It’s not like newspapers or television are much better. The oligarchs bought and control both of those outlets. Plenty of “opinion disguised as news” to go around these days.
It’s not like newspapers or television are much better. The oligarchs bought and control both of those outlets
You have plenty of non-profit newspapers. ProPublica. The Guardian. The Colorado Sun. Mississippi Today. The Salt Lake Tribune. Mother Jones. The Walrus. Le Devoir. La Presse. Mediapart.
The way to assess the credibility of a journalist is easy. Just look at their past articles. Their articles usually follow them for their entire career.
If someone on social media spreads bullshit, what happens ? Nothing.
You have plenty of non-profit newspapers. ProPublica. The Guardian. The Colorado Sun. The Salt Lake Tribune. Mother Jones. Le Devoir. La Presse. Mediapart
And how much of the market do these networks control? Just because there are non profits available doesn't negate their claim.
Also, if a journalist writes total bullshit, they lose their job. It's career suicide. Their articles follow them for their entire career. So they have to be careful.
Depending on what network they are submitting their work to.... It's not like "journalists" on Fox News are being shamed for submitting fake stories.
We need to do better in supporting independent journalism, and journalism in general. Replacing perhaps slightly biased newspapers with influencers is not a good solution.. just makes it a million times worse. False information can spread so easily nowadays because influencers don't even bother checking anything, let alone asking experts. A lot of influencers also blatantly pander to their audience.
Which only reached middle aged and older men who drove a lot
Edit: I don't get the downvotes. In AM radio's heyday, pre-2000, women and younger people were not listening to it at all. Older men were the target demographic. Of course everyone had access to radios, but women and younger people were listening to FM, not Rush Limbaugh. And at home, AM was never on unless you were in a very rural area and an AM station was your only choice.
Being someone from back in the day, yes, I remember. And back then the dominant demographic who tuned in to AM talk radio like Rush Limbaugh were white men driving for work. There were just as many TVs around pre-2000, too, we're not talking about the 60s...
possibly more dangerous because they're what you turn to when you're really out there. out where spotify doesn't reach but you still don't want to be alone with your thoughts. it's like how it's important to pay attention to what's in the walmart discount dvd bin. for a lot of people that is what they have access to because no one else makes themselves available. having infinite connectivity has isolated us more than it connects us.
even now, i'm guilty of this. i'm outside. a honey bee polinates a sunflower. do i talk to anyone here? no they're all busy with their own conversations and i'm just waiting for a phone call. so i let these cracks in this fractured reality remain as i go online and simulate connection with all those who see this text.
in that experiment with the baby monkey, the wire momma with the milk, and the terry cloth momma with the heater, we are all the baby monkey clinging to the falsified social experience while missing out on the nutrients we need.
Yeah, but the target audience for those was people (mostly men) who had long commutes or drove for a living. I don’t think I ever knew someone to leave it on in their house, it was always something to listen to in the car. I’m sure some people did but I don’t think it was typical. If you’re in the house after 2000, Fox News is your steady drip of brain rot.
Thank you for agreeing with my point. No one ever listened to AM radio at home. I don't get why this perspective seems so controversial here after having living through it and observing this
They didn't say back in the day, though, they said before online influencers. Which would be, at most, the mid-nineties. Realistically late aughts to early 10s.
How many people, realistically, got their news from AM radio after the advent of television but before the advent of online influencers?
There was a time when Rush Limbaugh was one of the most politically influential voices in the country.
Not to mention the huge number of evangelical propaganda AM stations.
I think it's safe to say that telecom deregulation and the subsequent AM radio boom is one of the core reasons why American adults above 50 are rightwing/fascist.
General "centrist" unbiased news coverage tends not to affirm right-wing beliefs so they have to retreat into fringe independent media.
"Centrist" media tends to affirm things like the results of good science and vague inclusion, so liberals are happy to listen to it. It's only self-described socialists or other "far left" euphemisms that recognize the deference to capitalism as problematic.
General “centrist” unbiased news coverage tends not to affirm right-wing beliefs so they have to retreat into fringe independent media.
Ehhh, don't really agree; centrist news has historically ceded a lot to right wing framing and affirmation, while being far from unbiased. If anything, they have license to overtly right wing media to go even further.
every technology has had positive and negative. some get weaponized by the powers that be more effectively before the people can ensure safeguards. even the wheel has been a tool of the oppressor while making our lives too comfortable. of late, the powers that be have gained more through technological advancement than the people. i want to see a world where we can invert some of this power stream. after all, it's us, the people, who discovered these advancements, built these wonders, and now find ourselves increasingly imprisoned and controlled by violence
And its here to stay. The way kids are stuck on YouTube is like how old people are stuck on fox news.
I've thought about this a lot. There's no end. If its not Facebook, YouTube, cable, etc. It will be something else. If only our daily lives where interesting in and of themselves. Escapism will always detach us from each other and we will flail on the wind forever.
I honestly blame corporations rather than the availability to idiots.
Back in the Wild West internet days, things existed simply because people thought they were funny or hilarious, now things only exist if they garner some clout or can generate ad revenue. I don't know how much of that is an inherently human trait, but I feel like society wasn't so super-focused on personal success and self-image/confidence as it has been the past maybe 8 years. Or it was and I never noticed until then.
Edit: thinking more about it, availability might be a contributing factor to this, so you're probably not wrong.
It's availability mixed with profitability. It's never just one single factor. If it was just availability that changed, it wouldn't be as significant an issue as it is.
Are you suggesting that the nearly instantaneous spread of mis/disinformation, the erosion of young peoples' self esteem, or the damage to our attention spans is limited to people living in the United States?
Well, I guess I'm part of the "problem" then. Haha. I watch the show (although via sources that still don't "count"), but had no clue he has a podcast.
Asmongold...you have got to be shitting me. imagine getting your "news" from a guy that used a dead rat as an alarm clock, wipes the blood from his gums on his bedroom wall, used to routinely eat snacks that had maggots in them, and treats drinking water like it's poison.
A guy who could barely play WoW and left his main account on twitch because making money from viewers on that was "too stressful" proceeds to start an alt channel where he nows grifts the right for money.
All I know of him is he starts showing up on my YouTube if I dont wipe my brwser every few weeks. Haven't watched anything of his but based off the video titles I've seen and his face I don't see how anyone would want to watch them. He just looks dirty.
I don't get why people dislike him so much. You don't have to agree with everything he says, and he presents stuff pretty honestly. If you don't like it, just don't watch it
I don't watch him, and neither should you. He's a con artist. It's painfully obvious he's grifting his viewer base with his "hot takes". He doesn't present jack shit honestly. Remember when he called the Palestinian people "inferior"? He discovered he could milk people like you for money by saying the most dumb shit and you eat it up like pigs eating shit.
Idk, his reaction content just comes up on my second monitor once in a while. I've never given him anything. I think it's healthy to take in opinions other than my own, and I don't get brainwashed by media personalities, but then again, I'm not American
why follow someone that looks like homeless person, and never showered. people who dont like him arnt agreeing with him at all. and his recent drama with other influencers is quite stupid on his point.
A lot of these shows go hand-in-glove with traditional media. The police-blotter style coverage of local news, wherein a handful of old white people bemoan the latest string of young black man violent crimes gets picked up and fed into the Podcast Racism Engine and spat out as the show's Two-Minute Hate of the day.
Then you have a congo-line of ex-military blowhards telling you how they got rich trading in their service pensions for crypto futures. You have the usual suspects lineup of incel sex pests complaining that America's Newest Supermodel isn't hot enough or isn't Trad Enough, in between reading sponsor copy for whatever PR company paid them to say said Supermodel's name twenty times in a given episode. You have interviews with C-list politicians who come on the show to cry about how you can't say the N-word anymore, on account of the Woke. You have middling athletes at the end of their careers complain about how Transgender high schoolers are ruining the sport. You have middling songwriters at the end of their careers complain about how they pay too much in taxes and hate all three of their ex-wives. You have middling screenwriters demo a pilot episode of a cartoon series about Real Americans forced to use pronouns at gunpoint, then point you to the conservative version of Kickstarter with the promise of a full series that'll never get produced once they have your money. And holy shit will you get an earful about Jesus.
All this takes a bunch of time and networking and tons of money to grease the wheels. Charlie Kirk ain't doing this shit for free. But it's stacked up like any classic MLM, with the kingpins racking in disproportionately more than any of their minions or guests.
It's short-sighted to say these operations are just faster than traditional journalism, though. Lots of the names on that board have been bouncing around for decades. This is a long term, heavily financed, hugely lucrative propaganda machine. It dates back to the Nixon Era (arguably earlier) and quite a few folks have gone to their graves helping to build it.
they have been for decades, when i was in IR class in college, the professor, indian knows how partisan things are compared to other countries. although he dint at the time realize it was because of russia though. we were discussing various forms of govt in that class of different countries. (it was interesting class, but i dint want to stay in it.)
I find it interesting - and a little concerning - that there are so many more right-leaning voices than left. I have to ask a simple question - why has the left not produced more strident voices and more people able to make popular content?
The left doesn’t need their opinions constantly validated by personalities. The left enjoys (and understands) satire more. Voices like Colbert, and Jon Stewart, and John Oliver.
Josh Jonson Taylor Tomlinson hell 60% of the standup comedians easily. The picture would be much different with them in. Colbert alone would blow rogan out the water.
