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I am a member of a facebook group for my city's ward. We had an election on Tuesday regarding some rather complicated funding mechanism for managing stormwater.
by tfandango 8y ago
I am a member of a facebook group for my city's ward. We had an election on Tuesday regarding some rather complicated funding mechanism for managing stormwater. Something which would have greatly benefited from some rational discussion. Instead people just spammed the group with conspiracy theories about how the city wants to steal our money and build arenas and other eccentricities. It was worse than useless. I found myself longing for the forums of old where there would have been one topic and lots of useful discussion instead of 100 posts with name calling and conspiracy.
- paulryanrogers 8y agoHow much of that is due to the newer systems bring more accessible to the 'unwashed' masses? I recall forums back in the day requiring a certain technical aptitude to find and post on them. That created a filter, keeping out those who weren't as deeply interested or as technically educated.
- krageon 8y agoThere were always plenty of forums full of people with only a passing or casual interest. Even outright enormous lunatics - it's just that it always seemed a bit more reasonable overall: Everyone cooperated to not let the place go to shit immediately and the need for huge and unilateral moderator intervention was limited. I think the large social networks have mostly poisoned a lot of people with harmful memes (the need to shout, weird conspiracy theories, etc) and now that the damage is done it's too late even for the old format. As a society we've moved past being adults online and degenerated straight into childlike behaviour.
- AstralStorm 8y agoThe main difference was that on most forums you didn't write to get likes it points and your post wouldn't be drowned out most of the time.