The internet and specifically social media are especially conducive to the spread of right wing media and propaganda unlike other ideologies. Through a range of asymmetric ideological features coupled with algorithmic support the right has mobilized the internet as a means of ideological growth more effectively than any other strain of political thought. This can and has led to disastrous real world impacts in recent years and will continue to happen with the current state of many social media platforms in this case the flourishing of right wing accounts in Post-Musk Twitter.
Social media and social media algorithms are no stranger to right wing propaganda utilizing these systems to recruit young internet users into their movements. From the early 2010s the incidents of gamer gate and anti SJW accounts formed the basis of the alt-right pipeline to the role of facebook in the lead up to the American presidential election in 2016. Each of these examples have shaped many people’s indoctrination into the right. This problem still exists in many similar forms as it did in these previous instances with in many cases just the actors changed. In June of 2022 Tiktok user @Jacobiouss posted a video with the basic idea of “how fast can I fall down the alt-right pipeline” in which he creates a fresh tiktok account setting the age as 12 years old and then attempts to reach a Ben Shapiro video which he deems as the (mostly arbitrary as it depends on your definition of alt-right) point in which someone is securely in the alt-right pipeline. He finds that within 1 hour of liking videos beginning with videos like “for the boys”, moving into andrew tate, then more extreme conspiracy theories, he was able to flood his fresh For You Page with right wing content.1 While these experiments are imperfect they demonstrate the prevalence of this relationship between right-wing media and the algorithm.
This connection between the Right and social media is deeply linked to the inherent ideological asymmetry between the traditional liberal and conservative. As discussed in “The advantage of the right in social media news sharing” most right wing individuals are more likely to distrust mainstream media, spread more misinformation and be more forgiving of others spreading misinformation.2 Additionally they often distrust what they view as “Big-Tech” social media and instead opt to use “alt-tech” platforms that typically have more lax regulations.3 These aspects are especially conducive to the environments of social media in which it is easy to falsify or produce alternative information in tandem with more general right wing tactics like othering and moralising things that are both also very easy on social media with endless sources of bad faith representation and echo chambers it produces a perfect environment to gestate and grow conservative beliefs.
Additionally there is evidence to suggest that these pipelines are also fundamentally products of algorithmic bias. Most notable on twitter this bias was demonstrated by an internally conducted twitter study of the algorithm that was released in 2021. Titled “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter” it discusses and admits that the Algorithim promoted right wing tweets over more liberal/left wing tweets. 4 Using the home page (the most common method of interacting with twitters algorithm) and a sample of 1% of all twitter users they attempted to chart the amplification of various tweets from both left and right wing politicians to the sample.5 They find that in a majority of the studied nations with the exeption of germany, conservative media was greatly favoured in the algorithm with the largest disparity being in Canada with Liberal politicians being amplified by about 47% compared to 167% amplification.6 Similarly news source saw a strong trend for right wing media with the disparity between them reaching 30% greater amplification towards the more conservative media.
However since this study was conducted Twitter has changed in one major way. It was acquired by Elon Musk who has become notable for his growing right wing beliefs and defense of “Free Speech” on the platform. This has result in major ramifications for the algorithmic interaction with right wing content. Journalist Bari Weiss found after Elon Musk released several internal twitter documents that several right-wing accounts had been shadow banned she lists the following examples: Jay Bhattacharya, an anti COVID-19 Lockdown spokes person and Stanford University professor of medicine was on a “trends blacklist,conservative radio personality Dan Bongino was on “search blacklist,” and similar conservative personality Charlie Kirk was given a “do not amplify” label.7 In an indirect response Elon Musk Tweeted the following “Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal”.8 This response implies that twitter is now making an effort to reverse many of these shadow bans in the name of Musk’s Free Speech agenda. Together these factors in combination with the previously noted right wing factors create the ideal conditions for the growth of new right wing accounts something that has been demonstrated several times in the months following Elon Musk’s acquisition.