In that case, I think this chart is probably saying more about what kinds of media people with different leanings consume, not so much about deep pockets or a generational shift.
Late Show with Colbert has 10.1mil subscribers on Youtube, so yeah it should be on there.
If you expand to network TV for this chart — which I think you should, cuz all network TV has a digital presence too these days — it had an average of 2.42mil viewers per episode on TV through Q2.
Joe Rogan, for comparison, boasts 11mil listeners per episode.
So even just based on equating to network TV viewership, he’d probably be somewhere between MeidasTouch and The Breakfast Club.
There's probably some truth to this, but it also leans into the "MSM is lying to you" narrative that's pervasive in far right (and far left) circles. A production with [the appearance of] a low budget is associated with "genuineness" by most people. You can't be paid off by the big corpos if you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart...or so the reasoning goes.
I frequently see people on the left commenting “I don’t recognize this as a trusted source.” Or “Is this just someone’s blog?” Or, “I’m not seeing this published anywhere else.”
There is a lot of astroturfing, garbage, and propaganda that gets published online and on TV. I wish people would look into things more before believing everything they see on tv or read. People’s critical reading skills have definitely gone out the window, and it is totally being taken advantage of.
It’s not just politics either. Lots of fake product reviews, medical misinformation, etc. constantly showing up in search results, YouTube ads, TikTok videos, etc. And influencers are just the new “As Seen On TV” pitchmen of this century.
You don’t see Colbert or Stewart, or Oliver trying to sell you timeshares, or snake oil, or get rich quick schemes. Quite the opposite.
I am guessing here, but right wing shows seem to have more finances. They are run by wealthy people, playing power games, who have sociopathic motivations.
Left wing shows are more run on a minimal budget, more for selfless reasons, by people who have a day job too.
I mean personally my beliefs are really straight forward. I don't need influencers it's only complicated when you're internally dishonest and insecure.
I'm left leaning, however the only time I've watched Brian Taylor Cohen or Midastouch was because I got click-bated into watching what became a hyperbolic video subject.
After the first 5 minutes, when the facts become opinions, I immediately switch off. I simply hate fake shit.
those are what you call RESISTANCE grifters, they depend on outrage or clickbait and pretending that they are exposing something against or criticizing the right, but offer no real solution. I get enough fill on them from reddit posts of thier SC posts, so i dont watch thier actual videos.
Because most of these people make cheap potshots, even the ones with evidence to back themselves up. Just look at John Stewart, he can be incredibly insightful... but the majority of his comments during interviews are sarcastic cracks about how things aren't working as they should be.
The basis of a lot of left-leaning philosophies are abstract and complicated. That makes it hard to sum them up in convenient sound bites that are easy for mass audiences to consume. It also means that it can be very fractious, as the complicated nature of these philosophies lead to a wide variety of nearly-the-same-but-not-quite conclusions. Considering the very black and white, good versus bad, mentality that has been most prevalent at least since the WWII (if not earlier), this generally leads to people being unwilling to work with people whom they agree with 95% of the time... and that last 5% ends up being the most important to them.
This is less indicative of the political leanings of the population and more the result of a precise planned and serious effort of the right and rich political machine to spread their message. This is why Trump won 2025 in such a big way.
Is this graph supposed to be useful in any way? It excludes a huge number of voices from the left and also have a bunch of circles without names and just some random 1.1m or 2m NR on them but without any indication of who they represent more than their color.
I still can't believe we're going back to the days of muppet robber barons, beating up schoolchildren for enough lunch money to "respool their bobbins" (elmo made me censor that)
Most of the ones labeled “left” here are pushing center right talking points at best.
The actual leftist online sources, like African Stream, are straight up banned from the platforms. The right wing sources dominate because they don’t challenge corporate interests, and are not subject to censorship.
To those asking about the imbalance— it’s money. Just like older forms of media (print, radio, tv) there’s much deeper pockets for right-wing “funding” than on the left. And many left leaning outlets/personalities will turn down cash flows that might limit their control over their content. Follow the money. Always.
Exactly this. And the saddest thing is that it's not even rational criticism, just arbitrary "purity tests". "You are not left enough, go fuck yourself." "Wait, why are there so many people on the right?"
More likely, this is an artifact of a poorly condicted study. As someone else pointed out, John Oliver isn't listed. To me, this just indicates that more left people get their news from sources which didnt fit the study's criteria for whatever reason.
Not sure I trust the methodology here. I would've expected shows like The Ezra Klein Show or Pod Save America to be fairly big on the left here (and on the Apple Podcast charts, TEKS is ahead in rank of some that are listed here, PSA not far behind).
The description of the methodology is not very clear. For example, it's unclear what they consider a "show", what their search strategy was to arrive at their initial list of shows, and how the raters determined whether a show was leaning left or right (i.e., some of this is described but not in a way that would make it reproducible, and there seems to be some gut feel involved). The exclusion of shows produced by TV stations makes sense but excludes more left- than rightwing sources.
I don't doubt that right-wing shows have the upper hand in the non-traditional media market and agree this is a problem, but this project may be exaggerating the difference a bit.
To me, Ezra Klein is a pretty clear example of a left-leaning US political commentator. Not a far-left one, sure, but still one I would firmly expect to show up on the left-leaning side of this list. I know that ratings like this are far from perfect, but the AllSides media bias rating seems to agree (though marked as initial/low confidence): https://www.allsides.com/news-source/ezra-klein
Based on your evaluation, what would be an example of a commentator that leans moderately left (like just left of center) to you?
Wow. How are Colbert and John Oliver not on that graphic? Meanwhile, I don't think I've ever watched more than three or four YouTube clips of Trevor Noah.
Oh god, am I old?
Also, it sucks that Brand's a right-winger. There was a time when I thought his heart was somewhat in the right place even if the execution was... questionable.
Of the blue bubbles that actually have text (which is already a lot less than that of the red ones), I think I've heard of two or three. I've heard of a lot more of the red ones, and I actively avoid right-wing social media.
Last I saw them was them saying the left needs to start treating trans people shittier because my"most Americans are transphobic" and if we ever want to win an election again, we have to be transphobic.
As a trans person myself dating another trans person, where are we supposed to go?
They showed up on my feed when I got real into police accountability/1st amendment audits on YT. They used to do some coverage of really outrageous police interactions, but they've been swinging hard at turning the argument from "accountability" to "don't resist". Not my cup of mud
Them deciding to name themselves after the party that committed the Armenian genocide, the event according to which the term was defined, is especially heinous. It's like calling a show NSDAP live.
not really surprised, russias geopolitics includes funding both sides so they fight each other, and to distract from russias external policies. hence culture wars was a gift to them. they are basically agitators.
I must be missing something. I have been watching TYT recently after being impressed with Cenk's arguments in his appearance on Jubilee. Regarding American politics, he is certainly left. Maybe people on Lemmy think otherwise because we have so many literal Communists, but in their videos they take every opportunity to rant against the "donor class" while criticising Republicans for obvious reasons and Democrats for being pro-Israel, their election shenanigans, or for generally not being radical enough.
The only politicians I've seen get much praise when I watch are Bernie and Zohran Mamdani, so that's about where I would put them. If you don't consider Social Democrats / Democratic Socialists to be left, I am curious where you think the centrist "origin point" of the political compass should be. I would think their policies would be left of the governments of almost any country on Earth.
I think you may indeed miss something. It's not the "people on Lemmy". A few YouTubers on the left have noticed and made videos about TYT's downfall. They now have ex employees like Hasan Piker and Francesca Fiorentini openly talking about how people are treated at TYT.
There's also the whole thing about Ana getting "agitated" about some non-issues like "birth giving person" or some bullshit like that, and saying that she is done with the Democrats.
Another point that comes up often about them is how much they are willing to be friends with people of the right. They go on right wing shows to criticize the left. They also attack other YouTubers on the left like The Majority Report.
Beyond their sometimes seemingly balanced speeches, they are rapidly shifting on the right. They are becoming grifters.
Thank you for the link and context. I'm not familiar with most of what you brought up, but I'll check it out.
Hasan Piker is a socialist as far as I can tell so I guess they would be to the right of him. I hadn't heard of Francesca Fiorentini.
I think I remember them talking briefly about a "birth giving person" label but they didn't seem to treat it like a big issue at the time. They may have focussed on it more some other time and I just didn't see.
One thing I do remember is when Cenk caused a stir as a guest at a TPUSA conference a few years back and focussed on common ground ideas like oppression from elites and disdain for legacy media and certain politicians, some on the left but also a lot for Mitch McConnell. If that's what friendship means then I don't have a problem with it I guess. He seemed consistent then with what he's been saying now.
I guess another thing recently was praising Marjorie Taylor Greene for proposing cutting back on funding for Israeli missiles. Regardless of the background of the person launching it, the bill was a step in the right direction for them so they gave credit. Again, I would say it's consistent with their values rather than it being a partisan thing. They are definitely not fans of hers.
A big part of avoiding echo chambers is holding people on your side accountable and examining perspectives from people who disagree with you. The criticism I've seen so far focuses on the actions that violate their stances and acknowledges counterarguments so I consider it generally fair.
The effect Cenk had on the people at that conference backfired. Kirk played him like a fiddle and they only talked about common ground issues. To their audience it came off as "we're so right that even this leftist agrees with us".
I don't think they understand politics enough to discern ideology, so they take political labels at face value. That's how you get 1 liberal (sam seder) vs 20 conservatives, and it turns out to be 1 jew vs 20 weird nazis.
