it happened to tumblr, then twitter, now tiktok. since the rumor that obama won the election because of youtube (thanjs bo burnham), conservatives have spent an uncomfortable of money trying to control political & social narratives on social media.
then, once a far-right owner has control of the app, like the above three companies, they can pump unlimited propaganda. soley right-wing social media companies, like truth social, are wildly unpopular. even right-wing dating apps go bankrupt like “the right stuff” app. the only approach the far right has to get this propaganda to new people is to control/buy/coerce large social media titans & remove left wing talking points.
another tactic is censoring left wing topics or subjects. for example, tumblr got bought out by yahoo first. before yahoo bought the company, it was a bastion of left wing ideals & feminism. i couldn’t spend two mins on the site without being reminded to register to vote, and there were consistent updates & voting guides. after it was bought by yahoo, all of the sudden, all political content was now 18+. the voting registration numbers dropped. the die-hard online support for hilary completely disappeared overnight. all mentioned of anything lgbtqia+ were hidden for being adult content. any mention of feminism was barred from home pages. there is no way it wasn’t purposeful & the site hasn’t hit the same traffic since then. when that happened, everyone moved to twitter
then, of course, elon buys twitter. what happened when he did ? a giant influx of far right content, with left wing accounts getting banned or barred for no apparent set reason. elon’s been known to directly silence accounts he doesn’t like. so everyone left twitter & elon completely devalued the company to spread propaganda
these are very obvious, planned takeovers. this media manipulation hasn’t ended since the cold war started. and the push in right wing targeted spam will continue to keep increasing online through every avenue. tiktok wasn’t the first & won’t be the last company to rise on free speech of everyone & fail hard due to a right wing takeover & forced censorship propaganda