It turns out there wasn't a generation of crystal, these guys are the functionaries of crystal. Too frequently is functionaries loudly complainig about any kind of questioning.
Palantir will give a lot of fake positives and overload remainder of ICE forces who will be chasing ghosts.
Heck even Google believes that I am a woman and is constantly showing me women hair and clothes products. And they are doing targeted data mining for ads business for decades.
ICE doesn't give a shit about false positives. They are already using a facial recognition app as definitive proof of someone's immigration status, even when they are shown documentation such as a birth certificate. They don't care if it's accurate, they just want targets.
That would make the agents culpable. If they're just doing what the AI told them to do, then who can hold them responsible? After all, the AI is smarter than all humans combined, who can argue with its wisdom?
Expect "The AI told me to do it" to be tried as a defense at Nuremburg 2.0
If ICE were as unpopular as you say with conservatives, they would not have been defending both murders with such passion. I guess this is the difference in listening to the 'streets' vs a carefully sampled poll.
Looking at net support is an odd way to look at the data.
Overall approval of Trump's immigration policy is floating around 50% +/- 5%. That means 1 out of every 2 Americans support it. That seems quite high to me.
> Looking at net support is an odd way to look at the data.
Its a lot more useful as a single number to look at than either “support” or “oppose”, because those don't tell you how much of the excluded amount is on the other side versus undecided.
> Overall approval of Trump's immigration policy is floating around 50% +/- 5%
Overall immigration policy is a different and broader question, but, no, its not.
39% support, with 53% opposed; support hasn't been at or above 45% (the floor of your claimed 50% ± 5%) since the beginning of last summer.
Many Americans understand "Trump's immigration policy" to be "deport murderers, rapists, and drug dealers".
But what's happening now is that Trump pulled a bait and switch -- when he said "deport criminals" the crime he had in mind was that of being an undocumented immigrant, whereas everyone else had in their head when he said criminal he meant "murders, rapist, gangbanger, drug dealers". Not "people going through the asylum process and my roofer".
For a lot of people, they just want to see immigrants come in the "right way", but for the Trump administration they don't want to see any immigrants who are not white.
So when people say they support Trump's immigration policies, you have to really dissect what they mean by that. Which policies? The ones he campaigned on, the ones they wish he campaigned on and are ascribing to him regardless, or the ones actually being implemented?
Isn't this the same problem of many people who feel otherwise not participating in polls? The conservative subreddit shows a very different story. I'm sure the asktrumpsupporters sub does also.
I think modern polling is deeply flawed, but taking the sentiments of a particular subreddit as more representative of an entire political party than the polling is probably taking it too far.
The polling is frequently wrong. I believe the subreddits (not just one) are mostly real people giving their views. They are not just random subs, they are the subs for those particular ideologies. They also match the opinions media pundits put out, and match various supporters appearing in other media, like the Jubilee Surrounded videos. On the balance of evidence available, it seems most people in that party is more for than against what has been going on.
We've gotten to a dark place where someone doesn't just slip into an echo chamber by accident but actively chooses to believe that selectively sampled data sources are actually superior to sources that attempt randomization.
There is no sane reason to think the subreddits nor Jubilee videos are actually representative, and certainly no reason to believe they are representative in contradiction to virtually every poll conducted in the past 12 months.
"Prior polls are wrong" is a lazy man's way out. Polls actually have been way less wrong than people commonly meme about, and again there's no sane reason to say "sources that attempt randomization were wrong so therefore sources that actively bias their samples are probably better."
It's not a dark place to try and be objective and take data from multiple sources, and shame on you for trying to paint doing so as something negative.
> There is no sane reason to think the subreddits nor Jubilee videos are actually representative, and certainly no reason to believe they are representative in contradiction to virtually every poll conducted in the past 12 months.
It's not just those sources, it's basically every single source yo ucan fine with people giving an opinion. Every talk show (Fox/News Nation/ONE, etc), all the right aligned papers e.g. NY Post, WSJ, all the podcasters, all the influencers, and yes, whenever supporters are given a chance to speak, they overwhelming are pleased and support what is going on.
At some point, ignoring all that and favoring purely a few polls is wilful ignorance, and I have to question the motive of anyone doing so. At a guess, I'd guess it's someone that voted conservative but doesn't want to be lumped in with 'the bad ones'.
No, I'm just not ignoring the majority of data points that disagree with the reality a particular reality I hope to wish into existence with the power of belief.
In general you should discount low quality data points, potentially to zero, while prioritizing high quality data points — regardless of which each of them says.
Both of those are heavily astroturfed / propagandized. Historically they often did reflect the views of supporters, because the subreddits mirror the talking points presented across all other conservative media - and most conservatives adopt their beliefs from those media sources. Thus, even though the voices you read on the subreddits are mostly "bots", they typically mirror the sentiment you'll hear from the actual people.
However, this is not guaranteed to always be the case - and regardless, the voices on r/conservative and r/asktrumpsupporters are not necessarily actual real people's voices, even if they usually say similar things as real people.
