Just Sociology Tings: The normalization of facism on social media

On Jan. 19, I, along with 178 million other Americans were thrust into the freezing pool of reality when ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, shut down its U.S. servers in compliance with House Bill 7521 — the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. 

Despite objections from the millions of people that would be affected by the TikTok purge — and a lawsuit against the U.S. government raised by ByteDance claiming that the act would violate people’s free speech rights — the bill took effect regardless. While the app was only down for about half a day with promises of being restored under Trump’s administration, many people were skeptical upon the app’s servers being restored. 

I think it’s important to start with a video the TikTok's CEO Shou Zi Chew published on his page just days before the ban was supposed to go into effect. In the video, Chew personally thanks Trump for his cooperation with the company in searching for a way to keep TikTok available in the U.S., and for many users, this looked like a scene out of a play that’s far too familiar for many of us. 

Before I go into conspiracy theorist territory, I want to give a bit of context surrounding the increase of right-wing sentiment on platforms such as Facebook, X, and Instagram. 

Earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would be ending their third-party fact-checking program as well as loosening the restrictions placed on content creators and the topics they can post and share. The decision stems from Zuckerberg's claim that the third-party checkers in question are "too politically biased,” and that leaves certain groups at more of a disadvantage in the fight to gain control over Meta’s algorithms. 

Many people, including former President Joe Biden, have expressed concerns over the policy change, and rightfully so. With little to no moderation on political content and the accuracy of posts being left up to the discretion of users, Meta’s platforms are shaping up to be a breeding ground for a lot more offensive and insensitive content. 

Aside from the fact that this is just a highly suspicious move, period, a lot of social media users also find it suspicious that this announcement comes just weeks after Meta decided to donate $1 million to Donald Trump's inaugural fund. The implications of Zuckerberg loosening content restrictions on his platforms while simultaneously working on building a more stable relationship with our newly inaugurated president reads like another story from recent years. 

This brings me to every incels’ wet dream — Elon Musk. 

In 2022, Musk bought Twitter — now named X — as a part of his campaign to “save free speech and expression.” Under the guise of being a champion for our first amendment rights, Musk set out on a mission to make alt-right and conservative content much more available on X’s algorithm. 

Upon acquisition, he dismantled the verification system and reinforced a “Community Notes” fact checking system that utilizes volunteers to clarify or strike down misinformation. However, the algorithm determines which content is sent to these volunteers based on their voting history, almost always guaranteeing that the fact checker is bound to only discuss posts that align with their political affiliation. This echo-chamber leaves so many posts unaccounted for and unresolved. 

From claiming that there is bound to be a genocide of white South Africans to retweeting — re-X’ing? — posts about the “the great replacement ” theory, Musk has made no effort to conceal his conservative ideologies on his platform. On top of that, there have been accusations of Musk consciously silencing liberal voices while amplifying conservative ones. 

The entire situation with Mark Zuckerberg loosening the fact checking system on Meta platforms is very reminiscent of the change in promoted content that took over Twitter not too long after Elon Musk took over. While this normalization of right-wing views may seem like a chronically online issue, the real world implications aren’t something to ignore. 

We’ve seen how social media posts and movements can compel people to action. Documentation of the Palestinian genocide, as well as activists making posts about the different companies to boycott, led to a decline in sales for numerous companies as well as mass demonstrations and protests all across the world. 

On the flip side, its social media sites and online forums that compel people like Payton Gendron — the perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo grocery store shooting  — to commit horrible atrocities. 

Along with this, there has been an influx of criticism in recent years regarding the  “alt-right pipeline”, a rabbit hole of internet content that starts off as harmless and gradually leads viewers down a path toward reactionary ideologies. 

Knowing that the CEOs of some of the largest tech companies in the nation are trying to use their assets to promote harmful content speaks to a much larger issue: The gradual takeover of fascism in America. 

It’s not just the social media posts. In recent years, we’ve seen restrictions and bans pertaining to education occur all over the country. The most recent example I can think of is Trump's talk about shutting down the Department of Education, and this isn’t something that just started with Trump. Talks of dismantling the Department of Education have been circulating around for years, with Congress having recently introduced a bill that would force states to use non-federal funds for educational institutions — H.R. 938. 

Education is one of the most powerful tools a society can utilize to ensure that its children are well taken care of, and within American society specifically, it’s seen as a ticket out of poverty for many, including myself. Taking away educational resources and restricting the topics taught in public schools — think the "Don't Say Gay" bill or Florida's block on AP African American studies in high schools — is the government’s way of asserting control over the most vulnerable and impressionable minds. It begins with the flow of information and resources and gradually escalates into even more extreme exercises of power. 

Insert the barrage of executive orders that Trump has already signed only a week after being sworn into office. For those that might not know, executive orders are among the most immediate  actions a president can take without approval from Congress, so long as they don’t conflict with the Constitution or any preexisting federal statutes.

As of writing, Trump has signed 51 orders , with a considerable amount of those targeting marginalized communities in some way. He’s mandated that all federal agencies terminate their “DEI” hires, which opens the door for any person of color to lose their job simply because of their race. He’s already ordered mass deportations of undocumented people and has given Immigration and Customs Enforcement clearance to go searching within people’s schools and places of work. And he’s also signed an order that forces the government to only classify people by their assigned sex at birth — an obviously anti-trans law. 

This is an abuse of power in every way — the same kind of tyranny that the framers of the Constitution were trying so hard to prevent. We are taking a step backwards in nearly every way imaginable. The laws that are being passed, the blatant disregard of voters' needs and rights all point toward our nation slowly forming into a fascist regime that holds no regard for anyone besides the ultra-wealthy and the politicians who make their dreams come true. 

I don’t like Biden in the slightest, and I don’t want to give the man too much credit for reiterating things most leftists have been stating for years now, but he was right in saying that we currently live in an oligarchy — and the TikTok ban is the result of them realizing that we are starting to rebel. 

One of the things that separates TikTok’s algorithm from Facebook, Instagram, and X, is the focus on newer showing content similar to the stuff that the user typically watches. Instagram and Facebook typically pull from a user’s following list to curate their homepage. TikTok does this, as well as integrating newer content that has the potential to open your gaze to entire corners of the internet you wouldn’t have even known existed. 

Because of that, many people took to TikTok to begin political organizing and crowdfunding projects. More and more anti-government sentiment began to spread across the platform, and with TikTok having such a huge user-base, it didn’t take long for more people to become revolutionized by the things they were seeing on their homepage. 

Even if the Foreign Adversary Act claims that the government wants TikTok gone because of its associations with China, it’s not hard to see that the real reason lies in their lack of control over the content circulating on the site. Despite TikTok — and quite literally almost everyone else — pointing out the fact that Meta platforms sell and leak our data all the time, the Supreme Court and our Legislators repeatedly ignore the cries of the American people in favor of having tech giants like Musk and Zuckerberg line their pockets. 

They hate that we’re starting to wake up, and they hate that their indoctrination tactics are slowly starting to lose their effect. Our current political and economic state has left more Americans depressed, frustrated, and resentful than ever, and because of that we are getting restless. 

It feels like a balloon ready to burst at any given moment, and despite the anticipation terrifying me to my core, I feel oddly optimistic of what the future has to hold. This country might be headed in the wrong direction, but its people remain steadfast, and that gives me hope.