Politically-engaged Redditors tend to be more toxic – even in non-political subreddits::A new study links partisan activity on the Internet to widespread online toxicity, revealing that politically-engaged users exhibit uncivil behavior even in non-political discussions. The findings are based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of comments from over 6.3 million Reddit users.
Ur mad cuz of things the TV said about trans kids and classroom litter boxes. I’m mad cuz your political party is a brainwashed cult bent on fascism.
We are not the same
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Political topics are also the topics that are most strongly gamed by political actors using Persona Management software to make it seem like their opinion is in the majority. The idea that people who participate in things such as “forum sliding” aren’t toxic in their interactions is absurd, so we’re left with assuming a large number of these toxic accounts aren’t actually real people.
I’m not saying people deep into politics can’t be toxic. Plenty of them are, sure. However, it’s in the interest of people with political power (especially politicians with politically unpopular ideas) to make regular people not want to participate in politics. One way you do that is to make all political people seem unhinged, angry, and just terrible. People wonder why hardly anyone votes in elections, this kind of stuff is why, and it’s not on accident that these folks seem like the majority.
I’m fully convinced the majority of them are bots trying to make politics in general seem more toxic than it actually is to dissuade more people from even wanting to be involved. The intent is to drive political apathy.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
100% agree with you. The worst part is the bots are getting better and better. I have a policy that you respond once to clarify and then walk away. These are for obvious bad actors, but now they’re seeming more and more like decent people with a flawed idea until you keep talking and realize it’s a bot. I don’t know how to counteract that.
voidMainVoid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Simple. You don’t. When I’m debating, I’m usually not trying to convince the person I’m debating with. I’m trying to convince a disinterested third party who reads the exchange later.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 11 months ago
How do you know they’re actually bots? 90% of the time, when I’m debating with someone who is passionately defending their position, they’ll at some point accuse me of being a bot or a shill. I also can’t recall any time I’ve debated someone and have been convinced they are a bot.
I’m just skeptical as it’s a convenient ad hominem.
alvvayson@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed these bots were mostly absent on Lemmy.
But recently, I have noticed they have arrived here, too.
I fully agree with your analysis.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In what way? Lemmy has been very political from the start. It arguably got less-so after the influx of redditors.
What are you seeing in the last month or so that makes you think there’s something more abnormal happening than usual?
thepiggz@programming.dev 11 months ago
Intriguing. 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.
aidan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Found a reddit mod with a dozen plus accounts. Made a new account to disagree with me, I pointed it out, and he denied it, but never used that account again.
It was probably just someone with no life, but I’d feel better about the world if he were being paid for it.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Are there any sources on this from the last decade?
Because I’m not sure if you noticed, but 2016 was kind of a big moment for politics and it triggered a lot of anger and controversy. Politics on social media are a very different thing now than they were in 2011/2012.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why, what happened in 2016? Did 46% of registered voters lose their goddamned minds and vote to put an entirely incompetent and demented convicted fraud and rapist sociopath who wears clown makeup in charge of the federal government or something? Why would that increase the fervor of fucking social fucking media for fuck’s sake jesus goddamned christ on a busted motherfucking crutch!!!
Sorry. You were saying?