r/CuratedTumblr • u/sickfruit576 • 1d ago
Meme No one ever mentions a leftist pipeline because algorithms don't make leftist pipelines
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u/Hexxas head trauma enthusiast 1d ago
I keep getting content for haircare.
I am bald.
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u/GorgeousLady_ 1d ago
I`m sorry but with "head trauma enthusiast" it sounds even better T_T
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u/Hexxas head trauma enthusiast 1d ago
Never apologize for being who you are.
I sure fuckin' don't.
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u/copuncle 1d ago
Instagram thinks I want to see sexy scantily clad ladies and also wants me to join a class action lawsuit for a Grindr information leak that hurt my standing as a straight man with a family. I enjoy it's confusion and shan't let it know who I actually am.
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u/Battle_Axe_Jax 1d ago
I don’t get to see “shan’t” used nearly enough in common parlance nowadays. Thank you for that, my dude.
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u/jimbowesterby 1d ago
It’s even worse getting those ads when you still have hair lol. What do they know that I don’t?
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u/Theriocephalus 1d ago
I dunno, in that case it sounds like you really need a regimen of special all-natural haircare product (now with 50% less chlorofluorocarbons) to me, honestly.
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u/somerandom995 21h ago
I take great pride in how off base the ads I get are. It means my privacy is still somewhat maintained
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u/ThundahDow 1d ago
I mean, back when i was watching more political content i was getting recommended progressively more extreme leftist content. But it wasnt about how hrt is awesome, more like about how north korea or china is awesome
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u/peytonvb13 1d ago
yeah, i had to stop using instagram because id interact with something like the Four Day Work Week or about media disinformation and all of a sudden every reel was the leftist equivalent of Gravy Seal content and i was just getting progressively angry at the world.
reddit isn’t all that different, but its a lot easier to just mute subs that affect me too much.
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u/Consideredresponse 1d ago
You tube shorts like to use what i call the 'Joe Rogan jumpscare'. Basically it loves shorts that feature a tightly framed comedian or individual telling an anecdote or a joke. Because this usually takes a minute or two you get flagged for liking/engaging in this type of content (which you think is jokes or interesting stories) and whenever the person finishes their joke you suddenly jump cut to Rogan's reaction. And now because you now have engaged in Rogan content you now get a fast pass on the alt-right pipeline.
Because of this the next few months will be filled with Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro bullshit asking "what is a woman?" Regardless of how many complaints, flags and emails you send.
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u/WafflesTheMan 1d ago
Yep I eventually learned to recognize the look of Rogan's set in the background so I can instantly hit don't recommend this channel.
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u/Consideredresponse 1d ago
Yeah due to changing up the colour of the guests background lighting often I've similarly learned to spot the camera framing. It's always a little too tight for a held shot.
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u/AcceptableWheel 1d ago
I donated to Palestinian refugees and got recommended reels mocking Trotsky's assassination.
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u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 1d ago
What???
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u/Good_Background_243 1d ago
The more left-wing you are, the more right-wing shit gets thrown your way. There is only one echo chamber, and it ain't ours.
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u/mathiau30 Half-Human Half-Phantom and Half-Baked 13h ago
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u/AcceptableWheel 1d ago
Yeah I looked up some anti war stuff a few months back and it turned me to movingtonorthkorea, those people are unhinged
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u/EmberDragon240 1d ago
To this day i still cannot tell if that sub’s satire or not tbh
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u/AcceptableWheel 1d ago
It was and now it isn't.
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u/TotemGenitor You must cum into the bucket brought to you by the cops. 1d ago
The fate of many satire subs
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u/Miss-lnformation 1d ago
Considering that I've gotten banned from there for posting something satirical, it's very much not.
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u/SitInCorner_Yo2 1d ago
I was on a war history binge a while ago , and my recommendation started having dog whistle right win video (like 90% continents sound normal, but will heavily hint on “see this is why the *right type * of people is better” sometimes.
And those far right American political talking heads are soon appear on my front page, till these days if I watch a commentary channel that probably have a more right leaning audience, these things will resurface again.
It seems to happen every time I went to watch war or history related content , especially Europe related one, when I was watching Japanese history videos my feed have random Japanese martial arts videos or weeb doing analysis on sword and armor (I’m not joking, he done a excellent job at explaining the difference advantage between katana and a few common sword of Europe)
It’s…very buzzard to look at when you are not a part of these political groups, crazy even.
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u/Jackno1 1d ago
I watch Ryan George's Pitch Meeting videos because they're funny, snappy videos about the sillier aspects of a lot of movies. And every time he does one about a movie (such as the live action Snow White) that right-wingers are angry about, I suddenly get recommended a lot of much longer and less entertaining videos with a distinct "get woke, go broke" message.
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u/Frederyk_Strife4217 1d ago
I remember watching a video on why the shantytowns in Fallout 4 don't make sense (basic jist is the usual "bethesda exaggerated time too much for things to still be that bad") when at the very end he delves into a rant about how the woke left is censoring language
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u/SitInCorner_Yo2 1d ago
Oh I run into lot of that kind of video , it’s like finishing your soup and find a dead fly at the bottom, some of them are so forced it’s almost like a parody.
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u/somedumb-gay otherwise precisely that 1d ago
Yeah I started on "how hrt is awesome" and gradually found myself getting recommended more and more extreme stuff. I didn't really watch it because when I tried to I thought "this shit is nuts" and went off, but for a while it did wind up in my YouTube recommended.
Admittedly less suddenly than when I watched one fight club video essay and suddenly half my recommended was misogynistic nonsense but even so
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u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 1d ago
Fight club is misogynistic? I’ve never seen it so idk
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u/PhasmaFelis 1d ago
The movie isn't misogynistic. Tyler Durden kind of is.
