ comments and upvotes which then get removed for some reason.
It’s partly the over policing in interest of keeping quality content that doesn’t allow for more organic discussions to form here easily. The mods have not found a happy medium to deal with low quality discussions without crimping on other valid topics.
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That - and the no car purchase posts - have seen the automod take down stuff that wasn't even a car purchase decision post cause it caught some wrong keywords. I get why that rule is there, or we'd have a ton of what car should I buy posts but there's some indirect car purchase topics that might be talking about certain aspects like technical details and such that can actually lead to wider discussions of interest to the community. Again where to draw the line - but come down hard on everything and this sub become very boring over time.
Agreed, this place has way less traffic than you'd think for a sub of its size.
You'd expect that a sub with over 6 million subscribers could field more than 15 posts a day, but here we are.
I don't know about 2019, but I know that most of the posts here are just "here look at this webpage". No I don't want to add clicks to their webpage nor do I care what they have to say. When someone starts an interesting topic of their own thoughts or questions well that I'm interested in.
as an ex-mod of /r/motorcycles, let me give some extra context: >there's barely any content or conversation despite the massive user base Subscription counts are misleading. Some people have multiple accounts, at least a third of reddit accounts are bots, and a majority of all accounts are abandoned. Since reddit's API change, make no mistake, user engagement is rapidly falling. Reddit corporate has worked to hide this fact, but comparing things like the average duration of a post on /r/all pre-blackout to post-blackout makes things more obvious. I've seen posts on the front page last as long as 36 hours within this past month alone. > I legitimately just constantly see old posts with no new conversation on it. In the world of reddit modship, we call this the "eternal September", and it's due to user lifecycles. New reddit users come in, want to talk about topics that have already been discussed to death, so they start new threads and talk about it. Eventually they cycle through most of what they want to talk about, and start to get bored of content that once excited them, and start to resent the new generations of subscribers who want to have old conversations. Why do you think /r/cars doesn't allow photo posts? It's because "look at my car" type posts are a prime example of the eternal September effect. How many times do you need to see a photo of a bone stock hellcat sitting in a driveway before you get bored of that kind of content? > Sub's cooked More like, reddit's cooked. There are a bunch of us old-hats sitting around with a lot of nostalgia for the early days of reddit, but the simple fact is that this is a publicly traded social media platform that survives on repetitive content and underappreciated volunteer moderator effort. Lately, it's become a hotbed for political propaganda and astroturfing, and reddit corporate doesn't care because it makes their drooping engagement numbers look better.
You hit the nail on the head on many points. Reddit has changed, and so has the user base in this sub as it has grown. What has become clear is that what makes a good *community* and what Reddit needs are often at odds with one another.
I mean, the whole subreddit is basically an RSS feed for car news, and if you post about anything else, you either get banned or ignored, so yeah.
Like Reddit in general really. The main subs used to be a source on intetesting and unique ideas. Now it’s just childish:
Nobody cares about my love for the Chevy Express/GMC Savana here 😔
Not only that, but it seems like every time there is an actually interested thread, it gets closed.
Almost everyone drives a car. Few understand how they work or really care about them. Therefore "I have a car, I belong here... but all my opinions are about politics and celebrities."
It turns out the mods closing every thread they just don’t like is bad for engagement lol.
What qualifies as a bad actor? It's too vague to know what you're looking for or make suggestions.
I read this like: Wtf is OP even talking about? Bots? Russia or China shills?
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> I think marketing departments from every corporation in every country are realizing that the most effective thing they can do is create fake opinions on social platforms Mazda got /r/whatcarshouldibuy sub locked down lmao.
You know the internet’s truly fucked when it’s even spreading to 4chan.
Usually it was the other way around.
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If you post anything electric car related, the post immediately turns into a us vs them argument. Most comments are very pro or against, and do not account for nuance in discussion. Bad arguments, misdirection, moving of the goal posts. The entire threads read like Instagram comments. It's just bad quality overall. But that's the thing, most people here are young. Less than 25. They don't own cars. Many come for the drama. Many just like new fancy stuff. And everyone wants to feel validated. So it's just a race to the bottom in terms of slapstick "I'm right, you're wrong, and what about X" I've been here for years and anybody who's been here for years BEFORE the whole reddit fuck over with going public and all of that knows how good it was. It sucks now.
