r/The_Donald helped radicalize users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months.

To all the people rushing to sarcastically comment how surprised they are: Yes, we all saw it happen. But..

It's important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.

This is why OP posted it. Science isn't feelings, you need data.

Literally everyone on Reddit could see this except spez, who is a greedy little pigboy

Remember when they lifted the no racism rule? I do.

While it certainly is a bit of a captain obvious moment that exposure to far-right echo chambers helped radicalise vulnerable people into the far-right, but I can see the merit in having empirical evidence supporting what we see (as OP said) - it is a lot easier to dismiss an andecdote than statistical evidence

To add on to the people pointing out that science is data:

Yes, it is incredibly obvious that the turmp fanclub subreddit would radicalize people to become white nationalists.

What is not obvious is that this is happening everywhere. And, if you get a hold of one of the "leaked" white supremacist recruiting guides from the 80s and 90s, that is by design.

South Park Libertarians and all but it really is telling how many people, to this day, insist that the f-slur for gay people is really "Oh, we took that back. it means obnoxious motorcycle drivers". Let alone statements like "har har, you are so butthurt" that (regardless of what urban dictionary says) are on the same level as "ha ha, you are gay"

We see it every day. And it makes communities hostile. And if you call it out, you get driven out. Which means there are fewer people around to say "... what the fuck? How can we think this is acceptable?". And then someone whose entire vocabulary is "lolzors go woke go broke pepe pepe" gets rightfully made fun of elsewhere and now they are a victim and all those "for the lolz" become their identity.

insert shocked pikachu here I mean, is this really surprising? That place was a cesspool disguising as irony. But news flash, it stops being ironic after a certain amount of time.

This won't make Spez any more uncomfortable when he wants to sleep at night. According to him, that subreddit was "valuable discussion".

One cannot be an active thedonald user without already being a white nationalist.

Any dissent gets an instant permaban.

If you ever want to observe or engage (be ready for the pile-up) with these same folks, r/ShitPoliticsSays contains the exact same user-base of extremists. These are dyed-in-the-wool folks because they use this as a launching-point for brigading other subs comment threads. Lots of Canadian righties there, too. The only credit I'll give is unlike r/conservative that they never censored so you could pretty much discuss and test argumentative points to your heart's content.

Just read the thread covering this very article about T_D lol

Of course I still think a sizable chunk of these folks operate in discord channels and astroturfed Sanders subs (especially the 2020 election), ChapoTrapHouse, etc.

No. Fucking. Shit.

Any and I do mean, any conservative based subreddit all now function the same. r/conservatives have turned into a shithole. Hell, even TrueUnpopularOpinion has turned into it's own shithole because it's just a foundation for right-wingers to express their radicalized thought processes for all to see.

I don't know what they mean. I hung about in there for three years and I never picked up any white nationalist vocabulary.

This article sounds like (((globalist))) propaganda to me!

Edit: Incidentally, I was perma-banned from reddit for making a similar joke there.

My story from the donald is I got banned for saying, "Donald will have more than 2 terms." Or something like that.

Now Republicans don't think they should ever lose elections.

Weak, all of them

Yes, that's why nazi digg kept them around.

It's all about living in a silo. Surround yourself with one side, and there's no other direction to go but further down your side.

I would be extremely interested if things changed after the sub went private.

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Lmao the fascists are ready to burn down Reddit faster than greed would

And today the front page is still being used to push fanatical American extremism, just in a different guise. American progressives are just alternative Trumpists. It’s horrifying

4chan was pure weaponized autism in those days. They still call Trump "The meme president".

i thought the donald got banned, guess there's a new the Donald.

r/The_Donald helped radicalize extremify users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months.

FTFT. I so hate it when people who should know better ignore the actual meaning of terms.

I would've been curious to see what kinds of words got counted as "far-right vocabulary" but it appears that research has recently gone back to being effectively concealed behind paywalls for those of us not in academia.

So what's the definition of white nationalist vocabulary?

EDIT: Why da fuck am I getting down voted for wanting specifics on the very premise of the article?

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Did it actually radicalize, or just take the mask off? They may have used vocabularies they always wanted to.

Using an original dataset of Reddit user posting histories from 2015–2017, I test for increases in the frequency of this far-right vocabulary.

I think there's a lot to be discussed on the topic but I wouldn't put much on this methodology.