How "guilty" do you think are social media/YT-like plattforms regarding the rise of right wing ideologies?

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

I was thinking about that a lot, since I remember I have been on the web for over 20 years now, saw the late 90s/early 00s webpages, where internet was mostly just for nerds, talking about hobbies, the crass/edgy jokes of Newgrounds and, personally felt far more relaxed and not really that political.

And then the rise of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. came and I feel there was a big shift to the right. Conspiracy theories everywhere, older generations learned how to use the net. Facebook mostly used by my and the younger generation to, in my experience, the older generation. Boomers, Generation X and I can not help but notice that most of those talking points of the right are being amplified through those social media channels.

How would the world look like if those social media plattforms would actually ban and moderate everything to a "normal", maybe even "centrist" level, at least do more than what is being done now. You can write the n-word everywhere there, nothings being really monitored.

 

[Zampano]

Guilty as fuck

 

[Arkanim94]

Guilty as hell.

 

[JasonV]

Incredibly fucking guilty.

 

[Tobor]

Guilty as fuck

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Yep. Social Media and YouTube is a cancer.

 

[Bloodforge]

100%

 

[Spenny]

Fuckin bury-them-under-the-prison level guilty

 

[excelsiorlef]

Blood on their hands felony murder guilty

 

[lucebuce]

Super fucking guilty.

 

[Arkanius]

Extremely guilty

 

[y2kyle89]

Double Guilty

 

[King Kingo]

Sentenced for life guilty.

 

[krazen]

GUILTY. Radicalized White supremacy was always around, but thanks to social media it went from fringe groups to an accepted political belief that deserves debate.

Depending on how the future goes, for all the 'connecting the world' bullshit im ready to say it's existence has set us back as a society.

 

[Duffking]

They're about 99% of the reason for the scale of it, honestly. In large part because of the "don't feed the trolls" attitude. We should have been making these spaces as unwelcome as possible for bigots and kicking them out of the house instead of letting them poison the communities. Most far right extremists these days will have been radicalised by youtube, twitter, etc.

 

[Hyun Sai]

 

[iRAWRasaurus]

Guilty as fuck. Easy to make supporting echo chambers to reinforce each other's ideas..hmm

 

[acheron_xl]

Extremely. Like almost entirely.

 

[Tamanon]

Validation is the most important part to ignorant beliefs becoming deeply rooted. So, extremely guilty.

 

[samoscratch]

They are 100% guilty.

 

[oledome]

Their inaction has allowed the shit to spread, they aren't fulfilling their responsibilities. They're loathe to make any move at all but I think we are gradually moving to a point where they will have to, the expectation is greater.

 

[Monstress]

100% guilty.

 

[Dehnus]

Google? VERY GUILTY, Youtube keeps punishing smaller content creators and pushing "NAZI SWEDE MCNAZI FACE" to make more money, and at the same time exposing toddlers to his ideology.

Seriously that stuff is heinous. Like I mostly watch engineering videos, and the occasional soldering video. Add to that some left wing tubers like radical reviewer or Thoughtslime? AND BAM there he is again! Some NAZI pushed in my suggestions, and no matter how many times I report them or tell them "I don't like this channel/tuber", it keeps being pushed! While content creators that talk about Rapsberry Pi's, carpentry, music i like, homebrew programming hobby projects, engineering, extremely old games (which often have interesting assembly code) and technology? Those don't get suggest to me, but that's mostly the content I watch.

Youtube/Alphabet/Google is extremely guilty in pushing them!

 

[Deleted member 6949]

They did nothing to address the problems with their platforms after 2016. Zuckerpsycho and Dorsey should be in jail.

 

[EarthPainting]

It allowed them to both advertise their ideology and monetise it, so yeah, I'd say they are pretty complicit.

 

[Dead Man Typing]

Very. They've allowed horrible small voices to be amplified and disrupt regular political progress. Trolling with bot farms and manipulative messages designed to make people angry and divide themselves.

The whole thing has emboldened racists the world over and it feels like the world has taken a massive step backwards.

The internet is a tool but also a weapon. Those companies have the power to make sure it is used responsibly and they have failed to do that.