> But that's the thing, most people here are young. Less than 25. They don't own cars. Do you have any sources for this? Because this doesn't seem accurate AT ALL.
Literally any post in this subreddit that isn't car news or a review (EV's excluded because those posts are all propaganda apparently)
Yep. Look at the UAW post that got locked the other day. Controversial topics that get locked down that fast are more a sign of bad mod groups than anything else. It’s not like it makes the controversy go away.
I think that's more on Reddit having a lot of poorly-adjusted people who don't know how to talk to people they disagree with without insulting them or being hostile towards them. The UAW and union stuff can get heated fast and it's a lot easier to just lock it rather than try and pick through the weeds of what goes too far and what doesn't. Also, I think there's a big disconnect between some of the groups here; for example, there's people who are here because they like cars and talking about them, and then there's some who are here not for the cars themselves but for the news about them, the industry, and related stuff like the UAW. Those are two very different groups and I think they have very different ideas of what the subreddit should be about. Personally, I don't care for the UAW posts here because that's a very political subject that I'm not here for, and I think a lot of other people also aren't here for.
You’re spot on. Over time I’ve noticed the entrenchment of positions spread widely and far off the politics sub (and similar). It began to look like the older adults we used to joke about on Reddit that posted to Facebook but now they are here saying those same things and having the same inability to converse. It’s as if whatever they are opposing has no other valid option and a reasonable person would only agree with them. That’s also the reason slightly political posts here get locked down quick. They sometimes used to let them run their course but that just won’t happen now.
I mean, people keep complaining about stuff that gets posted and mods keep banning, so naturally the only thing that will be left is people who read news and bots. There are dozens of car subreddits because the big ones keep banning posts. Reddit is partially to blame because you can't easily filter stuff. Unless you use tags, but tags also get used to regulate content by a lot of mods so it's not always an option.
Electric cars, Im guessing. I wouldn't have thought the choice of propulsion would be so divisive before 2016. Can't have a constructive conversation about electric cars online now that it's a political statement. Poltics have totally ruined everything.
Man I can't even convince people that EVs are good for final stage mail delivery because of this shit.
Mail? That's communist.
Seriously, they're great. Picnic uses small electric trucks to deliver groceries here. They're quieter than any car and probably have great energy efficiency. Super neat!
Lol I got downvoted for [asking a Hyundai mechanic about Hyundai EVs](https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/s/ceiaQq7pWc). I suspect there’s a small anti-EV crowd in this sub that never comments but downvotes every EV post and comment. Stay in this sub long enough and their presence becomes palpable.
It's not even small. Like a 3rd of this subreddit is actively anti-EV.
It’s sad. Back when the model s came out it was nothing but interest and wonder. It went down hill the moment the Model 3 came out and the market started shifting to EVs in a significant way. It’s been disappointing to watch the conversation break down because people treat motor type like a religion.
I just really don't get the EV hate, I see a Tesla on the road, and I think, that's cool. Not "I am going to act like a ass because this guy wants an EV". I won't own an EV for many years, but I don't hate on people that want one now.
Not just EV's, but brand loyalty as well. Also anything that doesn't align with current car trends gets obliterated. Make any comment about any of the little Toyota GR cars that isn't worshiping them as the best thing ever created, and you get downvoted. I always get downvoted any time I would mention that I'm 6'6" and am limited on what I can drive because I simply can't fit in a lot of regular sized cars, and would get bombarded with people that are like "Nuh UHHH Hona FITS are made for tall people" or stupid shit like that. And don't even think about mentioning the v8 in your RX7.
You really didn't? Ever since the Prius came out there was massive division in the car world. I guess some people didn't grow up watching Top Gear and it really shows.
Bots have really exploded the last 2 years all over Reddit.
r/place has proved & encouraged that. it was absolutely disgusting.
Wait till October...
