I'd like to balance the article out a bit and say something nice about Facebook. (Holds nose) Yes, these things turn ugly. But I think there are a lot of peopl

I'd like to balance the article out a bit and say something nice about Facebook. (Holds nose) Yes, these things turn ugly. But I think there are a lot of people who have strong political opinions but have not been forced to communicate them (and defend them) in writing. Instead, they'll just tell a joke to a few friends that they know share the same view. The old complaint about television was that there were no segmented conversations anymore. It used to be that grown-ups talked about one thing with the kids around, other things with just adults, and still other things with close friends. Television changed all of that. Now every type of conversation was fair game for everybody. This is probably one of the main driving factors for the youth-dominated culture of the past several decades, but I digress. Facebook is doing that about politics -- and to some extent, religion. You don't get a special set of friends you make those atheist or conservative jokes to. It's everybody, all the time. This is forcing folks either to 1) learn to defend their views in longform discussions civilly (which is very rare), 2) have lots of flame wars with people (I disagree with the article. I think some of these folks can be fairly close), or 3) just shut up and self-censor. I've been privileged to be on a couple of sites where open and civil discourse was promoted, and I miss those experiences. I learned a lot and managed to change my opinion on a couple of things. Facebook is not that kind of site. At first I thought I could cultivate reasonable discourse in my comment feed. I could not. Then I tried a private group, thinking a smaller group could self-moderate. Perhaps some could, but mine could not. The more people realized they might be in error, the more abusive they became. Now, for me, it's just jokes, travel pictures, and humorous family stories. About once a month somebody will sucker me into a political/religious discussion. I always apologize and bow out. I love having difficult conversations. I like being challenged to think differently about the world around me. But for this to happen implies a high level of written respect for other participants that simply doesn't exist on the site. I eventually decided to become a no-politics guy on FB because it made me a worse person. It made me angry at people that I liked. How many times can you explain concept X to a friend before you don't have to again? Well, the answer is an infinite number of times if the other person doesn't want to hear it. So discussions have no progress. No matter what you do or say, a couple of weeks later you're going to be doing and saying that all over again. I do not have the infinite patience required to do this, and hell, I like these people! Easier just to dumb down my content so they can consume it.