Yes, I recognize this has echoes of the "no true scotsman" fallacy, but it's just an accurate description of the system.
> Both of those are heavily astroturfed / propagandized.
I'm pretty skeptical of that, honestly. I think if we apply Occam, it's just that there are enough people that do feel like that. Look at some of the Jubilee 'Surrounded' videos to see that such people are not in short supply.
There's not much financial motive in building up or buying accounts just for them to say they agree with what's going on - it doesn't help anyone in power right now. Anecdotal, but the users I check the profile history off seem legitimate posting across several different subs also.
> I'm pretty skeptical of that, honestly. I think if we apply Occam, it's just that there are enough people that do feel like that.
After following that sub fairly closely in the days after big scandals on the GOP side since Jan 6th, I can personally vouch for r/conservative being incredibly controlled and propagandized.
Not only do the mods delete many even slightly critical comments by their own flaired conservative users pretty quickly, almost any thread about a scandal or gaffe that's not filled with one-sided commentary is also deleted after a few days. The last big example I remember was the tariff stuff over the last year - there were always at least three or more posts about any new announcement, and the ones with the most negative comments were gone after a few days.
I can't show you archived data since those tools stopped working due to AI scraping, but I implore you to at least follow a few negative threads and to take regular snapshots. I've never seen any other internet community that's modded so strictly without admitting to it.
And yet, you can still go to any thread, find dissenting and sometimes negative opinions by users with accounts that are several years old.
I'm not claiming it's super reliable or super representative, but I do think it is representative as one point, and despite all the issues around the sub, that representation matches most other sources. Except a few polls, which I don't think count for much these days.
> It's as far away from representative as it can be.
Nah. If that were the case, it wouldn't match conservative opinions from so many other sources.
Let me ask you something. You said you're 'from the GOP side above'. Can you rule out confirmation bias here, that you don't want to be affiliated with support of what is going on, so you're focusing on evidence that you think shows that your 'side' doesn't support it?
You can try an experiment for yourself. If you have a Reddit account, comment something on one of these subreddits that doesn't toe the party line. Wait less than 24 hours until your comment is removed and you are banned.
What do you think that proves, though? Yes, they don't let anti-conservative people comment in the sub, that doesn't mean the people that are posting are bots or paid.
It's the same as all the Tesla subreddits, they ban and delete anything negative so casual readers don't get anything but a very biased and curated viewpoint.
Even worse, the subreddit they are using as their example of common "conservative thought" is a subreddit where only verified Conservative users can post, and any dissenting opinion is met with bans and post deletion. You have to go to their Discord and provide enough proof your are conservative (MAGA) before they will let you post.
It's not indicative of how people feel in general. It's a very specific, coaxed and managed image.
I am not lying when I say the front page of the Conservative subreddit is run by less than 10 accounts. You can go there now and see that most of the submissions on the front page of the subreddit is split between the same 3-4 users at any given time.
It's representative of the opinions conservatives share. There are many more commenters than submissions, and other conservative subs like asktrumpsupporters show the same sentiments.
A lot of conservatives in this discussion suddenly seem embarrassed by the side they chose and really want to distance themselves from it.
The conservative subreddit isn't fake as such, it's just incredibly tightly curated and so not in any way representative. Number of deleted comments is a better barometer than tone of remaining comments, if still not a great one, because you're simply not going to see any significant number straying too far from the party line.
I mean, there's plenty of disagreement to the point many call anyone who dissents "fellow conservative", which has become kind of a joke. The official line is they remove any non-conservative posts, which doesn't seem relevant when assessing to what extent conservative posters support what is going in with ICE currently.
A vote for T is not a vote for every dimension of T.
In fact, all the data shows that the economy was the absolute top issue by a huge margin.
There's good reason to believe that not only would any Republican have gotten similar or better results, but that if it had been a Republican in power, that any Democrat would've gotten similar or better results.
Incumbents got smacked (far harder than Trump v Harris) in every election in the world in 2024, which is concordant with a long history of incumbents getting smacked during periods of high inflation.
> A vote for T is not a vote for every dimension of T.
Does. Not. Matter.
When you vote for T you know you are getting all of T.
> In fact, all the data shows that the economy was the absolute top issue by a huge margin.
Sure, and the poorly educated overwhelmingly chose to believe the lies they were told because they were attractive, and were taken advantage of. It doesn't matter. Lets say they were single issue voters on the economy, well, they still voted for T knowing all of what that entails.
Then there was no sense in you pointing out that a vote for T is not a vote for every dimension of T, since pointing out the obvious and gets another answer pointing out the obvious in response.
> That's totally irrelevant as to whether the current actions are actually popular.
You've chosen to rely on a single poll that supports your contention that they aren't, when pretty much every single other source of info is contrary to that.
You want to put all your faith in a poll, that's on you. There isn't much for us to discuss so I'd appreciate it if you stopped replying to me, so we don't just go around in circles.
Well it’s directly relevant to the claim “most Rs voted for T (fact) therefore you can infer most Rs support T_{specific policy}.”
