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by downWidOutaFite 573 days ago
Social networks' usefulness is proportional to the size of the network so they are naturally winner takes all markets.
1 comments

unless you have two enormous networks where one happens to be libertarian/right leaning and the other is mostly very left. both have huge audiences and can likely thrive just fine on their own. i don't particularly think it's healthy, but it seems like that's just how humans are.
I think that if you have a neutral social network and a politically-charged social network, the neutral one will attract more eyeballs. People like to see ideas challenged and debated. Heavily-moderated and single-sided networks (Mastodon, Truth social, etc.) are simply boring compared to celebrity drama and political clashes on twitter.

What you have in the modern internet is that left-leaning users avoid networks that aren't moderated in their favor (in a conscious attempt to prevent moving the overton window), which leads to right-wing takeover (and eventually death of the social network because there are only right-wingers, see the graveyard of reddit alternatives). This trend would have been reversed a decade ago.

So Gab, Parler, Truth Social, etc were all left-leaning?