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Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magn

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservative) values. - Or we are underestimating how many people are on the far right, because they are constantly censored so in our minds we think they are the minority but maybe they're about half of the online population? I'm just trying to figure out why it takes herculean effort to shift things enough to the left to be publicly palatable. And if so, then then it seems like any social forum is going to require heavy censorship/moderation to even be tolerable to the general public.

osmarks 6y ago
I'd expect that it's because if you have some new forum without (as many) restrictions, you get both: - people who disagree with the restrictions of other places on principle and want a freer alternative - people who can't say what they want to anywhere else, because it's generally disliked and most people probably do not want to read stuff from the second group.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Everyone else has no strong reason to leave the existing platform.
- agensaequivocum 6y ago
  There are quite a few people on the left in the gun community who do.
jka 6y ago
My guess would be that attention-seeking and disruptive behaviours are part of the explanation. In a forum with ten reasonable conversation threads and one highly controversial one, attention is likely to move towards the controversial topic. The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online and can witness and partake in minor and major conversations alike. It also doesn't help that engagement (regardless of reason for engagement and any human stress created as a result; they're harder for software and metrics to capture) tends to be seen as something to optimize for, both within companies themselves and also by their investors. Controversial conversations are sometimes necessary. People who repeatedly raise controversial topics to gain notoriety or attention are generally not - although their behaviour may be a sign that they need help in other ways.
- ativzzz 6y ago
  > The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online and can witness and partake in minor and major conversations alike. I wonder if it's possible to have a community where the moderation is more focused on educating people to identify trolling and discourage posters from engaging with emotionally charged/inciting posters. Instead of warning the troller, encourage people to just downvote and move on instead of engaging. I consider a troll as someone who is seeking to create a strong negative (anger, hate, frustration, etc) emotion in a reader intentionally or unintentionally. I dont know if this is too subjective and impossible to enforce.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    Hacker news has excellent moderation, and high standards for comments. Relax them a bit to allow for memes and harmless troll threads like Rick rolls while strictly moderating against those participating in bad faith. Mind you, moderation needn't be by paid or even volunteer moderators. There are various solutions axiall available and the most successful are always multifaceted in their approaches.
- kelnos 6y ago
  > The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online I think this is similar to the economics of spam: the cost of spamming is so low that even if a small fraction of a percent respond and convert, it's still profitable to spam. People who troll are just looking to rile people up. All they need is one or two people to respond (out of hundreds or thousands or more). Even someone who knows better will occasionally be triggered enough to respond to a troll.
jboynyc 6y ago
You might be interested in what one of the foremost sociologists studying white supremacy online has to say about this: https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-alt-right/ https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al...
- devcouvert 6y ago
  > You might be interested in what one of the foremost sociologists studying white supremacy online has to say about this: https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al.. https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al.... Depends on how relevant you consider a social "scientist" having build a career on creating a bogeyman on mixing up nationalism, extreme right and white supremacy. A former columnist at "Huffington Post", she is now writing a book on "Undoing White Womanhood". Calls herself a "change agent" on her own webiste. Sounds rather like "anti-White" activist to me, like an intellectual Robin DiAngelo.
seneca 6y ago
Maybe I'm naive, but it seems pretty obvious that it's because technology is mostly full of leftists, so they tolerate their own extremists and ban their opponents. Deplatforming has been a tactic of the left for a while now.
- nebulosa 6y ago
  > Maybe I'm naive, but it seems pretty obvious that it's because technology is mostly full of leftists, so they tolerate their own extremists and ban their opponents. Deplatforming has been a tactic of the left for a while now. I wouldn't say that technology is full of actual "leftists", more a group ranging from overly-myopic liberals who struggle to do what would actually benefit minority communities in a more positive sense to the libertarian types who only end up restricting what people say because it ends up affecting their advertising revenue. Simply by virtue of being in a position of financial power, it's very difficult to hold truly leftist views.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >Deplatforming has been a tactic of the left for a while now. Deplatforming has been the go to method of the right for at least a century (see mccarthyism) and longer if you include lynching/death as essentially equivalent (ie: you can't speak if you're dead). The left has simply finally got enough critical mass to do it themselves.
badRNG 6y ago
