From the original article on August 27, 2021. Author: eugyppius.
An assumption shared by all the cockroaches I've encountered in the last 48 hours, is that anonymity somehow makes it easier for bad actors to influence discourse here.
It's the absolute opposite.
Nobody knows who anybody is here. This means that followings are built strictly on the basis of content and our own ad hoc networks. The big accounts are the ones everyone likes.
This makes conspiratard theories about funding totally beside the point.
Everybody is funded in one way or another. We all have to have day jobs. If people with money were funding frog twitter (calm down, Imperium, it is a hypothetical) that would be bad how? The content would still have to appeal.
If you look at actual, funded content out there in the real world - things paid for by grant foundations and the like - it is terminally awful wankery. Nobody likes it. It's the exact opposite of the spontaneity and vitality of what many of my favourite poasters produce here.
Finally, our anonymous communities are illegible to outsiders. If somebody wanted to influence our discourse, where would he begin? He'd pick established personalities he already liked and ... pay them to do what they were already doing but moar. Which, again, is a problem why?
Outside money can never make content popular, unless you're alleging that we're all bots.
PS. You have to be stupid or a real autist to cast aspersions on the allegedly mysterious rise of this or that account. Successful posters with big followings put in enormous work behind the scenes, bromoting frens, creating mutually supportive ecosystems, etc.
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