They could be intentionally obtuse. Surely they're intentionally provocative, the question is whether this is because of ignorance or malice. My guess is it's something in between, where they're smart enough to know what they're doing but care more about the money. I mean they surely vetted the fascists they got on with Mehdi Hasan because most of those people are creators with content out there for all to see, so they knew exactly what views they were platforming and normalizing to a wide audience.
I don't think they're ideologically fascist, but I do think they're evil, in the same way capitalists are evil: they always consciously choose their self-interest over accountability for the consequences of their actions (which they are well aware of). And if push comes to shove, they'd fight dirty (e.g. aligning with fascists and fascist narratives) to protect themselves from said accountability.
The left has a communication problem, all around the world. Right/conservative types seem very good at breaking their ideas down to very simple messages, and progressive types just don't seem to be able to communicate in that way.
The right do a lot of culture war bullshit. Left wingers will need to be on the defensive constantly because too many people listen to right wing talking bs.
Yes? "Rich people are robbing you blind" takes about as long to say. It's just that liberals don't like this message and the left is hesitant to break with them, so you end up in a weird limbo where the left's most important message is suppressed rather than blasted 24/7.
60+ years of conservative polcies have removed social safety nets, supressed wages, irresponsibly deregulated key industries, and funneled money to the ultra rich. These policies are largely responsible for the decline of the middle class, lack of accessible medical care, and decline if upward economic mobility. In this essay we will only be reviewing the 5,897 polcies enacted since George H. W. Bush that have directly affected these key socioeconomic systems for the middle and working class...
Yeah that doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "brown people did it" does it?
That's not the entire story, you even see it in the far left commenters here, they're notorious for writing an essay in response to a relatively short comment.
Money can be used to buy a lot of marketers, sloganeers, and focus testers. When you're trying to craft an effective way to deliver your message, it helps to be able to hire buildings full of professional spin doctors.
I mean we deserve far worse than 9/11, not that killing a few thousand civilians has the potential to move things in a positive direction, a lesson america still hasn't learned.
Crimea is Russian territory.
Crimea has been administered by Russia for years now, like it or not, its currently Russian territory and is likely to remain so in the near to mid future. In the 20+ year term though, who knows what Russia will look like, you don't sell 10 and 20Y bonds with 17% rates without consequences.
China’s takeover of Tibet
I have my criticisms of the CPC, but liberating Tibet from the theocratic, slave-owning Lamas is not one of them. Theres a reason when we dropped a bunch of gusanos into Tibet and gave them weapons, instead of sparking a rebellion, they were lynched by their former slaves.
Backs the “reeducation camps” China has for the Uyghurs.
It was better than earlier policies, somewhat successful, though it could have been done more competently seemed like the general consensus when I was in Urumqi earlier.
Theres more nuance than I was able to parse with my limited knowlege and language, so I dont have any solid opinions here, but I am certain that knowledge is greater than someone who has never been there and gets their understanding from other people who have never been there.
Plays Houthi terrorist propaganda videos and backs Hezbollah.
They've been the defacto state for a decade now, they're defending against a genocide, what exactly are you getting out of handringing over this?
Defending against genocide by conducting terrorist attacks on ships, killing the crew and taking them hostage? Crews that have fuck all to do with Israel?
They are fulfilling their obligations under the convention on genocide by using every means at their disposal to stop a genocide. Or were you under the impression they were risking their lives and what little wealth they have to enforce a blockade because they hate boats and love the feeling of terror?
It's also harder to do on the left as I feel truth is valued much more on that end of the spectrum. While there are plenty of libs who seem content to float through life in a center-left/center-right haze, even they won't buy the quantity of easily disproven bullshit spewed out by fascist propagandists. It's hard to compete.
its harder to be a left wing grifter than a right wing, because with right wing you can just bank on fear of : POC, lgbtq+, anti-leftism, mysogyny,,etc and prone to propaganda and misiniformation/disinformation. the left cant really do that with that much HATE,a nd they are pretty fickle audiences for left wing talking heads. case in point tim poole and candace owens couldnt profit off of left wing audiences, becauses its harder to gather attention large enough and not touch on controversial subjects like constant "hate this other group", thats why switched sides, right wingers LOVE DRAMA.
It is important to mind the small text, showing where the data came from. Subscribers and followers on YouTube, Spotify, Rumble, Twitch, Kick, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
right leaning folks also don't think for themselves, left leaning folks tend to do better in that regard. This is generally a positive, however it means listening to someone share their own views without being able to communicate disagreements is really fucking annoying.
They go into listening to those people with less brain cells than an average healthy person. If you have a normal number of brain cells you don't get caught up with that shit to begin with.
Hm, "newspaper" vs "online influencers". Can't newspapers be called "offline influencers"? This is how propaganda works, folks. Or are newspapers all online now too?
The right is also pretty much unified in their one big Russia-funded ideological echo chamber, or at the very least, unwilling to speak out against it. Even if the left stopped the infighting with all their purity tests, it'll take a lot more to counter the right.
My only purity test is that I will never support anyone ignorant or insincere enough to talk about "purity tests".
"Purity tests" is a thought terminating cliche created by Democratic consultants to shut down legitimate dialog with the left. If the Democratic establishment didn't have purity tests of their own, then whence "Anybody but Bernie". Maybe try grappling with what those purity tests look like.
At least that one has been proven to be bullshit by the establishment's reaction to the Mamdani campaign. I don't think it's going to be as useful to them going forward.
If purity test isn't the right wording, then there's still plenty of infighting, even if it stems from legitimate criticism. My point was that the right's lock-step mentality is what gives them such a huge advantage.
Oh, there is plenty of infighting, but putting it on the left is nonsense. If the establishment fought the right as hard as they fight the left, it would be Democrats running the whole government.
I guarantee you that the vast majority funding for right wing echo chambers comes from domestic oligarchs. Honestly, the most effective right wing misinformation campaign has been the one to get liberals to blame everything on reds under the bed.
When Left posts, they get flack from ALL right AND MOST of the left as well
Yeah, remember when the right was raging when Soros was funding left leaning causes, but they are mum when climate-change denying, racist, LGBT-phobe, rich oligarchs are funding anyone on the right?
Right isn't as unified as you might think. There's plenty of right on right violence, especially when a channel that operates under the veneer of enlightenment or "smarts" does something that goes against it, like recent JP Jubilee appearance.
Left is also a very wide umbrella, not some team, so when someone is being idiotic, giving flack and "infighting" is good.
If you were even an atom correct we wouldn't be in fascism right now
The left's infighting is what lost this election. Every single Genocide Joe abstainer needs to have their voting rights removed permanently since they can't handle the responsibility of having such power.
And that wide umbrella has a fucktonne of misandrists that are the cause of gamergate's publicity and consequently Bannon's pro-drumpf propaganda campaign followed the same pattern
So that wide umbrella could use some closing
The things you tout as 'values' are why we are here where we are now, so it's time to change them.
You think infighting is good, but the people in control of every branch of our government are in power now because in the 80s Reagan forced them all to stop attacking each other and they accomplished ALL of their fucking goals ahead of time
Your rhetoric is old, failed and objectively useless in the modern political landscape
Very much so, though I'm still shocked by how little they even try to pretend otherwise. Just one post to go from saying the left needs to stop infighting to tearing into the left like a rabbid wolverine.
H3 calls netanyahu a monster, but more importantly, Palestine vs Israel is not a left vs right conflict.
The reason this list is more right than left is because the criterias used are based on some arbitrary opinion or the amount of times someone has been called right leaning, rather than actual stances, otherwise some of these red circles would be blue. H3 is without a doubt left leaning.
Pretty sure anynone who is for universal basic income and free healthcare should be blue no matter what the other stances are, and I know some of these red ones are for these things.
No, he is against IDF bombing hospitals, he also doesn't deny sexual abuses suffered by Palestinians and he also doesn't spread Zionist propaganda. You've watched too much Hasan Piker (who did deny reports of sexual abuse during the Hamas attack by the way). Pretty sure all your points were cleared up during the debate between them.
Colonialism and genocide are bipartisan issues that is unanimously agreed on.
I would actually like a clarification of what you meant, because to me it sounded like you think someone's stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict is many times more defining of left/right than even Universal basic income which is considered by many to be communism.
all the large ones are , as you guessed it funded by putin through his oligarch, through an LLC media company or series of other right wing groups. they are responsible for drawing men into incelism, and to conservatism.
THeo von, was orginally not so shilling, i first saw him an asian youtubers channel now turned maga, surprise! that ALSO hosted russian asset TULSI gabbard on thier show just before the election, luckily these asian Yutz destroyed thier old fanbase for mysogyny(decided to blame everything that caused thier declining channel on a single female employee(she was the sole catalyst after another gossipy asian chimed in) and by extension all the former women on thier channel) and incel. im guessing over pandemic he went right wing, although i always had a suspicion he was a trashy white guy that is right winger, even before the pandemic, but couldnt put my finger on it.
Seems out of date. I think Peterson and Shapiro "fell off." Didn't know Trevor Noah was still doing stuff. Don't know who the fuck Russell Brand's audience is. I guess basing it off subscriber accounts biases it toward channels/influencers that have existed a long time, and many subscriptions may just be ignored or tied to inactive accounts. I agree the right dominates the online ecosystem, but different influencers dominate now.
