Election Reveals Right-Wing Shift of Social Media Platforms - The New NormalBoo Hoo
Nov. 17, 20241/2
Liberals Are Left Out in the Cold as Social Media Veers Right
If the election underscored anything about the internet, it was the ascendancy of social platforms for the right. That puts Democrats at a disadvantage.
(Only the NYT's Would Be so Dishonest to Pretend the Left Haven't Tried to Destroy Us Forever, and Then Complain About It, when they can't control social media, because you suck so bad. The Left Has Held Power 75% of the time and you are acting like you are left out!Begging for sympathy when you have condemned, destroyed and tried to kill our president PDJT, this is your sick Narrative Turn!)
After Donald J. Trump won the election this month, his supporters gravitated to a panoply of online destinations to celebrate.
Hundreds of thousands ofposts lauding Mr. Trump’s victory filled Truth Social, the social platform that the president-elect owns. Speculation about what the new administration would accomplishran rampant on X,which is owned by Elon Musk.Gab, Parler and other right-wing social mediasites were flooded with thousands of memes glorifying Mr. Trump.
No similar spaces existed for the left. Meta’s Instagram, Threads and Facebook had publicly de-emphasized politics leading up to the election. Mr. Musk had transformed Twitter into X and shifted it to the right. And no other tech platform had gained momentum as a public square for liberals. (OMG fucking outrageous)
“It has become starkly evident that the left, the Democrats, do not have the same social media platforms to push their agenda,” said Phillip Walzak, a political consultant based in New York. “It has left Democrats in a huge deficit.”
If the election underscored anything about the internet, it was how far social media platforms had moved to the right. While Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other sites continue to be popular gathering places for entertainment and meme-making, political discourse online has increasingly shifted to an array of mostly right-wing sites that have built up their audiences and stoked largely partisan conversations.
The change was an unintended consequence of a series of decisions made by some of the biggest social platforms nearly four years ago.(you cheered it, you intended the destruction of the right)
After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Facebook and Twitterbooted Mr. Trump and his far-right supportersfrom their platforms. In response, Mr. Trump and his allies, who accused the tech companies of censorship, flocked to or started their own social media sites that promoted conservative causes. By the time the mainstream platforms allowed Mr. Trump and other right-wing figures to return, they had increased their online followings and influence.
That has left Democrats at a major disadvantage(WTF?), just as Republicans are set to take control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. Inside the Democratic Party, some have discussed the lack of tech platforms available to push their agenda, said two Democratic strategists involved in the confidential conversations, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Some have debated how they squandered years in which they should have built their own answer to Truth Social, the people said.
The online disparity was evident on Nov. 5, when Vice President Kamala Harris and Mr. Trump shared messages on social media urging people to vote. Mr. Trump’s posts were more widely shared and liked than those by Ms. Harris and her campaign, according to a New York Times review of social platforms.
On Facebook, Mr. Trump’s most popular Election Day post asking voters to stay in line and cast their ballot was liked nearly 160,000 times and shared by more than 15,000 people. Ms. Harris’s most popular Facebook post was liked 18,000 times and shared by 1,500 people.
On Instagram, an image that Mr. Trump posted on Nov. 5 with his “Make America Great Again” slogan was liked over 2.1 million times. Ms. Harris’s most popular post that day, which celebrated Gen Z’s first-time voters, was liked 569,000 times. And on X,Mr. Trump’s most popular post calling on supporters to vote was liked over one million times, while Ms. Harris’s most popular post was liked just over 318,000 times. (Are you freakin kidding me, Trump has always has millions on his X. But Even the left doesn't like Kamala, there's plenty of lefties on X.)
https://archive.is/Xyg9s