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As a relatively consistent process over the past 4 years, aggrieved right-wing extremists have migrated off-platform, in response to perceived targeting by the social media platform which they primarily engage on.
This has resulted in split impacts. https://twitter.com/MariaBartiromo/status/1324516507188166656
This has resulted in split impacts. https://twitter.com/MariaBartiromo/status/1324516507188166656
On one hand, studies of extremists who have been deplatformed by major social media platforms shows their reach plummeting. Alex Jones is a major example.
On the other, extremism foments when concentrated among isolated communities. The Q movement is a result of this effect.
On the other, extremism foments when concentrated among isolated communities. The Q movement is a result of this effect.
It can be argued that the proliferation of 4Chan culture into broader popular culture is a macrocosmic example of this effect of isolated extremism proliferating into the wider ecosystem, as seen with Q and 8Chan, which pretty quickly took hold across all spheres of social media.
In general, from a sociopolitical perspective, it seems effective to isolate demagogues, but not their audiences, within the popular information ecosystem. Isolating demagogues strips them of their platform, but isolating their audience entirely externalizes the movement's views.
When a movement's views are externalized, they're allowed to foment uniquely toxic and harmful ideas which clash with the very essence of the political economy and social ecosystem they're participant in. This is 1 of many cult effects. But modernity is sloppy: ideas proliferate.
In modernity, there is no truly enclosed social ecosystem. In the past, prominent cult movements have proliferated throughout society by shifting the Overton window of commonly held thought. Today, cult movements are proliferating by virtue of networked mass information sharing.
Q spread from a 4Chan-derivative message board all the way to your mother's baking group on FB because info is constantly and repetitively parsed, re-parsed, decontextualized, recontextualized, and decontextualized again by a sea of screenshots, shares, algorithms, bad actors...
It seems increasingly as though the internet, on a structural level, is incapable of dealing with these issues. Thus, a pragmatic approach to governance of the social order would seem to be ensuring isolation of demagogues while maintaining the popular cohesion of their audience.
