They added moderators, tightened policies, banned mass posting, and leaders like Mark Zuckerberg apologized in front of Congress and repeatedly promised to “do better.” They even begged Congress to “regulate us.”
But at the same time, these companies, especially Facebook, were spending tens of millions of dollars each year lobbying to ensure that any kind of legislation that might be introduced would not impact their financial position.
In the end, in what Benavides called a “Big Tech retreat,” even the small steps the companies had actually taken to make their platforms safer were erased or forgotten.
“Their values are ultimately about making money, and their profits are more important than protecting their users or democracy,” Benavides said. “In a critical year for democracy around the world, with billions of people voting, the platforms have withdrawn from their role in protecting[the elections].”
Before Harris As Trump became the Democratic nominee, right-wing voices were already poisoning the Democratic campaign, reviving baseless conspiracy theories about the vice president’s eligibility to run for president, casting his past relationships as illegitimate and attacking his race and gender.
Harris has been a strong advocate of abortion rights, another key issue for those on the right whose wildest dreams were realized when the Supreme Court overturned abortion bans. Roe v. Wade 2022.
“This year has brought to the forefront issues of what women can do and what power women have over their bodies and in the public world,” Benavides said. “So it’s no surprise that the GamerGate tactics that first raised alarm bells a few years ago over what women can and can’t do are back in the spotlight.”
These attacks are so commonplace that they happen everywhere, all the time. While you may hear about some, such as the so-called Gamergate 2.0 earlier this year, most go unnoticed and women who are the targets of these campaigns are left to deal with the fallout on their own.
“Every week there’s a new Gamergate story, and no one outside of games journalism wants to cover them because they don’t matter,” Broderick said. “They don’t feel important, so these problems are only going to get worse over time because there’s no way to talk about them in American popular culture.”
Even outside of gaming, the news cycle in 2024 is so fast that even if someone focuses on a coordinated online attack, they’ll likely have moved on to something else 24 hours later, which is why accounts like LibsofTikTok are able to direct hate at the transgender community and the doctors and hospitals that support them.
Chaya Raiczyk, the person behind LibsofTikTok, has received support from prominent members of the Republican Party who have similarly promoted anti-LGBTQ+ policies, as well as Musk, the owner of X, the platform where many of these hate attacks originate. Last month, Musk called his daughter by her deadname in an interview and claimed she was “killed” by the “virus of the woke mind.”
