Plenty have watched for almost 2 years as online spaces are consumed by disinformation + equalities matters used as a proxy for other factional disputes. It’s poisoning discourse + many are feeling the impact. We really don’t want Trumpian politics in Scotland.

US online subcultures attack national orgs (see Planned Parenthood), spread false information about policies + law, generate panic about minority groups. We are seeing this at home with trans people in the spotlight. If we don’t crack on to how this works it won’t stop.

We’ve plenty examples of complex laws being discussed on Twitter, all nuance being lost and in its place disinformation + fear spread - to the point where conversation is impossible + the laws are undermined as people misunderstand their implementation which causes more problems.

The idea that any helpful discussion of policies + laws can happen in 240 characters on a social media platform built + designed to wrap us in an echo chamber is ludicrous, which is why there are people knowingly continuing these discussions online all the time. They rely on it.

There is an onus on legislators to understand how information spreads in online spaces + how the goings on of the internet can impact policy discourse. What happens online is not representative of the real world, but left to fester long enough - it makes its way out there.

Social media platforms tear empathy out of any discussion. Every single one of us becomes reduced to a little profile picture, and the usual social rules of human interaction don’t apply. That’s why prejudice, and general nastiness, spreads online at an alarmingly rapid pace.

This is also wrapped up in post-2016 anti-expert climate, and a small yet loud underbelly of society has been stirred into reaction by increasing demonisation of “woke” “progressive” “youth” politics - platformed everywhere because media love anything they can pitch as “a battle”

At the end of the day, we’ve gone from a massive cultural conversation about #metoo   which challenged power and the broken status quo, to a now constant narrative about - and near enough every mainstream outlet fixating on - trans people. Who might that benefit.