I’m not going to link to it, but I am fascinated by a recent post on the Gab blog where Andrew Torba announced some new features to help Gab users push back against research on the platform. Not only do I have two or three ongoing projects using Gab data (one is in the very, very early stages and—ironically—uses Gab blog posts), but some of what Torba wrote also aligned with some of the (fortunately mild) trolling my co-author, Amy Chapman, and I have experienced because of my work on the far-right-influenced DezNat hashtag in Mormon Twitter. So, I thought I’d write up some of what stood out to me in the post.

I get that some of this is bluster and posturing, but that doesn’t make it any less worrying. This is the same state GOP that leaned into Gab a year or two ago.

Given the aggressively queerphobic language I’ve read on Gab, events like this are worrying but not surprising. More worrying is the way that this queerphobic language is increasingly used in the mainstream GOP. How do Republican politicians and voters feel about these events?

GOP has some reckoning to do.

Last week, I was interviewed by a reporter at WEKU about social media and content moderation in the context of the horrific recent shooting in Buffalo, and I was pleased to see the interview appear on the WEKU website this morning.

I wish that the headline didn’t frame this as a question of “free speech”—and that I’d perhaps been more forceful in emphasizing that these really aren’t questions of free speech so much as content moderation. I’m also a bit disappointed that our conversation about 4chan in the early part of the interview got cut; I get why (probably not as interesting to the average viewer than some of my more generally-reaching comments), but I also think it’s important to understand that there are these dark places out there on the internet and that they are leading to tragedies like Buffalo.

Like its predecessors, this volume was interesting, and I appreciated what it had to say, but there was just too much that was weird about it for me to really love it. I don’t regret reading it, but I have no plans to buy the physical versions like I thought I might in the past.

The story seemed to get more and more speculative over time, and while I appreciated the intent, it just felt like more and more of a stretch, which felt like it weakened the goals of the author. The art was still weird, and things came off as overly didactic. The main characters lost more and more of the spotlight and their personalities, simply becoming vehicles for ideas.

I read this volume of the series much faster than the last one—perhaps because it was new to me and perhaps because the second round of the election motivated me to finish it—though I clearly won’t finish the series before today’s results were announced.

Thematically, I thought the book was stranger. It put more emphasis on how laws and politics established under mainstream parties could become terrifying in the hands of far right extremists. It was also helpful for learning more about other elements of France’s far right.

This matches rhetoric I’m reading while doing research on Gab. We need respectable conservative movements in the U.S., but our contemporary mainstream right is flirting with these ideas instead of denouncing them. It’s troubling

Faut pas oublier ces liens quand-même.

Keeping an eye on France’s elections in April and then Idaho’s in May, I guess.

I have spent a few hours this week reading violently anti-trans posts as part of a research project. My patience for queerphobic dog whistles disguised as feigned concerns about girls’ sports is at zero. So disappointed in the Kentucky legislature.

Worrying stuff here. Right-wing media consumption appears to be the big predictor for QAnon beliefs.

Just explained something I learned from studying far right spaces in Mormon social media to collaborators on a project studying queer spaces in far right social media, which is not an experience I expected when starting grad school in ed tech.

We can prosecute criminals without weakening encryption.

Interesting read on a subject I expect to be following for a while.

Ugh ugh ugh.

Unhappy reading for the holidays.

Looks like QAnon is going to be around for a while. Worrying stuff.

Very worrying. Underlines the importance of local politics.

I have a professional interest in the far right, follow the news pretty well, and still sometimes forget how bad Jan. 6 was just because life is crazy. Shame on those actively encouraging us to forget out of cynicism and self-interest.

Not a great look.

File this under bad solutions to worse problems.

Another reason to be wary of automated ad exchanges.

Guess who responded to a recent House censure by joining Gab a few days ago?

Truly frightening.