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by Barrin92 1929 days ago
>because major institutions mostly refuse to say it out loud

because most of the actual content of far-right echo chambers is insane. Let's be real for a second the reason why this happens:

> [...]"Every other type of news outlet suffers a "misinformation penalty" if they share false information. The analysis found that in the far left, slightly left, and center categories, credible stories saw between two and five times as much engagement as fake news. On the far-right, however, misinformation received 426 interactions per thousand followers in an average week, while credible far-right information received only 259 engagements[...]"

is because the average far-right reader is, to put it bluntly, kind of stupid. Can you imagine what the average Economist reader thinks if the Economist were to publish "the earth is hollow, Bill Gates is a lizard, MAGA!".

This has nothing to do with 'major institutions', it's to do with the people who consume far-right content. I guess if you want to start to talk about solutions, you would have to stop to be politically correct, ironically enough a major demand of the far-right, and stop trying to pretend the consumers of this content are equal in their ability to critically process information.

2 comments

Funny because I think that firing person for saying a bad word, especially when talking about the nature of the word and not using it in a negative context, is an excessively and obviously bad practice of the 'Far Left' and that people who believe in this ideology are quite 'stupid'.

Banning Dr. Seuss books and trying to get publishers to stop publishing or carrying books by Children's authors like JK Rowling is equally bad, supported by 'stupid' people, who 'do not have the ability to critically process information'.

Much of this stupidity is authoritarian and unfortunately is backed by institutional forces.

I think the OP is essentially correct: the 'Far Right' (or the most stupid among them) are relegated to to Parler et. al. because the 'furthest right' of it is not acceptable in public commons.

Far Left ideology is actually supported by enough institutions, private and public, that however controversial their actions may be, it can exist in public discourse.

You can be a literal Communist today, in 2020 and possibly be ridiculed, but not banned.

Also: I suggest the timing of this may be a problem. Since the 2020 US Election, Trump has made the most serious lie of his career and repeated it often, which relates to his claims to have won the election. This is a Trumpian lie, of hyperbolic magnitude, and has millions of people caught up in it. If you read only Newsmax or occasionally Fox (remember that most people don't watch that much news) you might be inclined to believe this lie. In effect there is an incredible amount of buzz still lingering about the election lies, and this might distort the findings. I wonder what the results will be next year? I suggest probably similar, but not as drastic.