Mildly Infuriating

Deleting Facebook does not delete MAGA content. What is gone are the views and framing of events from the left.

Facebook's user base are primarily older, Apolitical low-information voters, community groups, parents, workers, retirees, church groups... These are not MAGA voters, they are regular people who mostly passively scroll, absorbing whatever dominates their feed that day.

When left leaning users deleted their social media accounts, it didn't delete MAGA content. This rebalanced the algorithm. Comments and posts became more dominated by right leaning voices because fewer people were there to counter them and because there was more of it.

Silence functions as consensus.

When passive scrollers see MAGA or right leaning content, they don't think 'this is extreme' instead they think 'this must be normal or widely accepted'. Without content that can counter it, right leaning messages begin to shift public opinion. You can see this reflected in polls, polls answered by regular folk not just MAGA. Within public opinion you'll hear how protestors are violent or burning down cities, vaccinations are dangerous, ANTIFA is a terrorist organization, media is always fake and lying, etc.. these views we all thought would be insane 15 years ago have become status quo.

Here is something that is very critical to how this reshaping of status quo occurred. This is important to my point. Research shows a small, committed minority can flip majority opinion once it crosses a critical threshold, around ten percent. That minority does not need to convince everyone. It only needs to dominate what people see often enough to make its position feel normal.

Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities

Here is the abstract

We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction 𝑝 of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value 𝑝𝑐≈10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time 𝑇𝑐 taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. 

Does it mean every time when you have a small dominate minority that opinions will flip? No. But it does give evidence to the idea that there is some small value like 10% of a group needed to change their views for the rest of the group to flip 100%.

MAGA understand this, the left seem to be out of the loop on this however. This is why we see right leaning content that is more engaging and users who flood the zone.

In 2024 there was 1.9 billion spent in online political ads.

Facebook Says 10 Million People in the U.S. Saw Russia-Linked Ads

Far-right news sources on Facebook more engaging

How right-wing influencers are bending reality in Minneapolis

MAGA are using platforms like Facebook to become committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. And they can only become those agents when the left is not there to challenge them. When we all left Facebook and x and whatever else, we played right into their hand.

You can put hundreds of millions of people in the streets, but if digital spaces are dominated by MAGA frames then public opinion will turn against any protests or efforts.

Online perception shapes IRL legitimacy.

Leaving Facebook feels morally correct. But it's a retreat.

Public support matters. Views matter. Presence matters. Framing matters. Abandoning the largest passive audience on the internet only serves to accelerates the normalization of MAGA.

Can you answer the question I asked?