Trends in online chatter mirror patterns observed in the lead-up to 2020 elections and January 6 Capitol attack
There could be a potential surge in political violence following the upcoming US election, and pro-Trump rightwing vigilante “poll watchers” might surveil ballot drop boxes as Americans cast their votes, experts warned this week.
A new report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) highlighted alarming trends in online chatter, mirroring patterns observed in the lead-up to the 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Meanwhile, Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI), issued a fact sheet with recommendations for dealing with conspiracy-minded monitoring groups like True the Vote, which spread false narratives in 2020 alleging that Democrats had sent paid “mules” to drop boxes with thousands of illegal votes in order to steal the election from Donald Trump.
We have seen FB groups of people planning to open carry to the polls. Likely to intimidate voters in my area. If you live in a state with open carry and someone intimidates you, call the police. Open carry does not allow for harassment or assault. Be safe y’all.
I’m planning to take the day off and join a counter protest of MAGA “poll watchers”. We were trying to encourage people to plan to counter protest after they vote. So that there can be a united front that grows as people show up.
Even with concealed carry, which is basically every state these days.
Even if its illegal to carry, don’t count on these thugs to follow the law.
Even if the person intimidating you is unarmed, they have been known to be supervised by concealed groups of thugs armed with anything from bludgeons to AR-15s in order to turn the tide against someone standing up to them.
Call the police, don’t get carried away on principle and put yourself in danger.
Trump wins: 1st American Purge!!!
Harris wins: Take back the stolen election!1!
The magats have been gearing up for violence for a year or so, now. There IS going to be violence. Seriously SERIOUSLY wanna be wrong on this one.
The magas have been stockpiling and planning for almost a decade.
The right has been working on this for decades.
They are ready to fight and die in the name of white supremacy. I hope their efforts fail spectacularly.
Plenty of people leave those areas or at least grow out of their thinking.
I had a shotgun and rifle before I was even conceived. But I’ve only voted D.
This is America, it’s safe to assume everyone has a gun even if they’re not strapped 24/7. And regardless of how many guns someone owns, it’s really difficult for someone to use more than two at the same time.
For example, in October, violent rhetoric related to election denialism increased by 317% on Telegram, 105% on Gab, 25% on communities.win, and 75% across a selection of Fediverse communities.
While it’s nice to be included, weird that they used “a selection”
What else could they do? There’s no way to make a comprehensive list of every Fediverse-supporting server in existence, let alone aggregate their data.
They could name the instance (what they probably meant) or the communities (what they said).
A 75% increase in parts of the Fediverse means absolutely nothing…
Like, you understand that was my complaint, right?
That X% of a non defined subgroup is literally meaningless?
Yeah, I agree. Even if they were trying to be comprehensive, there’s no real way to make sure they got the entire long tail of tiny instances, especially since, for all we know, there might be clusters of them federated with each other but disconnected from the “main” cluster containing the biggest servers.
Moreover, I agree that failing to name the instances/communities is absolutely worthless. A 75% increase on lemmy.world might mean a very different thing than a 75% increase on exploding-heads.com, which might in turn mean a very different thing than a 75% increase on lemmygrad.ml.
No way! Really? Slap my knee, and color me surprised! Who’d a thunk!?
