My take for a while has been that authoritarian ideas (both hard right and hard left) dominate on social media because of the short form short attention span format. Authoritarianism tends to run on simple slogans, grievances, and identity politics. That stuff is very well suited to 140 characters, memes, and short videos.

Liberal ideas require more explaining and historical context, and they don’t play well when everyone has been triggered and trolled into limbic system mode by rage bait.

Liberal politics speaks to the neocortex. Authoritarianism speaks to the brain stem.

Authoritarians also use state influenced media to undermine democratic principles.

It seems to me that this is much bigger problem for vulnerable or stupid adults. You can be naive when you are young but you can change.

I would say that much bigger problem is possibly the influence of these sites on development of young people. We know it's addictive, we know it's harmful. Cigarettes and alcohol are banned for the same reason so I'm kinda glad for this Australian experiment. We'll see.

Authoritarians use power. That’s why consolidation of power is bad. Government is historically the most dangerous place to centralize power.