This isn't about research, it's about preconception. You imagine that you've got 80 million Americans watching cute dog videos and you can find some algorithm t

This isn't about research, it's about preconception. You imagine that you've got 80 million Americans watching cute dog videos and you can find some algorithm to feed them communist propaganda or whatever. In reality what happens is you start fucking with their cute dog videos and they all immediately turn off. What made Facebook and Youtube dangerous is they enabled a pre-existing trend to just slowly trudge further into the extreme and insane. Yes, there are highways to hysteria. But they're embedded in humans and reinforced by algorithms, you can't just pick the way you want to go. The far right on facebook isn't really distinguishable from talk radio, because it's reinforcing not creating. Now, you could say that's bad in itself, but at the end of the day, extremism is often far ight Americans using their free speech to talk to other far right Americans. Right up until they storm the capitol.