4 ms·

I too find some of the Guardian's columnists truly exasperating. However, isn't it important that they be given space to voice their opinions? Very occasionally

I too find some of the Guardian's columnists truly exasperating. However, isn't it important that they be given space to voice their opinions? Very occasionally, they give me pause for thought, and that's important. We've seen what happens (Trump, Brexit, etc.) when large sections of society retreat to personalised echo chambers.

throwawayyx96 9y ago
Actually, that would be what happens when mainstream media becomes an echo chamber and is rejected by half the populace.
dageshi 9y ago
The Guardian is catering to its own specific echo chamber demographic and everyone else is retreating to theirs. My personal level of exasperation with the guardians CIF section got me to the point where I just stopped going to the site at all, it's now right up there with Facebook with me as a pointless waste of time and source of annoyance.
wtf_is_up 9y ago
>We've seen what happens (Trump, Brexit, etc.) when large sections of society retreat to personalised echo chambers. I can't tell if you're talking about pro-{Trump,Brexit} or anti-{Trump,Brexit} supporters. I think there was some significant part of Trump's moderate voterbase composed of people turned off by the purity tests of the progressives and echo chambers like those manifested in /r/politics.
- soundwave106 9y ago
  Part of the issue of "echo chambers" is that they tend to be big fans of playing the fallacy of composition -- that is, they tend to take the "loudest extremists" on the other side, and over-promote them to marginalize the entire lot. Sure, radical progressives exist with narrow, dogmatic viewpoints... but these folks do not represent the entire spectrum of liberals / Democrats. The same goes for similarly narrow, dogmatic radical alt-righters or fundamentalists... these are not representative of all conservatives / Republicans. However, within echo chamber media, it is very common to see lots of unflattering reports on "radicals" of the "other side". These type of articles are actually pretty good warnings of what you are going to get. As far as /r/politics/ and others of similar ilk goes, it seems to me that as a general rule, social media seems to be pretty good at carving out these "echo chambers" way more explicitly. It's probably because the promotional tools are crude (binary systems of likes / thumbs up / thumbs down / etc.)... and outrage-inducing headlines is much better at selling clicks. I personally don't think The Guardian is the greatest example of sober reporting in the world, but at this point I'd take them far and beyond any Reddit political sub I've seen so far, or in fact any mass political board on the Internet anywhere.

throwawayyx96 9y ago

Actually, that would be what happens when mainstream media becomes an echo chamber and is rejected by half the populace.

dageshi 9y ago

The Guardian is catering to its own specific echo chamber demographic and everyone else is retreating to theirs. My personal level of exasperation with the guardians CIF section got me to the point where I just stopped going to the site at all, it's now right up there with Facebook with me as a pointless waste of time and source of annoyance.

wtf_is_up 9y ago

>We've seen what happens (Trump, Brexit, etc.) when large sections of society retreat to personalised echo chambers. I can't tell if you're talking about pro-{Trump,Brexit} or anti-{Trump,Brexit} supporters. I think there was some significant part of Trump's moderate voterbase composed of people turned off by the purity tests of the progressives and echo chambers like those manifested in /r/politics.

soundwave106 9y ago
Part of the issue of "echo chambers" is that they tend to be big fans of playing the fallacy of composition -- that is, they tend to take the "loudest extremists" on the other side, and over-promote them to marginalize the entire lot. Sure, radical progressives exist with narrow, dogmatic viewpoints... but these folks do not represent the entire spectrum of liberals / Democrats. The same goes for similarly narrow, dogmatic radical alt-righters or fundamentalists... these are not representative of all conservatives / Republicans. However, within echo chamber media, it is very common to see lots of unflattering reports on "radicals" of the "other side". These type of articles are actually pretty good warnings of what you are going to get. As far as /r/politics/ and others of similar ilk goes, it seems to me that as a general rule, social media seems to be pretty good at carving out these "echo chambers" way more explicitly. It's probably because the promotional tools are crude (binary systems of likes / thumbs up / thumbs down / etc.)... and outrage-inducing headlines is much better at selling clicks. I personally don't think The Guardian is the greatest example of sober reporting in the world, but at this point I'd take them far and beyond any Reddit political sub I've seen so far, or in fact any mass political board on the Internet anywhere.