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by glenstein 2181 days 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.