People don't want to be exposed to content that dehumanizes them, argues for their extermination, or targets harassment against them. There are large swaths of the population who are targeted by the far right in this way. These targeted groups simply wont deliberately return to a site that consistently provides them that experience, there's simply no reason for them to. These large segments of the population will demand moderation from platforms they use to protect them from targeted harassment. It's these sorts of platforms that have the potential to truly become massive. Platforms that are strongly moderated from day one (e.g. don't allow targeted harassment of minorities) don't need a "herculean effort to shift things enough to the left to be publicly palatable." A good example is the Reddit alternative raddle.me or even hacker news.
- agensaequivocum 6y ago
  > people don't want to be exposed to content that dehumanizes them, argues for their extermination The left does this on Reddit/Twitter constantly towards right wing people and no one bats an eye. It's like maybe those in power are extremely biased towards the left.
  - badRNG 6y ago
    I don't think that there's an equivalency between the advocacy for the genocide of black people, Jews, trans people, etc and opposing someone for their political beliefs. Perhaps there'd be more legitimacy in a comparison to the vitriol on the left against billionaires and cops, but these are positions of power, not identity groups one is born into. All revolutionaries of all political persuasions will oppose those in positions of power currently.
    - agensaequivocum 6y ago
      > advocacy for the genocide of black people, Jews, trans people This is a misdirection. Yes there are a very small minority of people who do call for this but it is what I'm talk about is simple opposition to others political beliefs. If I say that there are only two sexes and you cannot change your sex, I would be banned from many of the most popular subreddits. This is not advocating for the genocide of trans people. It's a scientific and political position. > vitriol on the left against billionaires and cops, but these are positions of power, not identity groups one is born into. Doesn't make it okay.
deleted 6y ago
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nebulosa 6y ago
I'd assume another reason is that given that a small number of far-right threads/communities exist, you're going to have people leaving simply because people who are against, or at least frustrated with, your existence isn't a great place to be around.
BosunoB 6y ago
It's the paradox of tolerance. If you tolerate the intolerant (e.g. right-wing assholes) they will push out other groups through their intolerant behavior. The only solution is to rabidly ban hate speech and similar behavior.
wnevets 6y ago
or keep getting kicked off of the other platforms. or duplicate accounts to give the illusion of larger numbers. For example there are a lot of Reddit accounts created with in the 3 months or so very active on the same post pushing the same agenda.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Twitter recently deleted 170k bot accounts that pushed a Chinese controlled narrative related to covid. It's not hard to imagine that other actors are doing the same on reddit in order to stir shit up, and that impressionable real users are falling for it.
throwvid19 6y ago
Most social sites lean left, and far-left dialog is generally tolerated in those places, while anything right of center is demonized in a gradient of intensity the further right you go. Your own scenarios exhibit this, for example: - You ask if the far-right are magnitudes more vocal, ignoring the comparison to the extremely vocal far-left which is heard regularly on mainstream social media - You conflate "conservative" with "selfish", presumably ignoring the selfishness of the extremes at both sides. Frankly, I think the left (and by extension, most social media sites) are WAY more comfortable with censorship, banning, hiding, etc., especially of ideas that don't align with the left. (Typically characterized as "evil".) The far-right, on the other hand, I think is a lot more tolerant of at least the notion that "other" speech exists. They'll insult you, make fun, etc., but the compulsion to censor others is far less frequent. So when you have a whole segment of the political spectrum treated as evil and silenced, they tend to gravitate to fora that enable speech, even if unpleasant speech. The far-right might be most noticable on those platforms, but if you look carefully, you'll see a whole gradient of right-ness. And even some lefties!
- paulv 6y ago
  > The far-right, on the other hand, I think is a lot more tolerant of at least the notion that "other" speech exists. They'll insult you, make fun, etc., but the compulsion to censor others is far less frequent. The right thinks explicit "censorship", which happens via the community or site owner, is bad. Implicit "censorship", however, which happens when the targets of racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia[0] leave the site, is just fine. [0] or their allies or people who don't want to be surrounded by assholes.
  - throwvid19 6y ago
    Well put. The Left typically wants to silence/ignore while the Right typically wants to fight/berate about it.
    - paulv 6y ago
      Berating people to the point that they leave the discussion is the same thing as silencing. Also, "berating" is a kind word. We're talking about "I have the right to exist" vs "we should systematically exterminate/enslave people like you"
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Normal people won't tolerate being on the same forum with huge assholes. Especially assholes who are bigoted, rather than just generally angry/jerk-ish. The far right happens to contain a lot of this kind of person. The far left has people who are also very angry, but they're generally not as bigoted. The demographic they're most angry at is rich people, which is punching up instead of down at least. And most of the rhetoric there simply isn't as vile. It's stuff like, "take rich people's assets so we can redistribute it equally". I may not agree with seizing wealthy people's stuff, but that's nowhere near as offensive as "kick out all the gay/non-white people".