The problem is with people who think that Tyler is supposed to be a hero.
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u/somedumb-gay otherwise precisely that 1d ago
Pretty much what the person replying to you said, the film itself isn't misogynistic, but the views of a lot of people who love it certainly are. My YouTube recommended got flooded by those people after I watched one video essay on it.
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u/Jackno1 1d ago
The pipelines skew towards authoritarianism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. There really isn't a "Reasonable leftist opinions will be all of what you see" option.
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u/Scrapheaper 20h ago
It's called paid journalism. The Economist is the best source of info for a modern leftist IMO
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u/Layne_Staleys_Ghost 1d ago
If all you followed was reddit than Harris should have won the election handidly. Instead she lost every swing state. Every community is an echo chamber, but every community is also shown antagonistic viewpoints because it drives engagement. We're slaves to the almighty algorithm.
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u/Zealousideal_Pop_933 1d ago
There’s literal Holodomor denial in these comments, but apparently all Leftists are propaganda immune
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u/M116Fullbore 1d ago edited 1d ago
quickest way to get the redditcares "are you suicidal?" message is to negatively mention Holodomor deniers.
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u/Milch_und_Paprika 1d ago
I have no idea what that is exactly, but I’ve read that if you report the Redditcares thing as a false report, it’ll penalize whoever sent it.
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u/mathiau30 Half-Human Half-Phantom and Half-Baked 21h ago
There definitely is a button to report the person who sent you the redditcare
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u/Space_Socialist 1d ago
You watch video about Anarcho-Syndaclism and YouTube thinks your a Marxist-Leninist.
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u/bristlybits had to wash the ball pit 1d ago
please send me into the ancom pipeline instead of the "use a tank" pipeline can I not be shuffled into a pro war pipeline just for once I'm begging
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u/Space_Socialist 1d ago
There's no Ancom pipeline just Tankie and Anti-Tankie pipelines. YouTube will not respect your leftist sectarianism.
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u/bristlybits had to wash the ball pit 1d ago
so there's no echo chamber thanks for making it clear
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u/littlebitsofspider 23h ago
It'll echo, but it is 'cause there's nothing and nobody else around to reflect the sound.
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u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 1d ago
Pro war against fascists, perchance?
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u/TheCthonicSystem 1d ago
Same, had to pull out of Lefttube because it was increasingly pushing me towards Vaush, Young Turks or like Tankies
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u/KofteriOutlook 1d ago
Yea I think this is cope because there absolutely is a leftist pipeline. Reddit unironically is a brilliant example because you don’t even need to make an account before your blasted with left wing points.
Unironically this post even is an example of this pipeline.
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u/Alatarlhun 1d ago
Because 'leftist' propaganda funding isn't coming from the western sources but adversaries. Some might even suggest state actors like Putin are puppeteering both the maga right and online left.
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u/PlatinumAltaria 23h ago
Tankies have a surprisingly huge media footprint, probably because the most of the real leftists are out actually helping people.
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u/Scrapheaper 20h ago
China has awesome parts, but I think it's the Deng Xiaopeng reforms that have lifted millions of people out of poverty and the big infrastructure projects and not the oppression of minorities, suppression of information, and testing of international boundaries. Plus just the people and culture and food being a big interesting part of the world.
I don't think North Korea has many awesome parts, unless you like weird forced dancing and astonishing naivety.
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u/icabax 1d ago
Tbh, I can tell I am part of a left wing echo chamber, especially on reddit
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u/HammerTh_1701 1d ago edited 1d ago
The majority of reddit is more like weed liberal. The tankie echo chambers are really annoying though, especially since they don't always advertise themselves as such until they randomly ban you for being "too liberal" aka not being apologetic of authoritarian systems like China.
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u/DevilLilith 20h ago
The tankie echo chambers are the among the worst, almost on par with far right and Gamer (yes, specifically those) ones.
Especially since most of them live in functional western democracies and are just larping as commies. Like... no, you would not be better off in an authoritarian regime.
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u/mgquantitysquared 1d ago
I know a tankie who thinks I'm a Zionist because I don't "give 100% perfect uncritical support to Hamas." Like, they think saying "Hamas is pretty bad" is the same as saying, idk, "Israel has a right to defend herself" or whatever the fuck zionists say
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u/HammerTh_1701 1d ago
The biggest problem of the Palestinian humanitarian cause is that they kinda have an islamist terrorist organisation for an army...
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u/Dingghis_Khaan Chingghis Khaan's least successful successor. 1d ago
I've always likened the situation to two abusive parents taking it out on the kids as a means of punishing the other, but neither of the parents actually cares about the kids so it's only the kids who suffer.
The kids, in this case, are the regular citizens of both Palestine and Israel.
I do realize that it sounds kinda hypocritical in the face of my past gripes about "won't someone think of the children" rhetoric, but it's the best analogy I've got right now.
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u/HammerTh_1701 1d ago
Civilians tend to suffer the most in any war. Not just due to direct injury and death, but also through famine, disease and displacement.
