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The question, I think, is whether social media merely removed bureaucratic gatekeepers so that a preexisting silent majority of extremists (as it were) was suddenly allowed to speak out; or whether the presence of politicians on social media contributed to a self-sustaining feedback cycle that made everyone's positions genuinely more extreme than they were before.
Under the latter theory, the outcome would indeed be "politics becomes more centrist and less populist/fringe", but that would not be because nefarious advisors are preventing the politicians from giving the base what it wants; it would be because, in the absence of the toxic social media clout-chasing incentives, the politicians and to an extent the people will genuinely come to hold more measured views because they aren't getting into stupid dick-measuring contests everyday.
Putting it into practical terms: in a world where he is forbidden to communicate in any way on Twitter or Truth Social or any similar platform, Trump is going to rant a lot less about CROOKED Democrats who are TRAITORS who should be SHOT to DEATH for TREASON. Is this because his advisors would stop him from saying what he wants to say? I don't think so. I think it simply wouldn't occur to him to tell the world half the shit he types, if he wasn't invested in chasing the algorithm like a common vlogger. Would he be betraying the wishes of the voters who put him in the White House? Again, I don't think so - at least, not in a counterfactual world where he was never the Poster President at all. I think his base would not want him to say this stuff if he hadn't gotten them hooked on their daily Two Minutes of Hate in the first place. It's a hyperstimulus like any other, and you've got to cut off the vicious cycle.
Okay, that's a consistent viewpoint. I half-agree with it, too. E.g. my opinions of Scotland became sharply more negative after being exposed to the writings of Cybernats (Scottish Nationalists online).
The flipside is that at least in the UK I think we have been building up serious problems that, prior to social media, it was simply impossible to discuss or publicise. I remember Covid, when social media was maximally locked down - the effect of that freezing wasn't that people or politicians became less extremist, it was that it was impossible to publicise any facts or opinions that ran contrary to what was convenient to the administration. That's a big blow in my mind for the 'more controlled communication leads to better and saner politics' hypothesis.
I would say I started getting worried/upset about immigration in 2013-2016 which did coincide with rhetoric ticking up but also with various life changes and pretty high levels of immigration. Likewise my opinions of feminism were worsened by extremely negative feminist rhetoric online (White Male Tears) but also by the behaviour of my actual acquintances. And so on and so on. I think it's both tbh.
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