For one, anonymity, or at least pseudonymity, is increasingly important if not fundamental to being active online in counter-hegemonic ways.

And so a void is created, and into the void rush monsters: fake versions of the roots we are looking for. Identity politics, newly rigid racial labels, extreme forms of nationalism, endlessly multiplying genders, and ‘identities’ constructed online with no reference to reality. The mono-ethnic identitarianism of the far right or the ‘diversity’

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These refugees have labored to build an informational and communicative infrastructure that isn’t so overwhelming, one that can be bootstrapped in private or semi-private spaces where a level of trust and good will is taken for granted, and conflict can be productive and encouraging instead of destructive and terrifying. As she puts it, “If the... See more