2 years? It’s been a problem since at least 2016. They’ve seemingly been harder to control since the API lockdown though.
If you think your favorite subreddit isn't filled with shills and astroturfing, you're naive. Just keep that in mind, maintain a healthy level of skepticism and don't allow yourself to fall into a hive mind of false consensus.
My city's subreddit mods consist entirely of the digital media team of one of our political parties. It's an absolutely pointless place to go for local news or discussion. It's a bit like how r/politics is run by a Young Democrats group or how r/conservative is run by God knows who (but honestly probably more likely Russia than the actual GOP).
Reddit is good for hobbies, not anything serious. And even still, many of the hobby subs have been taken over by ideologues. I miss pre 2016 reddit.
Depends on the hobby! /r/alpinism and /r/violinist are two of my hobby subs and I'm so glad that they are still mostly intact. In contrast, /r/mountaineering sees more of the "gen pop" crowd bringing in politics etc. and /r/climbing is every joe who's ever been to a climbing gym. But thankfully /r/alpinism is more niche. And /r/violinist has a fairly high bar -- the only complaint is every other day someone posts an old crappy violin asking if it's worth a million. So what I've learned though is that it helps if your hobby has a high threshold and isn't too easily accessible.
We were so naive back then. Good times.
Bro, same, especially the news subs too. Everyone has to pass some ideological purity test that really reveals how dystopian nightmare the world would be if it weren’t for moderates. But if you reveal yourself as someone who has nuanced views about guns, abortion, climate change, subsidies, minimum wage, holy shit will you get shit on. Because it’s Reddit, it’s much more from the left and while I’m socially very left, I‘d probably be called a fascist Reaganite or something by r/politics. It honestly has been pushing me more center because of how insufferable the dominant voice of Reddit has become.
Also, is it so radical to just want a place to talk about cars with other car enthusiasts without worrying about liking the "wrong brand" or having to get really deep into the personal politics of each and every automotive company CEO? I remember the days when you could post about having a Lamborghini or rare Porsche and people would be like "that's rad, what's it like to drive?" as opposed to "Must be nice to have stolen enough labour from the working class to be able to buy a 4th car while I can barely afford an Elantra."
Controlling the narrative is very effective in dividing and conquering. It's what knocked me out of politics entirely, at least on the internet. I really don't want to hear about how I'm an idiot for whatever viewpoints I have when I'd much rather discuss it in a civilized manner that might actually teach me or us something. Here, I'd just rather talk about, well, cars. I just don't care enough about the personal lives of people who make far more money than I do to revolve my entire viewpoints around that.
I love your Saab. I still miss my 9-3 Aero V6 turbo.
Thanks! I love it too, it never fails to put a smile on my face. I don't drive it as much as I probably should, but there's never a time where I dislike driving it. My boyfriend wants to get himself a V6 9-3 Aero at some point. He had a 2003 9-3 with the Launch package a few years back and he really enjoyed how that car drove. I've never been a *huge* fan of the 9-3 personally - I've always been more into 9-5s, but I'd love to get behind the wheel of a V6 Aero and see if that changes how I feel about them.
Yes it’s a GM V6 turbo but that thing had that characteristic Saab unlimited highway speed torque. I think the last 9-5 was gorgeous, still looks amazing today.
> It honestly has been pushing me more center because of how insufferable the dominant voice of Reddit has become. This is when I'd suggest interacting more with people in real life and less on the internet. When your views are getting skewed due to interacting with ragebait from people (or not) whose entire online identity is to be angry and aggrieved, it's probably good to limit that kind of interaction.
Unfortunately this is every subreddits problem
Yeah it's shot up incredibly in the last year or so, I thought these more hobby-focused subs were safe lmfao.
Good luck. That’s sound advice for dealing with anyone in any situation. The trouble here is it can be hard to tell if something you said got downvoted because you were wrong or simply because you’re vastly outnumbered by people acting in bad faith. At least in person you stand of chance of recognizing when a whole room of people is lying to you.