Media Matters compiled a list of 418 popular online shows — podcasts, streams, and other long-form audio and video content regularly posted online — that were active during 2024
I'll spot you this. How many of these followers are dated? How many are bot accounts used to game the promotion algorithms? We can only speculate. It does seem crazy to see Russell Brand competing with Jordan Peterson at the high end, when neither of these two clowns seem to have any real popular following outside of the Podcast set. Peterson hasn't even been producing episodes reliably since COVID. He's had to take repeated extended breaks due to his declining health. These have to be stale numbers.
On the flip side, if you look at the numbers by Patreon Subscriber Count, a bunch of these guys fall off the lists and a bunch of more normal groups rise to the top. Where's "Dungeons and Daddies" or "This American Life" or "True Crime Obsessed"?
Hell, where's the de facto reining podcast champion "Chapo Trap House"?
shapiro seems to have become silent, after israel increased the recent attacks in gaza, he probably dint want to draw the ire of his racist, anti-semitic fanbase, he tried it once and he was trounced for it. Also likely putin was telling him to not defend israel outwardly too much.
russel brand the SA/HARRASer of women, seems to be new into the grift train. his most recent thing was becoming "baptized".
It's an interesting dataset, but I do think it's interesting that they're looking at followers versus viewers.
Looking just at YouTube, Joe Rogan has ~20 million YouTube subscribers, but his videos average 0.5 million to 1.3 million views.
I don't know much about the other services, but followers might be inflating their size. It is likely doing so evenly, so the left leaning bubbles should also be smaller.
In the article itself they did look at some of the views where right leaning viewership was nearly double left leaning viewership, so it is still notable, but the breakdown would be interesting.
He was also off of YouTube for a few years cause Spotify had an exclusivity deal for his stuff... so lots of longtime viewers went over there and didn't come back.
You wouldn't know it with all of the crying they do any time a left-leaning policy position is shared online. You would think that they're being bullied off of the internet.
I don't listen to or follow any of the sources on the chart, and I don't like politics. That said, as a passerby I thought it was an interesting chart. One thing I thought about, the legacy media that is highly manipulated in my opinion is dominated by so-called left and the pseudo independent in my opinion voices in red on the chart are dominated by so-called right.
I believe most people no longer trust the legacy media and are turning to just about anything else as an alternative.
I think most people mistakenly think that some of these voices in red are independent of or not affected by persuasion, coercion, other. Some of these voices in red are also potentially literal government agents.
All that said, I also find it interesting that there are not more blue dots: pseudo independent so-called left voices.
Does this mean that the so-called left audience is captive to the legacy media? And/or does this mean that the so-called left audience does not trust independent voices?
I will check some of the comments to the original post to see if anybody has thoughts on that.
Russell Brand is a British comedian and social media personality who started his career as a left-aligned comedian that relied on shock value style comedy and shows.
He got a career doing TV shows and movies and was known for his intellectual style arguments and contrarian opinions. His major claim to fame in the US would be marrying Katy Perry
and later breaking up with her and asking for a divorce via txt message 2 years later.
He was later accused of a number of sexual assaults and inappropriate behaviour and was disowned by Hollywood as a result.
In 2013-2015 Brand admitted to have never voted despite his strong political leanings and expressed public disillusionment in the British political process.
During the 2020 pandemic Brand went totally off the rocker and began sharing conspiracy theories on his social media platform and started moving towards the far-right.
Like many washed up celebrities that got Me-too'd or cancelled he began pivoting far to the right as his left-wing audience abandoned him. He changed his content to align with the likes of Joe Rogan
and Jordan Peterson
the so called "The Intellectual Dark Web" that give a platform to people with seemingly intellectual content but with a focus on contrarian beliefs, anti-woke politics, non-mainstream scientific beliefs, and straight up conspiracy theories.
He's now considered a right-wing anti-woke podcaster who uses his social media following to spread conspiracy theories.
Medium blue circle about 8 o'clock from Rogan. And they only took the number 1 spot on YouTube's podcast rankings. Rogan is still the top podcast on Spotify by far. Not sure about Apple podcasts
"Mildly interesting" is not very close to my reaction to this at all, rather something closer to "particularly concerning"
It’s not like newspapers or television are much better. The oligarchs bought and control both of those outlets. Plenty of “opinion disguised as news” to go around these days.
You have plenty of non-profit newspapers. ProPublica. The Guardian. The Colorado Sun. Mississippi Today. The Salt Lake Tribune. Mother Jones. The Walrus. Le Devoir. La Presse. Mediapart.
Also, if a journalist writes bullshit, they lose their job. It's career suicide.
The way to assess the credibility of a journalist is easy. Just look at their past articles. Their articles usually follow them for their entire career.
If someone on social media spreads bullshit, what happens ? Nothing.
Thats not true. They become president.
And how much of the market do these networks control? Just because there are non profits available doesn't negate their claim.
Depending on what network they are submitting their work to.... It's not like "journalists" on Fox News are being shamed for submitting fake stories.
WMDs in Iraq
We need to do better in supporting independent journalism, and journalism in general. Replacing perhaps slightly biased newspapers with influencers is not a good solution.. just makes it a million times worse. False information can spread so easily nowadays because influencers don't even bother checking anything, let alone asking experts. A lot of influencers also blatantly pander to their audience.
Before online influencers, it was AM radio.
Which only reached middle aged and older men who drove a lot
Edit: I don't get the downvotes. In AM radio's heyday, pre-2000, women and younger people were not listening to it at all. Older men were the target demographic. Of course everyone had access to radios, but women and younger people were listening to FM, not Rush Limbaugh. And at home, AM was never on unless you were in a very rural area and an AM station was your only choice.
You know some people really show their age when they talk about the past..
Their were just as many radios as we have TVs now back in the day
Being someone from back in the day, yes, I remember. And back then the dominant demographic who tuned in to AM talk radio like Rush Limbaugh were white men driving for work. There were just as many TVs around pre-2000, too, we're not talking about the 60s...
I submit that there are more radios than cable tvs now. Radio is still going strong. The radio shows are just as dangerous as ever.
possibly more dangerous because they're what you turn to when you're really out there. out where spotify doesn't reach but you still don't want to be alone with your thoughts. it's like how it's important to pay attention to what's in the walmart discount dvd bin. for a lot of people that is what they have access to because no one else makes themselves available. having infinite connectivity has isolated us more than it connects us.
even now, i'm guilty of this. i'm outside. a honey bee polinates a sunflower. do i talk to anyone here? no they're all busy with their own conversations and i'm just waiting for a phone call. so i let these cracks in this fractured reality remain as i go online and simulate connection with all those who see this text.
in that experiment with the baby monkey, the wire momma with the milk, and the terry cloth momma with the heater, we are all the baby monkey clinging to the falsified social experience while missing out on the nutrients we need.
the powers that be know this and manipulate it
Yeah, but the target audience for those was people (mostly men) who had long commutes or drove for a living. I don’t think I ever knew someone to leave it on in their house, it was always something to listen to in the car. I’m sure some people did but I don’t think it was typical. If you’re in the house after 2000, Fox News is your steady drip of brain rot.
Thank you for agreeing with my point. No one ever listened to AM radio at home. I don't get why this perspective seems so controversial here after having living through it and observing this
They didn't say back in the day, though, they said before online influencers. Which would be, at most, the mid-nineties. Realistically late aughts to early 10s.
How many people, realistically, got their news from AM radio after the advent of television but before the advent of online influencers?
Tens of millions of people did.
There was a time when Rush Limbaugh was one of the most politically influential voices in the country.
Not to mention the huge number of evangelical propaganda AM stations.
I think it's safe to say that telecom deregulation and the subsequent AM radio boom is one of the core reasons why American adults above 50 are rightwing/fascist.
General "centrist" unbiased news coverage tends not to affirm right-wing beliefs so they have to retreat into fringe independent media.
"Centrist" media tends to affirm things like the results of good science and vague inclusion, so liberals are happy to listen to it. It's only self-described socialists or other "far left" euphemisms that recognize the deference to capitalism as problematic.
Ehhh, don't really agree; centrist news has historically ceded a lot to right wing framing and affirmation, while being far from unbiased. If anything, they have license to overtly right wing media to go even further.
Social media was a mistake.
Social media is a tool that could just as easily be used for the betterment of humankind.
Sadly, that doesn't make a few people lots and lots of money, so it doesn't happen.
Agriculture was a mistake.
every technology has had positive and negative. some get weaponized by the powers that be more effectively before the people can ensure safeguards. even the wheel has been a tool of the oppressor while making our lives too comfortable. of late, the powers that be have gained more through technological advancement than the people. i want to see a world where we can invert some of this power stream. after all, it's us, the people, who discovered these advancements, built these wonders, and now find ourselves increasingly imprisoned and controlled by violence
And its here to stay. The way kids are stuck on YouTube is like how old people are stuck on fox news.
I've thought about this a lot. There's no end. If its not Facebook, YouTube, cable, etc. It will be something else. If only our daily lives where interesting in and of themselves. Escapism will always detach us from each other and we will flail on the wind forever.
Social media isn't the problem Friendster used to exist and it was fine
The problem is putting the internet on a smartphone, because that meant that any idiot could get online now
And now the internet is 99.99% idiots
I honestly blame corporations rather than the availability to idiots.