- throwvid19 6y ago
  Not as bigoted? Large swaths of the Left don't hate: - men? - whites? - straight people? - conservatives? - police? - people who live in rural parts of the country? There may be a ton of rationalizations for those rather bigoted perspectives, but it doesn't make them any less bigoted. Heck, the white supremacists have a whole bunch of rationalizations of their own. Does that make theirs okay? [Edited: formatting]
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Police sure, and you could argue for conservatives maybe. The others, no. The far right thinks black people are flatly inferior, and tolerate or encourage violence and oppression against them because of this. The far left's attitude toward white people is "it's bad that white people are dominant in society because of historical/structural racism", even in cases like affirmative action the clear goal is eventual equality, not that they want white people to end up structurally oppressed instead. If you can't see the difference in how toxic each of these attitudes are, I'm afraid I can't help you. But I'd love to see you explain how the left is apparently bigoted against straight people.
  - earthscienceman 6y ago
    As a straight white dude from the rural United States who regularly hangs out in extremely far-left circles in very far-left places... you're out of your mind. I've never once heard a 'leftist' advocate for the murder of men, whites, straight people, conservatives, or rural dwellers (although, to be fair, occasionally the police). However, growing up and still when I visit home, I regularly hear how black people, queer people, and just liberals in general, aren't worthy of being left alive. These sides are not equivalent, no matter how desperately you want them to be. Also, my induction into these liberal circles went so far as "you want people to be treated equally? cool.". I didn't have to hand in my cis-white-man card and tattoo an anarchy symbol. In fact, we regularly talk about all sorts of controversial subjects. My friends often enjoy hearing what it was like to grow up in the world of pocket knives and bar fights. I take my communist friends out to shoot guns. Ask me how many of my rural friends have ever asked to experience life among the queers? You're comparing a rose bush with thorns to a semi-automatic rifle in terms of aggression towards the other party.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
The current state of slashdot is good place to investigate. These days the comments are filled with people switching to anonymous mode to inject some sort of political statement even if it has no relevance to the story. Sometimes it's just people posting giant ascii swastikas.
gregf 6y ago
I would say reddit is on the far left not the far right, you can't have any opinion that isn't towards the left on reddit with being attacked.
lodovic 6y ago
No moderation: right wing posts flourish. Strong moderation: left wing posts flourish.
antepodius 6y ago
It's because everyone puts up this herculean effort. There's a large population of people out there with views that annoy left-wing people, who don't really have a place on most internet platforms, because all internet platforms are left wing, because the dominant culture of silicon valley is much more left wing than the mean of, say, US citizens. (And everyone who wants to keep their job pretends to be more left wing than they are, too.) Anyway, this means there's this mob of people without a place to talk, and they want such a place. So if a place ever opens up that doesn't strictly persecute right-wingers- well, it's like being a town during the inquisition that doesn't persecute witches. Obviously, all the witches are going to flock to you!
antepodius 6y ago
It's because everyone puts up this herculean effort. There's a large population of people out there with views that annoy left-wing people, who don't really have a place on most internet platforms, because all internet platforms are left wing, because the dominant culture of silicon valley is much more left wing than the mean of your average person. (And everyone who wants to keep their jobs pretends to be more left wing than they are, too.) Anyway, this means there's this mob of people without a place to talk, and they want such a place. So if a place ever opens up that doesn't strictly persecute right-wingers- well, it's like being a town during the inquisition that doesn't persecute witches. Obviously, all the witches are going to flock to you! (Witch metaphor courtesy of Slatestarcodex, may it rest in peace.)
winstonewert 6y ago
I think it is because far-right is far less palatable than far-left. Consider two possible statements: 1. Hitler wasn't that bad. 2. Stalin wasn't that bad. I think, for most people, the first provokes a much more extreme reaction. Both were objectively terrible human beings, but defending Hitler is seen as far more extreme than defending Stalin. This has two effects: Firstly, far-right people are continually kicked out of communities. Far-left people are not. So any new unmoderated community is going to attract these "refugees" Secondly, nobody notices or cares when a community goes far-left. But its far more noticeable when a community goes far-right.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  I think both of those examples would provoke a pretty extreme response in most people, but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common, at all. You see a _bit_ of "Stalinism was actually good" stuff on the internet (weirdly, occasionally from the right; some more confused Russian nationalists have a bit of a Stalin fetish), but you'll see a lot more holocaust denial.
  - devcouvert 6y ago
