Less that, I've been more wary of their takes on China and recent color revolutions springing up around the world. Electoralism non-sense does feel like a warning sign all things considered, though.

I've also seen a massive uptick in 'irony-posting' (I don't have a name for it) reminiscent to what I've seen on

do you mean by state actors? i feel like hexbear is too low impact for that personally. (letting disgruntled people who use the site in bad faith into positions of power, that i do think has happened.)

tbh i think it's mostly underlying contradictions and negative tendencies in the site culture/administration that have always been there, but came to a head in the last year or so. admins have always seen themselves as Vanguard of Posts (rather than what they should be, which is peacekeepers of a chill, cozy community whose focus and culture should be directed by the users). my impression is that that undercurrent kind of erupted after a year or two of relative peace & chill vibes. 

just a lot more DSA posting since Zohran, a few users over there are active members.

I knew of a few popular users that have dipped because of the surge of radlibs. One's gripe was specifically about users dunking on Sakai. Other than that, there is a surge of combative users too. Purpleworm is one to take a look at. I've never seen someone lose their fucking shit over a meme like that, lmao.

I think the refusal to have a burning zionist flag emoji did cause a lot of non-white users to leave.

okay I know I wanted to not stoke internet drama (and this is mostly separate from electoralism stuff) but I will say: that struggle session and the big one late last year really showcased the core issues with the site IMO. culture of administration has always had an undercurrent of bogus Poster's Vanguardism, but admins seem to have radlib politics with chauvinist tendencies (in a majority ML instance, so a user base that's broadly more politically developed than its leadership) and the site has no real democratic input. these contradictions came to a head at various points in the last year, after a year or two of peace & relatively chill vibes.

that's not to mention the impression many have of contempt for the userbase from site management, or the impression that you can get away with a lot of hostility (or tbh outright bullying) if management likes you enough and/or you have enough clout, but that's a discussion for another time.