Just simple logic!
No, I am actually not relying on a single poll. Pretty much all polls, even those with a conservative bent, converge on my claim and dispute yours.
This can’t possibly be news to you, otherwise you’d be sharing evidence to the contrary.
Instead you’re just openly declaring your own inability/unwillingness to assess information quality, and being proud of it?
Strange interaction indeed!
I can think of a few motivations one would have to knowingly deceive themselves into believing the immigration enforcement actions are popular, and all of those motivations are bad. Even aside from the basic violation of intellectual honesty.
> Instead you’re just openly declaring your own inability/unwillingness to assess information quality, and being proud of it?
That's your interpretation, which is far from reality. I think the big difference here is you put way more value on polls than is warranted. It's not like you've provided a ton of sources, either.
I likely won't be relying to you further, as I don't see the point. Cheers.
You can certainly prioritize evidence as you like, but I explained why when balancing all available evidence, it seems supporters are fine with what is happening. They say as much unambiguously in multiple places across multiple venues. I'll take that over a poll anyday.
Surely there are enough supporters to populate the message boards on which supporters congregate with messages of support. No doubt about that.
If you think that gives you a read on the overall attitude, then unfortunately there's nothing I can say to help you.
It is literally mathematically nonsensical to look at the numerator, put no effort into knowing the denominator, and then claim to have a sense for the ratio between them. It's shocking to see someone explicitly claim they can do this lmao.
I don't need help from you, thanks for the offer though, however misguided.
Like I said, you're free to ignore all the datapoints that disagree with you and focus on the one that doesn't, if that makes you feel better.
I don't think there's much for us to discuss, and instead of going back and forth ad nauseum I'd just really appreciate it if you stopped replying to me altogether.
So you have more data points? I am in fact interesting in them, I don't care too much who's in the right in this very discussion as this is all way too serious to be about who it being right.
But from what I have read with 'data' you mean your general impression from subreddits? Or do you have more robust data?
I can imagine a few affects that lead to the subreddit(s) evolve independent of the average opinion of R voters. It happens all the time with subreddits.
But then again, maybe you got more information about it?
Given that one half of this country openly states that it is OK to not provide medical care to anyone from the other political side [1] [2], I would not trust any polls. Many people would be unwilling to draw a target on their families' backs just to help some pollster.
The point is presumably to make an example of a few, and use that to deter future people from posting information about ICE officers, not to send everyone who oppose ICE to the gulags.
Not YET. But ICE's budget is now larger the military budget for most countries. They are spending billions developing sophisticated AI-powered surveillance tech infrastructure and building detention centers (aka, concentration camps).
When they run out of immigrants to deport, they aren't going to just sell all that crap on ebay. They're going to go looking for more targets.
Arbitrary cruelty is the point. There isn't a coherent rationale. You're going to the gulags if the subhuman pig in the mask says you are. You'll be lucky (?) if they don't just decide to execute you in the street. This is the reality on the ground right now. In a blue state in America.
You're using exactly the kind of dehumanizing rhetoric that the administration is using in order to justify their violence and inhumane treatment of immigrants. You might need to think about that.
Other than the quoted snippet, everything you said may be true. Still, don't dehumanize your opponents.
I fear they've burned the credibility they'd need for that to work. If they claim to have made an example of a critic, how do we know that was actually a critic – and by extension, how do we know that not critiquing them will keep us safe?
That's when loyalty becomes the new bar. Polarization makes everyone not supporting the regime an enemy. I don't see USA fully going down that slope, so I'm confused about what is the final goal. Maybe it's just a temporary whim of the executive and his backers.
It's pretty offensive that DHS is spending our tax dollars trying to supress critisim —free speech. The most protected type free speech is poltical speech. Even pursuing identification could be construed as abusive and unlawful.
>The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has backed down from a fight to unmask the owners of Instagram and Facebook accounts monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Pennsylvania.
It seems they aren't going after "critics" but people who are posting about their "activity" which I take to mean alerting the public about ICE presence. It's a bit different than mere "criticism."
Yes, they may want a full on Tiananmen every day in every blue city. Suppressing dissent is the end goal; hurting brown people is only a warmup. If the public actually starts to fight back, the Insurrection Act has already been threatened.
Yes they did, and that's the problem. Some people support this. It's easier to rile up hatred than to fix any real problems. When you spend years framing ALL immigration as illegal, you get a lot of people (like some of my family members) who will say "well, they ARE here illegally so they just need to enforce the law". And yes there are illegal immigrants in this country, but I don't think this kind of violence is the right solution.
Racists, fundamentalist christians, xenophobes, anyone happy with the way they think ICE is 'cleaning up' the country, which involves dealing with 'enemies'.
> Did they not watch the same videos we all did?
They did, and continue to insist on an interpretation not supported at all. It's like literally pointing at green grass and insisting it's red.
ICE OFFICER Jonathan Ross: After seeing all the media bs about a domestic terrorist getting go fund me. I feel that the officer that was 1000 percent justified in the shooting deserves to have a go fund me. Funds will go to help him.