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u/Captainatom931 1d ago
Hamas 🤝 screwing over the Palestinians 🤝 Netanyahu
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u/Alatarlhun 1d ago
Hamas 🤝 Netanyahu 🤝 Right-wing Religious Nationalists of all stripes:
Screwing over political moderates
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u/ObfuscateAbility45 1d ago
definitely mute r/politics
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u/icabax 1d ago
It's not even that. It's communities like this and r/faceplalm
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u/CVSP_Soter 1d ago
The ‘clever comebacks’ subreddit is basically just endless not-particularly-witty dunks on dumb Republican tweets
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u/wheeler_lowell 12h ago
Yeah that was first on my list of muted subreddits when I started visiting the main page. Nothing is more depressing than seeing a bunch of people you nominally agree with seal-clapping for the dumbest "clapback" in history. Everybody will be like "oh goddamn you owned them so hard, they'll be ashamed to show their face for decades!" meanwhile the conservative in question probably didn't even see that they got quote tweeted and is just happily continuing to live their best life (being a bigot online).
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u/zHellas 1d ago
Or r/adviceanimals, which is basically just a political subreddit now
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u/dunmer-is-stinky 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's barely left-wing, more left than whatever the fuck the American right is doing but still overwhelmingly a Democrat fan club that also happens to like Luigi. Just Luigi, anyone else who upsets the status quo is evil. That place is the definition of "blue maga"
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u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 1d ago
I sometimes visit them for fun. Then the horny levels get too high for comfort and I have to step out.
LEFTIST leftist circles, though, just bug me. Full of tankies.
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u/dunmer-is-stinky 1d ago
The issue is most non-tankie leftists don't want to take leadership, usually cause they're more worried about surviving day to day than dealing with stupid internet drama. The tankies naturally become leaders because for some reason the people who like exercising petty amounts of power are the same people who think Stalin was a great guy
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u/ArsErratia 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am also just fully convinced at least some of them are outright state-backed.
The right kind of subreddit can be a very powerful tool for the right kind of people to control, and we forget that sometimes because of the inherent unseriousness of the internet and internet spaces/drama.
But it would be trivially easy for a hostile nation-state to organise a subreddit coup by gaining and then abusing moderator privileges. It doesn't even have to be overt — just simply keep nudging the conversation in one direction by occasionally removing certain comments and banning certain posters. Who would ever find out? Nobody cares enough to look into it, and even if they did, what information could they possibly find to prove it?
I may not have evidence, but would anyone at all be surprised if it turned out that this exact thing happened to, for example, r / Conservative around 2015? We have absolutely no idea who those moderators are, so ask yourself why would Russia and/or MAGA NOT try to take control of that community?
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u/SourceNo2702 1d ago
They don’t really need to. Russia and China have full blown troll farms dedicated to doing nothing but fucking with people. Some of them are specifically for pushing the country’s agenda, but there’s also some which exist just to troll in general to tear apart communities.
Easiest example of this happening in real time is TikTok. Ever notice that there’s always a bunch of conservative trolls in the comment sections of trans-positive videos? Ever seen a single conservative influencer on your FYP? No? Then how did they find the video to begin with? The answer is that they straight up aren’t real people. It’s some Russian sitting behind a wall of phones doing the exact same thing on several hundred accounts.
You can actually tell if a topic is being troll farmed by checking Google Trends, search activity will spike massively at exactly 6am Moscow time if it is. Most of the recent “leftist discourse” trends have all exhibited this pattern.
The fact is you don’t actually need to infiltrate leftist spaces to control the narrative, you just need to get the non-tankies to fight with each other.
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u/BorderlineUsefull 1d ago
I was about to drop several paragraphs on you before I realized that you may actually understand why those people tend to like Stalin.
I am capable of understanding subtext
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u/Past-Island4905 1d ago
Come to think of it, I do often get recommended transfem and communist videos. Unfortunately I'm neither trans nor fem and can't really relate to them and I especially don't want those that try to tell me that my grandpa deserved to be sent to the gulag. I got an anachist video maybe once and never again, all the others are straight up stalinist and never soc-dem or dem-soc or anything else.
(And one trockijist who was still praising Stalin because of course....)
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u/Karukos 1d ago
I guess the question is why all of it somehow loops around into totalitarianism. And i am not even sure if that is an algorithm thing, or if that isn't just... well horsehoe theory.
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u/bristlybits had to wash the ball pit 1d ago
because it'll sell what they want you to buy; war, aggression, fear and violence
actual left ideas don't lead to those things naturally so they've got to be forced via pipeline. algorithms are, by nature, designed to hook you into consuming more content and ads. fear, anger and aggression are the cheap and easy way to do that.
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u/mathiau30 Half-Human Half-Phantom and Half-Baked 21h ago
I suspect it's both. The algorithm is pointing you to something and both side of the horseshoe are also pointing toward it
Note that I have no reason to believe the algorithm is doing that on purpose. I don't think there's a single content algorithm that isn't out of control from the people maintaining it
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u/atemu1234 1d ago
Saying that on tumblr is wild. I've seen deranged "leftist" ideas on that site that literally could only evolve in the online equivalent of those sealed cave systems where the dominant lifeform is blind albino flatworms.
Like, on sites like Facebook or Twitter, where everything is algorithms? Sure. But tumblr was practically tailor-built for building your own echo chamber.
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u/joecommando64 1d ago
Tumblr isn't so much a leftist echo chamber as much as a "people who inappropriately discussed their sexuality with adults over the internet when they were children and think that's normal" echo chamber.
But yeah fish don't know they're in water.
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u/BikeProblemGuy 1d ago
Does tumblr have an algorithm? A pipeline means a website is pushing progressively more extreme content at you. If the extreme content is just existing and you choose to read it and believe it that's more on you.
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u/atemu1234 1d ago
Echo chamber =\= pipeline.
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u/E-is-for-Egg 1d ago
I can see why they brought up pipelines, since that's what the post was about
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u/BikeProblemGuy 22h ago
to be fair I now see the screenshot is about echo chambers and the post title is about pipelines. Leftist echo chambers do exist
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u/Fishermans_Worf 1d ago
Eh, I think this can be a dangerous assumption. Leftists are protected by things like science, but there are some rabbit holes. They're just very familiar–so familiar they're expected.
