[bun_at_work]

I have an example - I remember a time before social media and internet populism. In those days these same groups existed, but were exclusively on the fringe. You didn't hear people bring up radical alt-right talking points, or sympathize with nazis, or spout outright racism (as much).

The fact of the matter is that echo chambers encourage extremism and social media is nothing but echo chambers.

Another fact of the matter is human psychology. Humans have a biological tendency to accept as truth the first opinion they hear on a topic. This is a result of evolution. If your tribe member tells you a berry is poisonous, is the first response to argue? Or to just listen. Better to be safe than sorry.

When you combine that bit of psychology with social media, you see people go online to some circle jerk, innocently at first, and then get radicalized.

Now before any counter examples get brought out, just consider that while it doesn't work this way for every person, in every context, it does work this way for some non-trivial amount of people, and that's what we're seeing. A lot of users on parler aren't domestic terrorists, but if it's even 1% who fall victim to basic human psychology, that's enough for what took place on Wednesday.

So yeah - the example is the time before social media.

[jessaustin]

The time before the printing press was invented is certainly not an example of "taking away printed materials". Both the printing press and social media exist now. You wrote lots of stuff without including the example I requested.

Also, if you didn't hear racism in USA in the 1980s you've led a very sheltered life.

[bun_at_work]

You must have misread my comment.