 

[Dyno]

They're a portal of congregation for ideas that would have typically been unacceptable in most circles. They've grown their base to a point that the ideas are no longer unacceptable and are commonplace in the world now. These people are now also vital to them continuing to pull in the numbers they're used to and by extent, are vital to their business. I'd say that makes them extremely guilty.

 

[formasymphonic]

They have provide staging grounds, harboured growth and signal boosted while doing as little as possible to clean up unless some kind of major PR incident has occurred.

 

[Famassu]

One of the biggest guilty parties, if not the biggest (other than the right-wing shitgibbons themselves). They have a social responsibility to thwart hate speech, but they don't.

 

[Belladonna]

Allowed them to fester unattended.

 

[swift-darius]

the internet, and more specifically fora like youtube, reddit, 4chan, et al are particularly to blame for the radicalisation of a new generation of disaffected young white men. the demographics may differ, but ultimately the "logged on"/socially detached male white 15-30 year old is a huge new market and target audience for conservative and far-right ideology

you see this across multiple spheres. gamergate of course was a huge path for this, but it crops up in a bunch of smaller or other fields too - e.g. paradox's grand strategy games get inundated with reactionaries, irredentists, crusader memes, 1453 blah blah. the refugee crisis here in europe was another huge push for conservative backlashes that gained ground among younger male majority-demographic individuals - likely the same majority demo for this website, which of course goes to show that ultimately the internet is itself as polarised as society has been lately

 

[Deleted member 3093]

Indisputably the major cause for it.

 

[Red Liquorice]

The main reason it's festered and grown in the 21st Century.

 

[rsfour]

Right up there with trading child porn. They're one of the worst things about the Internet

 

[spineduke]

How would the world look like if those social media plattforms would actually ban and moderate everything to a "normal", maybe even "centrist" level, at least do more than what is being done now. You can write the n-word everywhere there, nothings being really monitored.

Click to shrink...

there isn't a "centrist" position to adopt here, when one side thrives on xenophobia and racism. thats the hill conservatism seems to be willing to die on. *shrug*

 

[mentallyinept]

By providing the platform for it, they cosign it.

 

[Soap]

Very high. The algorithms fucked us.

 

[oledome]

Right up there with trading child porn.

Click to shrink...

pfff, k

 

[Deleted member 2226]

I was thinking about that a lot, since I remember I have been on the web for over 20 years now, saw the late 90s/early 00s webpages, where internet was mostly just for nerds, talking about hobbies, the crass/edgy jokes of Newgrounds and, personally felt far more relaxed and not really that political.

And then the rise of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. came and I feel there was a big shift to the right. Conspiracy theories everywhere, older generations learned how to use the net. Facebook mostly used by my and the younger generation to, in my experience, the older generation. Boomers, Generation X and I can not help but notice that most of those talking points of the right are being amplified through those social media channels.

How would the world look like if those social media plattforms would actually ban and moderate everything to a "normal", maybe even "centrist" level, at least do more than what is being done now. You can write the n-word everywhere there, nothings being really monitored.

Click to shrink...

I don't think you can blame this on "the olds" joining. Basically all the web's big nerdy communities were harboring some pretty regressive people, it's just that the cultural discourse wasn't so that this stuff was coming up often (and it was often disguised with the aforementioned edgy humor.)

Things would definitely be better if the sites actually enforced their TOS, although I think some of the blame is excessive. If it wasn't social media they'd still be in their various communities. Social media came along as the web went mainstream, but the web going mainstream without social media would still have caused an explosion in those communities as people realized their beliefs were acceptable somewhere.

 

[crimsonECHIDNA]

Absolutely guilty. I'd go as far as to say the current state of GAF is like the prime example of what happens when you don't nip that shit in the bud.

Hell, things like Gamergate would have flatlined if it were not for those alt-right youtubers stoking the fires.

 

[Holundrian]

Very guilty. The youtube algorithm is just awful. I consider myself progressive as heck and it used to be very frequent for me to get alt right/sceptic/youtube scum recommendations. This has gone drastically down after I just abused their shitty system and reported every video like that on my front page. Now it's happening extremely rarely. Which is still stupid like how does the algorithm just shift so strongly towards pushing those videos? It's just garbage.