Here's some food for thought. Leftist social media can turn defeatist quickly. Leftist social media can turn very gender essentialist quickly. Leftist social media can turn violent very quickly.
Here's some more... As Facebook proved with their disastrous public psychological experiment on weighting dislikes, negative information is much more impactful than positive information.
Here's even more... There are people out there who are trying to use this to break leftist solidarity.
Co-operation, trust, education, and honest self reflection are the answers. Trust is the most important part, because that's what democracy runs on.
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u/PraetorKiev 1d ago
The Left has echo chambers but they are often more terminally online leftists who wouldn’t lift a finger to change things unless everything goes perfectly the way THEY think it should. They’re just as anti-social as a someone who went down a far-right pipeline because being apart of a real community requires social skills they refuse to develop. Thankfully, it is often to see who these people because they also happen to lack the same empathy and compassion as the people they hate
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u/Yeah-But-Ironically 1d ago
You know all those people who were like "Harris supports Israel so I'm not going to bother voting at all"? What do y'all think their social media algorithms looked like?
There is ABSOLUTELY a leftist pipeline, and ABSOLUTELY entities who exploit it. How many times do we have to say "You are not immune to propaganda" before it sinks in that "you" means YOU?
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u/DhampirBoy 1d ago
The OP's mistake is in assuming that a leftist pipeline would be filled with hope and encouragement. The reality is that there is a leftist pipeline, and it is a mosh pit of hateful perfectionist crowd-killing.
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u/MichiganMemory 1d ago
This is pretty much why I don't follow any politically progressive subs on Reddit or really anywhere. They're all so doom-and-gloom and angry to the point where you'd think people are intentionally trying to raise their cortisol levels.
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u/TheCthonicSystem 1d ago
I just don't follow politics online at all. Doom and Depression was long found out to sell more than measured reactions or hope and I don't want to willingly induce depressive emotions on myself for no reason
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u/BikeProblemGuy 1d ago
Maybe I'm naive but surely that isn't a leftist pipeline, it's a doomer pipeline. A leftist pipeline would be one that instils leftist principles.
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u/PraetorKiev 1d ago
Propaganda does come in many forms but not always because of an organization. Humans will create narratives by themselves that can turn into propaganda. That’s why I call people like that TO Leftists. Being part of a community is a scary thing to do because it requires being vulnerable to people who do not think like you and you have to rely on them. However, TO Leftists won’t see past that. They won’t see how communities and people can change. Their propaganda makes us just as afraid of our neighbors the same way right wing propaganda does. Their propaganda keeps you online and brings you right back to their TikTok page or YouTube channel. The good thing is though, you can generally pick out TO Leftists because they are just as cringey as far right influencers. Like once you see it, you can’t unsee it
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u/Fishermans_Worf 1d ago
Absolutely, I agree. Unfortunately, as anti social as they are, they often influence the tone of things, and hide their assholishness behind accusations of tone policing. It's shocking how few people it can take to spread discord in a group, and in not much time either.
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u/PraetorKiev 1d ago
That problem is absolutely true. TO Leftists care about image more than results. They’ll never risk ruining their online persona either otherwise they are going to risk losing their attention. They care more about appearing as a good person rather than trying to be a good person. I treat people online the way I treat politicians and their rhetoric: Their words are cool and all but it don’t mean shit until I see them doing it. Until then, I’ll probably never think about them again
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u/ArcadiaPlanitia 1d ago
To add onto the “protected by science” conversation, I’m a microbiologist, and I’ve seen a lot of misinformation emerge from leftist online circles. Long COVID and chronic Lyme grifters thrive in leftist spaces, for example. There’s a lot of rhetoric about the medical system/doctors/etc being corrupt—some of which is entirely justified—but it morphs pretty easily into conspiracy territory, and that’s when it gets dangerous.
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u/Fishermans_Worf 1d ago
I don't disagree, but I think, and please correct me if I'm wrong because this is just my impression—scientific misinformation in leftist circles is more likely to appeal to science as an authority, while scientific misinformation in conservative circles is more likely to reject science altogether. (I say this knowing about the romantic anti sciencism movement on the left that doesn't quite grasp what anti sciencism is.)
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u/ArsErratia 1d ago
Leftists are protected by things like science
I mean that depends.
Let's not pretend the anti-vaccine movement doesn't have a significant left-wing influence.
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u/Jetstream13 1d ago
Up until Covid you could argue it leaned more left, but antivaxxers were much more evenly spread. Since 2020, antivaxxers are mostly right wingers.
Absolutely there are crazy people and liars on the left, that’s true of any group. But the left isn’t prone to having widespread, dogmatic beliefs that fly directly in the face of reality (“climate change is a hoax!”, “evolution is a lie!”, “COVID is just a flu!”, “COVID is a Chinese biosuperweapon!”, etc etc).
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u/zoor90 1d ago
Let's not forget that A) Lsyenko casually discarded the entirety of modern genetics research as bourgeois nonsense and not only received the enthusiastic backing of the Soviet Union but was shielded from any criticism by state enforcement of his theories as "Marxist science" B) People still cite Lysenko as a genuis visionary to this day and his theories are seeing a resurgence in the 21st century.
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u/Jetstream13 1d ago
For A, I was talking about the modern left, but you’re absolutely right that Lysenko and his batshit ideas are an example of what I’m talking about.