This is especially exemplified by the twitter account @Endwokeness. EndWokeness is a right wing twitter account that has utalised a meme-based style of populism to promote right wing messages mostly revolving around the idea of ending “wokeness”. The account created on Jul 28th, 2022, only a few months before Musk’s take over has show exponential growth in post-musk twitter with Elon Musk specifically regularly interacting with the account. The account consistently gains between 100k – 200k followers each month tracked over the last 12 months and now has a following of 1.7 Million.9 Whereas many of these accounts would have been limited by the blacklists formerly found on twitter Endwokeness has experienced unbridled growth in the Post-Musk environment even garnering support from Elon Musk himself. The accounts profile picture proudly displays a Chad Wojack (a meme originating from 4chan that typically depicts a caricature of an archetype of masculinity eg. A Soyjack is a beta-male where as a Chad is the typical correct/right alpha male) over an american flag with the caption “I support the Former Thing” implying the typical conservative idea that the current state of “the west”/the world is worse than it was in the past. Falling into the archetype that the paper found was deeply entrenched in right wing tactics – the creation of a narrative of alt-media separate from the perceived current narrative. The condensed form of tweets also provides the ideal format for the excusable fake news that right wing groups are often more tolerant of while also creating ideologically charged narratives despite false claims or misrepresentation. Typical posts from Endwokeness involve a form of fear mongering or othering surrounding minority groups or movements such as queer people or POCs. This is often established by creating a narrative around these issues by selectively posting content such as a recent post in which he characterizes an ads inclusion of “straight white people” appearing in a political ad as a rarity as well as attempting to argue that the ad then proceeded to demonize them. This tweet falls squarely into an attempt to construct a white replacement narrative – that traditional america is being overrun by non-white, gay people. This post received 5k likes even being one of the accounts smaller posts (possibly due to the length of the video attached) however it still received over 551k impressions. Its larger posts often promote similar bile. Clearly labeling immigration as an invasion of white america it received over 37k likes and 7.4 Million impressions.
Accounts like Endwokeness’ influence however does not simply remain on twitter. The reason that the algorithmic push is an issue is the promotion of external violence and hate against these minority groups due to the narratives constructed by these accounts. This fear is not unprecedented either. Most prominently @LibsOfTiktok a similar account to EndWokeness became highly relevant in the rise of direct action regarding Queer youth in America. The account is credited with the popularisation of the term Groomer to refer to trans/queer activists and individuals especially in schooling settings.10 Additionally she has been noted as a possibly cause for numerous threats of violence against a hospital due to the account posting videos and audio regarding the hospitals administration of Gender affirming care to minors. These accounts lead to real hate, against people in the real world. With the algorithm behind and seemingly only encouragement from Twitter’s newer policies it only continues to facilitate their bigotry and its influence over those on these sites. Without direct action these imbalances, their greater ability to capitalize on the environment of social media will continue to allow these accounts to fester on social media platforms spreading hatred that will inevitably lead to harm and growing hatred against real people.
Bibliography
- Bari Weiss, [@bariweiss], Dec 9, 2022, THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO. TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS. [Tweet]
- “Digital Hate: Social Media’s Role in Amplifying Dangerous Lies About LGBTQ+ People” (PDF). Human Rights Campaign. August 2022. Retrieved September 16, 2022.
- Ferenc Huszár, Sofia Ira Ktena, Conor O’Brien, Luca Belli, Andrew Schlaikjera and Moritz Hardt (2021) “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter” Twitter, St San Francisco, CA USA.
- @Jacobiouss (2022). “how fast can I fall down the alt-right pipeline”, Tiktok
- Sandra González-Bailón, Valeria d’Andrea, Deen Freelon, Manlio De Domenico, (2022) The advantage of the right in social media news sharing, PNAS Nexus, Volume 1, Issue 3, July 2022, pgac137, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac137
- Schroeder, R. (2018). Digital media and the rise of right-wing populism. In Social Theory after the Internet: Media, Technology, and Globalization (pp. 60–81). UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20krxdr.6
- Socialblade, October 2 2022, https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/endwokeness
- @Jacobiouss (2022). “how fast can I fall down the alt-right pipeline”, Tiktok, https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSNL15XkH/ ↩︎
- Sandra González-Bailón, Valeria d’Andrea, Deen Freelon, Manlio De Domenico, (2022) The advantage of the right in social media news sharing, PNAS Nexus, Volume 1, Issue 3, July 2022, pgac137, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac137 ↩︎
- González-Bailón, d’Andrea, Freelon, De Domenico, (2022) The advantage of the right in social media news sharing, ↩︎
- Ferenc Huszár, Sofia Ira Ktena, Conor O’Brien, Luca Belli, Andrew Schlaikjera and Moritz Hardt (2021) “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter” Twitter, St San Francisco, CA USA. ↩︎
- Huszár, Ira Ktena, O’Brien, Belli, Schlaikjera and Hardt (2021) “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter” ↩︎
- Huszár, Ira Ktena, O’Brien, Belli, Schlaikjera and Hardt (2021) “Algorithmic Amplification of Politics on Twitter” ↩︎
- Bari Weiss, [@bariweiss], Dec 9, 2022, THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART TWO.
TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS. [Tweet],https://x.com/bariweiss/status/1601008766861815808?s=20 ↩︎ - Elon Musk, [@elonmusk], Dec 9, 2022, “Twitter is working on a software update” [Tweet], https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601042125130371072?t=dh2f2E0BmJspgkXadjvimA&s=19 ↩︎
- Socialblade, October 2 2022, https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/endwokeness ↩︎
- “Digital Hate: Social Media’s Role in Amplifying Dangerous Lies About LGBTQ+ People”. Human Rights Campaign. August 2022. Retrieved September 16, 2022. ↩︎