The Economist recently published an opinion piece arguing that bigotry has become a lucrative business.  As the magazine puts it:

The country is in an unusually flammable mood. This being America, there are plenty of businesspeople around to monetise the fury—to foment it, manipulate it and spin it into profits. These are the entrepreneurs of outrage and barons of bigotry who have paved the way for Donald Trump’s rise….

Breitbart News, in particular, has excelled in pushing boundaries. … It has provided platforms in its comment section for members of far-right hate groups who rail against immigration and Jews.

The outrage industry has clearly reached a milestone with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. …He won the hearts of 13m Republican primary voters by recycling conservative media hits such as “build a wall” and “ban all Muslims”. …

There are big bucks in bigotry

Twitter has been a particularly virulent source of online bigotry and abuse.  Buzzfeed recently published an article on Twitter’s 10-year failure to halt hate speech – often targeted at particular users – that stems from a combination of corporate dysfunction, failure of (white, male) corporate leadership to recognize the problem, and business exigencies that emphasized user growth.  In this election season, Twitter has become a famous platform for bigoted trolling, often aimed at journalists who oppose Donald Trump.

But it appears that bigotry as a profit-center only goes so far.  Twitter has been plagued recently by a stagnant user base and correspondingly declining stock price; as a result, it has been seeking an acquirer.  But according to recent news reports, Twitter’s troll problems are driving away potential bidders.

So, it seems there’s at least a built-in limit as to how far bigotry can take you.