WSB wasn't all that alt-right/Nazi/whatever before the GameStop insanity, but after some clickbait articles equating them with Trump supporters, something like 6 million new people descended on them, some noticeable number of them being Trump/QAnon cultists. I suspect it was a self-fulfilling thing.

No Trumpists were spotted - people just wanted a piece of the pie and say fuck you to the criminals at Wall Street - but it seems the media did their job.

Oh, no. They were spotted. Afterwards. I am not talking about hearsay or "journalism". There was a thread with several tens of thousands of upvotes and someone innocently said to the effect of "that sounds almost like one of those worshippers of the orange god..." and another person said (paraphrasing) "it literally IS, they are an antivaxxer and EVERYTHING, just check their posting history". They were not lying.

That doesn't prove any particular percentage of the newcomers were, but when you see one like that...

But I say again, I believe this was an effect of the articles, not the cause.

You know these things are allowed to be something other than all or nothing, right? You can hold the stance that WSB fiasco is idiotic scaremongering while also acknowledging that there are other internet mobs that do real harm. Because when it comes to WSB I completely agree with you.

My point, well I have more than one really, they are 1) if these evil mobs are really any semblance of a threat, pointing at them every time a blue check decides to go after ideological opponents desensitizes us to it, and 2) the only prominent examples of what you're saying exists and is a danger are perpetrated by the people reminding us of this ever present danger.

You can't defend baseless attacks against things like WSB by reminding us that a real mob of scumbags exist and then expect others to disassociate the two. When an article is written attacking someone that is legitimately going after the evil people on the internet, your point may very well be valid, but in this case it is not. If you want these two scenarios disassociated from one another, perhaps don't associate them with one another.

No that's fine, I think we're actually in agreement. I want also want the two disassociated! It just seems like whenever deplatforming comes up like this people's gut reaction is to say that its bad in absolute terms and that getting rid of the very worst who do real harm is the same as silencing political views you don't like. I absolutely do not want to give off the impression that I approve of the WSB scaremongering. They're a vulgar bunch but it's all in good fun and self deprecation.

Lynch mob is wrong, even if it hangs the right man on occasion.

> You can hold the stance that WSB fiasco is idiotic scaremongering while also acknowledging that there are other internet mobs that do real harm.

You mean like that group that has torched neighborhoods, shot polive officers, shot other protesters, thrown rocks, use baseball bats on police and civilians etc etc?

Or do you mean the really really scary ones like the ones that walked into Capitol Hill and had four lunatics with strips along with them while the rest were busily taking photos?

So I don't have skin in the game here, and I'm definitely no fan of the comment you responded to (not appropriate for this forum and not conducive to real discussion) but I figured I'd point out 1 person was killed at the capitol and she was shot by DC police, another cop was thought to have been killed with a fire extinguisher but that is currently being investigated, and the rest died of heart attacks and things like that. To claim "6 people died" is at least as disingenuous as what you're accusing.

Maybe it was a little disingenuous. Of the 5 (my apologies) that died, 1 was a stroke, 1 was a heart attack, 1 was crushed by the mob, and we know what happened to the other 2.

I could be wrong, but I still don't think there was a single BLM protest this summer where 3 people were killed.

I agree my example was ugly.

I wasn't there, wouldn't have been there if I could (quite on the contrary I'm working on getting people away from such activities.)

Still I think we shouldn't compare the Capitol event with one BLM event but rather compare all MAGA events with all BLM events.