Alternative Social Media Platforms and Right Wing

Hi there. I hope you are doing well.

It is 4:00AM right now, and it really is time to sleep. But I did sleep for four hours this evening, so it is easier to justify not sleeping.

I had some headache before, now it is okay.

Anyways, this one hopefully will be a quick one, as writing this popped to my mind suddenly.

It has been some time now that, almost every night I spend couple of hours browsing the web, watching videos, discovering weird websites, and so on. Although I don’t need one, it is a great time killer activity, which also feels good after finishing the session.

Anyways, today I was watching a video from Louis Rossman, about YouTube and new adblocker-blocking behavior. From there I wandered off to Rumble. It is a social media for video sharing - basically a YouTube alternative. Upon looking over their website and content, surprisingly it didn’t feel like an abandoned place. Then I searched internet with the company name¹ . Turns out, they were around since 2013, and are actually doing business². But one thing really caught my attention.

Rumble’s video platform is popular among conservatives[ref][ref][ref] and far-right users[ref][ref][ref] and has been described as part of “alt-tech” by various observers.[ref][ref][ref][ref]

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Here is another one, from wiki page of MeWe social media platform:

Although MeWe has not intentionally positioned itself as a social network for conservatives,[ref][ref] Mashable noted in November 2020 that its active userbase trends conservative.[ref]

[Link to the paragraph]

Hell no. Why can’t we have nice things?

This really drives me crazy. As you probably now, because of all these unethical practices, I very much dislike Facebook and such mainstream platforms. They have the most strict guidelines about which word, how, in which context, in which parts of content^{3 4} you can or can’t use. I mean, I understand why they have such strict rules. It is not easy to govern such massive platforms. But at this point, their massive size - inflated like a balloon - hurts the platform, freedom of speech and prevent users from expressing themselves. That is exactly why Elon Musk could advertise twitter as free-speech platform⁵ once he took over. To maintain this ridiculous scale, mainstream platforms implement censorship that is beyond the law. When you see people forced to do letter juggling to write the word “suicide”, you know we have failed. As society. Of course, platforms need to keep close eye on the usages. Internet is full of creepy people. But whenever I see the word written like “5u1c1de”.. It doesn’t feel good, man.

So, as a result of this censorship practices, communities with different political/economical views get suppressed. Most of the times, it is for good of our society - at least majority of it. And I think, unfortunately, blocking them from social media always backfires.

For example. It is extremely sad that there still are people influenced by fascist ideology. What do corporations do about them? They ban them from platforms. Block their accounts and label them in a very rude fashion. So, as every suppressed person would do, they seek for a platform which more like-minded people, and if they find one, they immediately join. That is why and how Trump’s Truth Social Media kind of things are created.

These platforms host very much concentrated communities, and they become like nests. People with doubts to their beliefs go there and get welcomed very nicely. They tell them that society is suppressing them, they are being censored and their freedom is being limited. That is why we should fight, get our freedom back, spread this idea.

You see how they work like nests! Nowadays every damn alternative social media feels like a possible nest for such suppressed communities.

This is exactly why Trump - and such people - join “Rumble”⁶.
This is exactly why “Odysee” is flooded with crypto-bros and right-wing people ⁷.
This is exactly why “Fediverse” admins have to de-federate from such instances in usual basis⁸.
This is exactly why “MeWe” has majority conservative user base.

There are much more samples to these, but I’m trying to to keep stuff short this time.

And from history, we all know what happens if you put all outlaws at the same place. America was kind of created this way, and the history is not that bright for them. Also, we don’t gather all criminal people together and let them live for themselves. Instead, we try to teach them and integrate them back to our society. Why are we not doing the same for online presence and ideologies?

First and the foremost, we can and should educate people. Make them aware. Don’t hide the history from them⁹. Show it in its nude form. Then make people question the events. Come up with fixes. Think about stuff.

You could let them socialize among us, and only take action based on the laws. I am all for enforcing rules at the most strict way possible. This way, they will also be exposed to other views, and possibly question their choices.

Sometimes, I also think that mainstream platforms have been doing this deliberately. By pushing these people out to other platforms, you can do multiple very crucial things for your business. Firstly, you get to avoid huge portion of lawsuits. Then, by showing other platforms as toxic environments, you can keep people in basically forever. For example me, I couldn’t get used to Odysee because of the huge amount of political / far-right / crypto stuff. The same for Rumble. And for MeWe.

Sigh.

Now I’m thinking, after all, we need to go back to niche forum times. Those were nice.

Whoop! I’d love to say this, but nope. This one is like closing your eyes and thinking others doesn’t exist.

Guess, there will never be a sweet spot. Maybe this is better, world have never had stable times. Maybe this is what the Yin and Yang means. The forever battle between sides. We need the balance.

If video is not playing for you, watch on YouTube

Attention!
DO NOT keep these references as your only resource to learn about these matters. They can (or do) contain bias.