    >but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common Maybe the figure-head isn't en vogue anymore. The methods are always popular. Leftists(Socialists, Communists, Anarchists) often publically revel in the idea of when "the revolution comes" to put anyone dissenting up against the wall or sending them to a Gulag camp of some sort. I don't find that exactly reassuring. Seeing how "protesters" in the US and Europe act like chinese Red Guards during the cultural revolution, this day doesn't seem far off. I'm reading the "Three-Body Problem" right now and the first chapter eerily reminded me of the current situation where not being enough of an "ally" to the racial BLM movement is a thought-crime punishable by having your life destroyed.
- deleted 6y ago
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seph-reed 6y ago
Smart people use their brain to avoid conflict and end up kind of weak in that context. They don't stand their ground. Typically the lean left. Far-right definitely stand their ground, and can easily go unfazed by logical arguments. Dicks fuck pussies. We need assholes to shit on the dicks.
rsynnott 6y ago
Option 4: poorly moderated forums tend to fill with people banned by most other forums, such as Nazis. And various other undesirables, too; I gather voat had a big influx when Reddit banned its paedophile subreddits, and another one when FPH et all were killed. So if 1% of the population are far-right extremists, but most normal platforms ban or restrict them, any new platform with poor regulation will tend to fill with them. I do think that the very extreme (and thus bannable) far right _are_ probably more common than ditto on the far left; you just don't get that many Stalinists, anywhere. But the normal left (and normal right) aren't generally nasty enough to get banned everywhere, so most of the internet's displaced population of commenters is far right. I think there is an aspect of option 1, too, though. In Ireland a while back we had a referendum on allowing same-sex marriage, which passed by 62%, and another one, on legalising abortion (until then only legal in very limited circumstances), a few years later, which passed by 66%. Now, if you'd gone based on web polls and opinions being expressed in the comments on mainstream sites, you'd have assumed that both would fail by a landslide; it was really kind of incredible. Comments on news sites etc were grossly unrepresentative of the actual public mood; the right really does seem to be a lot noisier.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Ok, I've not lived in Ireland for 15 years but I find it hard to believe that it has a 'right' that falls into the same definition as that of the US. You can't say that being anti-abortion means you're right-wing and therefore must also hate black people. It is actually possible for people to have a foot in either camp, to varying degrees, on multiple issues.
glenstein 6y ago
>Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? This did not used to be the case. It's a relatively extremely recent phenomenon, that I would say only really coalesced around 2014-2015. It used to be that the wild west of the internet was, to the extent that it reinforced anything at all, a boon to liberal and left wing politics and organizing. And a lot of the cultural aspects weren't co-opted the way they currently are. Gamer culture was surely unconsciously sexist, misogynist, but not to the extent that it is now where it's a full-on reactionary identity. Internet atheists didn't used to be misogynist right-wing trolls, but they are now. Trolling was just trolling, it wasn't organized into mobs or propaganda in the sophisticated way it is now. Anonymity and revealing one's 'true self' didn't channel it into a cultural current of toxicity that is now established and ready to welcome those impulse and stoke them and use them to nudge a person into a right wing trolling infrastructure. I think it's been weaponized by state actors and by bad actors who figured out how to use the tools, to turn everything into a nuclear wasteland. I don't believe it inherently disposes anyone toward any particular set of politics necessarily, and it didn't used to be the case that it got channeled in this way.
swebs 6y ago
It's because mainstream moderated sites don't censor far-left views, so those people have no incentives to move to unmoderated sites. For example, /r/MoreTankieChapo isn't even quarantined.
deleted 6y ago
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austincheney 6y ago
> become far-right oriented? The problem is not so subjectively limited as to be a right-wing problem. Communities, unless extremely well policed, tend to become gravities of like mindedness when there is a visible vote system. This seems to occur because vote counts, whether positive or negative, are viewed as a form of credibility and because people are generally hostile to disruption and originality. When you step back from a subjective slant the phenomenon of group think has been well studied.
fiblye 6y ago
When reddit first launched, the media and mainstream leaned a bit more right. Reddit had people with pretty heavily left leaning views and also borderline anarchist libertarians flocking to it. Gay marriage and legal weed were actually not incredibly mainstream ideas back then and people who supported these things were often pushed out of many places, but virtually everyone posting on reddit supported it and topics like it popped up daily, mixed among programming news. There was also batshit sovereign citizen stuff and videos of people walking out of court because the court flags had gold fringes and that meant it wasn’t legit, and quite a few people on reddit praised stuff like this. Now the virtually everybody out there already supports gay marriage and legal weed, and those are a baseline for everything left of center and basically mainstream thought now. Everybody right of that gets pushed out of communities, so whenever some new community pops up, you get a whole spectrum of right of center as well as sovereign citizen types again looking to settle down and establish a community like left of center people did with places like reddit all those years ago. One bad thing for these new communities is that the internet is far more accessible now, and the more extreme members see their chance to finally talk, and those with extreme opinions like talking a lot.