Back in the Wild West internet days, things existed simply because people thought they were funny or hilarious, now things only exist if they garner some clout or can generate ad revenue. I don't know how much of that is an inherently human trait, but I feel like society wasn't so super-focused on personal success and self-image/confidence as it has been the past maybe 8 years. Or it was and I never noticed until then.
Edit: thinking more about it, availability might be a contributing factor to this, so you're probably not wrong.
It's availability mixed with profitability. It's never just one single factor. If it was just availability that changed, it wouldn't be as significant an issue as it is.
for muricans
Are you suggesting that the nearly instantaneous spread of mis/disinformation, the erosion of young peoples' self esteem, or the damage to our attention spans is limited to people living in the United States?
no,I'm saying muricans. are mostly stupid and therefore MOSTLY susceptible
I see the same shit here in Germany. Not a US-exclusive problem.
Maybe because Jon Stuart, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver don't currently host any "online shows"?
Jon Stewart has a podcast: https://youtube.com/@WeeklyShowPodcast
Well, I guess I'm part of the "problem" then. Haha. I watch the show (although via sources that still don't "count"), but had no clue he has a podcast.
Yeah, but that may not count as an "online show" since the full episodes aren't available on the platforms they were looking at.
ThE LeFt cOntRols The nArAtiVe
Left snowflakes are treading on me snaek!
Asmongold...you have got to be shitting me. imagine getting your "news" from a guy that used a dead rat as an alarm clock, wipes the blood from his gums on his bedroom wall, used to routinely eat snacks that had maggots in them, and treats drinking water like it's poison.
A guy who could barely play WoW and left his main account on twitch because making money from viewers on that was "too stressful" proceeds to start an alt channel where he nows grifts the right for money.
Shitstaingold: "Muh Superior Western Culture"
Also Shitstaingold: "I never clean my room, have roaches, and never wash my hands"
🤣
I dunno who this person is... But this chart was apparently made my Media Matters according to the credits at the bottom.
All I know of him is he starts showing up on my YouTube if I dont wipe my brwser every few weeks. Haven't watched anything of his but based off the video titles I've seen and his face I don't see how anyone would want to watch them. He just looks dirty.
Chosen of Nurgle
I don't get why people dislike him so much. You don't have to agree with everything he says, and he presents stuff pretty honestly. If you don't like it, just don't watch it
I don't watch him, and neither should you. He's a con artist. It's painfully obvious he's grifting his viewer base with his "hot takes". He doesn't present jack shit honestly. Remember when he called the Palestinian people "inferior"? He discovered he could milk people like you for money by saying the most dumb shit and you eat it up like pigs eating shit.
Idk, his reaction content just comes up on my second monitor once in a while. I've never given him anything. I think it's healthy to take in opinions other than my own, and I don't get brainwashed by media personalities, but then again, I'm not American
The man is a biohazard that I can smell through the monitor.
You need to take a hard look at your life, and maybe seek some therapy
Alright buddy
why follow someone that looks like homeless person, and never showered. people who dont like him arnt agreeing with him at all. and his recent drama with other influencers is quite stupid on his point.
Lying is easy and takes less time. Real news requires going places, interviewing people, fact checking, and presenting it in a professional manner.
It's no wonder the right wing media ecosystem is bigger.
A lot of these shows go hand-in-glove with traditional media. The police-blotter style coverage of local news, wherein a handful of old white people bemoan the latest string of young black man violent crimes gets picked up and fed into the Podcast Racism Engine and spat out as the show's Two-Minute Hate of the day.
Then you have a congo-line of ex-military blowhards telling you how they got rich trading in their service pensions for crypto futures. You have the usual suspects lineup of incel sex pests complaining that America's Newest Supermodel isn't hot enough or isn't Trad Enough, in between reading sponsor copy for whatever PR company paid them to say said Supermodel's name twenty times in a given episode. You have interviews with C-list politicians who come on the show to cry about how you can't say the N-word anymore, on account of the Woke. You have middling athletes at the end of their careers complain about how Transgender high schoolers are ruining the sport. You have middling songwriters at the end of their careers complain about how they pay too much in taxes and hate all three of their ex-wives. You have middling screenwriters demo a pilot episode of a cartoon series about Real Americans forced to use pronouns at gunpoint, then point you to the conservative version of Kickstarter with the promise of a full series that'll never get produced once they have your money. And holy shit will you get an earful about Jesus.
All this takes a bunch of time and networking and tons of money to grease the wheels. Charlie Kirk ain't doing this shit for free. But it's stacked up like any classic MLM, with the kingpins racking in disproportionately more than any of their minions or guests.
It's short-sighted to say these operations are just faster than traditional journalism, though. Lots of the names on that board have been bouncing around for decades. This is a long term, heavily financed, hugely lucrative propaganda machine. It dates back to the Nixon Era (arguably earlier) and quite a few folks have gone to their graves helping to build it.
they have been for decades, when i was in IR class in college, the professor, indian knows how partisan things are compared to other countries. although he dint at the time realize it was because of russia though. we were discussing various forms of govt in that class of different countries. (it was interesting class, but i dint want to stay in it.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
and also propaganda is easy to digest on the right too.
Would be interesting to see a funding source overlay on this
I find it interesting - and a little concerning - that there are so many more right-leaning voices than left. I have to ask a simple question - why has the left not produced more strident voices and more people able to make popular content?
The left doesn’t need their opinions constantly validated by personalities. The left enjoys (and understands) satire more. Voices like Colbert, and Jon Stewart, and John Oliver.
Are my eyes failing me, or are they not in the chart?
Having a hard time pre-deciding who and what content I think should appear in such a chart. Vlog brothers? e-newspapers?
Josh Jonson Taylor Tomlinson hell 60% of the standup comedians easily. The picture would be much different with them in. Colbert alone would blow rogan out the water.
In that case, I think this chart is probably saying more about what kinds of media people with different leanings consume, not so much about deep pockets or a generational shift.
Late Show with Colbert has 10.1mil subscribers on Youtube, so yeah it should be on there.
If you expand to network TV for this chart — which I think you should, cuz all network TV has a digital presence too these days — it had an average of 2.42mil viewers per episode on TV through Q2.
Joe Rogan, for comparison, boasts 11mil listeners per episode.
So even just based on equating to network TV viewership, he’d probably be somewhere between MeidasTouch and The Breakfast Club.
There's probably some truth to this, but it also leans into the "MSM is lying to you" narrative that's pervasive in far right (and far left) circles. A production with [the appearance of] a low budget is associated with "genuineness" by most people. You can't be paid off by the big corpos if you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart...or so the reasoning goes.
I frequently see people on the left commenting “I don’t recognize this as a trusted source.” Or “Is this just someone’s blog?” Or, “I’m not seeing this published anywhere else.”
There is a lot of astroturfing, garbage, and propaganda that gets published online and on TV. I wish people would look into things more before believing everything they see on tv or read. People’s critical reading skills have definitely gone out the window, and it is totally being taken advantage of.
It’s not just politics either. Lots of fake product reviews, medical misinformation, etc. constantly showing up in search results, YouTube ads, TikTok videos, etc. And influencers are just the new “As Seen On TV” pitchmen of this century.
You don’t see Colbert or Stewart, or Oliver trying to sell you timeshares, or snake oil, or get rich quick schemes. Quite the opposite.
that sounds alot more like right wingers pretending to be on the left, to stok anger division, i dont pay attention to those posts.
I am guessing here, but right wing shows seem to have more finances. They are run by wealthy people, playing power games, who have sociopathic motivations.
Left wing shows are more run on a minimal budget, more for selfless reasons, by people who have a day job too.
I mean personally my beliefs are really straight forward. I don't need influencers it's only complicated when you're internally dishonest and insecure.
I'm left leaning, however the only time I've watched Brian Taylor Cohen or Midastouch was because I got click-bated into watching what became a hyperbolic video subject.
After the first 5 minutes, when the facts become opinions, I immediately switch off. I simply hate fake shit.
those are what you call RESISTANCE grifters, they depend on outrage or clickbait and pretending that they are exposing something against or criticizing the right, but offer no real solution. I get enough fill on them from reddit posts of thier SC posts, so i dont watch thier actual videos.
Because most of these people make cheap potshots, even the ones with evidence to back themselves up. Just look at John Stewart, he can be incredibly insightful... but the majority of his comments during interviews are sarcastic cracks about how things aren't working as they should be.
The basis of a lot of left-leaning philosophies are abstract and complicated. That makes it hard to sum them up in convenient sound bites that are easy for mass audiences to consume. It also means that it can be very fractious, as the complicated nature of these philosophies lead to a wide variety of nearly-the-same-but-not-quite conclusions. Considering the very black and white, good versus bad, mentality that has been most prevalent at least since the WWII (if not earlier), this generally leads to people being unwilling to work with people whom they agree with 95% of the time... and that last 5% ends up being the most important to them.
Voices need an audience and leftists are shit at organizing right now
Plus what are they going to campaign on? Even more corporate welfare?
The left had a ton of progressive voices and the DNC spends a fucktonne of money making sure they never ever get an audience.
Bernie would have saved us from Trump twice and the DNC shitcanned him for fear of losing their corporate gravy train
Because the left doesn't have oligarchs with functionally infinite money funding them.
Reagan was President when I was a kid. America is right-wing as Hell and always has been.
This is less indicative of the political leanings of the population and more the result of a precise planned and serious effort of the right and rich political machine to spread their message. This is why Trump won 2025 in such a big way.
