Internet culture was so much better before the racists infiltrated everything.

[Lightning Count]

Seemingly everywhere these days online, there are racists spewing hate and spreading conspiracy theories.

Now of course this isn't a new problem they were always there before, but now they are far more bold and brazen than ever before, and worse they have learned to hijack the system for their own ends.

It's a sad state of affairs when you go on YouTube these days and racist videos are being recommended, the right wingers have hijacked the algorithm to favour their content and they are poisoning the minds of young, impressionable people. Twisting the truth to suit their own hateful ends.

Facebook and Twitter aren't much better, in fact I got so fed up with seeing racists being open on FB I deleted my account, on Twitter literally as soon as something happens the racists will be forming a false narrative to frame the event to suit themselves.

Even the gaming forums aren't immune, GameFAQ's trolls are rampant in the social boards, baiting everyone. On GAF the site has gone to hell since the fallout that birthed ERA, the right wingers now seem to enjoy a comfortable majority after most migrated away from GAF.

OK, that's my rant done, ERA.

 

[Veliladon]

Racists didn't hijack the algorithm. The algorithm decided racists were what it wanted to put front and center.

 

[Deffers]

The attitudes were always there low-key. And people scheming to deepen and radicalize those attitudes were always there. They just found an opportunity and seized it.

 

[jeelybeans]

Is your Facebook feed not tailored to your friend circle? I'm sure there are a lot of racists on Facebook, but I sure as hell never join their groups or see their comments.

But yes, the internet was way better back before Silicon Valley libertarianism fucked it up.

 

[Dekuman]

Biggest difference is the nature of the Interactions.

Late 90s to mid 2000s was about community building. People were willing to overlook disagreements if on the whole they agree.

The toxicity and fandom menace stuff is what defines a lot of community interactions today.

 

[MoonsaultSlayer]

It's shit. I've become so depressingly fucking angry, bitter and pessimistic because of all this.

 

[Lightning Count]

Is your Facebook feed not tailored to your friend circle? I'm sure there are a lot of racists on Facebook, but I sure as hell never join their groups or see their comments.

But yes, the internet was way better back before Silicon Valley libertarianism fucked it up.

Click to shrink...

Unfortunately some older people in my family are pretty right wing.

 

[Deleted member 23212]

The racists were there all along, I think we're just more aware of it.

 

[Stinkles]

1. Anonymity
2. Lack of repercussions
3. The ubiquitous accessibility for morons
4. Deliberate malfeasance by agitators
5. Business models that don't care

 

[Quantza]

Nope, they were there all along. You can just see it more frequently now.
Plus, communities have turned into networks, exacerbating things.

 

[Clefargle]

Spoiler alert:

they were always there

But after boomers figured out social media and smart phones it became more prevalent than ever

 

[Cocolina]

I actually think it's gotten a lot better, especially considering the ubiquity of the Internet nowadays.

 

[Lightning Count]

1. Anonymity
2. Lack of repercussions
3. The ubiquitous accessibility for morons
4. Deliberate malfeasance by agitators
5. Business models that don't care

Click to shrink...

BIig agree on the anonymity and zero repercussions, there are racists out there who have been banned multiple times on platforms, but they just keep coming back with new accounts.

The current political climate is also a huge factor, figures like Trumo and other populists embolden and empower these attitudes massively.

 

[El Bombastico]

Um, the racists were ALWAYS there. We just didn't care as much 15-20 years ago.

 

[Lightning Count]

Um, the racists were ALWAYS there. We just didn't care as much 15-20 years ago.

Click to shrink...

I acknowledged already they were always there, but now they are far more prevalent and visible.

 

[Min]

It's shit. I've become so depressingly fucking angry, bitter and pessimistic because of all this.

Click to shrink...

step away and turn it off? If your work doesn't revolve around community organization than just step away from social media, have your withdrawal period, and then live a happier life, not caring about every minute detail that strangers post on the internet and in a public surveillance state. Maybe there is a FOMO aspect of not being well informed, but does endless scrolling on reddit, twitter, or facebook actually make you more informed about the state of the world and its happenings?

If a friend wants to talk to me they'll call or send me a text/picture through SMS.

 

[Masoyama]

Ive been on the internet since 96, cant remember a time where racists and edge lords werent the most vocal people around.

 

[Deleted member 1476]

Put me on the "they were always there" camp. There are more of them now and they are emboldened, sure, but things were different back then.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

Spoiler alert:

they were always there

But after boomers figured out social media and smart phones it became more prevalent than ever

Click to shrink...

