How To Stop The Left from Losing Social Media

There is this false narrative among conservatives, that they are systemically discriminated against online. “I’m just going to cut to the chase”, Republican congressman Jim Jordan said during a congressional hearing. “Big Tech is out to get conservatives.” This persistent narrative has been echoed by the right for years and has been a central topic of debate and frustration.

The first thing people on the left do in response is to usually point out that conservative influencers dominate engagement on many mainstream platforms by every conceivable metric. As sociologist Jen Schradie wrote for NBC back in 2020: “Platforms heavily favor conservatives, who not only have war chests of funding but also a swath of digital boots on the ground. And they will marshal their forces if they perceive a threat to that advantage”

And while this correction might make a good clap back in the moment, when we step back, it's more of a self own. It emphasizes the extent to which the left is not doing a good job capturing attention and engagement among users — a failure that prevents us from controlling the conversation™, and makes our efforts reactive, rather than proactive. We are so used to attacking the opinions and people on the Right without really bothering to put out a narrative of our own.

We are going to take this time to highlight the extent of the problem at hand, and more importantly what we can do to reverse the tide.

Social media’s conservative bias

Something to note is that every platform is different. Some platforms have an obvious conservative bias, where conservative influencers dominate. When we look at Facebook, for example, conservative voices consistently capture engagement more than any other. Content creators such as Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino are so frequently securing the top-performing posts per day that, if you were to map out engagement in any given month, they would be their own categories.

In fact, conservative content overall makes a disproportionate amount of engagement on Facebook, Returning to the month of November, a little over 64% was conservative-leaning content, with more liberal content only taking up a little under 5% of the top posts. There is unquestionably a conservative bias here. My spreadsheet doesn’t care about your feelings.

Other platforms have a more neoliberal bias (e.g. favoring participation in the marketplace over an overtly ideological stance). On these platforms, corporate actors selling a product or brand is what succeeds the most. When we look at the top retweets or most liked posts on Twitter or the most-watched video on any given day on YouTube, we mainly see content promoting music videos (especially BTS), Marvel movies, and the promotion of other brands.

In other words, shit people want to buy.

The most popular TikToks are slightly less corporate (though not by much), and not overtly political. The posts that tend to succeed are comedy videos (see Khabane Lame, whomst we stan), celebrity vids, or cute ones with animals in them. It should be emphasized that even though they don’t often break to the top in terms of engagement, conservative influencers do have a robust following on TikTok. Ben Shapiro is on every conceivable platform, including TikTok, as well as other users such as the Real Conservative Guy, conservative barbie, and more.

There is no parallel to Ben Shapiro for the Left. Leftist content creators certainly exist on all mainstream platforms, but they do not have the same success, and in fact, often face systemic barriers for mobilization. Leftist content creators routinely report being censored when creating content on difficult topics such as LGBTQIA+ rights or violence. BreadTube creator Mia Mulder, for example, recently did a video describing drug decriminalization but had to speak in code for the entire video due to YouTube’s censors, cheekily titling her video Why Can’t We Talk About “Drinks?”

Conservatives face censorship as well, but when they get banned from major social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, their movement has a tendency to build or coopt other platforms in response. Telegram, Signal, and Rumble didn't necessarily start out with the explicit purpose of becoming breeding grounds for far-right voices, but that’s what they have become. Over the past few years, these platforms have received a major influx of cash from conservative billionaires, something that makes them hesitant to cut ties with their new user base completely.

There are also new platforms such as Gettr that have been built by conservatives from scratch, to give users who have been purged from platforms like Facebook and Twitter a place to go. Trump is also allegedly building a social media platform as well, though, given his past business ventures, we aren't holding our breath for its success. Regardless, it underlines the point that the right has a lot of money to throw around when it comes to organizing on social media.

Yet, the Left doesn’t have the same resources to pick up and leave when these platforms refuse to accommodate us. It takes years for Leftists to do what the people on the Right can achieve in a matter of months. There are some projects out there like Nebula and Means TV that leftist creators have slowly built up over the years, but these are just starting out, and do not have the same reach (or pockets) as these other platforms.

What we can do about it

Well, that was a downer.

It’s not the most optimistic thing to hear that the right is dominating social media. Engagement is a core value for how our society operates. If you don’t have people watching you, you aren’t going to get the money, manpower, and political capital necessary to make your vision of politics a reality.

