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They have the right to do this. I still think this is terrible. Echo chambers are becoming more common with the wide-spread adoption of the internet and peopl
by CivBase 8y ago
They have the right to do this.
I still think this is terrible.
Echo chambers are becoming more common with the wide-spread adoption of the internet and people are increasingly worse at handling disagreements. It is so easy to immerse yourself in communities that validate your ideas. Many online services push you into these echo chambers because, in general, people engage more with groups that express ideas they are comfortable with.
The internet is a never-ending record of the adverse effects of echo chambers. Politics, religion, game consoles, programming languages, frameworks, operating systems, browsers, text editors... they exist for just about everything and the effect is always the same. People immersed in echo chambers gradually stop being able to show empathy to those outside their group. Perceived public opinion is a powerful thing and we love to point to popularity as justification[1].
Humans need to be challenged in order to grow. Maybe RPG.net isn't the right place for people to be challenged politically. Then the mods should just ban discussions about any real-life politician. Targeting one politician just creates another echo chamber.
Again, I know they have the right to do this. They should be allowed to do it.
I think it's bad.
[1] Apparently it's called "argumentum ad populum". Cool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
- muzz 8y agoNot sure if a gaming forum is an apt comparison to a politcal echo chamber
- CivBase 8y agoYou don't have to be a politically-focused website to be a political echo chamber. Clearly politics are a common discussion point on that forum.
- gus_massa 8y agoThe part that is terrible is that they are not banning all political discussion, they are just banning the part they don't like. The rule says: > New Ban: Do Not Post In Support of Trump or his Administration If they want to keep the gamming forum on topic they can ban all political discussion. (As a comparison, HN has a ban in political discussion. It's difficult to ban all political discussion because the is an spectrum between 100% political and 100% technological, and some posts are both political and technological, and in some case there is not clear threshold.)
- dragonwriter 8y ago> If they want to keep the gamming forum on topic they can ban all political discussion. This isn't about being on topic, as it's a sitewide rule which applies even in the open-topic forums on the site. So, criticizing it as not the best way to keep things on-topic is missing the point. > As a comparison, HN has a ban in political discussion. No, it doesn't, though it did as a quite controversial experiment for a few days a while ago. (If it did, this discussion, which is 100% political, would be banned.)