One study found that YouTube viewers who consume the kind of “mild” right-wing content created by provocative talk show host Joe Rogan, whose audience in 2020 was 286 million, are often pulled into much more radical alt-right content. The study concluded that YouTube is “a radicalization pipeline.” It’s this business model of engagement that makes social media so terrifying to those of us who study civil wars. The current model doesn’t care if the information it disseminates is true or not, just that it is all-absorbing.
