I don’t have any conclusion here, it’s just an interesting thing to observe.
I mean I definitely wouldn’t be a leftist now if it hadn’t been for the leftist parts of facebook and Reddit
Yeah unfortunately it makes it super easy for feds to target leaders or potential leaders for harassment/conversion.
He didn't realize just how much they'd fuck him. A real belief in hacker idealism lead him to think that if he had access, readily given, to the JSTOR database, there was no good reason that anyone would seriously object to him sharing that access with the rest of the world. An educational institution should understand better than most that "information wants to be free," right?
All technology is a double edged sword. Imo the goal of leftist online outreach should be for recruitment and education, then push towards joining local orgs. Like, you get people to side with you, educate them, tell them to find a PSL chapter or something, then never hear from them again as they work on politics locally.
The internet was invented by the military. It functions on a consumer level as a personalised Skinner box.
I think it's illusory that it draws people to the left - that seeming effect is just because leftist ideology has intrinsic mass appeal, which of course necessitates the infiltration, policing, control of the medium of mass communication, just like town hall gatherings. So far at least the internet doesn't seem to have resulted in any real world gains for left wing movements, or maybe I'm ignorant of such an occurrence?
Its something orgs should seriously reckon with, and ideally we can find some way to use it for bare essentials (like event awareness, agitprop "pipelines" in online communities, leftwing media promos, directing ppl on social media to good sources instead of ops) and completely scrap it for any other kind of political engagement. So no more arguments on the CPUSA official twitter page, or building paper thin internet "subcultures" to make up for cultural suppression of the left irl and having them turn into splinter ideologies, like the 'patsocs' or any form of anarchism that wasn't invented before 1990
i can't imagine being radicalized on facebook and reddit instead of on tumblr like a true revolutionary
It's human stupidity but faster and farther than ever before
Just pure undiluted dumbfuckery broadcast across the entire globe at unprecedented rates
