r/The_Donald helped radicalize users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months. ( journals.sagepub.com )

I know most people that were on reddit at the time are fully aware of this and won't be surprised but don't dismiss the findings out of hand. It's important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

One cannot be an active thedonald user without already being a white nationalist.

Any dissent gets an instant permaban.

instavi76 ,

Any dissent gets an instant permaban.

So just like r/conservative? I only commented there once and was instantly permabanned. It was a while ago. Deinately before Trump was president, maybe 2015. Maybe earlier.

I kinda watched the political climate change drastically since 2015. Statring form Trumps presidency to spreading all over America, Europe and the world. And I wonder where this came from in such masses. Russian efforts and paid propagandists? They can't be THAT powerful, can they? It is insane and it spreads everywhere. Into every corner of the world. I don't understand it. People seem to want authoritarian leadership. Have they all lost their minds?

Daft_ish ,

Not defending Russia, the us wrote the book on election interference. To act like it's not possible now is insane. American exceptionalism is the biggest hoax. The GOP is now banking on the us letting Putin win. They've sold us down the river with fanciful delusion that they will get to rule the ashes and install their Christo-fascist bullshit.

Socsa ,

Literally everyone on Reddit could see this except spez, who is a greedy little pigboy

Zipitydew ,

Oh he could see it too and didn't care because he's a self proclaimed libertarian.

Eldritch ,
@Eldritch@lemmy.world avatar

What's a right wing libertarian other than a fascist so selfish they aren't concerned or swayed by ideas of nationalism or "heritage". But they'll happily enable and march with the ones who are. When their self interest aligns. They just want to be the ones on top.

nilloc ,

They’re mostly just conservatives who like drugs.

Ensign_Crab ,

Be fair. They're also conservatives who are more open about not wanting the age of consent to be a thing. Which also explains the sub spez used to moderate.

barsquid ,

There are only three kinds of libertarians:

  1. Likes drugs and naive about economics.
  2. Hates minorities and understands economics but naive as fuck about NAP.
  3. Pedophile.
PoliticalAgitator ,

Extremists are engagement.

JasonDJ ,

I really wonder if the nouveau rich tech startup boys look around and realize that their greed is directly responsible for the 2016 election and by extension, the state of US domestic politics today, and feel even a tiny bit of guilt over it.

Probably not.

PoliticalAgitator ,

I don't think that's how they're wired. If anything, they'd be excited to learn they're a couple of million dollars of AI astroturfing from being able to choose the president.

GoofSchmoofer ,
@GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world avatar

But that's not true I've heard it straight from the tech-bros mouth. They build these technologies to help us, the little people. To spread peace and love and build deeper connections with the people that we love. I'm sure that they feel pain and guilt that they have to deposit those large checks into their bank accounts. /s

Ensign_Crab ,

Why would they feel guilt regarding something they wanted to do?

JasonDJ ,

See, I don't think that. I think they are power hungry, sure. But I don't think they ever realized the power that their product would grant them. It's totally unprecedented. They get right into our brain and tickle our dopamine receptors while they mess with everything else.

I don't think they expected or were prepared to yield that type of power, at all. I really feel like Zuck et al accidentally stumbled into being a supervillain. Like some sick Mr. Bean skit.

BonesOfTheMoon ,

Remember when they lifted the no racism rule? I do.

Illuminostro ,

We 'member.

Appoxo ,

Reddit or the sub?

BonesOfTheMoon ,

The Donald.

Iceman ,

It was a hilarious mask of movement. They did it to "own" /r/Sweden in the subwars and obviously got their asses handed to them.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Yes. And I really should have left Reddit then and never looked back.

Th4tGuyII ,
@Th4tGuyII@kbin.social avatar

While it certainly is a bit of a captain obvious moment that exposure to far-right echo chambers helped radicalise vulnerable people into the far-right, but I can see the merit in having empirical evidence supporting what we see (as OP said) - it is a lot easier to dismiss an andecdote than statistical evidence

glimse , (edited )

To all the people rushing to sarcastically comment how surprised they are: Yes, we all saw it happen. But..