Leftists need more eyeballs and so the natural question becomes: What can we do to reverse the trend?

See what works & copy it

The first and most obvious strategy is to see what ideological competitors (and your peers) are doing and to copy that formula. By copying the right, I do not mean to adopt the same lies that they do. We do not need to fabricate falsehoods for the sake of convenience (we, fortunately, have the truth on our side, Ben), but we do need to be wary of the aesthetics and tones that do well on our platforms of choice.

Branding, honey. It’s all about the brand.

One of the few leftist brands to do well on Facebook is Occupy Democrats, which is occasionally able to break the Top 10 in terms of engagement. The way they manage to accomplish this task is the same way that conservatives do — they push “outrage porn,” which is not nearly as fun as it sounds (i.e. content intended to make consumers angry). In the same way that Ben Shapiro is always complaining about how liberals are ruining society, Occupy Democrats posts spend a lot of time dunking on people like Trump and Fox News. Facebook, as a platform, is set up for this type of engagement, which means if you want to be successful there, serving up a hot dish of outrage porn on a consistent basis is a great way to amass a following.

In another example, The Gravel Institute marketed itself explicitly as the left’s answer to PragerU — a conservative education channel that attempts to radicalize people to conservatism through short explainers. The Gravel Institute does the exact something, also putting out short explainers that break down topics from a leftist perspective. They didn’t reinvent the wheel here. They saw what their most popular competitor was doing and they copied the basic idea, albeit with a slightly nicer polish. And with over 300,000 followers, they are having a lot of success.

As fun as it is, it’s not enough to simply “dunk” on conservatives. We need to break down what they are doing and copy it.

Be entertaining & relatable

Leftists have a reputation for being unfunny killjoys. We are not the kinds of people you invite to a party. There is a joke among leftists that a typical leftist meme is a long, unreadable wall of text.

Just, no thank you. Next. Give me the bill, please. I am ready to leave, thank you very much.

The Gravel Institute created partial success by doing the opposite of this strategy. They launched their channel with a trailer narrated by H Jon Benjamin of Archer and Bob’s Burgers fame. This video has hundreds of thousands of views. It was a minor success and how they achieved this was not by monologuing about the need to join Leftism, but rather having Benjamin interweave jokes throughout the video that made it actually entertaining to watch.

Arguably some of the most popular Leftist content creators are Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube and Natalie Wynn of ContraPoints, and how they have achieved this fame is by being very entertaining. It’s not that they don’t talk about important or heavy topics — the two of them have tackled everything from white supremacy to islamophobia — but they do this by creating elaborate set pieces, great jokes, and plenty of understandable references. Their content is #relatable. I do not need a degree in philosophy or political science to understand what the fork they are saying, and that sort of relatability makes them approachable.

There is a new generation of leftists who understand that it's easier to radicalize people through memes and pop culture references than it is to have them immersed in theory that will take months of study to understand. It’s not that theory is bad, but it's more the thing you pull out after someone is comfortable with leftism, and not the opening salvo in a conversation.

Don’t let the right control the conversation

We are going to have to talk about the right. It’s inevitable. They are unfortunately everywhere, and that is a bummer. If you are going to debunk the rights’ nonsense, however, I implore you, don’t just make it about them. They already have enough. Link it to an issue you care about, or you will find that your brilliant fact-checking was for nothing.

We saw this phenomenon with the Critical Race Theory (CRT) debate, which is an academic concept that studies how racism is embedded in our legal system and policies. The right turned this obscure theory of legal study into a boogeyman, where they claimed that, well, a lot of contradictory things, but the primary objection was that CRT teaches white people to feel ashamed of themselves. A ludicrous claim that has been repeatedly debunked (see Tim Wise’s essay on the subject).

In fact, many people on the left have spent (and are continuing to spend) a lot of emotional energy trying to debunk this topic, and so far it hasn't had a lot of success because the issue was never really about CRT. As the original conservative agitator, Christopher F. Rufo explains on Twitter, “We have successfully frozen their brand — ‘critical race theory into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.” This was always about branding and power. The right was successfully able to use this nonsense as a wedge issue to help them win the Governorship in Virginia and probably more seats in 2022.

