I used to like xkcd, but he has made some comics that have had a pretty negative effect on society as a whole.

Famously, I think that comic #1357 is a (https://xkcd.com/1357/) great example of unintended consequences. Most average people think it's unreasonable to get fired from a typical job for supporting a given party so the idea that "free speech isn't free from consequences" doesn't really ring true. Most people seem to believe in a principle of "free speech" that goes beyond "freedom of speech only protects you from the government", you could call it the principle of open discussion or something. This whole idea of "community" moderation in this fashion is inappropriate when the actual moderation is only done by a handful of unaccountable people and executed with an invisible recommendation algorithm. When you get banned by a social media website, that's not the same thing as being kicked out of a bar. Social media websites are funded by advertising companies. The kind of people who use this comic were living in a venture-captial funded web2.0 utopia and did not realize that the town square had been privatized. Reddit, Tumblr, etc. did not see the coming wave of censorship coming in the name of advertiser-friendliness. Twitter users did not realize "It's a private company, they can do whatever they want", goes both ways when their site got bought out by a right wing guy.

I also see comics like #538 (https://xkcd.com/538/) used to justify a total pessimism around cryptography at all. Like "why bother encrypting your hard drive or data when the government can just beat you with a hose". It's not hard to see why this is a terrible argument.

xkcd is fine, it's very quotable, it's just that his well of "nerdy humor" has seemed to run dry. Most of his comics are rehashes of old ideas/jokes at this point. And when it comes to politics, xkcd just seems to tow the democratic party line, even when it's disastrous like supporting kamala or hillary.