I think it's quite significant, especially when you consider the way in which social media platforms function and how they make money and what kind of content they reward and monetize. When you have channels like Tenet Media, which are hyperbolic and intentionally provocative, what happens, of course, is human nature. It draws eyeballs and people pay attention to that. Then the algorithm that is curating content on TikTok or on YouTube simply serves up more content of a similar type.
The more we see things, the more normal they seem and the more normalized they become in our political rhetoric, and the less extreme they seem to us from a political standpoint as the centre line begins to move. How extreme can something be if it seems like everybody on social media is talking about it?
This is the pattern that we see in digital media marketplaces, which gradually leads towards a polarization of rhetoric. This is extremely divisive, not only because it distorts the representation of public opinion but also because it is so heavily rewarded. It's not that Tenet Media relied exclusively on Russian secret dark money to run their operation. They also made a lot of money on advertising from the likes of YouTube and TikTok, who also make a lot of money from this kind of overt, hyper-politicized content, without any effort to determine where it is coming from, whether it could be an influence operation, and what are their responsibilities in terms of public safety and national security.