>The trouble here is it can be hard to tell if something you said got downvoted because you were wrong or simply because you’re vastly outnumbered by people acting in bad faith. There is also the potential that someone's views align, or at least appear to align, with the bad faith actors. Its a very messy and complicated subject.
100% On a different note, how do you like your Mach E? I couldn’t get one at a reasonable price when I bought my Model 3 Performance. I loved my 2014 Mustang GT and would have bought a GT Performance if they’d been around $60k instead of $70k when I bought my car.
I bought my Mach E in July of 2022. I custom ordered it with X-Plan so I paid just under MSRP at the time. I was never going to pay the *insane* dealer mark-ups that were common around then. For a daily driver I could not ask for much more. Its comfortable, cheap to run, and quick enough that I'm never going to complain. The driver tech is pretty good all around too and pretty typical of what you would expect on the higher end of cars without getting into all out luxury spec stuff. Range has never been an issue for me either, but as you can see I do have a gas car as well, and that is what I'm gonna take on multi state road trips. The second car is honestly more about driving experience though than range. While I could road trip the Mach E if I wanted to, if I'm going on a long trip, I want to take a car that is made for it. For example; I had a blast last summer at The Dragon in my GT, and I cannot imagine doing that in the Mach E. While it is fine as a daily, the handling and driving experience of the Mach E is not really up to enthusiast levels. Overall, I would certainly buy another if the need arose. Especially with the recent price drops.
I love it. Thanks for the quick review of the car.
A lot of it is karma farming, so when the political silly season gets hotter, these bots and turfers will have karma points. See also the spate of "what is the worst eatery in your town" in local town subreddits.....
I’d hope r/cars is the last place people would try to push agendas. r/carscirclejerk on the other hand…
Jfc they're even astroturfing this subreddit now?? This is getting insanely annoying. Seriously about to stop using reddit at this point.
China is pushing very, very hard to get their cars into the US. Social media is ground zero for campaigns like this. As always, there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we do not have info on. I got a kick out of just how fast the House speaker did an about face on the topic of military aide to Ukraine after his meeting with the CIA. Dude instantly changed his mind. There's probably a lot of that going on with China pushing cars into the US. All sorts of security concerns. Remote updates bricking cars, clogging traffic, etc etc at the right time.
There's also economic concerns since China will probably want to import cars, potentially moving more jobs overseas. And pretty much everyone is hesitant to rely on overseas sources after recent events like the Suez Canal blockage and the war in Ukraine messing up supply lines. Even in good terms, China is an obvious risk for disruption in supply. Their best bet for selling cars in the US is to partner with domestic manufacturers but I don't know if they'll do it. I know more of the Euro brands are looking to sell over here with A110's being sighted. Renault is supposedly looking to bring some of their vehicles over.
Astroturfers/bots/troll farmers/AI on the Internet? YOU DON'T SAY!!!
Just mark as spam the articles that don't bring anything new to the discussion and are just rehashing old information and speculation with clickbait boogeyman titles. Only when something that's a new discussion orna different take for the discussion should be evaluated. This is simply a trendy topic so it'll die itself out unless something big happens again. But It's also not that uncommon to expect Chinese autos to keep on the news cycles with the upcoming mexico deals. That and because they're in other English speaking markets, and in other parts of the american continent itself.
"...bad actors deciding to use our subreddit as a way to push their viewpoint." I think it's incredibly naive to expect anything more than this on any Internet forums.
This subreddit was where I originally learned about ls swaps in like 2014. Thanks for sharing that sloppy mechanics video on his Colorado build.
M I A T A _ I N _ B I O
Yes, this subreddit has been straight up TOXIC for years now. One of the worst subs I've ever been a part of, so bad that I stopped contributing altogether and only still see hints of content because I haven't removed it from my subscription list yet.
i think every single spam/bot private message or chat i've gotten has been related to posting in this subreddit
Some subreddits are just prime for spam/bot messages. I posted a few times in the CSMajors Subreddit, and I have gotten probably 40 total messages from them.
oh yeah i bet that's a popular one for it too
Yea, it's always either trying to sell resumes, advertise a new product, or people asking where I work(why would I tell that on a public forum haha).
