Perhaps they only find the increase shocking on the left.
There's a bunch of ways to measure political opinions. The Authoritarian-liberal one being one of many. The economic-left and the economic-right are becoming more separated from the social-left and the social-right.
Tribalism also causes people to take on the positions of their 'tribe' which may be distinct to what their own personalities might normally gravitate to.
In the past, it has been the economic-left and social-right that were more prone to authoritarianism with their proponents believing that their ideals should be enforced.
The economic-right and social-left was more of a logic vs empathy tension ('this works' vs 'this is right') and a lot of people seemed to reconcile the two for one flavour of centrism.
To me it is a little shocking how authoritarian elements of the social-left have become, an ideology that has long been characterized by empathy and supporting others seems to have become blended with opinions which are exclusionary or dogmatic, which seem counter to their own principles.
In some respects maybe this is just the march of time making the progressive opinions of one generation the orthodoxy of the next and these people are just finding a new conservatism rooted in a new orthodoxy.
Isn't that just what happens when you keep pushing the Overton Window to the right? What would have been 'centrists' have to become more authoritarian to stand ground or else they let their position get absorbed by the stronger leaning side. When one side refuses to compromise even slightly, you have two options: give in or dig in.
If the left-most edge of the Overton Window had been pushed right of the centrist position of, say, the 90s that would be correct. But it's obvious that isn't at all true -- many moderate left positions today would have been considered outlandishly radical in the 90s.
It's rather more likely that the increase of left-authoritarianism is due to increasing resistance to moving the Overton Window, both the left-most edge and the right-most edge, leftwards. As resistance increases more forceful techniques are necessary.
Gay marriage, for instance. In the 90s (and even the 2000s) it was pretty common even for people on the left to come down on the side of "I don't think we should allow gay marriage". Whereas now, it's so firmly within the Overton window that even most of the right thinks gay marriage is fine.
The fact is that society changes over time and what was unacceptable during one time becomes acceptable in another. This does not indicate a shift to the left, it indicates humanity becoming less intolerant. Are you going to argue that allow black people and white people to marry and repealing miscegenation laws mean that the country shifted to the left?
Are you saying that the Overton window can never move right as long as we maintain more human rights and tolerance than we had decades before whatever the current time period is?
No. I'm saying once you smooth over five or ten year periods, that it is empirically false that the Overton window in North America is moving rightwards.
It may very well feel that way to people who live in strong bubbles, but it just isn't true across the general population -- which of course is how the Overton Window is defined.
How does 'moderate positions now would be extreme in the 90s' act to bolster that contention, without the unsaid requirement that 'any included tolerance or added human rights that didn't exist more than a decade ago means de-facto left-wing Overton movement', which precludes any democratic society from having the Overton move right?
As far as I noticed, the “right” effectively gets the boot in most online communities which abide to a Code of Conduct, leaving mostly the “left” (the most recent example I have in mind of such moderation efforts is the save-nix-together.org open letter). It’s interesting that you don’t notice this happening in the communities you seem to frequent.
No, I see a lot of the "right" discourse. Many are openly supporting Putin now. I follow many conservative (US) pundits and journalists and they have either taken a hard right turn or are raising the alarm and supporting Harris. I see similar trends here in Canada.
Yes, I see that the left has become more authoritarian, but it pales to the hard shift I see on the right.
> It's interesting that you are only seeing it on the "left".
One explanation is that now things have switched round, and people with left-wings beliefs, sometimes extremely life-wing beliefs, control a lot of institutions and structures. People who are my age (too old) grew up with the right being in that position, but I don't think that's a contemporary instinct to possess.
The problems are well-known and highly-documented. You should leave the determination of (b) up to those who know and understand (a), which includes the author.
It does poison the article, when someone is talking about subject X, and then they feel the need to insert their political opinion about person Y and that dont' like that Z is left-wing/right-wing. It makes them seem not at all objective, and calls into doubt what else they are not being objective about in their article.
Even if this is true it being an emotional decision, so much of twitter/X itself is now AI slop anyway, so it'd be worth it to just not even include it whether it was right wing or not.
Regardless, the owner is well within his right to make an emotional decision based on his beliefs to stop anyway.
Yeah, I'm no fan of Musk or Trump, but I think Twitter always was a spam-infested, hateful cesspool where people with online-addiction yelled at each other. There was nothing for Musk to ruin, because the whole concept was rotten from the start. Allowing only short messages doesn't promote intelligent discussion, it does the opposite.
I don't care about the political part, but twitter used to have nice, high-enough quality expert discussion around topics, and now its just a shithole with very stupid takes polluting the few spots free in replies between engagement farmers and llm slop-spewers
