This has been well before the pandemic and even before Trumps presidential bid. But also before corporate social media being dominant i remember being exposed to self identifying nazis in video games around the time when facebook was mostly farmville invitations.
Once the Nazis realized the power of corporate social media and its algorithms and the corporations realized the money they can make with peddling hate-speech, it became more present, but it always was there and certainly not shunned away to the fringes.
I think they always have been there and certainly not on the fringes.
Take this question about “stormfront” for instance from reddit nine years ago.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/45krzb/why_do_many_of_the_european_subreddits_seem_like/
This has been well before the pandemic and even before Trumps presidential bid. But also before corporate social media being dominant i remember being exposed to self identifying nazis in video games around the time when facebook was mostly farmville invitations.
Once the Nazis realized the power of corporate social media and its algorithms and the corporations realized the money they can make with peddling hate-speech, it became more present, but it always was there and certainly not shunned away to the fringes.