This has/is already happening, how do you think they found a 15 year old post where Graham Platner was dancing with his shirt off that got like 15 views? How do you think they found his "anonymous" reddit account?
Yeah, I agree, there's a file on everyone. However, actions like this may backfire. In this case I think this will help Graham Platner rather than hurt him
No I didn't explain what I meant well enough. If someone ends up sniping a famous person, we go back in time and figure out who they are.
I'm talking about if you work at McDonalds and online you post "Man I hate McD's" you get fired within 5 minutes because everyone, everywhere has already been doxxed and notification systems are attached at the employment level. Even if your online name was "reactordev". At scale meant- everyone, always.
>> If someone ends up sniping a famous person, we go back in time and figure out who they are
Yeah, most civilians don't understand operational security at the functional level.
Though... most people doing these thing probably want to be caught because they just aren't quite right in the head and want people to tell them that what they did is 'justified' for whatever reason.
This is about posting license plates (presumably not of personal vehicles), facial images, and names of federal officers.
I mean I thought we already make federal employees and vehicles public knowledge. The national guard currently deployed in Minneapolis are unmasked as far as I know to compare. I'm not understanding why DHS federal employees are exempt from this standard.
They don't magically gain more privacy protection in public over what your average person has just because they clock out after a hard day of work by virtue of being a government employee.
They are constantly and consistently reminded that people have the right to record in public and they chose to ignore that as there are no consequences if they violate the law. Or that people have a right to peacefully assemble. Or freedom of the press...
I agree they don't gain more privacy protection in public than the average person. I also agree they shouldn't gain more privacy protection in public than the average public employee, either!
I'm merely assuming that the license plates being listed are ones they use for their official work, since the rest of their info is being tied to what's available for any other public work.
> I'm not understanding why DHS federal employees are exempt from this standard.
Because the aim of ICE is to terrorize local communities that either have a lot of immigrants/non-white people in general or that vote heavily Democrat like Minneapolis.
And terror doesn't work when you can reliably identify the terrorists and hold them accountable, or do the same to the terrorists as they dish out on their victims.
Also related: "Don’t say ‘Watch out for ice’: FEMA warned storm announcements could invite memes"[0]
This administration is really sensitive about ICE being shined in a bad light.
0: https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/23/politics/fema-ice-storm-memes
Not sensitive enough to change behaviors, unfortunately.
Oh, of course not. They're sensitive about the PR, they wish they had complete control over the narrative because their behavior is bad.
It turns out there wasn't a generation of crystal, these guys are the functionaries of crystal. Too frequently is functionaries loudly complainig about any kind of questioning.
Given ICE's unpopularity this is like trying a find a very specific piece of hay in a hay stack.
That's where AI come into play. This is why Palantir exists.
Palantir will give a lot of fake positives and overload remainder of ICE forces who will be chasing ghosts.
Heck even Google believes that I am a woman and is constantly showing me women hair and clothes products. And they are doing targeted data mining for ads business for decades.
ICE doesn't give a shit about false positives. They are already using a facial recognition app as definitive proof of someone's immigration status, even when they are shown documentation such as a birth certificate. They don't care if it's accurate, they just want targets.
Then what they need AI for? Just pick random people from the street and deport them wherever.
That would make the agents culpable. If they're just doing what the AI told them to do, then who can hold them responsible? After all, the AI is smarter than all humans combined, who can argue with its wisdom?
Expect "The AI told me to do it" to be tried as a defense at Nuremburg 2.0
The much easier solution is ID laws and make everyone get a passport. Fucking amateurs.
Mobile phone? Passport Voting? Passport Buy weed? Passport Police stop? Passport
But that wouldn't let tech bros get paid billions I suppose.
Be glad we have Palantir and not Decima.
This is exactly why palatir exists.
They data mine for you.
> Given ICE's unpopularity
Seems divided along party lines unfortunately. Plenty of people are proudly saying this is exactly what they voted for.
> > Given ICE's unpopularity
> Seems divided along party lines unfortunately.
Is there a partisan split? Very much. Is ICE deeply unpopular? Also very much.
Net support (% support minus % oppose) for abolishing ICE is at +5 overall; +61 with Democrats, +12 with independents, and -54 with Republicans.
Net approval of ICE is at -22 overall; -81 with Democrats, -39 with independents, and +60 with Republicans.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/53939-more-americ...
If ICE were as unpopular as you say with conservatives, they would not have been defending both murders with such passion. I guess this is the difference in listening to the 'streets' vs a carefully sampled poll.
Where did I say anything about ICE being unpopular with conservatives?
You didn't, sorry. Had the discussion with the other guy in the thread in mind trying to argue that's the case.
Looking at net support is an odd way to look at the data.
Overall approval of Trump's immigration policy is floating around 50% +/- 5%. That means 1 out of every 2 Americans support it. That seems quite high to me.
> Looking at net support is an odd way to look at the data.
Its a lot more useful as a single number to look at than either “support” or “oppose”, because those don't tell you how much of the excluded amount is on the other side versus undecided.