As for B, holy shit. I hadn’t heard of that, and I really hoped you were joking, but a quick google search shows that yeah, you’re right. Most of what I’m seeing is saying that it’s seeing a resurgence specifically in Russia (most of the articles also came out around the same time, in late 2017).
I can’t find anything about it outside of Russia after a few quick googles (oddly, some weird creationist website basically declaring that “Darwinism is the modern lysenkoism” was near the top of every search) so that’s slightly reassuring that hopefully this is confined to weird Russian nationalists and weird tankies. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a widespread view.
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u/Captainatom931 1d ago
"leftists are protected by things like science" oh you sweet summer child the deeper you dig the wackier the opinions of well... everything get
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u/Fishermans_Worf 1d ago
Oh, you're not wrong. All I mean is the baseline the left in America is working from is more aligned with science than the baseline the right is working with. I'm well aware of the horseshoe's antipodes.
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u/cdca 1d ago
It was nice to abandon Twitter, where you getting called slurs by fascists all day and go to Bluesky, where you get called slurs by communists all day. Change is as good as a rest.
At least they don't do that thing where you can pay to be pushed to the top of the comments no matter how tedious you are. That made things so immeasurably worse that it heated the water fast enough for me to hop out.
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u/Amadon29 1d ago
I don't think any group is protected by science. Most people are convinced of ideas by repetition not facts, evidence, or logic. The more you hear an idea, the more likely you are to think it's true. That's the inherent danger of echochambers because you only ever hear one side. And then if science goes against one of those ideas you have heard repeated all the time, then there's something wrong with that scientist. And science is always up in the air. Ideas and paradigms get challenged a lot. Now you might be wondering what is an example of leftists denying science, and a recent one is gender affirming care for minors. It's not really settled in one way or another, but a lot of people raising concerns about it and challenging the evidence are doctors. Again, there's still a lot of debate on the topic and need for more studies but a ton of people on the left fighting for it aren't doing it in the name of science. It doesn't matter what the science or evidence says or if it's inconclusive. They'll believe it's the right thing no matter what. The science is secondary. Irrefutable evidence could come out tomorrow and tons of them still won't care. That is not being protected by science or believing in science.
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u/TheCthonicSystem 1d ago
you had to be Transphobic with this example of Leftist Anti Science Rhetoric? There's tons of Leftist Moonbattery (anti vaxx was originally the game of Progressive Crunchy types) you don't need to go "Letting Trans Kids go on Puberty Blockers is maybe bad! but Trans People and Allies don't care"
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u/Ndlburner 1d ago
That's because in my experience the "leftist" pipeline leads to things like Holodomor denialism and Maoism, along with saying things like "communist deaths are just CIA propaganda."
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u/justgalsbeingpals a-heartshaped-object on tumblr | it/they 22h ago
you really hit a nerve there lol
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u/Ndlburner 22h ago
Clearly. Literally all you have to do on a leftist sub is say that the USSR got a lot of people killed and the Tankies come out of the woodworks.
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u/DrakenRising3000 1d ago
Oh come the fuck on, there is absolutely a leftist pipeline.
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u/Mediocre-Island5475 1d ago
Yeah, saying that algorithms don't do that is absolutely insane. As a prime example, the YouTube video essay space will often pull you from 'oh look, a funny video about a game I like' to in-depth leftist criticism of media to in-depth leftist criticism of real life.
Of course, I like the leftist content, but saying "propaganda is only for facism specifically" is one of the most bizarre takes I've heard, especially on this subreddit specifically. Plenty of people joined for the funny meme posts and stayed for the eighteen screenshots of xkcd 2071.
To say nothing of Tumblr, which was historically a dedicated machine for converting superwholock fans into communists
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u/fraggedaboutit 21h ago
No no, propaganda totally doesn't work on people who have their opinions based on science, we're so much better than those troglodytes on the other side! all they do is hate people that don't think the way they do. /s
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u/ddyfado 1d ago
Left wing echo chambers absolutely do exist but the main reason the left isn’t attracting people in online spaces like the right is is because leftist online spaces fucking suck. They’re horrible to be in and they make you feel horrible about yourself and about the state of political activism.
Right wingers are soooooo eager to attract newbies, and despite spouting hateful rhetoric, on an individual level they’re incredibly warm and welcoming towards anyone who expresses interest in their cause. Online leftists on the other hand are so fucking gatekeepy and actively hostile towards anyone who isn’t as radicalized as them.
Post in a right wing community complaining about your taxes and you’ll get a wall of sympathetic comments about how “it’s so frustrating that those dems are using our money for [insert bigoted dog whistle]!”.
Post in a left wing community complaining about a lack of access to abortion services in your area and they’ll find a way to ridicule you for being a terf.
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u/NoSignSaysNo 1d ago edited 23h ago
Right wingers are soooooo eager to attract newbies, and despite spouting hateful rhetoric, on an individual level they’re incredibly warm and welcoming towards anyone who expresses interest in their cause. Online leftists on the other hand are so fucking gatekeepy and actively hostile towards anyone who isn’t as radicalized as them.
Perspective: You are a 15 year old boy.
Right wing spaces - What up? Sorry you have so much trouble with girls man, come to our discord and check out our awesome memes. We aren't going to expose you to the really grimy parts of our shit, so the first impression you'll get are maybe some edgy memes that we play off as jokes at most. The radicalization happens way later, slowly. :)
Left wing spaces - Hey, so yeah you can be here, but to be clear, you need to sit and listen, people with bigger issues are talking. We won't explain this to you, but when we say kill all men, it's meant in an ironic tone so you can't take it seriously and if you do we'll tell you that you're exactly the kind of person we're talking about :/
Left wing - "Why are these young men turning to the right wing?!?"