It's important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.

This is why OP posted it. Science isn't feelings, you need data.

DreamlandLividity ,

Science is feelings

Typo? 🤣

xChronoZerox ,

Seriously 😮‍💨 science is literally the opposite of something vague like "feelings"

DreamlandLividity ,

Could be social commentary on what passes as "science" on social media these days. 🤣 That's what made me laugh.

glimse ,

Yes

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

I would've been curious to see what kinds of words got counted as "far-right vocabulary" but it appears that research has recently gone back to being effectively concealed behind paywalls for those of us not in academia.

ZeroCool OP ,
@ZeroCool@vger.social avatar

It's 2024, anyone feigning ignorance about what constitutes a "far-right vocabulary" is just being disingenuous.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

That's not really true. Anyway, the "supplementary material" provides a few examples at least. We can only assume that they should be representative and that care was taken in drawing the boundary between that sort of thing and less objectionable but culturally adjacent terms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240511183257/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/1532673X241240429/suppl_file/sj-pdf-1-apr-10.1177_1532673X241240429.pdf

thanks_shakey_snake ,

Good find, thanks.

"Gamer precursor" is a bit of a surprise. I know gaming communities can be toxic, but it seems like the odd one out in a list with "conspiracy, racist, violent, sexist, and offensive."

ZeroCool OP ,
@ZeroCool@vger.social avatar

“Gamer precursor” is a bit of a surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)

thanks_shakey_snake ,

Yes lol I've heard of Gamergate. But I still don't think "far right" when I hear "gamer." It wouldn't shock me to learn that they correlate to some degree, but whereas the other precursors sound per se characteristic of the far right to me, "gamer" seems like an odd fit.

Like lots of people from a broad range of backgrounds would describe themselves as gamers, and that's generally uncontroversial. Not the same for any other precursor in that list.

Hence, surprised.

SPRUNT ,

Oh, hey! Come on now!

They could just be really, really stupid.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

Speaking of online extremism, imagine calling someone stupid for wanting to read a scientific paper before forming an opinion about it.

Zorque ,

One can assume, yes. But that's not especially scientific, is it? What's the point of the research if you can't look at the methodology?

Someone else defended the post from people saying "well d'uh" by saying we need to corroborate our theories and not just assume they're correct. Kind of hard to do when research is hidden behind paywalls.

kakes ,

Was going to say this same thing to back you up. We can't both defend this "obvious" study by saying "it's good to have data to back it up!" And then simultaneously argue against having data because it's "too obvious".

I completely agree, a study like this is as good as worthless without disclosing the list of words, or the methodology used for testing words (if they are stored in a latent space rather than a list, for example).

thanks_shakey_snake ,

Why are we downvoting this comment? It's a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder about the study, and I had the same thought.

Not because I can't possibly imagine what could constitute "far right vocabulary..." But just cause I'm interested in the study methodology.

Like yeah, any of us can often identify far-right language when we see it... But how did the researchers approach that systematically? Are there any surprises there, like phrases that I wouldn't recognize? Did they include patterns like "randomly capitalizing words for emphasis?" That would be interesting to know.

Or maybe I misunderstood, and the people downvoting are just pro-paywall, idk.

kakes ,

Some people seem to be more concerned with this study "feeling" correct more than it actually being verifiably correct.

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/29abad51-991a-4430-9dad-44488c78eabe.png

someguy3 , (edited )

Did it actually radicalize, or just take the mask off? They may have used vocabularies they always wanted to.

Using an original dataset of Reddit user posting histories from 2015–2017, I test for increases in the frequency of this far-right vocabulary.