osmarks 6y ago

I'd expect that it's because if you have some new forum without (as many) restrictions, you get both: - people who disagree with the restrictions of other places on principle and want a freer alternative - people who can't say what they want to anywhere else, because it's generally disliked and most people probably do not want to read stuff from the second group.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Everyone else has no strong reason to leave the existing platform.

agensaequivocum 6y ago
There are quite a few people on the left in the gun community who do.

jka 6y ago

My guess would be that attention-seeking and disruptive behaviours are part of the explanation. In a forum with ten reasonable conversation threads and one highly controversial one, attention is likely to move towards the controversial topic. The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online and can witness and partake in minor and major conversations alike. It also doesn't help that engagement (regardless of reason for engagement and any human stress created as a result; they're harder for software and metrics to capture) tends to be seen as something to optimize for, both within companies themselves and also by their investors. Controversial conversations are sometimes necessary. People who repeatedly raise controversial topics to gain notoriety or attention are generally not - although their behaviour may be a sign that they need help in other ways.

ativzzz 6y ago
> The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online and can witness and partake in minor and major conversations alike. I wonder if it's possible to have a community where the moderation is more focused on educating people to identify trolling and discourage posters from engaging with emotionally charged/inciting posters. Instead of warning the troller, encourage people to just downvote and move on instead of engaging. I consider a troll as someone who is seeking to create a strong negative (anger, hate, frustration, etc) emotion in a reader intentionally or unintentionally. I dont know if this is too subjective and impossible to enforce.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Hacker news has excellent moderation, and high standards for comments. Relax them a bit to allow for memes and harmless troll threads like Rick rolls while strictly moderating against those participating in bad faith. Mind you, moderation needn't be by paid or even volunteer moderators. There are various solutions axiall available and the most successful are always multifaceted in their approaches.
kelnos 6y ago
> The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online I think this is similar to the economics of spam: the cost of spamming is so low that even if a small fraction of a percent respond and convert, it's still profitable to spam. People who troll are just looking to rile people up. All they need is one or two people to respond (out of hundreds or thousands or more). Even someone who knows better will occasionally be triggered enough to respond to a troll.

jboynyc 6y ago

You might be interested in what one of the foremost sociologists studying white supremacy online has to say about this: https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-alt-right/ https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al...

devcouvert 6y ago
> You might be interested in what one of the foremost sociologists studying white supremacy online has to say about this: https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al.. https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al.... Depends on how relevant you consider a social "scientist" having build a career on creating a bogeyman on mixing up nationalism, extreme right and white supremacy. A former columnist at "Huffington Post", she is now writing a book on "Undoing White Womanhood". Calls herself a "change agent" on her own webiste. Sounds rather like "anti-White" activist to me, like an intellectual Robin DiAngelo.

seneca 6y ago

Maybe I'm naive, but it seems pretty obvious that it's because technology is mostly full of leftists, so they tolerate their own extremists and ban their opponents. Deplatforming has been a tactic of the left for a while now.

nebulosa 6y ago
> Maybe I'm naive, but it seems pretty obvious that it's because technology is mostly full of leftists, so they tolerate their own extremists and ban their opponents. Deplatforming has been a tactic of the left for a while now. I wouldn't say that technology is full of actual "leftists", more a group ranging from overly-myopic liberals who struggle to do what would actually benefit minority communities in a more positive sense to the libertarian types who only end up restricting what people say because it ends up affecting their advertising revenue. Simply by virtue of being in a position of financial power, it's very difficult to hold truly leftist views.
marcinzm 6y ago
>Deplatforming has been a tactic of the left for a while now. Deplatforming has been the go to method of the right for at least a century (see mccarthyism) and longer if you include lynching/death as essentially equivalent (ie: you can't speak if you're dead). The left has simply finally got enough critical mass to do it themselves.

badRNG 6y ago

People don't want to be exposed to content that dehumanizes them, argues for their extermination, or targets harassment against them. There are large swaths of the population who are targeted by the far right in this way. These targeted groups simply wont deliberately return to a site that consistently provides them that experience, there's simply no reason for them to. These large segments of the population will demand moderation from platforms they use to protect them from targeted harassment. It's these sorts of platforms that have the potential to truly become massive. Platforms that are strongly moderated from day one (e.g. don't allow targeted harassment of minorities) don't need a "herculean effort to shift things enough to the left to be publicly palatable." A good example is the Reddit alternative raddle.me or even hacker news.

