We examined how online hate is motivated by receiving social approval via Walther's (2024) social approval theory of online hate, which argues (H1a) more signals of social approval on hate messages predicts more subsequent hate messages, and (H1b) as social approval increases, hate speech becomes more extreme. Using 110 million messages from Parler (2018-2021), we observed the number of upvotes received on a hate speech post was unassociated with hate speech in one's next post and during the next month, three-months, and six-months. The number of upvotes received on (extreme) hate speech comments, however, was positively associated with (extreme) hate speech during the next week, month, three-months, and six-months. Between-person effects revealed an average positive relationship between social approval and hate speech production at all time intervals. For comments, social approval linked more strongly to online hate than social disapproval. Social approval is a critical mechanism facilitating online hate propagation.

The psychologist Josh Cohen said, "Privacy, precisely because it ensures we're never fully known to others or to ourselves, provides a shelter for imaginative freedom, curiosity and self-reflection. So to defend the private self is to defend the very possibility of creative and meaningful life." The IoT brings with it a deluge of devices for our homes that are always on, always listening, sometimes watching. These omniscient objects are designed to have human traits to encourage us to be ourselves around them so we interact with them eagerly and often. But this could come to damage our sense of privacy as we become more and more aware of what we say and do around them -- and we run the risk of altering our behaviour accordingly.