There was someone on CBC Radio discussing this yesterday and they pointed heavily to how effectively conservative talking points are being pushed online by young social media influencers. Some unrelated research has shown that the beginning and end of a lot of political information younger people are receiving is on social media. Heck, I saw one article discussing how a lot of young people go to TikTok first when they want to learn how to fix something. What a stupid resource to go to for something like that, so if people are trying to figure out how to change a tire on TikTok they’re certainly also going there for their political information.
The seemingly obvious answer is that the other parties should be working more heavily on putting out counter messaging on these channels, but the way the algorithms work these people won’t even see the content because the algorithm ignores it and only provides further polarization of ideas.
Written by black metal icon Paul Shaffer.