4 ms·

An essential part of the "town square" is that it is that it is a central place where people can be heard. The fact that zillions of social networks exist is i

An essential part of the "town square" is that it is that it is a central place where people can be heard. The fact that zillions of social networks exist is irrelevant since only a few of them have the public scope and size such that they act as a modern town square. The same is true of physical spaces. The right to peaceable assembly doesn't the same as it has in the past because in the past the center of society was in public rather than private places.

SllX 7y ago
To be frank I think the relevancy of those few social networks that are considered “public squares” is massively overblown. They can register on a political radar, but only on a very crowded radar screen. Tumblr isn’t dead yet, and is still a favored hangout for the fringe parts of society. Twitter isn’t dead, and it is the favored hangout of journalists and celebrities and their hangerons. Facebook and Reddit are appealing to vast cross sections of society but serve different functional purposes, so different parts of society surface more easily than others depending on the platform. Every Slack channel, Discord, IRC channel, group chat in iMessages or WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger, whatever the Google Talk of the week is, and mailing list is in essence, a different public square, and we haven’t even factored in newer federated social network stacks. Society happens in many different spaces. It happens in the courthouse, in the cafés and tea houses, on the subway platform and the train that picks you up, in the back of a hired car, at your local City Hall and in the halls of Congress, inside the very Oval Office, and all the public parks. The misconception that you, and many many others are under is that there even is a town square as a central organizing principle that serves as one place that society gathers. There isn’t, outside of the New England townships and their imitations anyway, just a million different islands, some of them bigger and/or more trafficked than others, some of which a little flashier than others, and with larger coastal defenses than others. Social networks are merely a part of society, they aren’t the means by which society organizes itself.
- harimau777 7y ago
  I think that you are most likely correct that there are a large number of "public squares" and that people sometimes over state the importance of a given one. However, I still think it's likely that among those public squares, certain ones are more important than others. If I had to guess I would say that Hollywood, network news, and social media are the biggest players. I suppose someone could probably do a study to try to determine which platforms are most important. For example, they could track where political slogans that eventually go mainstream originated.
  - SllX 7y ago
    Okay, pick some variables. What do you want to measure to determine the value or importance of differing “public squares” and what criteria would you like to use to define what is and isn’t a “public square”? Personally while I don’t think Facebook itself is all that important as a “public square”, I think they actually have figured this one out and a long time ago at that.

SllX 7y ago

To be frank I think the relevancy of those few social networks that are considered “public squares” is massively overblown. They can register on a political radar, but only on a very crowded radar screen. Tumblr isn’t dead yet, and is still a favored hangout for the fringe parts of society. Twitter isn’t dead, and it is the favored hangout of journalists and celebrities and their hangerons. Facebook and Reddit are appealing to vast cross sections of society but serve different functional purposes, so different parts of society surface more easily than others depending on the platform. Every Slack channel, Discord, IRC channel, group chat in iMessages or WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger, whatever the Google Talk of the week is, and mailing list is in essence, a different public square, and we haven’t even factored in newer federated social network stacks. Society happens in many different spaces. It happens in the courthouse, in the cafés and tea houses, on the subway platform and the train that picks you up, in the back of a hired car, at your local City Hall and in the halls of Congress, inside the very Oval Office, and all the public parks. The misconception that you, and many many others are under is that there even is a town square as a central organizing principle that serves as one place that society gathers. There isn’t, outside of the New England townships and their imitations anyway, just a million different islands, some of them bigger and/or more trafficked than others, some of which a little flashier than others, and with larger coastal defenses than others. Social networks are merely a part of society, they aren’t the means by which society organizes itself.

harimau777 7y ago
I think that you are most likely correct that there are a large number of "public squares" and that people sometimes over state the importance of a given one. However, I still think it's likely that among those public squares, certain ones are more important than others. If I had to guess I would say that Hollywood, network news, and social media are the biggest players. I suppose someone could probably do a study to try to determine which platforms are most important. For example, they could track where political slogans that eventually go mainstream originated.
- SllX 7y ago
  Okay, pick some variables. What do you want to measure to determine the value or importance of differing “public squares” and what criteria would you like to use to define what is and isn’t a “public square”? Personally while I don’t think Facebook itself is all that important as a “public square”, I think they actually have figured this one out and a long time ago at that.