Comment by arsome

2 years ago

I'm sure our extremely divided society will benefit greatly from configurable echo chambers.

It unironically will. Instead of locking everyone in the same room just let people have their own spaces, and everyone can get out of each others hair. I'll never understand when the excellent idea of localism was turned into the derogatory term 'echo chamber'.

Unlike in the physical world there's not even a limit to land, cyberspace is infinite. Don't understand why people who can't stand each other are so eager to get in each others face.

What should we have instead? A benevolent dictator controlling what everyone can read?

  • Delete the social networks, work with real people and all of a sudden things become a lot less extreme.

No-one’s come up with an obviously-correct, completed, broad-appeal social network design so far. Twitter’s approach worked to some extent, for a little while, but is clearly now utterly broken. Anyone who’s ever spent any time on an internet forum (broadly defined) knows that there has to be some kind of moderation. Personally, I’m simply not going to be using a social network where I’m subjected to routine transphobia – not because I don’t want to “hear both sides” but because I already have the firmest possible position against it and I don’t need to hear any more. Maybe a general solution doesn’t exist, but I applaud Bluesky for giving this a go.

These seem more like notch filters and I’m hoping they work. At least they are trying something, and a large scale experiment can only help figure this out (even through failure).

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  • Not really. Legal limitations to free speech as well as ethical standards are geo-divided and are often mutually incompatible. There are little that can be spoken without offending someone.

  • No doubt division is exaggerated by the media and politicians for self-serving ends, but there absolutely is plenty of division on many topics.

    • The trick is to just discard everyone who disagrees with you has driven by hate or some other excuse to dehumanize them. Then the remaining people are not divided. Societal unity achieved! /s

  • The irony is lost on this one.

    • I think I agree with their point though (despite their comment being divisive). In my actual real (off the internet) life people with diverse opinions and backgrounds all get along more or less fine and manage to "make it work".

      If you really think everyone is totally divided and falling apart I recommend just touching grass and getting off the internet. You'll realize it's really not that bad

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