When you only talk about your opponent's framing, you cede ground, and you allow them to define the debate. It’s great that fact-checkers exist, but because no dominant counter-narrative was established with CRT, every frustrated tweet and takedown also served as free advertising for the right. This is a great reminder that if you have to talk about a topic proposed by the right, it's necessary that you link it to something else. Don't just debunk something like Critical Race Theory. The right never gave a frack about the specifics of CRT in the first place. Link it to an issue you care about. Briefly discredit their framing and then segue onto something else more important.

For example, it's well known that concern for CRT was astroturfed by billionaire Charles Koch, who used their vast think tank network to create fear about it. Use that fact to advocate for a need to tax the wealthy. Billionaires like Koch have far too much say over policy and this is yet another example of why we need to redistribute their wealth. In three sentences, you have moved away from the conservative framing of CRT and towards the more leftist conversation of wealth redistribution. Carlos Maza does a great job doing this segue in their video Critical Race Theory And “Moral Panic,” saying:

“While immigrants, people of color, and working-class whites are exploited in different ways and for different reasons, they are often exploited at the hands of the same powerful elites and have reasons to look out for each other. To treat racial justice and economic justice as part of the same struggle.”

Bamn a video about CRT really turns out to be a video about class consciousness.

This tactic shifts the conversation to debating your policy, instead of the nonsense being proposed by the right. Use whatever issue or topic is in the zeitgeist and reappropriate it for your own purposes. That is how you win. By refusing to play on your opponent's terms.

Be persistent

One of the greatest problems that the left has had to grabble with in recent years is how some people within the coalition (mainly liberals) rely too heavily on polling. There is a tendency among leaders in the Democratic party to claim that an issue should not be pursued because it doesn’t poll well — an argument that can be seen in every debate from Single-Payer Healthcare to gay marriage.

For example, one of the greatest narrative coups in recent memory was Defund the Police. For a brief couple of months, the left controlled the media conversation. You might not agree with this policy, but it’s hard not to argue that it was all anyone could talk about for a few hot months.

However, an argument emerged from Democratic Party leadership and pundits that this was not a good narrative. Soon people began talking about how “defund the police” was bad, and while you may believe that, something we have to reckon with was that no alternative narrative was established by critics to take its place. The conversation moved from arguing how to “defund the police” to how “defunding the police is bad,” which is a reactionary take not helpful for advancing policy. You can’t build a constructive movement on the word no — change requires articulating a solution.

The right soon captured the conversation to talk about nonsense like CRT because they are very good at “agenda-setting” (i.e. controlling the framing of an issue to influence public opinion). The right doesn’t let a poll stop them from fighting for something. Conservatives will repeat a policy or issue over and over again, no matter how unpopular, until they capture enough support, even if it takes years of struggling in the wilderness to do so (see abortion). There is a famous saying by Republican Strategist Frank Luntz that goes like so:

“There’s a simple rule: You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you’re absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time.”

The biggest takeaway the left needs to understand from the right is to never let anything go. If you believe in something, no matter how unpopular it is at the moment, you need to fight for it. Social media requires a constant backlog of content that users can tap into. Completely throwing out your entire volume of content because the public’s perception has shifted is a terrible way to gain a foothold on the web

Polling should not be used to kill the promotion of an issue, but as a guide on how to campaign for it, and that remains just as true in online content as it does with political organizing. If Americans don’t like an issue, you call it something else. Republicans do this all the time. They didn’t stop campaigning for the privatization of the education system because it polled badly but reframed it as school choice. They didn’t stop pushing for mandatory pregnancies but reframed them as being pro-life.

I will say it again: branding is everything, honey.

It’s this ability to rebrand that we need to adopt from the right. Successful leftists know that it's their words that need to change, not their positions.

Conclusion

None of this stuff is new. Activists have been arguing for all of these points for years. The Right’s playbook is not really theirs. They just have the money and wherewithal to do whatever it takes to get their desired policy passed.

If you have the time and money — something the left is admittedly at a disadvantage online (and in real life as well)— then you too can establish a foothold online. You simply have to copy what works, be engaging, don’t let the right control the conversation, and do your darndest to remain consistent — not just in terms of content production, but with your general objectives.

We might never have the pockets of the right, but we have the numbers, and online, eyeballs are everything.