Politico helpfully enlists a Facebook executive to explain that conservative content is more widely shared on the social media platform because Nazis are popular.
But Facebook says there’s a reason why right-wing figures are driving more engagement. It’s not that its algorithm favors conservatives — the company has long maintained that its platform is neutral. Instead, the right is better at connecting with people on a visceral level, it says.
Now, you might be saying to yourself that this has nothing to do with Nazis, but they clear that up for us.
“Right-wing populism is always more engaging,” a Facebook executive said in a recent interview with POLITICO reporters, when pressed why the pages of conservatives drive such high interactions. The person said the content speaks to “an incredibly strong, primitive emotion” by touching on such topics as “nation, protection, the other, anger, fear.”
“That was there in the [19]30’s. That’s not invented by social media — you just see those reflexes mirrored in social media, they’re not created by social media,” the executive added.
In case you’re still confused, “Right-wing populism” from the 1930’s is commonly known as fascism, specifically Hitler and Mussolini’s variety of murderous assholes. So, this executive is saying that Facebook didn’t invest Nazis and Nazis are dominating Facebook because humans beings are just absolute garbage by nature.
“It’s why tabloids do better than the [Financial Times], and it’s also a human thing. People respond to engaging emotion much more than they do to, you know, dry coverage. …This wasn’t invented 15 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook.”
As for Zuckerberg, the customer always comes first:
Facebook employees have challenged Zuckerberg in company-wide Q&A’s on these topics and the CEO has pushed back against his progressive workforce.
“The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base,” Zuckerberg said during one such forum on June 18, according to a report this week from The Verge. “Maybe ‘a little’ is an understatement…If we want to actually do a good job of serving people, [we have to take] into account that there are different views on different things, and that if someone disagrees with a view, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re hateful or have bad intent.”
I wasn’t raised to do a “good job of serving” Nazis. The veterans I met growing up didn’t talk much about the war, but they were clear on what their job was. I never questioned the worth of that job, and I still don’t.
Maybe it’s true that right-wing populism is “engaging.” I don’t find that a compelling excuse for letting them take over the world. For me, it just means the battle to contain them is never easy.
Your last sentence says it all.
Who would have thought that giving the most scared, paranoid and tribal people in society a means to unite as an active movement, paired with an actual Fascist US President, would lead to the destruction of the country ruled by laws, rather than men?
Oh well, as long as the rich can cement in their wealth and power so they can continue extracting rents from 90% of the population, whatever it takes I guess.
Besides, if we don’t give the rich all of the money, they won’t give the rest of us jobs.
Plus fuck them.
Containing these extremists is definitely job one. Doing so once they’ve had a significant taste of power and with social media platforms that continue to enable them is going to be one hell of a heavy lift. I keep reminding myself that the alternative (Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Facebook!) is too dystopian to contemplate.
My family, like so many others, was filled with anti-fascists back when it was looked on as a personal and national duty to fight them. I lost a couple of uncles in the war. One was shot down over the Pacific, off the island of Mindanao, in the days preceding the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. His body was never recovered. Another uncle lost his life on the battlefields of Italy. Another was a tail gunner, whose plane was shot down over North Africa. He and some of his crew parachuted to safety and he spent a few weeks evading the Nazis, with the help of locals. The pilot and co-pilot did not make it out of the aircraft. He was finally united with British troops and returned to safety. The last time I saw him alive I was a teenager, and my brother and I sat up late into the night at my Aunt’s house listening to him tell his story. He had never related his war experiences to anyone in the family, as far as anyone knew, so hearing him talk of how close he came to being captured on several occasions was sobering, even to a teenager. He knew, at best, that a prison camp awaited him. There was one near where he spent his time in hiding, so the troop presence in the local area was very high. Several of the women in my family spent the war working in a local munitions plant, cranking out ammo of all sorts for the war effort.
So it kind of gives my brain a whiplash when I hear some people in my family, just one and two generations removed from these people who sacrificed so much, essentially supporting the very same sort of fascism that their blood relatives felt was their duty to destroy. It is one of the most confounding feelings of dissonance to try and square this whole idea in my head; the fact that they just don’t see the conflict here. Yet here I sit, with probably 90% of my relatives supporting a man who thinks there are Nazis who are “good people”.
I am simply at a loss. This really does leave an emotional scar on me, and I don’t think I will ever be able to completely get over or past my anger and disappointment at people who I thought I knew. Our dead relatives, who sacrificed so much in the fight, would be as aghast at their words and behavior as I am.
Obviously in the view of your family members, True Americans cannot (by definition) be fascists or Nazis. It does not and cannot compute. It can’t happen here.
Most Trumpites believe they are stopping the political “decline” of the chosen Herrenvolk–the white working class–and are advancing the interests of the beleaguered white “minority” in America from racial “destruction”, whatever that might be. That’s the highest possible social and cultural value, and doing so cannot possibly be politically wrong, no matter how much it might sound like Hitlerism. And no matter how unvirtuous, amoral and “deeply flawed” their (anti-democratic) Dear Leader might be. He’s the “chosen vessel”, obviously working for good. The Good of the Body transcends trivial issues like “democracy”…
Trumpites are voting “for” white identity, and for subjection of non-white interests. Whether they mull this over consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant; they can’t be made to admit to it in any circumstance. As the Facebook monsters have figured out, American fascism is a “policy” every True American can understand and “feel good” about, unlike health insurance reform!
Another “unintended consequence” of the internet: the unification of previously fragmented Fascist-American extremists–for profit! Thanks for your “service”, Facebook…
The only answer to such an operation is a total boycott by decent people and social shaming of anyone remaining on the “platform”. Economic destruction of the amoral and wrongdoing enterprise is the only answer, since the law can likely do nothing about regulating it.
Another basically unsolvable problem.
Clearly, Zuckerberg is looking out for his bottom line and I hate that. But we who encounter these folks online bear some responsibility for responding as well .
This topic has been discussed and illuminated ad naseum ever since the publication of Lakoff’s Don’t Think about an Elephant. People emote first do deep dives into abstract reasoning and moral philosophy second if at all. Lefties often make the mistake of thinking that online discussions are college seminars. They are not. The trick is making your point in emotional powerful ways. I strongly recommend Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. ”
I hate what is happening on social media, but just railing against it without a well founded way of fighting back is not going to work. In the end, unless we can undermine the blind and limited tribal moralities that are the bedrock of this nascent Fascist moment, we are in serious trouble whether Trump wins or not. We do this not just by intellectually challenging the evil swill that passes for morality on the Populist right, but by doing so with appeals to our better angels framed in emotional powerful ways and not just in intellectual ones.
Case in point: “Defund the Police” I suspect was somebody’s spur of the moment inspirational slogan. At least, I hope nobody thought about this for an length of time and decided to go with it. It pushes the right’s emotional/tribal buttons, puts moderate lefties on the defensive from the get-go and does nothing to advance any kind of hopeful dialogue. How about “right fund the police” or “rethink the police” or “reform the police”. Instead of the conversation starting off with me saying, I don’t support disbanding the police department, I just to reform them, I can start by engaging on the issue of what the police and should not be asked to do.