>the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America
>Brian Friedberg
you'll get the same story from watching cable news or any other government propaganda outlet

at best you get the perspective of an outsider journalist who doesn't rlly understand the communities they're talking about

more likely, u just get propaganda

i can assure you that you'll learn nothing from this. just a bunch of lies.

it's a book... that should immediately answer your question.

A bunch of people spammed Pepe edits and /pol/ memes a lot. That's about it

>>166327
this book looks like AIDS

>>166327
there are no good books. organic history isnt written about, only narratives are. if you werent there, it didnt happen.

I'm not sure if this is the same book or another similarly titled one, but there is a book that documents how Steve Bannon (who at the time was very buddy buddy with Epstein, we now know) psyop'd 4chan into becoming right-wing.

I do think 4chan played a significant role in getting Donarudo Torumpu elected, but it was merely being puppeteered by billionaires to create a new feudalism based on Dark Enlightenment ideas.

i think it will be the establishment opinion and nothing all that new.

memes bad, "democracy" good, internet censorship good

>>166384
There was no "psychological operation" per se - an anon made a post somewhere during 2019 or so that there was a large exodus of conservatives from Reddit and other social platforms during 2016 that largely replaced the local userbase which created nu-4chan as we know it today and modern /pol/

very likely this is what prompted the explosion of *Chan boards during the late 2010s such as Heyuri, there needed to be refuges

Im of the opinion that the influx of posters after the election wasnt due to a reddit psyop.

Im sure it was just a combination of media attention, and censorship on other platforms, which drove normies to 4chan to say things they couldnt say on reddit.

Tr*mp's win was blamed on 4chan, all that negative press is still advertisement.

>IMG_20231214_215058_889.jpg
The spike being attributed to Gamergate wasn't Gamergate at all - GG in fact led to thousands of users leaving 4chan for 8chan (and Twitter, which caused problems in its own way), while the Redditors stayed on Reddit because Redditors always stay on Reddit even when Reddit haet them

It was The Fappening around the same time that brought in a massive influx of n00bs to 4chan, at a time when many of the "old guard" were bailing. This lead to a lack of assimilation, and the rapid development of newer, shittier site culture - 4chan in early-2015 felt completely different to 4chan circa mid-2014

The big conservative/Trump-supporter influx that saw /pol/ become the most active board was also largely from places like Facebook and via IRL word of mouth, as opposed to Reddit. 4chan and 8chan were being promoted as Free Speech️ sites for True Patriots️ among conservative crowds, who traditionally wouldn't have touched imageboards with a 10-foot pole

I'll also add that the chart glosses over the 2010 boom, which was largely a result of the whole Jessi Slaughter thing

>>166574
>>166575
these posts are right.

OP i would not trust academic or mainstream "sources" because they are extremely (negatively) biased about image boards, even the ones that are seemingly pro-image board (like some right wing books on memes) are often very misinformed to the point of painting an equally untrue image of events.