> Overall approval of Trump's immigration policy is floating around 50% +/- 5%
Overall immigration policy is a different and broader question, but, no, its not.
39% support, with 53% opposed; support hasn't been at or above 45% (the floor of your claimed 50% ± 5%) since the beginning of last summer.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-immigration-approval...
Many Americans understand "Trump's immigration policy" to be "deport murderers, rapists, and drug dealers".
But what's happening now is that Trump pulled a bait and switch -- when he said "deport criminals" the crime he had in mind was that of being an undocumented immigrant, whereas everyone else had in their head when he said criminal he meant "murders, rapist, gangbanger, drug dealers". Not "people going through the asylum process and my roofer".
For a lot of people, they just want to see immigrants come in the "right way", but for the Trump administration they don't want to see any immigrants who are not white.
So when people say they support Trump's immigration policies, you have to really dissect what they mean by that. Which policies? The ones he campaigned on, the ones they wish he campaigned on and are ascribing to him regardless, or the ones actually being implemented?
Nope. Trump is -13% on deportations according to YouGov before the Alex Pretti murder.
Isn't this the same problem of many people who feel otherwise not participating in polls? The conservative subreddit shows a very different story. I'm sure the asktrumpsupporters sub does also.
I think modern polling is deeply flawed, but taking the sentiments of a particular subreddit as more representative of an entire political party than the polling is probably taking it too far.
The polling is frequently wrong. I believe the subreddits (not just one) are mostly real people giving their views. They are not just random subs, they are the subs for those particular ideologies. They also match the opinions media pundits put out, and match various supporters appearing in other media, like the Jubilee Surrounded videos. On the balance of evidence available, it seems most people in that party is more for than against what has been going on.
We've gotten to a dark place where someone doesn't just slip into an echo chamber by accident but actively chooses to believe that selectively sampled data sources are actually superior to sources that attempt randomization.
There is no sane reason to think the subreddits nor Jubilee videos are actually representative, and certainly no reason to believe they are representative in contradiction to virtually every poll conducted in the past 12 months.
"Prior polls are wrong" is a lazy man's way out. Polls actually have been way less wrong than people commonly meme about, and again there's no sane reason to say "sources that attempt randomization were wrong so therefore sources that actively bias their samples are probably better."
It's not a dark place to try and be objective and take data from multiple sources, and shame on you for trying to paint doing so as something negative.
> There is no sane reason to think the subreddits nor Jubilee videos are actually representative, and certainly no reason to believe they are representative in contradiction to virtually every poll conducted in the past 12 months.
It's not just those sources, it's basically every single source yo ucan fine with people giving an opinion. Every talk show (Fox/News Nation/ONE, etc), all the right aligned papers e.g. NY Post, WSJ, all the podcasters, all the influencers, and yes, whenever supporters are given a chance to speak, they overwhelming are pleased and support what is going on.
At some point, ignoring all that and favoring purely a few polls is wilful ignorance, and I have to question the motive of anyone doing so. At a guess, I'd guess it's someone that voted conservative but doesn't want to be lumped in with 'the bad ones'.
You are looking at the numerator, putting no effort into understanding the denominator, and claiming you know the ratio between them.
It's just total nonsense.
No, I'm just not ignoring the majority of data points that disagree with the reality a particular reality I hope to wish into existence with the power of belief.
In general you should discount low quality data points, potentially to zero, while prioritizing high quality data points — regardless of which each of them says.
As I said elsewhere, I think you are vastly overestimating the quality of polls as datapoints.
I'm fairly certain bias is playing a huge part in your motivation to do so, whether you are aware of it or not.
Haha that’s okay. Honestly flattering from someone who samples reality from Jubilee videos.
You can't help but misrepresent facts eh...yeah, that figures.
Both of those are heavily astroturfed / propagandized. Historically they often did reflect the views of supporters, because the subreddits mirror the talking points presented across all other conservative media - and most conservatives adopt their beliefs from those media sources. Thus, even though the voices you read on the subreddits are mostly "bots", they typically mirror the sentiment you'll hear from the actual people.
However, this is not guaranteed to always be the case - and regardless, the voices on r/conservative and r/asktrumpsupporters are not necessarily actual real people's voices, even if they usually say similar things as real people.
Yes, I recognize this has echoes of the "no true scotsman" fallacy, but it's just an accurate description of the system.
> Both of those are heavily astroturfed / propagandized.
I'm pretty skeptical of that, honestly. I think if we apply Occam, it's just that there are enough people that do feel like that. Look at some of the Jubilee 'Surrounded' videos to see that such people are not in short supply.
There's not much financial motive in building up or buying accounts just for them to say they agree with what's going on - it doesn't help anyone in power right now. Anecdotal, but the users I check the profile history off seem legitimate posting across several different subs also.
> I'm pretty skeptical of that, honestly. I think if we apply Occam, it's just that there are enough people that do feel like that.
After following that sub fairly closely in the days after big scandals on the GOP side since Jan 6th, I can personally vouch for r/conservative being incredibly controlled and propagandized.
