I've heard these sort of arguments before. Pretending shitposting is some sort of gateway drug is a nonsense. They will find one person that might have been sucked in out of 1000s.
Saying it is part of "far-right" (which is the current boogie man) is frequently repeated, yet I never see any actual numbers regarding this. What I usually see is a screenshot of /pol or somewhere similar. It would be like going to /g and finding a meme of Richard Stallman.
I haven't seen it. Personally I've seen a lot of Pepe's that I've seen posted on Gaming discords was memes about things like bad habits, loneliness etc.
The "hard-right" is normally bored teenage boys that are trolling for laughs and don't actually believe any of this stuff.
There is a meme online currently that says "My political opinions are based on who I am trolling".
As for Pepe being a far-right meme. It never has been one. That was misinformation to stir up a moral panic and push for censorship.
The Pepe has also been used by Hong Kong protesters, (IIRC) the yellow vest protesters in france and loads of other pro-democracy freedom groups outside of the west.
I haven't read the whole thing. However in the recommendations for action section of the document (page 13) isn't anything new in my opinion.
> Debunk the harmful content of extremist humour, but only once a certain tipping point has been
crossed
Debunking from "official" sources is already a meme online known as "Deboonking" and is heavily mocked already.
Also Debunking a meme is kinda pointless everyone knows that a meme is exaggerated and is supposed to be humourous. Social media platforms have been "fact checking" memes already. It is like fact checking a joke. It misses the point entirely.
> Quarantine extremist humour — and therefore extremist ideas. The first priority is to not amplify
messages that might harm broader communities or even directly benefit far-right campaigning.
So basically censorship.
The issue is that thorny issues aren't being discussed. Censorship will make things worse as it will make it "forbidden knowledge".
> Understand the motivations behind why people are sharing certain toxic content, in order to determine points of intervention.
Because even good faith discussions around thorny political topics are frequently conflated, obfuscated or censored by governments in Europe.
> Build up effective partnerships with social media influencers and progressive communities, which
have a strong influence on the views of their followers and supporters. Such alliances serve as much
more effective multipliers of their message than trying to inflate content on its own.
This is already the norm on social media.
> Civic education should also play a key role in terms of dispelling and confronting many of the myths that circulate within these online communities — and beyond.
This reads like propaganda. The worst thing you can do to people is propagandise them. If they find out the propaganda is false (and that typically happens sooner or later) they will resent you for it.
If it is valid criticism of something you have said that is incorrect or have done wrong, the adult way to deal with this is not to get upset but take the criticism on board, improve and move on.
If the criticism is nonsense you should disregard it as such and forget about it or in my case laugh at it.
If "mainstream" news organisation cannot be trusted. People will go elsewhere in search of the "truth".
I am in the UK and I cannot trust any of the outlets at all. They lie by omission in many cases or simply do not cover it.
e.g. We've had massive anti-lockdown / vaccine passport protests in most of the cities in the UK this weekend. There are protests in France from what I understand around vaccine passports / health pass as well.
Not a mention of it at all on the BBC. Instead I find out about it via "Right Said Fred"'s twitter account. Who are "Right Said Fred"? A 90s one hit wonder band.
Sorry I don't care how long they have been in business. Generally, "You are as good as your last performance."
The New York Times (along with many other news outlets) has been known in recent years to be biased and untrustworthy to anyone that has been paying attention.
So while it is nice they have been around since the mid-19th century they should not be bestowed trust just because in the past they have may have had good reporting.
