I look back at my teenage years and realised how hazardous they are to mental health. My curiousity & engagement on those communities was limited to infrequent lurking.
I now understand why alt-right/q anon movement popped up so quickly.
A big issue with these boards is that the ownership can't overmod because these communities are a big drawcard, even if they're financial negatives.
These forums seem to collect the most problematic people from every political group and subculture, put them all together, and then teach them their own unique manosphere philosophy that is currently one of my least favorite things about all of mankind.
It's some kind of primitivist thought combined with a screenshot of a Nietzsche quote about strength and power, some pretentious militant atheism, a bit of eugenics, a lot of intelligence-worshipping, and a heavy dose of still believing in cringe culture.
Way bigger than just alt right, there seems to be a variant for every affiliation. It's almost mainstream.
They're places that provide access to actual human beings though. So many other online communities - especially ones with wide readership - are astroturfed into oblivion.
My take on it is that having to deal mentally with lunatics howling at the moon and screaming about the upcoming Great Replacement is the price you pay for access to actual opinions. That screaming horde is what keeps the astroturfers and consent manufacturers out.
But you only see opinions of people who are willing to tolerate the torrent of abusive posts. You won't see the opinions of the silent majority who see the stupid flamewars and decide they'll spend their time elsewhere.
There's value to be gleaned from /pol/ if you can stand the lunatics. The skychan threads sometimes yield some interesting conjecture.
4chan is currently the best place for realtime ukraine war footage and analysis, in my opinion.
While I don’t particularly deny this
> 4chan is currently the best place for realtime ukraine war footage and analysis
Is most definitely a no.
Oddly enough, Reddit seems to be the best for footage, with Telegram likely coming second.
As for analysis, Twitter without a doubt. Is there a load of absolute horse shit? Of course. If you don’t know how to detour that, you shouldn’t care much in the first place.
The only good thing that has come out of 4chan regarding this war is the cope cage. That is indeed hilarious.
I'm not really sure how to respond to that. It's intrinsically different. It's getting responses from people who don't care what their neighbour thinks about them vs getting responses from people who care in the utmost what their neighbour thinks of them. One is intrinsically likely to be more unfiltered than the other.
If you want to know what sentiment a community actually holds you have to seek out all types of opinions.
There’s that word. The world is super “toxic”. The aforementioned sites allow people to speak freely, which can result in negativity, but they’re also bastions of freedom and creativity and everyone’s thoughts being equally visible.
One can easily argue that that’s far less toxic than Reddit’s style of everyone being the church mom that silences and admonishes everyone that says something “problematic” or what the congregation considers unacceptable. Where’s the fun in that?
There’s definitely a certain group of people who hate not being able to silence others, since if they can’t silence and censor their opponents, their arguments don’t really hold up.
And by the way, just because there is no active moderation doesn't mean that every voice is equally heard. Or did any one on running.com listen what Dr. Meza had to say?
Pour encourager les autres.
"The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others; who claim that if such things are to be allowed, their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty."
Yes, but so are Facebook and Twitter.
There is a difference though as those platforms have larger moderation resources though.
You can apply the same arbitrary granularity to bodybuilding.com (different subforums) and 4chan (different boards) too, and say 'such and such subforum isn't as toxic as these other ones...'.
The point is that all four platforms spread and foster toxicity. And given that Twitter and Facebook are magnitudes bigger, they also do so much more than 4chan or bodybuiding.com.
One FB/Twitter, you can only see stuff posted by your friends, friends of friends, specific people whose names/usernames you know and have searched for, groups you have chosen to join, and ads they show you. The other 99.99% of content is invisible to you.