Edit: but your statement is also true
Is this graph supposed to be useful in any way? It excludes a huge number of voices from the left and also have a bunch of circles without names and just some random 1.1m or 2m NR on them but without any indication of who they represent more than their color.
I don't understand why bubbles with seemingly random positions was chosen to represent this data.
is why
Elmo how could you! How dare you display data on a format that poorly communicated the data! You were supposed to be better than this!
I still can't believe we're going back to the days of muppet robber barons, beating up schoolchildren for enough lunch money to "respool their bobbins" (elmo made me censor that)
They get funding, that much is obvious. It was the same story with the Nazis who got massive support from obvious sources.
Yep. "influencers" make their content free. Big newspapers with national reach just refuse to be read online, they want subscriptions.
There's some good community papers but they don't get much reach because the Internet doesn't necessarily show you local stuff
Most of the ones labeled “left” here are pushing center right talking points at best.
The actual leftist online sources, like African Stream, are straight up banned from the platforms. The right wing sources dominate because they don’t challenge corporate interests, and are not subject to censorship.
To those asking about the imbalance— it’s money. Just like older forms of media (print, radio, tv) there’s much deeper pockets for right-wing “funding” than on the left. And many left leaning outlets/personalities will turn down cash flows that might limit their control over their content. Follow the money. Always.
It's not just money, it's the fact that leftists tear down other leftists more than they tear down right wing posts
The right doesn't have this problem
No, it's the money
Exactly this. And the saddest thing is that it's not even rational criticism, just arbitrary "purity tests". "You are not left enough, go fuck yourself." "Wait, why are there so many people on the right?"
THere's also the fact that our umbrella is so big it contains members that want to see all men dead in a literal sense so...
What are some examples of these "irrational purity tests"?
More likely, this is an artifact of a poorly condicted study. As someone else pointed out, John Oliver isn't listed. To me, this just indicates that more left people get their news from sources which didnt fit the study's criteria for whatever reason.
Not sure I trust the methodology here. I would've expected shows like The Ezra Klein Show or Pod Save America to be fairly big on the left here (and on the Apple Podcast charts, TEKS is ahead in rank of some that are listed here, PSA not far behind).
The description of the methodology is not very clear. For example, it's unclear what they consider a "show", what their search strategy was to arrive at their initial list of shows, and how the raters determined whether a show was leaning left or right (i.e., some of this is described but not in a way that would make it reproducible, and there seems to be some gut feel involved). The exclusion of shows produced by TV stations makes sense but excludes more left- than rightwing sources.
I don't doubt that right-wing shows have the upper hand in the non-traditional media market and agree this is a problem, but this project may be exaggerating the difference a bit.
Pretty Ezra Klein is a genocidal fascist not a leftist...
According to .world, supporting genocide is the moral leftist ideal, and if you don't support genocide you're a fascist.
They also think the sky is yellow and the everyone wears a goatee in their mirror universe.
Did something change? Last I knew they were insufferable libs
To me, Ezra Klein is a pretty clear example of a left-leaning US political commentator. Not a far-left one, sure, but still one I would firmly expect to show up on the left-leaning side of this list. I know that ratings like this are far from perfect, but the AllSides media bias rating seems to agree (though marked as initial/low confidence): https://www.allsides.com/news-source/ezra-klein
Based on your evaluation, what would be an example of a commentator that leans moderately left (like just left of center) to you?
Fascism and genocide are directly opposed to leftism.
Hasan maybe. Dude is a capitalist creep but does tend to promote some actual leftism.
Liberal leftism yes but not socicalist and communist leftism.
Wow. How are Colbert and John Oliver not on that graphic? Meanwhile, I don't think I've ever watched more than three or four YouTube clips of Trevor Noah.
Oh god, am I old?
Also, it sucks that Brand's a right-winger. There was a time when I thought his heart was somewhat in the right place even if the execution was... questionable.
Yeah. Seriously questioning methodology here.
I honestly had no idea Trevor Noah was still around.
Of the blue bubbles that actually have text (which is already a lot less than that of the red ones), I think I've heard of two or three. I've heard of a lot more of the red ones, and I actively avoid right-wing social media.
The young turks turned far right over night once Harris lost.
Last I saw them was them saying the left needs to start treating trans people shittier because my"most Americans are transphobic" and if we ever want to win an election again, we have to be transphobic.
As a trans person myself dating another trans person, where are we supposed to go?
You know every well where they want you to go.
How do you even talk to these people? The left is transphobic, you’re just calling the centre-right the left and stopping there.
Feels like the conversation can go no where because they view the left as just things they don’t agree with
They go where the money is.
i was going to say, there are some other things on here mislabeled as blue
It wasn't over night. For example, their support for harris was far right in the first place.
TYT is left? Excuse the fuck out of me? Lmfao last I heard TYT was russia funded
I haven't even heard of TYT in years. Somehow they still have 12m viewers? Do people listen to them to fall asleep or something lol
They showed up on my feed when I got real into police accountability/1st amendment audits on YT. They used to do some coverage of really outrageous police interactions, but they've been swinging hard at turning the argument from "accountability" to "don't resist". Not my cup of mud
Them deciding to name themselves after the party that committed the Armenian genocide, the event according to which the term was defined, is especially heinous. It's like calling a show NSDAP live.
not really surprised, russias geopolitics includes funding both sides so they fight each other, and to distract from russias external policies. hence culture wars was a gift to them. they are basically agitators.
So many masterdebaters
Seeing TYT "left-leaning" saddens me. If they were left-leaning, they are not anymore.
I must be missing something. I have been watching TYT recently after being impressed with Cenk's arguments in his appearance on Jubilee. Regarding American politics, he is certainly left. Maybe people on Lemmy think otherwise because we have so many literal Communists, but in their videos they take every opportunity to rant against the "donor class" while criticising Republicans for obvious reasons and Democrats for being pro-Israel, their election shenanigans, or for generally not being radical enough.
The only politicians I've seen get much praise when I watch are Bernie and Zohran Mamdani, so that's about where I would put them. If you don't consider Social Democrats / Democratic Socialists to be left, I am curious where you think the centrist "origin point" of the political compass should be. I would think their policies would be left of the governments of almost any country on Earth.
I think you may indeed miss something. It's not the "people on Lemmy". A few YouTubers on the left have noticed and made videos about TYT's downfall. They now have ex employees like Hasan Piker and Francesca Fiorentini openly talking about how people are treated at TYT.
There's also the whole thing about Ana getting "agitated" about some non-issues like "birth giving person" or some bullshit like that, and saying that she is done with the Democrats.
Another point that comes up often about them is how much they are willing to be friends with people of the right. They go on right wing shows to criticize the left. They also attack other YouTubers on the left like The Majority Report.
Beyond their sometimes seemingly balanced speeches, they are rapidly shifting on the right. They are becoming grifters.
I don't want to link to a bunch of AI articles and/or long YouTube videos but this contains a bit of juice: https://novapsyche.substack.com/p/the-young-turks-daniel-penny-and
Thank you for the link and context. I'm not familiar with most of what you brought up, but I'll check it out.
Hasan Piker is a socialist as far as I can tell so I guess they would be to the right of him. I hadn't heard of Francesca Fiorentini.
I think I remember them talking briefly about a "birth giving person" label but they didn't seem to treat it like a big issue at the time. They may have focussed on it more some other time and I just didn't see.
One thing I do remember is when Cenk caused a stir as a guest at a TPUSA conference a few years back and focussed on common ground ideas like oppression from elites and disdain for legacy media and certain politicians, some on the left but also a lot for Mitch McConnell. If that's what friendship means then I don't have a problem with it I guess. He seemed consistent then with what he's been saying now.
I guess another thing recently was praising Marjorie Taylor Greene for proposing cutting back on funding for Israeli missiles. Regardless of the background of the person launching it, the bill was a step in the right direction for them so they gave credit. Again, I would say it's consistent with their values rather than it being a partisan thing. They are definitely not fans of hers.
A big part of avoiding echo chambers is holding people on your side accountable and examining perspectives from people who disagree with you. The criticism I've seen so far focuses on the actions that violate their stances and acknowledges counterarguments so I consider it generally fair.
The effect Cenk had on the people at that conference backfired. Kirk played him like a fiddle and they only talked about common ground issues. To their audience it came off as "we're so right that even this leftist agrees with us".
jubilee seems very right leaning channel to me.
I don't think they understand politics enough to discern ideology, so they take political labels at face value. That's how you get 1 liberal (sam seder) vs 20 conservatives, and it turns out to be 1 jew vs 20 weird nazis.
They could be intentionally obtuse. Surely they're intentionally provocative, the question is whether this is because of ignorance or malice. My guess is it's something in between, where they're smart enough to know what they're doing but care more about the money. I mean they surely vetted the fascists they got on with Mehdi Hasan because most of those people are creators with content out there for all to see, so they knew exactly what views they were platforming and normalizing to a wide audience.
I don't think they're ideologically fascist, but I do think they're evil, in the same way capitalists are evil: they always consciously choose their self-interest over accountability for the consequences of their actions (which they are well aware of). And if push comes to shove, they'd fight dirty (e.g. aligning with fascists and fascist narratives) to protect themselves from said accountability.
What makes you think that?
The left has a communication problem, all around the world. Right/conservative types seem very good at breaking their ideas down to very simple messages, and progressive types just don't seem to be able to communicate in that way.