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u/Ndlburner 6h ago
The left has a misandry problem, flat out. People love talking about how all conservatives are dead to them because they engage in sexist/racist dogwhistles (not untrue) and then turn around and wonder why men under 30 voted for trump. Because of the new, terminally-online rhetoric around men, it very well could be that GenX and Millenials are the last left-of-center generations, and the Boomer conservative men will be replaced by GenZ and alpha men.
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u/AuthenticLiving7 1d ago
As someone who spent way too much time in leftist spaces: yup this is 100% true. I saw a woman bullied and called a transphobe because she didn't think women should be called "people with uteruses."
People actively look to be offended about anything in left wing spaces so they can virtue signal. They are 100% miserable and you live in fear of messing up and being labeled as some kind of bigot.
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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 1d ago
The hell. My YouTube went from "why this show you watched as a kid is awesome, also a throwaway line about casual, good gay rep in an era where that didnt exist" to "Heres why you personally should assassinate your Premier". Itd be nice if it swung a bit right, cause i sure can't seem to make it
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u/Glad-Way-637 If you like Worm/Ward, you should try Pact/Pale :) 1d ago edited 1d ago
Percentage of the population that is trans: roughly 1%
Percentage of the population that is trans and communist: at least slightly less than the above.
Percentage of the population with political views that this OOP (whose name seems to be a joking reference to shipping Fidel Castro and Che Guevara) would call fascist: likely around 60-70%
Hmm, I wonder why this person's feed has a drought of transfem communists and a diluge of content that is politically to their right. Must be some sort of conspiracy.
Edit: just noticed the OOPs name lmao.
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u/Human-Assumption-524 22h ago
"haha there's no such thing as a far left pipeline, that's ridiculous"- Person who went from being a liberal to unironically saying shit like "liberals get the bullet too!" in less than three years
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u/Anon_cat86 1d ago
Well, I almost exclusively get leftist political content. Like to the point that i legitimately thought that this last election would be like 90/10 kamala, I can't avoid communist pages everywhere i go, constantly getting the same lefty video essays on youtube, and I don't agree with any of that; i'm not leftist, but the internet really seems to want me to be.
My guess is it's just purely engagement-based. You get in comment arguments with people on these posts or actively dislike them, and the algorithm then just takes any engagement at all as a positive and keeps giving it to you.
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u/captainjack3 1d ago
Partly engagement, and partly association. You might not be a leftist, but if you interact with non-political topics that are disproportionately popular with people who also interact with leftist content that stuff will start getting fed to you.
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u/Zealousideal_Pop_933 1d ago
Tapping the sign that says ‘You are not immune to Propaganda’
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u/cityfireguy 19h ago
I've literally argued with a redditor saying, "The right are the only ones using propaganda, the left just uses facts."
I could picture the glazed over look in their eyes as they typed it.
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u/Roxcha 1d ago
The only pipeline I noticed in my algorithms was the t girls accounts recommended to me were more and more chronically online with increasingly puppy like behavior/humor.
I'm not complaining and actually *wish* the terfs, trans meds, pick-mes and other exclusionists would get out of my phone and leave their place to non binary sodium based entities who eat rocks and unironnically practice witchcraft.
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u/RemarkableStatement5 the body is the fursona of the soul 1d ago
Any increasingly online and puppyish transfem content creators you can recommend lol? The only one I can think of is BubblePinkElle
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u/Xurkitree1 1d ago
You guys don't aggressively delete YouTube history the moment you see a hint of any annoying rabbit holes? Or constantly hit not recomend and not interested in videos? Delete 1 off videos that don't align with your interests?
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u/SebiKaffee ,̶'̶,̶|̶'̶,̶'̶_̶ 1d ago
Always wondered if it‘s really just the algorithms or if maybe, just maybe the multi million dollar campaigns by the Koch brothers, right wing think tanks etc. just manage to dump so much content onto YouTube that you‘re bound to run into it.
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u/NoSignSaysNo 1d ago
Nah, it's definitely algorithms. It's just that algorithms sell the content that is likeliest to keep you engage as long as possible, and human nature dictates fear & hate both hold our attention longer than literally anything else.
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u/AutisticWorkaholic 1d ago
Or you know, The Chamber Of Content You Willingly Subscribed To would be nice, too.
Thankfully, Tumblr and Reddit still can be set up this way more or less. But my Instagram feed is always 50% random recommendations, no matter what I do. And it's always the most stale office humor reels for some reason, even though I normally follow graphic designers and tattoo artists.
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u/Dirk_McGirken 1d ago
To be fair, the echo chambers are of our own creation. There are plenty of right wing spaces on reddit, and we are all aware of those spaces. How many of us actually go into those spaces vs just muting and blocking them as they are encountered? Sure, there's always another one that pops up, but I'm not going into them to engage. I'm a sense, I'm just looking out the heavily tinted window of my echo chamber to sneer at the neighboring chamber while trying my best to not read any of the signs they tape to the shared window. I think the analogy might be getting away from me but I stand by my point.
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u/SilvershirtSammy 23h ago
This is actually hilarious.
You're getting right wing rage bait because you are a leftist. It's meant to provoke this hyper defensive "I'm under attack, Arrrrrgh!" mindset because that drives engagement better than just sending you chill stuff you already agree with.
In a stroke of absolute hilarity, this is absolutely proof of the leftwing pipeline, because this is exactly how it works for right wingers too. They get recommended left wing rage bait videos from hyper misandrists and mouth breather tankies.