This is the important differentiating factor. Before, boomer synthesis were locked out by their own ignorance. But once a younger business person advertised the platform's power as a revenue generator and a political tool, they've flooded online like the locusts that they are.

prior to this, the mostly younger Gen X and millennial crowd ran the social scene online and purposefully marginalized the shitheels through exclusion and self policing to a good extent. Over the past 5 to ten years though, the influx of new shitry power players online has made this impossible.

 

[smurfx]

i remember aol group chats and i remember a lot of racist shit said.

 

[Wafflinson]

They were always there. The only thing that has changed is that we care that they are there.

 

[TaySan]

Spoiler

They always existed. We just didn't care back then like we do now.

 

[Lightning Count]

The big problem is the people at the head of the social networks are spineles, twitter refuses to ban the nazis, Facebook are dodging responsibility, not just on this, but also on the multiple privacy scandals over the last few years.

 

[skeezx]

you think its bad now... pffft. like hardly more than 10 years ago about any community was the wild west in this regard

though i get what you mean, it is more concentrated and vitriolic whenever it does show up

 

[medyej]

The edgy 'comedy' of the early internet was fertile grounds for racism to propagate. It's just spread and shown its real face.

 

[zero_suit]

The big problem is the people at the head of the scowls networks are spineles, twitter refuses to ban the nazis, Facebook are dodging responsibility, not just on this, but also on the multiple privacy scandals over the last few years.

Click to shrink...

Dodging or indifference?

 

[ReAxion]

if you can't beat 'em...

this is a joke post.

 

[Deleted member 7148]

You can thank Trump for making it comfortable for them to come out of the shadows.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Um, the racists were ALWAYS there. We just didn't care as much 15-20 years ago.

Click to shrink...

The edgy 'comedy' of the early internet was fertile grounds for racism to propagate. It's just spread and shown its real face.

Click to shrink...

Arguably it wasn't just edgy comedy.

 

[MoonsaultSlayer]

step away and turn it off? If your work doesn't revolve around community organization than just step away from social media, have your withdrawal period, and then live a happier life, not caring about every minute detail that strangers post on the internet and in a public surveillance state. Maybe there is a FOMO aspect of not being well informed, but does endless scrolling on reddit, twitter, or facebook actually make you more informed about the state of the world and its happenings?

If a friend wants to talk to me they'll call or send me a text/picture through SMS.

Click to shrink...

I appreciate the gesture but this extends beyond social media.

I have a younger cousin who seems to have great family priorities but is so easily duped by what he surrounds himself with and doubles down on voting Trump again by actively switching his voter registration recently and I can't ignore it despite familial happenings during the holidays.

Not even getting into what I hear at work or even walking into a gas station. Shit's everywhere. I unplug and then what? It doesn't disappear.

Just being blunt with my frustrations in a topic about said frustrations.

 

[Dhoom]

Racists have been using the internet longer than most users. For me, it's become easy to ignore shit like that, you just laugh and move on. There's no getting rid of it so just look the other way.

 

[SliceSabre]

They've always been here of course. In fact I know I saw it in more frequency back in the earlier internet days it's almost cute how people seem to think racists on the internet are new. I can confidently say I saw people use more racist/bigoted terms in the past than now.

Nowadays they seem more apparent because people talk about them more but they've always been there it's just people kinda blew them off back in the day. I've found it easy to ignore them then and even easier nowadays to ignore them.

I also don't think they're anymore bold or brazen than they were in the past.

 

[Amanita]

Racism on the internet is as old as the internet itself. What changed is that the internet consolidated. Before the days of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, the internet was a million message boards for every single interest. You would have a sewing message board, a coffee-drinking message board, a skipping-rocks-at-the-lake message board, a message board for people who liked hats. Etc. And the racists would literally hang out on something called like racism.com, and you would barely see them. And when a racist showed up on your sewing forum, they would be banned immediately, because it's just a small forum for like-minded people and the moderators would have had free rein to ban them without much forethought or hassle. They would just go, "That's a weird post," and hit ban. Now everybody on the internet has been shoved together on the same seven websites, and so the moderators of these websites are pretty much the moderators of the entire internet. Given that power, they're conservative with their bans. People get away with a lot more. So the difference between then and now is that everyone is far more connected than they used to be, and the moderation on these massive sites is less swift and assured than the moderation on the smaller sites of old.

 

[Lightning Count]

So many people pointing out the racists were always there, when I say that exact thing in the OP.

