John Burn-Murdoch (FT) suggests that social media allows people with 'populist' views to see they are not alone & so be confident in expressing those views:
'the inexorable rise of the populists is n...
@nprofile1q... This process, which subtly shifts the Overton Window, is one of the reasons why Germany criminalised the “Auschwitzlüge” in 1994. It got (and still gets) a lot of stick for that from the free speech crowd, who argue that we shouldn’t do this because “factually incorrect statements” can be disproven in the “marketplace of ideas “. But Germany has so far been steadfast in arguing that the spreading of harmful and disprovable lies does not deserve legal protection. This is why.