The removal of view counts could empower fringe content. Even the most gullible are far less likely to take a video of an extremist nut job seriously when they have 100 views. Part of how radicalisation works is by convincing people that the radical ideology is far more mainstream than it actually is. It’s already easy to inflate view counts but removing them entirely makes it much much simpler for crazies to sell the idea that their ideas are popular.

Yup, flushable wipes should be avoided

That’s part of it another is that the right offers some easy answers to some very complex questions. They aren’t the right answers but they’re easier to wrap your head around. As prosperity drops, the time, effort and resources the average person can commit to understanding the complex problems facing their country also drop. This means the easy answers take root easier, and spread further and faster because the less informed are less resilient to them.