Completely agreed. This is just too much for just one person to run everything.

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

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

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

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

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

For perspective:

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

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

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

This is why the correct response is, "maybe somebody needs to put you in your place, whuddaya think about that, wiseguy?"

It's the blank stare directly upwards that's most relatable.

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

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

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

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

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

Did it feel like... half a dozen excited kids finding each other to explore a vast, empty, yet still interesting globe with @ symbols, virtual greeting cards and cool pictures of space stuff?

... more or less, yeah.

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

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

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

I was wondering about that! Thanks!