agensaequivocum 6y ago
> people don't want to be exposed to content that dehumanizes them, argues for their extermination The left does this on Reddit/Twitter constantly towards right wing people and no one bats an eye. It's like maybe those in power are extremely biased towards the left.
- badRNG 6y ago
  I don't think that there's an equivalency between the advocacy for the genocide of black people, Jews, trans people, etc and opposing someone for their political beliefs. Perhaps there'd be more legitimacy in a comparison to the vitriol on the left against billionaires and cops, but these are positions of power, not identity groups one is born into. All revolutionaries of all political persuasions will oppose those in positions of power currently.
  - agensaequivocum 6y ago
    > advocacy for the genocide of black people, Jews, trans people This is a misdirection. Yes there are a very small minority of people who do call for this but it is what I'm talk about is simple opposition to others political beliefs. If I say that there are only two sexes and you cannot change your sex, I would be banned from many of the most popular subreddits. This is not advocating for the genocide of trans people. It's a scientific and political position. > vitriol on the left against billionaires and cops, but these are positions of power, not identity groups one is born into. Doesn't make it okay.

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nebulosa 6y ago

I'd assume another reason is that given that a small number of far-right threads/communities exist, you're going to have people leaving simply because people who are against, or at least frustrated with, your existence isn't a great place to be around.

BosunoB 6y ago

It's the paradox of tolerance. If you tolerate the intolerant (e.g. right-wing assholes) they will push out other groups through their intolerant behavior. The only solution is to rabidly ban hate speech and similar behavior.

wnevets 6y ago

or keep getting kicked off of the other platforms. or duplicate accounts to give the illusion of larger numbers. For example there are a lot of Reddit accounts created with in the 3 months or so very active on the same post pushing the same agenda.

secondcoming 6y ago
Twitter recently deleted 170k bot accounts that pushed a Chinese controlled narrative related to covid. It's not hard to imagine that other actors are doing the same on reddit in order to stir shit up, and that impressionable real users are falling for it.

throwvid19 6y ago

Most social sites lean left, and far-left dialog is generally tolerated in those places, while anything right of center is demonized in a gradient of intensity the further right you go. Your own scenarios exhibit this, for example: - You ask if the far-right are magnitudes more vocal, ignoring the comparison to the extremely vocal far-left which is heard regularly on mainstream social media - You conflate "conservative" with "selfish", presumably ignoring the selfishness of the extremes at both sides. Frankly, I think the left (and by extension, most social media sites) are WAY more comfortable with censorship, banning, hiding, etc., especially of ideas that don't align with the left. (Typically characterized as "evil".) The far-right, on the other hand, I think is a lot more tolerant of at least the notion that "other" speech exists. They'll insult you, make fun, etc., but the compulsion to censor others is far less frequent. So when you have a whole segment of the political spectrum treated as evil and silenced, they tend to gravitate to fora that enable speech, even if unpleasant speech. The far-right might be most noticable on those platforms, but if you look carefully, you'll see a whole gradient of right-ness. And even some lefties!

paulv 6y ago
> The far-right, on the other hand, I think is a lot more tolerant of at least the notion that "other" speech exists. They'll insult you, make fun, etc., but the compulsion to censor others is far less frequent. The right thinks explicit "censorship", which happens via the community or site owner, is bad. Implicit "censorship", however, which happens when the targets of racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia[0] leave the site, is just fine. [0] or their allies or people who don't want to be surrounded by assholes.
- throwvid19 6y ago
  Well put. The Left typically wants to silence/ignore while the Right typically wants to fight/berate about it.
  - paulv 6y ago
    Berating people to the point that they leave the discussion is the same thing as silencing. Also, "berating" is a kind word. We're talking about "I have the right to exist" vs "we should systematically exterminate/enslave people like you"

TulliusCicero 6y ago

Normal people won't tolerate being on the same forum with huge assholes. Especially assholes who are bigoted, rather than just generally angry/jerk-ish. The far right happens to contain a lot of this kind of person. The far left has people who are also very angry, but they're generally not as bigoted. The demographic they're most angry at is rich people, which is punching up instead of down at least. And most of the rhetoric there simply isn't as vile. It's stuff like, "take rich people's assets so we can redistribute it equally". I may not agree with seizing wealthy people's stuff, but that's nowhere near as offensive as "kick out all the gay/non-white people".