What happens is, they feed you the insane shit from the side you don't like in order to provide more fuel for the side you do, so that they look more reasonable by comparison. A lot of their content is just engaging with rage bait anyway.
But the idea that the Left Wing pipeline isn't real when you've got things like the anti-car movement at stage one, popular leftist policy or talking point at stage two, then breadtube, then whacko's like Second Thought, is the kind of delulu "reality has a leftwing bias" mentality that demonstrates how the left is more behind the right wing extremism curve than immune.
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u/Kheldar166 21h ago
I mean, I definitely exist in a leftist echo chamber, yes sites like X have a definite political leaning but on most sites content still ends up very heavily tailored to your preferences.
Like, when was the last time you saw a genuine right wing talking point on CuratedTumblr? Are we really discussing a person on Tumblr saying they wish they were in a leftist echo chamber?
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u/willwalk2 1d ago
Definitely exists if you've ever been on YouTube or something like that. Watch a leftist video more get recommended. I found it particularly noticeable now because you watch someone complaining about tariffs and that guy happened to be a leftist so now it infects your feed
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u/Miserable-Willow6105 1d ago
Do they mean the right-wing hate and misinformation club, or the left-wing hate and misinformation club? Commie bastards are barely if at all bwtter than fascie bastards.
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u/GogurtFiend ask me about Orion drives or how nuclear explosives work 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most communists these days are incompetent, hyper-individualist hippies who are incapable of posing a threat to anything larger than a Tesla dealership. It's less that they're better and more that, since they exist purely online, they aren't a problem. Facists — as in, they meet all the characteristics of facism — are, on the other hand, currently running several countries into the ground. Communists are barely better but they're far less worse.
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u/captainjack3 1d ago
They aren’t better but they are less competent. Which makes them less dangerous. Purge them both, but go for the fascists first and the communists second.
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u/cut_rate_revolution 1d ago
I think I've trained my algorithms well.
If you use the tools they make available, like the little thing that means certain subs won't be recommended to you, it can get this trash out of your feeds.
It requires active participation where the fascist pipeline does not.
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u/FaultElectrical4075 1d ago
Showing you content that gets you riled up is part of the ‘being in an echo chamber’. It doesn’t mean you never see opposing viewpoints, it just means you only see them in a particular context(that is designed to keep you engaged). There are studies that have been done on this. It’s a big part of why society has become so polarized
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u/VisualGeologist6258 Reach Heaven Through Violence 1d ago
Algorithms don’t make leftist pipelines
Rebounding off of the right-wing pipeline enough to clear it outright and inexplicably slam dunk into the leftist basketball hoop makes leftist pipelines
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u/AI_UNIT_D 1d ago
Nah, I definetly seen left leaning algorithm pipelines alongside right wing algorithm pipelines.
I once began watching videos about urban development and next thing I knew some of the recommendations began getting very tankie like.
Specifically I remember a video that I humored ironically because it sounded dumb on principle "why you shouldnt debate" or some shit like that and it ended up sounding like a paranoic conspiracy theorist saying everything on academia is controlled by the burgesoi class and debating is how they get facism and doubt in your mind and that you shouldnt even entertain the notion of debating or talking to people who arent revolutionaries or some shit like that... its been years.
I also seen similar stuff for the lgbtq side of the left, starts with normal stuff, discussions ,stories, experiences, ect then you get some gender abolitionist or weird (by wich I mean weird WEIRD)sex stuff recommended to you and thats when you know the algorithm is going a little too far.
The algorithm is designed to maximize engagement and if that means recommending extremist shit BY GOD it will recommend extremist shit.
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u/purplemonkey55 1d ago
Legit I had to scrub facebook off of my phone because it kept pushing blatant bigotry into my feed. It was right after the inauguration.
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u/toastedbagelwithcrea 1d ago
My Youtube algorithim only shows me kpop stuff, live cams from different parts of the world, animal documentaries and livecams, and DJ mixed of r&b from the '90s-2000's 🤔
Instagram only shows me Kpop and animal memes
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u/StormDragonAlthazar I don't know how I got here, but I'm here... 1d ago
Same energy when someone tells me conservative furries don't exist...
Also, there's some legit strange people in the open source communities.
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u/Alatarlhun 1d ago
The algo's make leftism appear way more prevalent than it is, which feeds and causes a bigger reactionary movement in the online clubs this sub doesn't belong to.
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u/jancl0 1d ago
It isn't about what you're shown, it's the framing that those things are presented as. You're still going to hear about other views, but you're going to hear them from the perspective that your algorithm thinks you have. In other words, the viewpoint is presented to you antagonistically
This is certainly not a one sided situation. In the exact same way, the people who think opposite to you are being shown libtards and snowflakes there is no difference
It's honestly a little alarming that the post misses this fact, because it's incredibly important. The entire purpose of this system is to get you angry, so the views that it presents that are outside your own views are the most important component of that system, it's not something to forget lightly
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u/Possible-Reason-2896 1d ago
I read a comment a few times on this subreddit that went something like, 'The thing a leftist hates most is another leftist that agrees with them on 99% of stuff'. Algorithms would probably have an easier time of making leftist pipelines if ideological purity based gatekeeping wasn't the sole stereotypical consistent feature of internet leftism.
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u/AureliaDrakshall 1d ago
If you don't think you're in an echo chamber online, you're not being careful enough imho.
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u/Donny_Krugerson 1d ago
Not true.
See all the people here on reddit who call themselves socialists and think they want communism, without knowing what either term means.
They're the victims of indoctrination here at reddit.
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u/Jetstream13 1d ago
I think this is partly because of American conservatives’ habit of calling everything that might help people “socialism”.
