• The quality of their arguments doesn’t really matter though, nor does it matter whether they’re able to convince a majority of people. What matters is that they can reach the few people that will find their overall presentation intriguing enough to merit further investigation, and then pull those people down the rabbit hole. It’s the same strategy that fascists use, just red-flavored instead of brown.

    It also makes the space overall less appealing to your actual target audience, which is a cardinal sin of online community management.

    • …gonna pop in and agree, dbzer0 may have got carried away with engaging with them.

      Hexbear also doesn’t have downvotes, their instance heavily emphasizes commenting to show the quality of a post, rather than vote, in most cases anyways.

      But they do definitely rally behind their own and do both, as seen in this thread. It’s like kicking a hornets nest.