More moderators, stricter policies, mass bans, mea culpa proselytizing in front of Congress from leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, and repeated promises to “do better.” They even pleaded with Congress: “Regulate us.”
But in parallel, these companies, particularly Facebook, were spending tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying efforts to ensure that any type of legislation that might be introduced was not the type of legislation that would impact their financial well-being.
Ultimately, even the minor steps the companies did take to try and make their platforms safer were removed, or forgotten about, in what Benavidez calls the “Big Tech backslide.”
“Their values ultimately lie in making money, their bottom line is more important than protecting users or democracies,” Benavidez says. “This year, a major flashpoint for democracies worldwide, where billions of people will be voting, the platforms have washed their hands of the role they play in protecting [the elections].”
Even before Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, right-wing voices were already poisoning the well, resharing baseless conspiracies about the vice president’s eligibility to run for president, framing her past relationships as something illicit, and attacking her race and gender.
Harris is also a major advocate for abortion access, another hot button issue for the right who saw their wildest dreams come true when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“This year is one in which the question of what women can do and the agency women have over their bodies and in the public world, that question is thrown front and center,” Benavidez says. “So it makes sense that Gamergate tactics, being that first signal flare years ago around what women can and cannot do, should be back in the spotlight.”
These attacks have become so normalized they are happening everywhere, all the time, and while we may hear about some of them, such as the so-called Gamergate 2.0 earlier this year, most of them will never come to wider attention, and the women targeted by these campaigns will be left on their own to deal with the fallout.
“There’s a new Gamergate every week, and no one outside of gaming journalism is ever dealing with these things, because they don’t make any sense,” Broderick says. “They don’t really feel like they matter. So these problems just sort of compound over time, because there’s really no way for popular culture in America to talk about these things.”
Beyond games, the news cycle moves so fast in 2024 that even if someone does pay attention to a coordinated online attack, 24 hours later they have likely moved on to something else. This is how an account like LibsofTikTok is able to direct hate toward the trans community and the doctors and hospitals helping them.
Chaya Raichik, the person behind LibsofTikTok, is supported in her efforts by powerful figures within the GOP who are similarly pushing an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, and by Musk, the owner of X, the platform where many of these hate attacks begin. Just last month, Musk dead-named his own daughter in an interview, claiming she was “killed” by the “woke mind virus.”
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