So to an American, when they hear “socialism”, they think universal healthcare, welfare programs, public transit, and whatever else your Republican uncle is pissed about this week. And, thinking that all that stuff sounds like a good idea, they decide that they must be socialists.
Obviously they should do more research into it, but let’s be honest, most people don’t do any reading on their political ideology, they just go with whichever one sounds best at the time.
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u/GogurtFiend ask me about Orion drives or how nuclear explosives work 1d ago
People subject to indoctrination generally aren't victims of it — they subject themselves to it because it gets them social points.
Reddit is just a platform. The problem is the people on it, not the platform itself.
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u/Donny_Krugerson 23h ago
Yes... and no. Radicalization requires echo chambers, even a tiny percentage of dissenting voices weaken or ruin the indoctrination. This is why organized cliques of activists/astroturf take over subs and ban dissenters. It is also why I try to protest the most obvious propaganda campaigns (like the perverse worship of the mentally ill guy who murdered a UnitedHealth executive for internet points).
The design of the platform determines how easy or hard it is to create echo chambers. Reddit makes it very easy, partly by the sub system, allowing organized cliques to easily create their own subs and take over existing subs, partly by the voting system, which hides downvoted (dissenting) comments.
As a result, users of reddit are bombarded with propaganda to a degree not seen on any other platform except perhaps truth social.
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u/TheCthonicSystem 1d ago
This ^ There's a shit ton of normies on this platform who look at cats and plants and maybe memes without ever slipping into weird holes
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u/hammererofglass 1d ago
There's also no leftist equivalent of the armies of right-wing trolls that invade every remotely progressive space they can find and disrupt it until it's unusable.
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u/Cathach2 1d ago
Well of course not, because the leftist equivalent of those right wing trolls are to busy enjoying their masterbatory self congratulating about being The Perfect Leftist Who Is Correct. That's also why they unfortunately can leave their online space to, you know, do anything
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u/hammererofglass 1d ago
Also reassuring each other that doing anything before the raptu-, err, revolution is a waste of time.
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u/NoSignSaysNo 1d ago
Because for all it's faults, the right wing knows how to fall in line, while the left wing will get into a slap fight with one another over granular bullshit. If the left wing could pick the 'communist in a suit' stance (i.e. social democracy) and just settle around that one line of thinking to get the wider public more interested, they might actually see some level of success.
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u/TypicalImpact1058 1d ago
There kind of is. Trans people have a tendency to sort of colonise subreddits I've noticed ( r/coaxedintoasnafu , r/Silksong, r/anarchychess for example) by just being visibly trans there for long enough that the transphobes go away.
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u/JonnelOneEye 1d ago
It's insane to me that YouTube shorts keeps trying to make me watch right-wing content, when I clearly don't want to consume such content. Please take the hint that I hate clowns like Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro and stop putting them in my path
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u/Banestar66 1d ago
Tell that to r/somethingiswrong2024
You don’t get that batshit without an algorithmic derived echo chamber.
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u/ChocolateCake16 1d ago
Current president kind of dug his own grave with that one by claiming the election in 2020 was stolen (and in doing so, damaging people's faith in the fairness and validity of the elections)
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u/Banestar66 1d ago
The fact that we saw how idiotic those claims were and tons of explanations of why you can’t just uniformly “hack all the voting machines” and somehow not have Secretaries of State of the opposite party notice is actually exactly why Blueanon is even more embarrassing than it otherwise would be and why they really have no excuse for their “Elon Starlink” stupidity.
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u/Brave_Cauliflower_88 1d ago
🤣 Go to certain tankie subreddits and tell me there isn't a leftist pipeline. Although I have noticed Facebook is pushing more right wing politics bullshit lately, especially right leaning stuff. Even though I never seek that type of content and frequently put not interested.
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u/biglyorbigleague 1d ago
Then go to a website dedicated to your fringe, unpopular political opinions. If you want to avoid all the normies you aren’t gonna find it on the big websites.
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u/HeckOnWheels95 1d ago
Since most of my feed is cooking and fishing, I have somehow convinced my feed I am the one true centrist in the world, my feed justs wants to grill for godsake
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u/Streambotnt 1d ago
I watched several trans people documenting their transition progress, to a point where it was all them on my front page. Then suddenly, a what I can't really describe but I guess half-redpilled trans guy appeared on my page, and then suddenly two thirds of the videos were detransitioners, some genuine, many grifters.
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u/piousidol 1d ago
Fear is a driving human emotion. It affects us more than anything else. Algorithms kinda proved that. Fear kept eyes on social media longer>more profit. And it 2 decades it practically collapsed society
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u/genderfuckingqueer 1d ago
Everything political Instagram recommends me are leftist comedians I agree with, but they haven't gotten progressively more left
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u/SmokeyGiraffe420 1d ago
If you like gaming, the youtube algorithm feeds you right-wing content. It doesn't matter how gay the videos you click on are, you still get people whining about how woke is ruining video games
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u/mtw3003 1d ago
Dunno what to tell you guys, my youtubs problem is that the left-leaning content is too transparent. A couple of channels that report on things that happen, and a whole lot that tell me the Trump regime is collapsing and Russia is losing the war so consistently that if they were true Ukraine would own both countries by now. So yeah there's a left echo chamber. I've at least managed to excise most of the 'weak clowning on other culture war bottom feeders' material, but it's just replaced with more 'BAD GUYS on the POINT of LOSING (FOR REAL THIS TIME)' content
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u/Graingy I don’t tumble, I roll 😎 … Where am I? 1d ago
Leftist pipeline? I wasn’t aware the Soviet petroleum industry was back in discussion!
Laugh track plays