Real society is not that polarized. If you talk to real people they mostly have moderate political opinions. But they don't tweet about politics.
Twitter is not a real place.
Twitter is not a real place.
The people on twitter are real people (well, mostly, probably), and have real political opinions.
If you talk to people, by and large they'll profess moderate opinions, because in person discussions still trigger politeness and non-confrontational emotions in most people, so the default 'safe' thing to say is the moderate choice, no matter what their true opinion happens to be.
The internet allows people to take the proverbial mask off.
What Internet does have is ease of changing masks and joining diverse groups. Trying something unusual without reprecussions appeal to a lot of people who usually simply dont have time to join such groups offline.
The real problem is that unfortunately propoganda has evolved too with all new research about human phychology, behaviors and fallacies. Abusing weaknesses of monkey brain on scale is relatively easy and profitable.
So far ...
Plenty of people have radical thoughts and opinions, but are smart enough to keep it to themselves IRL
If far right political bullshit would stay online and out of my state’s general assembly that would be such a positive change.