Comment on Politically-engaged Redditors tend to be more toxic -- even in non-political subreddits
thepiggz@programming.dev 11 months agoIntriguing. I don’t totally know what I think about this argument. A purposeful initiative to make politics toxic to get people to stop paying attention. It’s not one I had totally considered before. You think that’s really going on?
I have had many experiences with real people not on the internet that seem to fixate largely on politics and believe so fervently that they are right that they allow themselves to become toxic. I always thought it was a kind of inconsistent latent belief in utilitarianism combined with overconfidence.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
I’m not saying those people don’t really exist, there are tons of them out there for sure, but we also have extensive evidence of governments doing this.
GCHQ in the UK had JTRIG using many forum disruption techniques.
There’s also the Five Eyes and how they use information sharing to essentially do an end-run around being able to spy on their own citizens. Technically, they’re not spying on their own citizens, a foreign nation is, they just so happen to have an agreement with that foreign nation to get info on their own citizens.
Israel has many different programs aimed at managing the PR of the state of Israel online. From paying college students to speak positively of Israel online to having “Think Tanks” use teams of people to influence Wikipedia.
We know that Hacking Team was selling their surveillance software to oppressive regimes, who were definitely using it to oppress the population. If they’re using these kind of tools, they’re using online disinformation tools as well.
So once again, there’s tons of real life absolute maniacs when it comes to politics. There’s also incentive for governments around the world to run influence campaigns for pennies on the dollar with digital tools in the digital world.
thepiggz@programming.dev 11 months ago
I think you’re right that there are people out there trying to manipulate and influence social media - I mean even that platforms themselves do this to a certain extent.
The idea that they purposely try to make it toxic to push the more intellectually-honest, emotionally-controlled people out of the conversation is the interesting part to me.
This particular facet feels less like intentional manipulation and more like a side-effect of our platforms and how they function.