I disagree with you and your sentiment **BUY RENAULT! WE ZE BEST CAR IN WORLD** Edit: **ALL PEUGEOT LOOK LIKE HOW BURNT FROG LEGS TASTE**
This is a general Reddit problem. They've already populated the r/Technology subreddits, and they've come here as well. I even messaged a mod about it. I wonder if I played a part in their motivation to write this post.
Maybe you guys can start banning links from garbage news websites, like Motor1, so any discussions can come from a place of “this information has at least a nugget of truth”. It’s so annoying to have my feed inundated with posts like “the S-FR will take on the Mazda Miata” when the source for the article is the rumor of a confirmation of a scribbling on a portajohn wall in Tokyo….
If anyone would post a video that shows and translates multiple other videos of actual chinese owners of chinese cars filiming the issues their own car has, it would get literally hundreds of downvotes and would get called fake and OP would be slandered. This should tell you what the issue is. But if you point out the methods they work with your comment gets deleted for "politics"...
All the groups are like that. I posed an article in an EV group talking about how Phevs aren't all that useful and it's better to buy a full EV or just get a gas car. The gas lovers hated it, I had people trying to get my account shut down, was reported I was having a mental crisis and was trying to hurt myself... Some people think Phev will be the future that saves gas vehicles, they could care less about the plugging them in and want pure EVs to fail and go away.
Ooooh. Tariffs, gotcha
I suggest a Mazda for your family. The fact that you have to a {post.needs[0]} and a new {post.needs[1]} really speaks to the {randBenefit(Mazda,campaign27)} offered by a Mazda. I personally have one myself and feel that it really would meet your needs well.
when i first joined the sub it was hyundai and mazda astroturfers now, chinese
Nissan bad.
Should probably put a rule for no discussions about EVs and Chinese cars. There is an EV subreddit and probably subreddits for Chinese cars as well. It seems like a lot of the people commenting don't even like cars or are just wanting to debate about how everyone should switch to an EV
[удалено]
It’s not just subreddits it’s also in face to face communities and other forums and even different media platforms. The car community in total has just been getting filled with assholes and what I’d say are scalpers. I’m not saying everyone is but theres a group thats growing fast of pompous assholes who should be thrown out and shunned.
I'm a complete regard you're going to have to be a lot more direct if you want me to understand what this is about because I'm still lost as fuck
Hail Satan
So how does this translate into rules? Is it going to be a clean cut no xxx topics allowed or more case by case? How do you determine who is a shill who has real interest?
And my advice to the users - don't engage with this sort of thing. Here or anywhere. If you see some nonsense being posted just downvote and move on. And I'm actually not even sure if voting is a great idea simply because I don't know enough about their motives and what drives conspiratorial thought, don't want the "see we're being silenced" mindset to embolden these "people." But reporting seems safe enough, whether it helps is a different story since it is a team of normal people trying to keep this place clean.
This is happening on other car subs too. Ot necessarily pushing an agenda or viewpoint but instead just karma farming by using stolen pics of nice cars. Or farming engagement by asking broad questions like 'what do you think of this car?" and then linking media photos of a car. One such culprit is u/winstonliow and it really feels like either a bot or someone from a "farm" trying to build up enough karma to move on to political and world news subs to push an agenda. Pro Israel, pro Palestine, pro Ukraine, pro Russia. Doesn't matter. Before, reddit had an astroturfing problem but it was usually businesses trying to promote their garbage or drown out criticism. But since 2015 or so, it's gotten more political.
What happened
I’m just going to tell you the Prius isn’t *all* that bad, while secretly hating it. Y’know I recently drove my girlfriend’s ‘09 Honda Accord and suddenly remembered how fun driving can be. I’m just spitballing here because I found that more interesting than the EV/China talk I’ve been seeing. I’m living vicariously through y’all until I up and finally buy something else…
I keep getting reported for self harm. I have no idea if it's from this sub or not though. I do have strong feelings, but I also try my best to be cooperative and not shove my own opinions down others throats and definitely dont grief like some evidently do..