> The 2017 white supremacist rally Unite the Right in Charlottesville, Virginia was planned through Discord, and the platform was used by far-right mass shooters in the 2022 Buffalo shooting and the Highland Park Parade shooting.
It's just free association untethered from the costs of physically finding your associates. During the 2020 BLM protests I found myself in a large Telegram groupchat of protest organizers. The organizers could have done the same thing in a person's house or a community center but it's cheaper and easier to do this in a groupchat.
I don't know what anyone can do about it without breaking US Constitutional freedoms or the SCOTUS narrowing the freedoms when applied to digital media (which I think would be a dangerous precedent.) It seems like the physical constraints of association used to have a pretty big hand in shaping 'radical' culture in the past.
estimator7292 · 16m ago
I am very explicitly not taking a stance either side, but: it's hard to argue that social media and the echo chambers it inevitably creates are extremely dangerous and make individuals much more susceptible to 'radicalization'. This is something we've been talking about and worrying over for years.
These echo chambers can easily motivate people into violence who otherwise wouldn't. The cheapness and ease of forming mass groups to organize such events is also a huge problem. If it weren't so easy to build a group online and you had to do it in person, how many fewer of these groups would form?
How good or bad it is kind of depends on your perspective. For the current government, activists planning protests and organizing to push for government reform or equality or whatever issue, this is an extremely bad and dangerous thing. For a plurality of citizens it's an extremely good and necessary thing. The same applies to hate groups planning mass shootings or whatever. They think it's just and necessary work and some parts of our government would be thrilled to encourage it.
Either way, the current authoritarian regime has a vested interest in shutting down this and other types of free expression and speech and association. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen. Turns out that human psychology and society are quite complicated and messy.
lm28469 · 4m ago
> I don't know what anyone can do about it without breaking US Constitutional freedoms
Well that's the thing, these apps can ban whoever they want they're not run by the government. The government cannot force them by law but I'm sure they can be very persuasive, especially given how many bootlickers execs there are
bhhaskin · 1h ago
The government is going to make a play for the Internet. It might not be today or tomorrow, but it will happen. They want to be able to control everything you say, see and do; especially who with.
Fairburn · 1h ago
The stupid just doesnt stop.
A little McCarthyism here, a little there.
For Context: They plan legislation to censor content creators critical of the regime or Israel, some of those content creators have larger audiences than legacy media (with younger people). Its a bi-partisan issue [1], so likely something is gonna happen and its not looking good.
I know these folks swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, but I wonder now if they have even read it.
Perhaps DHS should pull the agents back that they sent over to ICE so that they can go back to working on domestic terrorism again. Sound like a major fuck up on the administration's part.
It would seem we're too late to outweigh the impact of AIPAC...
lyu07282 · 1h ago
Especially now that they target left creators supposedly because of the dangers of left-wing extremism, when in reality the vast majority of political violence comes from the right. Like in a study by the Doj that the regime just removed today from their website:
> The 2017 white supremacist rally Unite the Right in Charlottesville, Virginia was planned through Discord, and the platform was used by far-right mass shooters in the 2022 Buffalo shooting and the Highland Park Parade shooting.
With Discord they really need to understand the difference between server level and platform level. A non-private tweet or Reddit post can be casually seen or shared by anyone on the platform, or even not on the platform. But I've been on Discord for a long time and I've never seen this extremism because I haven't gone out of my way to join servers where it's the culture.
craftkiller · 56m ago
What is the difference between a discord "server" and a subreddit? Aside from the handful of front-page subreddits, you actually have to explicitly decide to view that subreddit to see its content. I think the only difference is for discord you need to have a discord account to view the content.
ronsor · 48m ago
You can join most subreddits just by knowing the name. You can't join most Discord servers without an invite; they aren't public.
craftkiller · 38m ago
private subreddits and public discord "servers" both exist.
It's just free association untethered from the costs of physically finding your associates. During the 2020 BLM protests I found myself in a large Telegram groupchat of protest organizers. The organizers could have done the same thing in a person's house or a community center but it's cheaper and easier to do this in a groupchat.
I don't know what anyone can do about it without breaking US Constitutional freedoms or the SCOTUS narrowing the freedoms when applied to digital media (which I think would be a dangerous precedent.) It seems like the physical constraints of association used to have a pretty big hand in shaping 'radical' culture in the past.
These echo chambers can easily motivate people into violence who otherwise wouldn't. The cheapness and ease of forming mass groups to organize such events is also a huge problem. If it weren't so easy to build a group online and you had to do it in person, how many fewer of these groups would form?
How good or bad it is kind of depends on your perspective. For the current government, activists planning protests and organizing to push for government reform or equality or whatever issue, this is an extremely bad and dangerous thing. For a plurality of citizens it's an extremely good and necessary thing. The same applies to hate groups planning mass shootings or whatever. They think it's just and necessary work and some parts of our government would be thrilled to encourage it.
Either way, the current authoritarian regime has a vested interest in shutting down this and other types of free expression and speech and association. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen. Turns out that human psychology and society are quite complicated and messy.
Well that's the thing, these apps can ban whoever they want they're not run by the government. The government cannot force them by law but I'm sure they can be very persuasive, especially given how many bootlickers execs there are
For Context: They plan legislation to censor content creators critical of the regime or Israel, some of those content creators have larger audiences than legacy media (with younger people). Its a bi-partisan issue [1], so likely something is gonna happen and its not looking good.
[1] For instance Ritchie Torres (democrat) called for the ban of hasan due to his pro-Palestine politics: https://ritchietorres.house.gov/congressman-ritchie-torres-w...
Perhaps DHS should pull the agents back that they sent over to ICE so that they can go back to working on domestic terrorism again. Sound like a major fuck up on the administration's part.
It would seem we're too late to outweigh the impact of AIPAC...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/justice-depa...
With Discord they really need to understand the difference between server level and platform level. A non-private tweet or Reddit post can be casually seen or shared by anyone on the platform, or even not on the platform. But I've been on Discord for a long time and I've never seen this extremism because I haven't gone out of my way to join servers where it's the culture.