Comment by SirHumphrey
5 days ago
Nuanced discussion can only happen in good faith. It’s impossible to enforce that so to prevent being turned in to 4chan, social media turns to the most obvious proxy- likes upvote etc.
The logic underpinning this is that if a person is a jerk they will be downvoted- therefore there is an incentive to not be a jerk.
However, because the person on the other side is anonymous and therefore people can’t instinctively presume good faith, upvoting system turn in to a voting system - the goal is not to develop ideas, but to submit ones people will most agree with. When the main danger is apathy, there is no reason from self-moderation. Nerds are not immune.
I don't think it's impossible to enforce, you can probably do it on social media limited to hundred(s) of participants, where moderators (and other users) can get familiar with specific posters.
On most social media people aren't anonymous, they are pseudonymous - this can still have an impact on your behavior when you know that even non-moderators can look up your post history.
But I guess that a lot of posters are still going to feel pseudo-anonymous, because looking up still requires a lot of effort... at least until for a few they become famous enough (dang, pg...) that their pseudo-anonymity is gone.