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I don't honestly know how you'd make a phone targeting left-leaning folks, but I wouldn't have actually thought how to make one targeting right-leaning folks, either, because to me both of those use cases are covered by, well, phones. :) If I was trying to follow the scam playbook, I guess I'd probably install Mastodon, Signal (or its weird broken fork that started this conversation, I dunno), and maybe a few leftist news apps, but even that's actually a bit tough -- there's multiple surveys over the last few years suggesting that conservatives get news from markedly fewer news sources than liberals do. As much as MSNBC may desperately wish otherwise, there is no liberal equivalent to Fox in terms of audience loyalty. (Although, the FreedomPhone specifically calls out NewsMax and OANN, which suggests they're going for people who think Fox may be a little too liberal!) As for whether Twitter, Tumblr and friends are canted to the left, here's why I'm doubtful of that. (Also doubtful of the inverse, to be clear.) It's fairly trivial to create a Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc., follow list which is curated to your favored sociopolitical bubbles -- that's basically going to happen if you use the sites as designed. The more you interact with those bubbles (e.g., what you like and what you retweet/reblog), the more focused they become. Okay, so, that's all probably pretty obvious, but here's the thing. Once you're in your favorite bubbles, the problems you see on, say, Twitter are going to be the problems that bubble experiences. If most of the people you follow are deeply invested, either directly or indirectly, with far right activism, you're going to see and hear about far right activists that Twitter has flagged or suspended or banned. If most of the people you follow are deeply invested, either directly or indirectly, with LGBTQ activism, you're going to see and hear about LGBTQ activists that Twitter has flagged or suspended or banned. But those two streams are very, very rarely going to cross. And that makes it very easy to think it's your particular in-group that's bearing the brunt of Twitter's evil machinations. |