Not only do the mods delete many even slightly critical comments by their own flaired conservative users pretty quickly, almost any thread about a scandal or gaffe that's not filled with one-sided commentary is also deleted after a few days. The last big example I remember was the tariff stuff over the last year - there were always at least three or more posts about any new announcement, and the ones with the most negative comments were gone after a few days.
I can't show you archived data since those tools stopped working due to AI scraping, but I implore you to at least follow a few negative threads and to take regular snapshots. I've never seen any other internet community that's modded so strictly without admitting to it.
Here's a post I've found recording some of this for the recent ICE murder: https://www.reddit.com/comments/1qlzhb3
And here someone analyzed the patterns of their major posters - showing that a few accounts make up most new posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1p1vx9n/oc...
And yet, you can still go to any thread, find dissenting and sometimes negative opinions by users with accounts that are several years old.
I'm not claiming it's super reliable or super representative, but I do think it is representative as one point, and despite all the issues around the sub, that representation matches most other sources. Except a few polls, which I don't think count for much these days.
It's as far away from representative as it can be. Again, I have not come across any comparably propagandized space anywhere else.
> It's as far away from representative as it can be.
Nah. If that were the case, it wouldn't match conservative opinions from so many other sources.
Let me ask you something. You said you're 'from the GOP side above'. Can you rule out confirmation bias here, that you don't want to be affiliated with support of what is going on, so you're focusing on evidence that you think shows that your 'side' doesn't support it?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-immigration-approval...
https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/new-poll-trump-slips-on-imm...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/26/polls/times-s...
> I think if we apply Occam, it's just that there are enough people that do feel like that.
Enough bots for sure. Who's got the bot farms? See them in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsl_sKYywEI
Also enough real genuine people.
You can try an experiment for yourself. If you have a Reddit account, comment something on one of these subreddits that doesn't toe the party line. Wait less than 24 hours until your comment is removed and you are banned.
What do you think that proves, though? Yes, they don't let anti-conservative people comment in the sub, that doesn't mean the people that are posting are bots or paid.
It's the same as all the Tesla subreddits, they ban and delete anything negative so casual readers don't get anything but a very biased and curated viewpoint.
They are propaganda from vested interests.
Even worse, the subreddit they are using as their example of common "conservative thought" is a subreddit where only verified Conservative users can post, and any dissenting opinion is met with bans and post deletion. You have to go to their Discord and provide enough proof your are conservative (MAGA) before they will let you post.
It's not indicative of how people feel in general. It's a very specific, coaxed and managed image.
I am not lying when I say the front page of the Conservative subreddit is run by less than 10 accounts. You can go there now and see that most of the submissions on the front page of the subreddit is split between the same 3-4 users at any given time.
It's representative of the opinions conservatives share. There are many more commenters than submissions, and other conservative subs like asktrumpsupporters show the same sentiments.
A lot of conservatives in this discussion suddenly seem embarrassed by the side they chose and really want to distance themselves from it.
The conservative subreddit isn't fake as such, it's just incredibly tightly curated and so not in any way representative. Number of deleted comments is a better barometer than tone of remaining comments, if still not a great one, because you're simply not going to see any significant number straying too far from the party line.
I mean, there's plenty of disagreement to the point many call anyone who dissents "fellow conservative", which has become kind of a joke. The official line is they remove any non-conservative posts, which doesn't seem relevant when assessing to what extent conservative posters support what is going in with ICE currently.
I would not be making generalizations on any group based on what spews out of Reddit.
It's fair to judge a community by the average sentiment their members post.
Begs the question if the conservative Reddit community really represents the average Republican voter. I don't think so.
The average republican voter voted for trump, so I do think so.
That's a logical fallacy. That doesn't show that the poll is inaccurate.
The average R voter can be dissatisfied with how it all turned out while the average reddit conservative R voter isn't.
They voted R, there's no way to make the distinction on why they voted.
Nonsense. A vote for R was a vote for T.
A vote for T is not a vote for every dimension of T.
In fact, all the data shows that the economy was the absolute top issue by a huge margin.
There's good reason to believe that not only would any Republican have gotten similar or better results, but that if it had been a Republican in power, that any Democrat would've gotten similar or better results.
Incumbents got smacked (far harder than Trump v Harris) in every election in the world in 2024, which is concordant with a long history of incumbents getting smacked during periods of high inflation.
> A vote for T is not a vote for every dimension of T.
Does. Not. Matter.
When you vote for T you know you are getting all of T.
> In fact, all the data shows that the economy was the absolute top issue by a huge margin.
Sure, and the poorly educated overwhelmingly chose to believe the lies they were told because they were attractive, and were taken advantage of. It doesn't matter. Lets say they were single issue voters on the economy, well, they still voted for T knowing all of what that entails.
Sure, I agree with all that? They're all morally culpable.
That's totally irrelevant as to whether the current actions are actually popular.
> Sure, I agree with all that?
