4 ms·

>I'm not sure how to interpret this. The normie masses joined the internet. Simple as that.

• impossiblefork 4y ago
  I don't think that was at all what happened. I'm a Swede, so I'm slightly disconnected from American politics-- to me the people that are shocking or must be loved or anything else in American discourse are much less shocking or to be loved, basically, everything I feel about American politics is very strongly muted; and in the past I haven't had any conflicts with the Americans I know-- they were all pro-free speech, I think. Certainly, the idea of them supporting large-scale censorship by gatekeepers controlled by powerful individuals like billionaires or the political establishment would have been unthinkable. However, in the years after the 2016 election they all flipped completely. From my point of view they became dogmatic, insane and willing to do things that I saw as long-term self harm, or at least creating a situation where they made themselves helpless to protect themselves in the long term. They also ended up very strongly anti-Assange because of a feeling that Assange had helped Trump, even though they from their previous views would have been likely to support what he did. I have a vague feeling that there's been some kind of major propaganda effort whereby only official views are to be regarded as acceptable and that's it's related to the big internet companies. There is some public information on efforts in this direction in the context of preventing spread of non-official views-- called things like efforts at 'anti-disinformation'.