Well, that is easier to do when their news dont need to follow reality, and their solutions don't need to work or make sense
The right do a lot of culture war bullshit. Left wingers will need to be on the defensive constantly because too many people listen to right wing talking bs.
Well, the truth itself has a communicability problem whensoever it doesn’t amount to a very simple message.
Why have things seemed to be getting worse for you despite you working hard and doing everything you were told you were supposed to do?
It takes about half a second to say “flavor of the year minority group is attacking your freedoms!”.
Now if you actually care about the truth? Is there something as simple to present?
Yes? "Rich people are robbing you blind" takes about as long to say. It's just that liberals don't like this message and the left is hesitant to break with them, so you end up in a weird limbo where the left's most important message is suppressed rather than blasted 24/7.
Yeah, now we're talking.
60+ years of conservative polcies have removed social safety nets, supressed wages, irresponsibly deregulated key industries, and funneled money to the ultra rich. These policies are largely responsible for the decline of the middle class, lack of accessible medical care, and decline if upward economic mobility. In this essay we will only be reviewing the 5,897 polcies enacted since George H. W. Bush that have directly affected these key socioeconomic systems for the middle and working class...
Yeah that doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "brown people did it" does it?
It's not a communication problem, it's a money problem. The wealthy have an incentive to fund the right, not the left.
That's not the entire story, you even see it in the far left commenters here, they're notorious for writing an essay in response to a relatively short comment.
Money can be used to buy a lot of marketers, sloganeers, and focus testers. When you're trying to craft an effective way to deliver your message, it helps to be able to hire buildings full of professional spin doctors.
Lotta fucking idiots on that chart.
Left and right. Hasan is the Tucker Carlson of the left.
What's wrong with Hasan? He seemed fine last I knew.
I have to say, he does see pretty normal when your on lemmy for a while.
He went unhinged in the last few years.
Said america deserved 911.
Said Crimea is Russian territory.
Backs China's takeover of Tibet.
Backs the "reeducation camps" China has for the Uyghurs.
Plays Houthi terrorist propaganda videos and backs Hezbollah.
He went from a reasonable Bernie supporter to a full blown tankie in just a few years.
Based
I mean we deserve far worse than 9/11, not that killing a few thousand civilians has the potential to move things in a positive direction, a lesson america still hasn't learned.
Crimea has been administered by Russia for years now, like it or not, its currently Russian territory and is likely to remain so in the near to mid future. In the 20+ year term though, who knows what Russia will look like, you don't sell 10 and 20Y bonds with 17% rates without consequences.
I have my criticisms of the CPC, but liberating Tibet from the theocratic, slave-owning Lamas is not one of them. Theres a reason when we dropped a bunch of gusanos into Tibet and gave them weapons, instead of sparking a rebellion, they were lynched by their former slaves.
It was better than earlier policies, somewhat successful, though it could have been done more competently seemed like the general consensus when I was in Urumqi earlier. Theres more nuance than I was able to parse with my limited knowlege and language, so I dont have any solid opinions here, but I am certain that knowledge is greater than someone who has never been there and gets their understanding from other people who have never been there.
They've been the defacto state for a decade now, they're defending against a genocide, what exactly are you getting out of handringing over this?
Defending against genocide by conducting terrorist attacks on ships, killing the crew and taking them hostage? Crews that have fuck all to do with Israel?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_the_Eternity_C
Your tankie test came back. It's terminal.
They are fulfilling their obligations under the convention on genocide by using every means at their disposal to stop a genocide. Or were you under the impression they were risking their lives and what little wealth they have to enforce a blockade because they hate boats and love the feeling of terror?
He's just an influencer, but he's better than most. I just hate influencers. It's not a good aspect of our system.
Anger and outrage sell, and the shows that lean more to the right are the ones that draw most heavily on those two emotions.
We need more outrage on the left, but it's harder to come by because it frightens the rich who own all media companies.
It's also harder to do on the left as I feel truth is valued much more on that end of the spectrum. While there are plenty of libs who seem content to float through life in a center-left/center-right haze, even they won't buy the quantity of easily disproven bullshit spewed out by fascist propagandists. It's hard to compete.
its harder to be a left wing grifter than a right wing, because with right wing you can just bank on fear of : POC, lgbtq+, anti-leftism, mysogyny,,etc and prone to propaganda and misiniformation/disinformation. the left cant really do that with that much HATE,a nd they are pretty fickle audiences for left wing talking heads. case in point tim poole and candace owens couldnt profit off of left wing audiences, becauses its harder to gather attention large enough and not touch on controversial subjects like constant "hate this other group", thats why switched sides, right wingers LOVE DRAMA.
It is important to mind the small text, showing where the data came from. Subscribers and followers on YouTube, Spotify, Rumble, Twitch, Kick, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
I'm sure some of these right wing shows are funded by oligarchs and probably buying bot subs.
This is me. I get my news from Lemmy, a dude in New Z̶e̶e̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ Zealand , and a gardener in Oregon.
Sometimes a lady in Florida that owns a shed.
That's New Zealand, or Aotearoa if you prefer.
Get some of your news from a Scottish astronomer/gamer and Fly Safe!
Right leaning folks LOVE to have their views validated. Left leaning folks will listen but don't constantly need validation. Easy.
Need more left leaning people to game it by coming off right wing but satirically to challenge worldviews.
right leaning folks also don't think for themselves, left leaning folks tend to do better in that regard. This is generally a positive, however it means listening to someone share their own views without being able to communicate disagreements is really fucking annoying.
I will never understand how anyone can listen to Theo Von or Lex Fridman without losing thousands of brain cells per second.
They can't. Which explains the whole manosphere train of thought
They go into listening to those people with less brain cells than an average healthy person. If you have a normal number of brain cells you don't get caught up with that shit to begin with.
Hm, "newspaper" vs "online influencers". Can't newspapers be called "offline influencers"? This is how propaganda works, folks. Or are newspapers all online now too?
What are you saying?
Fun fact:
The Right owns online discussion because the left doesn't support itself or really even engage meaningfully in significant numbers
So when Right posts, they only get flack from some left
When Left posts, they get flack from ALL right AND MOST of the left as well
Since most sites use popularity voting for visibility, this means in every case this gives the right significant more reach
Stop tearing down your leftist fellows, you won't tho
The right is also pretty much unified in their one big Russia-funded ideological echo chamber, or at the very least, unwilling to speak out against it. Even if the left stopped the infighting with all their purity tests, it'll take a lot more to counter the right.
My only purity test is that I will never support anyone ignorant or insincere enough to talk about "purity tests".
"Purity tests" is a thought terminating cliche created by Democratic consultants to shut down legitimate dialog with the left. If the Democratic establishment didn't have purity tests of their own, then whence "Anybody but Bernie". Maybe try grappling with what those purity tests look like.
Add the "vote blue, no matter who" as thought terminating cliche. The Democrats are enabling the Republicans anyway!
At least that one has been proven to be bullshit by the establishment's reaction to the Mamdani campaign. I don't think it's going to be as useful to them going forward.
If purity test isn't the right wording, then there's still plenty of infighting, even if it stems from legitimate criticism. My point was that the right's lock-step mentality is what gives them such a huge advantage.
Oh, there is plenty of infighting, but putting it on the left is nonsense. If the establishment fought the right as hard as they fight the left, it would be Democrats running the whole government.
Just in case, define "purity test" with examples.
I guarantee you that the vast majority funding for right wing echo chambers comes from domestic oligarchs. Honestly, the most effective right wing misinformation campaign has been the one to get liberals to blame everything on reds under the bed.
Yeah, remember when the right was raging when Soros was funding left leaning causes, but they are mum when climate-change denying, racist, LGBT-phobe, rich oligarchs are funding anyone on the right?
If repugnicans didn't have hypocrisy, they'd have no platform at all
And calling it out only highlights how powerless dems are to stop it
Right isn't as unified as you might think. There's plenty of right on right violence, especially when a channel that operates under the veneer of enlightenment or "smarts" does something that goes against it, like recent JP Jubilee appearance.
Left is also a very wide umbrella, not some team, so when someone is being idiotic, giving flack and "infighting" is good.
If you were even an atom correct we wouldn't be in fascism right now
The left's infighting is what lost this election. Every single Genocide Joe abstainer needs to have their voting rights removed permanently since they can't handle the responsibility of having such power.
And that wide umbrella has a fucktonne of misandrists that are the cause of gamergate's publicity and consequently Bannon's pro-drumpf propaganda campaign followed the same pattern
So that wide umbrella could use some closing
The things you tout as 'values' are why we are here where we are now, so it's time to change them.
You think infighting is good, but the people in control of every branch of our government are in power now because in the 80s Reagan forced them all to stop attacking each other and they accomplished ALL of their fucking goals ahead of time
Your rhetoric is old, failed and objectively useless in the modern political landscape
Lol, so much for "stop tearing down your leftist fellows".
Only liberals say this shit, and they mean "abandon any leftist projects and give unquestioning support for imperialism abroad and austerity at home"
It reminds me of nazis complaining the left calls everyone nazis; this isnt a general problem everyone has.
Very much so, though I'm still shocked by how little they even try to pretend otherwise. Just one post to go from saying the left needs to stop infighting to tearing into the left like a rabbid wolverine.
Liberals are on the right. The democratic part is center-right.
I think the imbalance in available funding is what makes the difference.