I think there's a lot to be discussed on the topic but I wouldn't put much on this methodology.

bolexforsoup , (edited )

,

someguy3 ,

Radicalization happens yes, it's a question of The Donald specifically doing it. It's not so big that many people will just randomly stumble into it like Fox (which is passive and 24/7). People have to kinda seek the sub out and engage. At that point they were probably quietly, let's just say, racist. So I put that in the category of mask off. I know people they could do that.

bolexforsoup , (edited )

,

someguy3 ,

I did read the portion accessible, I quoted it in my original comment.

ZeroCool OP ,
@ZeroCool@vger.social avatar

Did it actually radicalize, or just take the mask off?

When a community allows you to feel comfortable "taking the mask off" and embracing your inner bigot that is radicalization. So yes, The_Donald did radicalize people. Your comment is an attempt to highlight a distinction without a functional difference.

someguy3 ,

I guess you could define radicalization like that, but I'd define it as taking regular Joe with no hate and you know radicalizing them.

Radicalization (or radicalisation) is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly radical views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo.

Yeah I think there's a difference between radicalization and mask off.

ZeroCool OP ,
@ZeroCool@vger.social avatar

"Increasingly" is the key word there, pal.

someguy3 ,

Adopting is the key word actually. Mask off is revealing it.

Zorque ,

There is no one key word. They all kind of intermingle to explain the whole idea. Picking and choosing which word you feel most comfortably explains your own opinion doesn't make it right.

kakes ,

Honestly, before now, this is what I had implicitly assumed was going on. I'm not American, and I had blocked most of this trash when it was happening, but my impression was that these ignorant people were just "coming out of the woodwork" so to speak.

Of course, fear and hate are learned behaviors, but it's interesting to me to see that these people were actually being quantifiably radicalized by that website in particular, and they weren't simply bringing views to the platform that were being established elsewhere.

lath ,

People are emotional creatures. And in a place where a type of view is being actively promoted, it's very easy to align those emotions in that specific direction.

An example here on Lemmy is ACAB. It's anti-police and it posts the bad stuff that's meant to show ACAB. They might say it shows the truth and people going through All, watching the videos and reading the articles might start thinking, huh cops seem bad. They keep going, read statistics and articles posted by other commenters and driven by this information, they eventually end up saying ACAB. Suddenly, anyone not saying ACAB is complicit, an enemy, a troll, part of the problem etc.

It's the same for any politically charged social hub. It's not just people who had the views but lacked a place to vent them, but people who are ignorant on the subject and are radicalized through emotional outrage.
Emotional opinions are the hardest to change because the investment in them is the greatest.

snownyte ,
@snownyte@kbin.social avatar

No. Fucking. Shit.

Any and I do mean, any conservative based subreddit all now function the same. r/conservatives have turned into a shithole. Hell, even TrueUnpopularOpinion has turned into it's own shithole because it's just a foundation for right-wingers to express their radicalized thought processes for all to see.

ZeroCool OP ,
@ZeroCool@vger.social avatar

Yeah, I've always described r/Conservative as The_Donald dressed up in their dad's suit and tie. But once The_Donald was finally banned (after they already left for their own website - thanks for nothing spez) r/Conservative dropped all pretenses.

MapleEngineer ,
@MapleEngineer@lemmy.world avatar

R/republican was a right wing echo bunker, too. I got banned for pointing out that the letter in the "article" that someone posted that claimed that the DOJ had found massive voter fraud in Georgia and asking the state to reject Biden's win was actually written by a Trumpist shill and contradicted the Republican AG, the DOJ, the Republican Governor, the Republican Secretary of State, and Republican election officials.

I asked them a couple of times when major events in the prosecution of John Eastman occurred if they would reconsider. They blocked me for 30 days each time. When he was finally disbarred I asked again and they told me that if I didn't stop asking they would report me to the admins.