Then there was no sense in you pointing out that a vote for T is not a vote for every dimension of T, since pointing out the obvious and gets another answer pointing out the obvious in response.
> That's totally irrelevant as to whether the current actions are actually popular.
You've chosen to rely on a single poll that supports your contention that they aren't, when pretty much every single other source of info is contrary to that.
You want to put all your faith in a poll, that's on you. There isn't much for us to discuss so I'd appreciate it if you stopped replying to me, so we don't just go around in circles.
Well it’s directly relevant to the claim “most Rs voted for T (fact) therefore you can infer most Rs support T_{specific policy}.”
Just simple logic!
No, I am actually not relying on a single poll. Pretty much all polls, even those with a conservative bent, converge on my claim and dispute yours.
This can’t possibly be news to you, otherwise you’d be sharing evidence to the contrary.
Instead you’re just openly declaring your own inability/unwillingness to assess information quality, and being proud of it?
Strange interaction indeed!
I can think of a few motivations one would have to knowingly deceive themselves into believing the immigration enforcement actions are popular, and all of those motivations are bad. Even aside from the basic violation of intellectual honesty.
> Just simple logic!
It's simple "logic", for sure.
> Instead you’re just openly declaring your own inability/unwillingness to assess information quality, and being proud of it?
That's your interpretation, which is far from reality. I think the big difference here is you put way more value on polls than is warranted. It's not like you've provided a ton of sources, either.
I likely won't be relying to you further, as I don't see the point. Cheers.
Nah, polling has been pretty good since everyone reset after 2016.
You can certainly prioritize evidence as you like, but I explained why when balancing all available evidence, it seems supporters are fine with what is happening. They say as much unambiguously in multiple places across multiple venues. I'll take that over a poll anyday.
Surely there are enough supporters to populate the message boards on which supporters congregate with messages of support. No doubt about that.
If you think that gives you a read on the overall attitude, then unfortunately there's nothing I can say to help you.
It is literally mathematically nonsensical to look at the numerator, put no effort into knowing the denominator, and then claim to have a sense for the ratio between them. It's shocking to see someone explicitly claim they can do this lmao.
I don't need help from you, thanks for the offer though, however misguided.
Like I said, you're free to ignore all the datapoints that disagree with you and focus on the one that doesn't, if that makes you feel better.
I don't think there's much for us to discuss, and instead of going back and forth ad nauseum I'd just really appreciate it if you stopped replying to me altogether.
So you have more data points? I am in fact interesting in them, I don't care too much who's in the right in this very discussion as this is all way too serious to be about who it being right.
But from what I have read with 'data' you mean your general impression from subreddits? Or do you have more robust data? I can imagine a few affects that lead to the subreddit(s) evolve independent of the average opinion of R voters. It happens all the time with subreddits.
But then again, maybe you got more information about it?
Given that one half of this country openly states that it is OK to not provide medical care to anyone from the other political side [1] [2], I would not trust any polls. Many people would be unwilling to draw a target on their families' backs just to help some pollster.
[1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/who-is-eri...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/pix11news/posts/a-union-says-an-nyp...
Where is the data on "half the country openly stating..."? Did you make that up?
The point is presumably to make an example of a few, and use that to deter future people from posting information about ICE officers, not to send everyone who oppose ICE to the gulags.
Not YET. But ICE's budget is now larger the military budget for most countries. They are spending billions developing sophisticated AI-powered surveillance tech infrastructure and building detention centers (aka, concentration camps).
When they run out of immigrants to deport, they aren't going to just sell all that crap on ebay. They're going to go looking for more targets.
Arbitrary cruelty is the point. There isn't a coherent rationale. You're going to the gulags if the subhuman pig in the mask says you are. You'll be lucky (?) if they don't just decide to execute you in the street. This is the reality on the ground right now. In a blue state in America.
> ... if the subhuman pig in the mask...
You're using exactly the kind of dehumanizing rhetoric that the administration is using in order to justify their violence and inhumane treatment of immigrants. You might need to think about that.
Other than the quoted snippet, everything you said may be true. Still, don't dehumanize your opponents.
Dehumanizing ICE will help the administration. They WANT war in the streets. That's how you solidify your power without proper democratic processes.
Would it be okay to dehumanize Nazi Gestapo officers going door–to–door searching for Jews? If not, don't dehumanize ICE.
They're dehumanizing people. How like them do you want to be?
In fighting them, don't become them.
First off, people have been calling police pigs since time immemorial.
Second, anybody who is abducting 5 year olds is subhuman.
I fear they've burned the credibility they'd need for that to work. If they claim to have made an example of a critic, how do we know that was actually a critic – and by extension, how do we know that not critiquing them will keep us safe?
There's a poem about this.
That's when loyalty becomes the new bar. Polarization makes everyone not supporting the regime an enemy. I don't see USA fully going down that slope, so I'm confused about what is the final goal. Maybe it's just a temporary whim of the executive and his backers.
Or is it more like trying to find all the hay in a hay stack?