throwvid19 6y ago
Not as bigoted? Large swaths of the Left don't hate: - men? - whites? - straight people? - conservatives? - police? - people who live in rural parts of the country? There may be a ton of rationalizations for those rather bigoted perspectives, but it doesn't make them any less bigoted. Heck, the white supremacists have a whole bunch of rationalizations of their own. Does that make theirs okay? [Edited: formatting]
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Police sure, and you could argue for conservatives maybe. The others, no. The far right thinks black people are flatly inferior, and tolerate or encourage violence and oppression against them because of this. The far left's attitude toward white people is "it's bad that white people are dominant in society because of historical/structural racism", even in cases like affirmative action the clear goal is eventual equality, not that they want white people to end up structurally oppressed instead. If you can't see the difference in how toxic each of these attitudes are, I'm afraid I can't help you. But I'd love to see you explain how the left is apparently bigoted against straight people.
- earthscienceman 6y ago
  As a straight white dude from the rural United States who regularly hangs out in extremely far-left circles in very far-left places... you're out of your mind. I've never once heard a 'leftist' advocate for the murder of men, whites, straight people, conservatives, or rural dwellers (although, to be fair, occasionally the police). However, growing up and still when I visit home, I regularly hear how black people, queer people, and just liberals in general, aren't worthy of being left alive. These sides are not equivalent, no matter how desperately you want them to be. Also, my induction into these liberal circles went so far as "you want people to be treated equally? cool.". I didn't have to hand in my cis-white-man card and tattoo an anarchy symbol. In fact, we regularly talk about all sorts of controversial subjects. My friends often enjoy hearing what it was like to grow up in the world of pocket knives and bar fights. I take my communist friends out to shoot guns. Ask me how many of my rural friends have ever asked to experience life among the queers? You're comparing a rose bush with thorns to a semi-automatic rifle in terms of aggression towards the other party.

CyberDildonics 6y ago

The current state of slashdot is good place to investigate. These days the comments are filled with people switching to anonymous mode to inject some sort of political statement even if it has no relevance to the story. Sometimes it's just people posting giant ascii swastikas.

gregf 6y ago

I would say reddit is on the far left not the far right, you can't have any opinion that isn't towards the left on reddit with being attacked.

lodovic 6y ago

No moderation: right wing posts flourish. Strong moderation: left wing posts flourish.

antepodius 6y ago

It's because everyone puts up this herculean effort. There's a large population of people out there with views that annoy left-wing people, who don't really have a place on most internet platforms, because all internet platforms are left wing, because the dominant culture of silicon valley is much more left wing than the mean of, say, US citizens. (And everyone who wants to keep their job pretends to be more left wing than they are, too.) Anyway, this means there's this mob of people without a place to talk, and they want such a place. So if a place ever opens up that doesn't strictly persecute right-wingers- well, it's like being a town during the inquisition that doesn't persecute witches. Obviously, all the witches are going to flock to you!

antepodius 6y ago

It's because everyone puts up this herculean effort. There's a large population of people out there with views that annoy left-wing people, who don't really have a place on most internet platforms, because all internet platforms are left wing, because the dominant culture of silicon valley is much more left wing than the mean of your average person. (And everyone who wants to keep their jobs pretends to be more left wing than they are, too.) Anyway, this means there's this mob of people without a place to talk, and they want such a place. So if a place ever opens up that doesn't strictly persecute right-wingers- well, it's like being a town during the inquisition that doesn't persecute witches. Obviously, all the witches are going to flock to you! (Witch metaphor courtesy of Slatestarcodex, may it rest in peace.)

winstonewert 6y ago

I think it is because far-right is far less palatable than far-left. Consider two possible statements: 1. Hitler wasn't that bad. 2. Stalin wasn't that bad. I think, for most people, the first provokes a much more extreme reaction. Both were objectively terrible human beings, but defending Hitler is seen as far more extreme than defending Stalin. This has two effects: Firstly, far-right people are continually kicked out of communities. Far-left people are not. So any new unmoderated community is going to attract these "refugees" Secondly, nobody notices or cares when a community goes far-left. But its far more noticeable when a community goes far-right.

rsynnott 6y ago
I think both of those examples would provoke a pretty extreme response in most people, but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common, at all. You see a _bit_ of "Stalinism was actually good" stuff on the internet (weirdly, occasionally from the right; some more confused Russian nationalists have a bit of a Stalin fetish), but you'll see a lot more holocaust denial.
- devcouvert 6y ago
  >but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common Maybe the figure-head isn't en vogue anymore. The methods are always popular. Leftists(Socialists, Communists, Anarchists) often publically revel in the idea of when "the revolution comes" to put anyone dissenting up against the wall or sending them to a Gulag camp of some sort. I don't find that exactly reassuring. Seeing how "protesters" in the US and Europe act like chinese Red Guards during the cultural revolution, this day doesn't seem far off. I'm reading the "Three-Body Problem" right now and the first chapter eerily reminded me of the current situation where not being enough of an "ally" to the racial BLM movement is a thought-crime punishable by having your life destroyed.
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seph-reed 6y ago