Also, you immediately started tearing into other leftists one post later
H3 calls netanyahu a monster, but more importantly, Palestine vs Israel is not a left vs right conflict.
The reason this list is more right than left is because the criterias used are based on some arbitrary opinion or the amount of times someone has been called right leaning, rather than actual stances, otherwise some of these red circles would be blue. H3 is without a doubt left leaning.
Pretty sure anynone who is for universal basic income and free healthcare should be blue no matter what the other stances are, and I know some of these red ones are for these things.
No, he is against IDF bombing hospitals, he also doesn't deny sexual abuses suffered by Palestinians and he also doesn't spread Zionist propaganda. You've watched too much Hasan Piker (who did deny reports of sexual abuse during the Hamas attack by the way). Pretty sure all your points were cleared up during the debate between them.
Colonialism and genocide are bipartisan issues that is unanimously agreed on.
Yeah they definitely sound like your average Hasan viewer.
"Universal" here obviously not including Palestinians
I'm sure you didn't mean to sound like the following just now:
"How can you advocate for social welfare when there is a literal genocide going on?"
Correct, I didn't and don't.
I mean that's exactly what you sounded like.
So sick and tired of the Palestine bullshit being dragged into every conversation.
No, that's just you lazily strawmanning
Yeah, how dare people make a big deal about the modern Holocaust. Don't they know that non-westerners aren't really human?
I would actually like a clarification of what you meant, because to me it sounded like you think someone's stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict is many times more defining of left/right than even Universal basic income which is considered by many to be communism.
Did this box of yours get lost in shipping?
and many "social media" forums leans right wing in various forms, so you might get banned very easily.
Steven Crowder is a one trick pony
Change my mind
I can get him to roll over for you… I’m going to need a bit of cloth and some Bacardi 151
This would be more representative as a venn diagram because a lot of those numbers overlap.
Since there's no colour legend, I was really confused by this since blue means conservative and red means liberal in Canada.
UK is the same colour scheme as Canada, only red is labour (party of the working man).
That does sound confusing :)
The right has more bots
Midas touch surpassed Rogan on some platforms at some point, thankfully.
I get my news from right here. So if I am misinformed: It's y'all's fault! 😝
all the large ones are , as you guessed it funded by putin through his oligarch, through an LLC media company or series of other right wing groups. they are responsible for drawing men into incelism, and to conservatism.
THeo von, was orginally not so shilling, i first saw him an asian youtubers channel now turned maga, surprise! that ALSO hosted russian asset TULSI gabbard on thier show just before the election, luckily these asian Yutz destroyed thier old fanbase for mysogyny(decided to blame everything that caused thier declining channel on a single female employee(she was the sole catalyst after another gossipy asian chimed in) and by extension all the former women on thier channel) and incel. im guessing over pandemic he went right wing, although i always had a suspicion he was a trashy white guy that is right winger, even before the pandemic, but couldnt put my finger on it.
Yeah, Dugin is getting his wish of the West self-destructing, however slowly.
Got any evidence for that? Or is this another case of BlueAnon liberals trying to blame everything on foreigners?
The source has other infographics in case you were more than mildly interested through no fault of your own. https://www.mediamatters.org/google/right-dominates-online-media-ecosystem-seeping-sports-comedy-and-other-supposedly
Seems out of date. I think Peterson and Shapiro "fell off." Didn't know Trevor Noah was still doing stuff. Don't know who the fuck Russell Brand's audience is. I guess basing it off subscriber accounts biases it toward channels/influencers that have existed a long time, and many subscriptions may just be ignored or tied to inactive accounts. I agree the right dominates the online ecosystem, but different influencers dominate now.
I'll spot you this. How many of these followers are dated? How many are bot accounts used to game the promotion algorithms? We can only speculate. It does seem crazy to see Russell Brand competing with Jordan Peterson at the high end, when neither of these two clowns seem to have any real popular following outside of the Podcast set. Peterson hasn't even been producing episodes reliably since COVID. He's had to take repeated extended breaks due to his declining health. These have to be stale numbers.
On the flip side, if you look at the numbers by Patreon Subscriber Count, a bunch of these guys fall off the lists and a bunch of more normal groups rise to the top. Where's "Dungeons and Daddies" or "This American Life" or "True Crime Obsessed"?
Hell, where's the de facto reining podcast champion "Chapo Trap House"?
Numbers seem a bit cooked.
shapiro seems to have become silent, after israel increased the recent attacks in gaza, he probably dint want to draw the ire of his racist, anti-semitic fanbase, he tried it once and he was trounced for it. Also likely putin was telling him to not defend israel outwardly too much.
russel brand the SA/HARRASer of women, seems to be new into the grift train. his most recent thing was becoming "baptized".
They should have gone off of recent viewership numbers instead, I agree.
It's an interesting dataset, but I do think it's interesting that they're looking at followers versus viewers.
Looking just at YouTube, Joe Rogan has ~20 million YouTube subscribers, but his videos average 0.5 million to 1.3 million views.
I don't know much about the other services, but followers might be inflating their size. It is likely doing so evenly, so the left leaning bubbles should also be smaller.
In the article itself they did look at some of the views where right leaning viewership was nearly double left leaning viewership, so it is still notable, but the breakdown would be interesting.
I think Rogan does serious numbers in audio form. Lots of people still listen to audio only podcasts.
He was also off of YouTube for a few years cause Spotify had an exclusivity deal for his stuff... so lots of longtime viewers went over there and didn't come back.
yeah, almost all the newspapers are owned by big nazi oligarchs
TYT not a fan
https://www.wsj.com/articles/political-news-outlet-young-turks-raises-20-million-after-viewership-gains-1502186406?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAi7rc3d692dO7zD3D1SvwgieQvHOWnkqH91ohhS9H7sCw3E-XMZsjbw&gaa_ts=68a34995&gaa_sig=gDiFpPmQ12hDdo6Mbj9f8lDDO5zqPcpwOGKdVwKzZegOu6R6jj02CAKxUBoiVdlztYU2LnJgjkKAoCuRWYl8ag%3D%3D
You are not a fan of a channel named after the party which orchestrated the Armenian genocide and overthrew the Ottoman empire?
Yes. Because educated individuals dont listen to talking heads.
I mean I do listen to left leaning news. Not right wing propaganda disguising as news
The left has its voices, but I don't know many left-leaning people who hang on every word of media personalities. It seems less cult-ish.
You wouldn't know it with all of the crying they do any time a left-leaning policy position is shared online. You would think that they're being bullied off of the internet.
How much overlap is there?
Because I'd bet the same type of asshole that listens to assholes like shapiro, peterson, etc, also listens to rogan.
not much, they are funded by the same person/people, and the get thier propaganda marching orders from a "country" known for its troll farms.
I don't listen to or follow any of the sources on the chart, and I don't like politics. That said, as a passerby I thought it was an interesting chart. One thing I thought about, the legacy media that is highly manipulated in my opinion is dominated by so-called left and the pseudo independent in my opinion voices in red on the chart are dominated by so-called right.
I believe most people no longer trust the legacy media and are turning to just about anything else as an alternative.
I think most people mistakenly think that some of these voices in red are independent of or not affected by persuasion, coercion, other. Some of these voices in red are also potentially literal government agents.
All that said, I also find it interesting that there are not more blue dots: pseudo independent so-called left voices.
Does this mean that the so-called left audience is captive to the legacy media? And/or does this mean that the so-called left audience does not trust independent voices?
I will check some of the comments to the original post to see if anybody has thoughts on that.
Anyways, thanks for your time.
Russell Brand is right wing…?
Most of the rapists are.
yep, he started drifting off the deep end during the pandemic.
Here is a reddit ootl from a year ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1eagosa/whats_going_on_with_russell_brand/
top comment:
His gigantic ego couldn't handle being the bad guy for being rapey. So he took a rightward swing in recent years.
Candice Owens has 22M followes? Doubt.
She's a hell of a grifter. Her YouTube channel pulls in a lot of views.
Medium blue circle about 8 o'clock from Rogan. And they only took the number 1 spot on YouTube's podcast rankings. Rogan is still the top podcast on Spotify by far. Not sure about Apple podcasts
"The way to control and direct a mentat, Nefud, is through his information. False information--false results".
-Baron Harkonnen pg 233 out of 548.
Anyone got a podcast for the sovereign citizen moment? Kinda interested in a morbid kind of way
A whole lot of people that don't relate to my life.
Wonder if there’s a way to detract people who follow multiple tho.
tyt? oof
Lex Friedman is right wing? I don't watch him but never got that impression
He’s part of the Roganverse.
Oh I've been under a rock! Did Rogan start acquiring podcasts, or is Rogan verse not specifically about them being owned by him?
But what about “both sides?” /s
The Young Turks are democrat?
Heh!
I'd say they're left and nonpartisan. They're anti-uniparty.
This chart is only accurate if you're color blind or don't understand leftism.
Most of these "left" news sources are right-wing AF: The Young Turks, Trevor Noah, The Breakfast Club (lol)...,
Liberalism =/= Leftism. Liberalism is a right-wing capitalist ideology.
The left-right paradigm is so stupid
People need to be on a team. They don't really do very well with thinking for themselves or taking issues/problems individually.
They want a wholesale solution and that requires being part of team A or B, one good, other bad. And believing there are no alternatives.
Especially when it's the people in the top half of the political compass who have always been the problem.