 

[chrisPjelly]

Extremely guilty. I STILL get the occasional recommended shithead if I dare watch anything vaguely political or controversial.

 

[TheEchosOfTheCyborg]

Absolutely guilty. I'd go as far as to say the current state of GAF is like the prime example of what happens when you don't nip that shit in the bud.

Hell, things like Gamergate would have flatlined if it were not for those alt-right youtubers stoking the fires.

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Same with GameFAQ, why did Gamespot buy that (or whoever owns Gamespot) if they weren't going to do anything to improve it and just leave to get worse and worse?

Does make me wonder what the internet would be like if proper moderation and the like were in place way sooner?

 

[Deleted member 2474]

"facebook should be shut down and mark zuckerberg should in prison" levels of guilty

 

[Pagusas]

I agree with you up until you started saying they should be moderating stuff... you want to encourage corporations to moderate political messaging to align with your view point? Dangerous. I can understand fact checking, removing automatic bots posting paid for messages, I can understand anti-racist moderation, I can understand child safety, anti-violance and all that moderations, but you are entering danergous areas when you start saying we need to moderate the political messages of people. Free will and free thought have to be a thing, especially in a liberal society. People WILL have different opinions then you, and many of them will be stupid, but if we start being thought police, than the world you are building will be a truly horrible one.

 

[Deleted member 2809]

FB/YT/Twitter and more, extremely guilty as they side with the nazis.

I agree with you up until you started saying they should be moderating stuff... you want to encourage corporations to moderate political messaging to align with your view point? Dangerous.

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Hate isn't politics or opinions, get the fuck outta here

 

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

I agree with you up until you started saying they should be moderating stuff... you want to encourage corporations to moderate political messaging to align with your view point? Dangerous. I can understand fact checking, removing automatic bots posting paid for messages, I can understand anti-racist moderation, I can understand child safety, anti-violance and all that moderations, but you are entering danergous areas when you start saying we need to moderate the political messages of people. Free will and free thought have to be a thing, especially in a liberal society. People WILL have different opinions then you, and many of them will be stupid, but if we start being thought police, than the world you are building will be a truly horrible one.

Click to shrink...

I wasnt talking about thought policing, but evidently "all n-words must die", saying the n-word should directly go into a ban, posting fake news, calling for genocide, clear racism, defense of pedo-/hebephilia etc.

Instead you have channels, facebook groups, twitter groups etc. dedicated to only that.

 

[Deleted member 2474]

I agree with you up until you started saying they should be moderating stuff... you want to encourage corporations to moderate political messaging to align with your view point? Dangerous.

Click to shrink...

they should, at the very least, be moderating provably false and dangerous conspiracy shit. facebook has been a breeding ground for antivaxxers, ludicrous covid conspiracies, people threatening to bomb and destroy 5g towers for spreading dangerous radiation, chemtrail nonsense, "crisis actor" conspiracies, etc. overt racism and hate speech should be pretty clear grounds for moderation as well. there's no political belief system grounded in reality that makes any of this shit okay.

 

[Kthulhu]

Extremely. Sure bigotry and far right views existed prior to Facebook and YouTube, but no one has profited or signal boosted these beliefs to this extent until Facebook and Google.

 

[shoptroll]

Guilty as all hell. Shit posts, controversial posts, drama posts, etc. all fuel "engagement" which is their bloodstream due to these platforms actual purpose as a advertising vehicle to their users. When you start removing those elements then the whole house of cards comes toppling down.

These companies want to act like they're "public squares" but they're not. They never have been. The Internet itself is the "public square", social media sites are just one of the taverns adjacent to it.

If someone wants to spout their racist bullshit it's not that hard to standup a server somewhere and get a domain name. FB/YT/Twitter don't have to do their job for them by giving them a platform.

 

[8byte]

I think it speaks volumes to say we'd be in a considerably different place without them, and I'd like to think that place has fewer nazis.