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The Antiquity to Alt-Right Pipeline (www.workingclassicists.com)

submitted 2 months ago by sculd to c/technology

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A good article in which the author researched how Twitter's algorithm pushed people interested in history into alt-right content.

Quote: "Adhering to my guidelines to follow accounts suggested by the algorithm, I clicked the “follow” button. This was the first time I was recommended content adjacent to alt-right and "manosphere" ideology. Prior to that, it was all history related. After “liking” approximately 100 Tweets, however, I saw that the accounts suggested to me were becoming increasingly political, and I was specifically being recommended accounts run by internet political commentators – as opposed to professional politicians or journalists. I cannot definitively call this observation evidence of being led down an alt-right pipeline, but it was interesting to note that those were the types of accounts suggested to me by the Twitter algorithm."

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[–] qprimed@lemmy.ml 40 points 2 months ago (2 children)

someone genuinely interested for intellectual reasons would likely not fall for it. I would imagine that a non-trivial percentage of "antiquity enjoyers" are very light on history substance and heavy on history feelz.

once the appropriate brain tickles have been pushed into their heads their "history substance" feed content becomes decidedly propagandized.

[–] sculd 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Agreed. Anyone who studies history should understand why Trumpism is bad and unsustainable.

But a lot of people are just in for the historical "aesthetics".

[–] aleph@lemm.ee 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Aesthetics, plus the seductive appeal that pre-modern, pre-liberal-democratic societies (when the governments were authoritarian, the women were submissive, and the men "were men") have for reactionaries, incels, and cryptofacists.

[–] The_Terrible_Humbaba@slrpnk.net 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think this is it.

The historians I know of actually seem to lean quite left of the average person; it's the light hobbieists, who are often more interested in the aesthetics/surface stuff, who seem to fall victim to the alt-right stuff.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 2 months ago

Honestly I'm a light hobbyist myself. My exposure to history is primarily via YouTube channels like the excellent Historia Civilis (their series on Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Roman Republic is stunning) and via games like Age of Empires.