Smart people use their brain to avoid conflict and end up kind of weak in that context. They don't stand their ground. Typically the lean left. Far-right definitely stand their ground, and can easily go unfazed by logical arguments. Dicks fuck pussies. We need assholes to shit on the dicks.

rsynnott 6y ago

Option 4: poorly moderated forums tend to fill with people banned by most other forums, such as Nazis. And various other undesirables, too; I gather voat had a big influx when Reddit banned its paedophile subreddits, and another one when FPH et all were killed. So if 1% of the population are far-right extremists, but most normal platforms ban or restrict them, any new platform with poor regulation will tend to fill with them. I do think that the very extreme (and thus bannable) far right _are_ probably more common than ditto on the far left; you just don't get that many Stalinists, anywhere. But the normal left (and normal right) aren't generally nasty enough to get banned everywhere, so most of the internet's displaced population of commenters is far right. I think there is an aspect of option 1, too, though. In Ireland a while back we had a referendum on allowing same-sex marriage, which passed by 62%, and another one, on legalising abortion (until then only legal in very limited circumstances), a few years later, which passed by 66%. Now, if you'd gone based on web polls and opinions being expressed in the comments on mainstream sites, you'd have assumed that both would fail by a landslide; it was really kind of incredible. Comments on news sites etc were grossly unrepresentative of the actual public mood; the right really does seem to be a lot noisier.

secondcoming 6y ago
Ok, I've not lived in Ireland for 15 years but I find it hard to believe that it has a 'right' that falls into the same definition as that of the US. You can't say that being anti-abortion means you're right-wing and therefore must also hate black people. It is actually possible for people to have a foot in either camp, to varying degrees, on multiple issues.

glenstein 6y ago

>Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? This did not used to be the case. It's a relatively extremely recent phenomenon, that I would say only really coalesced around 2014-2015. It used to be that the wild west of the internet was, to the extent that it reinforced anything at all, a boon to liberal and left wing politics and organizing. And a lot of the cultural aspects weren't co-opted the way they currently are. Gamer culture was surely unconsciously sexist, misogynist, but not to the extent that it is now where it's a full-on reactionary identity. Internet atheists didn't used to be misogynist right-wing trolls, but they are now. Trolling was just trolling, it wasn't organized into mobs or propaganda in the sophisticated way it is now. Anonymity and revealing one's 'true self' didn't channel it into a cultural current of toxicity that is now established and ready to welcome those impulse and stoke them and use them to nudge a person into a right wing trolling infrastructure. I think it's been weaponized by state actors and by bad actors who figured out how to use the tools, to turn everything into a nuclear wasteland. I don't believe it inherently disposes anyone toward any particular set of politics necessarily, and it didn't used to be the case that it got channeled in this way.

swebs 6y ago

It's because mainstream moderated sites don't censor far-left views, so those people have no incentives to move to unmoderated sites. For example, /r/MoreTankieChapo isn't even quarantined.

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austincheney 6y ago

> become far-right oriented? The problem is not so subjectively limited as to be a right-wing problem. Communities, unless extremely well policed, tend to become gravities of like mindedness when there is a visible vote system. This seems to occur because vote counts, whether positive or negative, are viewed as a form of credibility and because people are generally hostile to disruption and originality. When you step back from a subjective slant the phenomenon of group think has been well studied.

fiblye 6y ago

When reddit first launched, the media and mainstream leaned a bit more right. Reddit had people with pretty heavily left leaning views and also borderline anarchist libertarians flocking to it. Gay marriage and legal weed were actually not incredibly mainstream ideas back then and people who supported these things were often pushed out of many places, but virtually everyone posting on reddit supported it and topics like it popped up daily, mixed among programming news. There was also batshit sovereign citizen stuff and videos of people walking out of court because the court flags had gold fringes and that meant it wasn’t legit, and quite a few people on reddit praised stuff like this. Now the virtually everybody out there already supports gay marriage and legal weed, and those are a baseline for everything left of center and basically mainstream thought now. Everybody right of that gets pushed out of communities, so whenever some new community pops up, you get a whole spectrum of right of center as well as sovereign citizen types again looking to settle down and establish a community like left of center people did with places like reddit all those years ago. One bad thing for these new communities is that the internet is far more accessible now, and the more extreme members see their chance to finally talk, and those with extreme opinions like talking a lot.