Political Influencers and the Alt-Right Pipeline

“Social Media Marketing Strategy” by Today Testing is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Onlines influencers sell everything to their audiences— makeup, vitamins, video games, and even political ideologies. Right-wing political pundits like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have found a platform that allows them to sell their ideology without institutional oversight, and profit from it. But mainstream conservative voices are not the only ones flocking to online spaces to share their opinions. Far-right political extremists have a disturbingly large presence online that is gaining exposure on sites like YouTube, and even worse, are gaining a sizable audience. But how are they doing it? How are right-wing extremists using sites like YouTube as a battleground for political identity, and who makes up their ever-growing audiences

Frighteningly, signs point to the YouTube algorithm as a major ally in alt-right recruitment tactics. Over a quarter of people who comment on mainstream conservative videos also comment on extremist videos. Additionally, the algorithm recommends increasingly violent and extreme content to users who search for specific radical buzzwords related to these fringe ideologies. It fills their recommended videos with increasingly extreme content, which in turn prompts more extreme video recommendations. But by what mechanism does the algorithm decide who is pushed toward this extremist content? 

The answer, shockingly enough, is through the mainstream conservative pundits in your search history. According to a study conducted by Rebecca Lewis, people like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro act as a gateway to extremist ideology in the YouTube algorithm. For example, in the YouTube algorithm, Ben Shapiro is only one degree of separation from Richard Spencer, the neonazi conspiracy theorist responsible for the Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ Rally, because both have collaborated on the channel “The Roaming Millennial.” Similarly, Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host, is only one degree of separation from Faith Goldy, a notable Canadian white supremacist. In essence, in the online world, moderate conservatives are only one YouTube channel recommendation away from alt-right conspiracy theorists and neonazis. Therefore, people who view moderate conservative videos on YouTube will be funnelled into extremist audiences, and be exposed to violent ideologies by the search algorithm.

What does this mean for the population at large, though? There is plenty of literature about the alt-right pipeline on social media, and most adults can recognize the difference between people like Milo Yiannopoulos and The Golden One. Unfortunately, adults are not the problem. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2018, 85% of teenagers say that they use YouTube as a social media site, with 32% saying that it is the site they use the most often. The YouTube algorithm is a pipeline for teenagers who don’t have the political education to discern between mainstream and fringe views. As a result, they are the major building blocks of the growing alt-right platform. The YouTube algorithm is radicalizing people, especially teenagers, by exposing them to fringe conservative groups, and further polarizing politics. And the Right is not fighting this trend. Many conservative hubs are using this online ecosystem as a way to circumvent professors, parents, and even other media sources as a way to preach ideology directly to teenagers. Without the need for fact-checking or peer approval, messages like that of white supremacy and violent misogyny are able to proliferate in ways that official avenues would never permit. The lack of dissenting opinions allow these online political influencers to effectively trap young, inexperienced viewers in a conservative echo chamber of extremist thought. Forty-five percent of teenagers report that they use social media “near constantly,” and as such, are constantly exposed to the Right’s efforts to absorb them.

If the Right is putting in so much effort to win over teenagers on social media, then what about the Left? Surprisingly, there is no liberal parallel to the ‘alternative influence.’ Official right-wing groups use social media at a much higher rate than left-wing groups, despite popular opinion. Although individual left wing pundits, such as PhilosophyTube and Contrapoints, do make up a similar YouTube ecosystem to that of the Right, it is much smaller, and rarely seeks to actively recruit teenagers in the same way. However, this doesn’t mean that liberalism is absent online. Plenty of left-wing people use social media to promote their politics; they just are not influencers who monetize their audience. Forty-four percent of liberal democrats say that they have used social media to engage politically, while only a third or fewer of conservatives say the same. Although the Left doesn’t have the same institutionalized punditry that the Right does, it does have a grassroots network of activism across platforms. While there is no direct counter to the Right’s official platform of alternative influence, the Left is just as active across social media platforms on an individual, non-influencer level, which may help curb the effects of radicalization on the right.

Right-wing influencers are growing their audience by taking advantage of a broken algorithm to circumvent mainstream media standards, and promote harmful ideas like that of white supremacy, neonazism, and violent misogyny to a primarily teenage demographic. Although there is a left-wing presence online, it is predominantly on an individual level, instead of the large network of conservative influencers the right has built on sites like YouTube. Alternative influencers also use mainstream pundits as a gateway to their extreme ideology. Social media collaborations and an algorithm also do not distinguish between mainstream conservative voices and fringe conspiracy groups. Although the GOP claims that social media is censoring conservative voices, it would appear that, in reality, social media facilitates the rise of the Alt-Lite and similar movements.