 

[excelsiorlef]

I too miss the internet of 1988

 

[SageShinigami]

Lol. Nah, they were always around. What changed was the internet suddenly got a massive influx of black and brown people with the advent of smartphones. There's no need to be as openly racist when you don't have to deal with any PoC in your spot.

 

[Daniel Westlake]

The racists were literally always there

 

[Lightning Count]

Dodging or indifference?

Click to shrink...

Either way it's damning and an indictment on the leadership.

 

[sph3re]

So many people pointing out the racists were always there, when I say that exact thing in the OP.

Click to shrink...

I would argue that it's a hell of a lot less acceptable now than it was back then.

4Chan, at one point in time, was part of the cultural zeitgeist and was/is amazingly racist. It's not as relevant as it used to be, but racism was still pretty big "back in the day." It was just more acceptable back then. I think what you're seeing is a bigger backlash against racism which is why it appears like there's more of it.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

Bad actors these days are outright exploiting bigotry and leaders of the tech industry aren't inclined to do anything because engagement from a racist is still engagement.

 

[Clefargle]

This is the important differentiating factor. Before, boomer synthesis were locked out by their own ignorance. But once a younger business person advertised the platform's power as a revenue generator and a political tool, they've flooded online like the locusts that they are.

prior to this, the mostly younger Gen X and millennial crowd ran the social scene online and purposefully marginalized the shitheels through exclusion and self policing to a good extent. Over the past 5 to ten years though, the influx of new shitry power players online has made this impossible.

Click to shrink...

I know and I've been saying it since 2015 when I noticed everybody's great uncle or grandpa suddenly had a FB/Twitter and was unironically spouting nonsense with no concept of netiquette and a total lack of shame. It's because smart phones became affordable enough for their generation to figure out how to sign into FB and yell slurs

 

[Betty]

I believe if the internet wasn't so anonymous things would be better.

 

[Moppeh]

The attitudes were always there low-key. And people scheming to deepen and radicalize those attitudes were always there. They just found an opportunity and seized it.

Click to shrink...

That's true. White supremacist groups began their work on the internet very early on, the gestation period just took a while. And once social media became the primary destination of the internet, that shit spread like wildfire.

 

[Lightning Count]

I believe if the internet wasn't so anonymous things would be better.

Click to shrink...

That and there needs to be actual repercussions for spreading hate, once there are genuine consequences then we can start to actually tackle the problem.

 

[leder]

I'm not an old school bbser or anything, but there we're tons of racists in the gaming communities online c. 2000

 

[SliceSabre]

I believe if the internet wasn't so anonymous things would be better.

Click to shrink...

Gonna call BS on this one because people post racist stuff on news articles under their real name Facebook account all the time. Making the internet less anonymous is the kind of thing governments would love to enforce. Want your non-anonymous internet? Try China.

 

[Croc Man]

Racism on the internet is as old as the internet itself. What changed is that the internet consolidated. Before the days of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, the internet was a million message boards for every single interest. You would have a sewing message board, a coffee-drinking message board, a skipping-rocks-at-the-lake message board, a message board for people who liked hats. Etc. And the racists would literally hang out on something called like racism.com, and you would barely see them. And when a racist showed up on your sewing forum, they would be banned immediately, because it's just a small forum for like-minded people and the moderators would have had free rein to ban them without much forethought or hassle. They would just go, "That's a weird post," and hit ban. Now everybody on the internet has been shoved together on the same seven websites, and so the moderators of these websites are pretty much the moderators of the entire internet. Given that power, they're conservative with their bans. People get away with a lot more. So the difference between then and now is that everyone is far more connected than they used to be, and the moderation on these massive sites is less swift and assured than the moderation on the smaller sites of old.

Click to shrink...

Great summary. Shame we can't seem to get back to the old way. It's going to suck if the handful of remaining forums I like shut.

 

[Lightning Count]

Gonna call BS on this one because people post racist stuff on news articles under their real name Facebook account all the time.

Click to shrink...

If anything their lack of shame is good, means we can identify the racist scumbags easier,

 

[WedgeX]

Is your Facebook feed not tailored to your friend circle? I'm sure there are a lot of racists on Facebook, but I sure as hell never join their groups or see their comments.

But yes, the internet was way better back before Silicon Valley libertarianism fucked it up.

Click to shrink...

Much of libertarianism has always sided with white supremacy first and foremost - as its slave-owning founders intended. We should've been far wearier.

 

[Dongs Macabre]

I believe if the internet wasn't so anonymous things would be better.

Click to shrink...

Lmao, people will be racist to your face but anonymity is the problem?