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Comment by twmiller | Hacker News Reader

"Guess what: in the fediverse, it would never have been possible to ban Trump in the first place. Sure, leftist servers could have stop syndicating his posts, but this would not have had much more of an effect than individuals blocking him on Twitter if he had never been banned there."

My observation is that the modern right wing social media user only thrives when there are 'liberal snowflakes' around that they can piss off. Hence Gab, Truth, Parler, etc. being largely failures. They all miss the key ingredient that the right wingers need to really get their endorphin hit: people to offend.

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My observation is that the modern leftt wing social media user only thrives when there are 'conservative Nazis' around that they can piss off. Hence Lemmy, Tumblr, Mastodon, etc. being largely failures. They all miss the key ingredient that the left wingers need to really get their endorphin hit: people to virtue signal over.

We can both play this game but I don't think it's particularly helpful. One could say Elon is bringing ideological equality to the platform. For leftists/liberals, this equality feels like oppression after years of dominance and privilege on Twitter.

I think you're only half wrong here. The difference is that you can virtue signal to people inside of your own crowd without much consequence, but if you seek to offend them, they kick you out. There's definitely (a lot of) virtue signaling going on in the fediverse, for what it's worth. And I really don't see people on the left getting the same sort of kicks out of pissing people off that people on the right seem to enjoy. As you sort of pointed out, they're annoying in different ways. ;)

I’m just grabbing my popcorn and can’t wait to watch the inevitable splits. Each of the communities will split into 2, will split into 2, etc. They just can’t help themselves.

I think you're only half wrong here. The difference is that you can piss off people outside of your own crowd without much consequence, but if you seek to offend them, they kick you out. There's definitely (a lot of) pissing off lefties going on in Parler, Truth Social, etc. for what it's worth. And I really don't see people on the right getting the same sort of kicks out of virtue signaling (AKA pissing right wing people off) that people on the left seem to enjoy. As you sort of pointed out, they're annoying in different ways. ;)

Again, we can both play these games. You original presumption:

>My observation is that the modern right wing social media user only thrives when there are 'liberal snowflakes' around that they can piss off.

Remember, one of the major reasons behind Truth Social, Parler, etc. failing to gain user share is the fact that their respective apps were banned from Google/Apple stores.

At the end if the day, both extremes, left and right, need an enemy to point at and rally over. They are different sides of the same coin.

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