It's pretty offensive that DHS is spending our tax dollars trying to supress critisim —free speech. The most protected type free speech is poltical speech. Even pursuing identification could be construed as abusive and unlawful.
>The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has backed down from a fight to unmask the owners of Instagram and Facebook accounts monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Pennsylvania.
It seems they aren't going after "critics" but people who are posting about their "activity" which I take to mean alerting the public about ICE presence. It's a bit different than mere "criticism."
Legally, it's not
Meanwhile at least two people who have openly murdered people are now effectively in witness protection without even investigation, forget trial
Just firing a gun on a street will open an investigation on any other cop in the country
Now killing someone gets a pass?
We are a banana republic now with the government executing protestors
Eventually it will be a dozen protestors shot at once, they already know they will get a pass based on policy, why stop at just one?
Yes, they may want a full on Tiananmen every day in every blue city. Suppressing dissent is the end goal; hurting brown people is only a warmup. If the public actually starts to fight back, the Insurrection Act has already been threatened.
This is a good point. Even if you don't like brown people or (illegal) immigrants the Republicans won't stop here.
Anyone who isn't a white Christian male is a second class citizen.
Jon Ross got a $750,000 payout via gofundme. So there is also a very large bounty for the murderers to execute someone. The new American dream?
There's a separate Christian crowdfunding site that caters to this audience. Someone raised $800K for being recorded using racial slurs:
https://www.newsweek.com/woman-who-has-raised-800k-online-ch...
Who funds a federal agent executing a citizen? Did they not watch the same videos we all did?
Yes they did, and that's the problem. Some people support this. It's easier to rile up hatred than to fix any real problems. When you spend years framing ALL immigration as illegal, you get a lot of people (like some of my family members) who will say "well, they ARE here illegally so they just need to enforce the law". And yes there are illegal immigrants in this country, but I don't think this kind of violence is the right solution.
> Who funds a federal agent executing a citizen?
Racists, fundamentalist christians, xenophobes, anyone happy with the way they think ICE is 'cleaning up' the country, which involves dealing with 'enemies'.
> Did they not watch the same videos we all did?
They did, and continue to insist on an interpretation not supported at all. It's like literally pointing at green grass and insisting it's red.
Bill Ackman, among other people.
Not disagreeing, but can you link to the source for the rest of us?
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ice-officer-jonathan-ross
Thanks for the link, hadn’t seen it yet. Definitely an eye-opener for me.
Iran in the making.
They were both something different than a "protestor" and you know it.
Unclear to me if he was a protestor, he seemed to just be a guy with a camera phone and tried to help a woman stand up.
What are you implying, ljsprague?
He had a gun. They were there to interfere.
having a gun = intent to interfere?
Interesting. Does having intent to interfere deserve execution?
Oh edit to add: did he interfere? And if so how?
I see a future where your comment history builds your known profile - at scale for everyone.
This has/is already happening, how do you think they found a 15 year old post where Graham Platner was dancing with his shirt off that got like 15 views? How do you think they found his "anonymous" reddit account?
Yeah, I agree, there's a file on everyone. However, actions like this may backfire. In this case I think this will help Graham Platner rather than hurt him
These days a Nazi tattoo can make you very popular with 50% of the population.
Buddy, you are describing the past… social media has been doing this since 2015.
No I didn't explain what I meant well enough. If someone ends up sniping a famous person, we go back in time and figure out who they are.
I'm talking about if you work at McDonalds and online you post "Man I hate McD's" you get fired within 5 minutes because everyone, everywhere has already been doxxed and notification systems are attached at the employment level. Even if your online name was "reactordev". At scale meant- everyone, always.
>> If someone ends up sniping a famous person, we go back in time and figure out who they are
Yeah, most civilians don't understand operational security at the functional level.
Though... most people doing these thing probably want to be caught because they just aren't quite right in the head and want people to tell them that what they did is 'justified' for whatever reason.
This is about posting license plates (presumably not of personal vehicles), facial images, and names of federal officers.
I mean I thought we already make federal employees and vehicles public knowledge. The national guard currently deployed in Minneapolis are unmasked as far as I know to compare. I'm not understanding why DHS federal employees are exempt from this standard.
>> presumably not of personal vehicles
They don't magically gain more privacy protection in public over what your average person has just because they clock out after a hard day of work by virtue of being a government employee.
They are constantly and consistently reminded that people have the right to record in public and they chose to ignore that as there are no consequences if they violate the law. Or that people have a right to peacefully assemble. Or freedom of the press...
I agree they don't gain more privacy protection in public than the average person. I also agree they shouldn't gain more privacy protection in public than the average public employee, either!
I'm merely assuming that the license plates being listed are ones they use for their official work, since the rest of their info is being tied to what's available for any other public work.
> I'm not understanding why DHS federal employees are exempt from this standard.
Because the aim of ICE is to terrorize local communities that either have a lot of immigrants/non-white people in general or that vote heavily Democrat like Minneapolis.
And terror doesn't work when you can reliably identify the terrorists and hold them accountable, or do the same to the terrorists as they dish out on their victims.