Right-Wing Social Media Finalizes Its Divorce From Reality

[Celerity]

Fox News acknowledged Trump’s loss. Facebook and Twitter cracked down on election lies. But true believers can get their misinformation elsewhere.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/right-wing-social-media-finalizes-its-divorce-reality/617177/



When Fox News called Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden shortly after the polls closed there on Election Night, right-wing social media erupted in fury. Fox is the most conservative of the nation’s major news outlets, and its aggressive Arizona call—which most other national outlets did not follow for days—left true believers on the right feeling betrayed. On the social-media app Parler, which has been gaining popularity among supporters of President Donald Trump, posts alleging electoral irregularities mixed with assorted hashtags decrying Fox itself: #BOYCOTTFOXNEWS, #DUMPFOXNEWS, #FAKEFOXNEWS, #FOXNEWSISDEAD, and #FOXNEWSSUCKS. Throughout Election Day, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had been cracking down on a flurry of allegations about voter fraud in Arizona; the platforms quickly applied warning labels to new posts containing false or disputed information and reduced the distribution of groups spreading them. In response, pro-Trump influencers exhorted their followers to congregate on Parler, which tells users to “speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being ‘deplatformed’ for your views.”

In the hours following the Arizona call, a paranoid conspiracy theory spread rapidly on Parler and in other right-wing online forums: Voters in conservative counties had been given felt-tip pens that supposedly made vote-counting machines reject the ballots that they marked for Trump. The following night, Trump supporters protesting what came to be called #SharpieGate gathered outside the Maricopa County ballot-counting facility in Phoenix. In a development previously unthinkable to liberals who have long dismissed Fox as state media for the Trump administration, the Arizona protesters began chanting, “Fox News sucks!”

Trump’s clear loss in the presidential election has precipitated a deep rift in the right-wing information ecosystem, as media outlets, tech platforms, and individual commentators have been forced to choose between upholding reality and indulging those who insist that the president actually won. On November 7, Fox News was among the major networks that called the election for Biden, its news stories now refer to him as “president-elect,” and even the pro-Trump Fox commentator Tucker Carlson has challenged absurd claims being made by the president’s lawyers. The major social-media platforms—which for years boosted sensational propaganda and Trump-friendly conspiracy theories such as QAnon—have been remarkably active and admirably transparent in preventing the spread of misinformation about the 2020 election. As the president continues to rail against his loss on Twitter, the mainstream social platforms have continued to label wild claims and false allegations and reduce their spread; Facebook has taken down some of the more extreme communities that have sprung up among its users.

Yet reducing the supply of misinformation doesn’t eliminate the demand. Powerful online influencers and the right-wing demi-media—intensely partisan outlets, such as One America News and Newsmax, that amplify ideas that bubble up from internet message boards—have steadfastly reassured Trump’s supporters that he will be reelected, and that the conspiracies against him will be exposed. No doubt seeing an opportunity to pull viewers from a more established rival, One America News Network ran a segment attacking Fox’s Arizona call and declaring the network a “Democrat Party hack.” The president himself, while tweeting about how the election was being stolen, amplified accounts that touted OANN and Newsmax as places to find accurate reporting on the truth about his election victory. And on Parler, the conspiracy-mongering has grown only more frenzied as Trump makes state-by-state fraud allegations: In addition to concerns about Sharpies, the social network abounds with rumors of CIA supercomputers with secret programs to change votes, allegations of massive numbers of dead people voting, claims of backdated ballots, and assorted other speculations that users attempt to coalesce into a grand unified theory of election theft.

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Link to tweet

[empedocles]

1. ' . . . a deep rift in the right wing information ecosystem . . . '

[CrispyQ]

2. One of the correspondents for MSNBC did a segment on Q-anon.

It was staggering. One of the people he interviewed was a young woman, under 30, had a couple of small children, lived in a nice, suburban neighborhood, I can't remember where, but Texas, I think. She got involved with Q-anon & when the correspondent asked her, "You don't really believe that Joe Biden & the Democratic Party are involved in an international pedophile ring, do you?" She said, "I don't want to, but yeah, I do."

I have some trumpers in my family & two of them are Q-anon whack jobs. And both are very angry, all of the time.

[Mariana]

6. There are churches preaching this shit to their flocks. nt.

[Newest Reality]

3. Let's see...

Let's see how Dr. Trumpenstein's monster works out now that they are so emboldened and encouraged.

It is quite possible that they will turn on everything and spin themselves into a deeper rabbit hole of chaos. They will get a group think going that is self-supporting and maybe independent of their former masters and anything and everything is fair game.

That's a body politic full of holes and conspiracies so the chaos maybe the monster turning on its creator now.

The thing is, they only have delusions to work with and none of it is based on a consensus reality the farther out they go. Heads may pop and anger and frustration may build into a frenzy as they try to resolve the cognitive dissonance they have been dealt and bought into based on "it sounds right to me".

[hatrack]

4. " . . . as if millions of morons suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced."

[Midnight Writer]

5. It's an addiction. They "get a rush" from "information" they find shocking.

And as their tolerance grows, they need stronger and stronger shocks.

When their dealer, in this case FOX, gives them weak shit, they find another dealer with the good stuff.