Delicate little snowflakes in their echo bunker.

bolexforsoup , (edited )

,

BakerBagel ,

r/unpopularopinion was a shithole. Any sub called "realXYZ" "QRS2" or "TrueABC" is just the "free speech" version started by someone pissed that they got banned for using slurs, so I'm not surprised r/TrueUnpopularOpinion went to shit. I'm surprised you think it was decent at any point tbh.

tigeruppercut ,
@tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip avatar

There were a couple "trues" that actually had a purpose and were actively less shitty than the original one. The games and gaming subs were mostly memes and fan boys being assholes, but truegaming was for longer form discussion and memes weren't allowed.

snownyte ,
@snownyte@kbin.social avatar

I remember TrueGaming having such a stingy requirement, like they wouldn't have allowed you to post for a month. It was dumb but I understood. It's no longer there.

Yeah r/gaming is a shitfest, you can't have an honest engaging conversation about games. It's always about sensationalist takes, cosplayer females dressing sexually to appeal to the lonely losers who frequent there, rage porn for like 2 weeks, unfunny memes and junk posts like "REMAKE THIS ONE GAME ONLY I REMEMBURH! COME ON, I PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND BUSINESS! THIS WILL RAKE IN SO MUCH MONEY!"

And the same person will pull a two-face and condemn the industry for practicing what they think is bad business, while simultaneously STILL PAYING FOR THE SHIT THEY THINK IS THE PROBLEM!

Hypocritical pieces of shit are what that community is.

waddle_dee ,

insert shocked pikachu here I mean, is this really surprising? That place was a cesspool disguising as irony. But news flash, it stops being ironic after a certain amount of time.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Who was that other dude? Think idubbz interviewed him.

Was doing the same thing trying to hide behind layer of “meta irony” or whatever water muddying bullshit they wanted to call it.

People who shoot crooked just don’t need to be trusted period

blargbluuk ,
@blargbluuk@sh.itjust.works avatar

Sam Hyde?

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

That’s the one

gravitas_deficiency ,

It’s not about how expected this was. It’s about the fact that we have data to prove it, and it is definitely a probable phenomenon.

Incidentally, I’d be fascinated to see the data the alphabet agencies have doubtlessly gathered on what major players on /r/TheDonald are affiliated with foreign agents (primarily Russia, though China and Israel absolutely had a hand in it too), or just straight up foreign agents themselves. I hear they’re going to release a big report about that on February 31st.

Pretzilla ,

Agreed, it's such a dereliction of duty to not report on this.

As well as letting all the kompromized 4th of July legislators, et. al., and one former commander in chief in particular continue their treasonous subversion.

We are heading right off the rails.

gravitas_deficiency ,

I mean… it’s basically one entire party.

Remember when they popped the DNC’s email server and released stuff tactically at just the right moments to have the most damaging effect on Hillary?

It’s kind of an open secret that they popped the RNC’s email server too… and then didn’t release anything. Ockham’s razor might suggest there wasn’t anything there, but if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’ve been looking to sell. FancyBear/FSB/Russian Mafia/whoever is kinda obviously blackmailing like at least half of the Congressional Republican caucus, as evidenced by the entirely astroturfed opposition to Ukrainian military aid and extremely peculiar Russophilia.

Pretzilla ,

Exactly.

And again, when TF are the TLA's going to do something about this? They better do something soon or else they might be mistaken for Christo-fashists.

Serinus ,

disguising as irony.

About this. It was legitimately funny at first, when the Orange One had no chance.

The thing that turned it so fast from absolute satire into not at all satire was the immediate, within seconds, banning of anyone who called it out as a joke. The speed of those bans convinced me that someone was being paid to steer the narrative in their desired direction 24/7.

It was a masterclass in modern propaganda, and I'm glad it's being studied.

I learned personal lessons from it. I'm absolutely more PC now, because you never know who's going to take your absurd joke seriously. As Waddle said, if you say something ironically enough, it stops being ironic.

MBM ,

a cesspool disguising as irony

See also: various still-existing places such as PoliticalCompassMemes

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