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This is a very interesting topic to me lately. Atheism has a disadvantage of no community. However, you also have the formation of echo chambers. Echo chambers

This is a very interesting topic to me lately. Atheism has a disadvantage of no community. However, you also have the formation of echo chambers. Echo chambers aren't just political. Xbox vs playstation? Nikon vs Canon vs Mirrorless? Wallstreetbets vs Buffet? The reasons for this comes from moderation. 1 place, say reddit, might push 1 way as best and being able to downvote or moderate the content of opposing viewpoints pushes people away. They find a new home and decide to defend their space. Afterall, how do you join a community that hides your comments. You go find a new place asap. Hence why the Digg exodus that made Reddit popular was because of censorship. Also why reddit's censorship has pushed people abroad. Hence why censored groups are leaving twitter for parler. It's increasingly more difficult to find community because these communities form themselves into echo chambers. The article explains this concisely "Without adequate moderation or stringent enough rules, it's all too evident that bad actors poison the well, sow division and spread misinformation." What's the cure to 'wrong speech'? Better speech. Not banning their misinformation. The poisoned well and sowing of division is all the same thing as misinformation. 1 or both groups do not have the same set of information and see each other as intentionally trying to deceive. Worse yet, communities see it happening. /r/canada for example has shown up several times in studies where the goal was to study echo chambers. There's no question at all that /r/canada moderators ban anyone who is critical of the liberal party. Every so often the moderators will sticky a post saying they'll improve and in less than a month it'll get worse. It's quite clear what the trend is, it's quite clear what the problem is, and it's going to get worse.

pdonis 6y ago
> What's the cure to 'wrong speech'? Better speech. Not banning their misinformation. While I agree with this in principle, it assumes a level of reasonableness in the discussion that is simply not there for many people who hijack online forums. They are not "spreading misinformation" in the sense of making factual statements or reasoned arguments that happen to be wrong, and then engaging in a civil discussion about the matter. They are "spreading misinformation" in the sense of shouting over everyone else and not observing any rules of civil discussion. What they say is often not even coherent enough to be worth trying to refute with better speech. The only way to keep the forum viable at all is to ban them.
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  >While I agree with this in principle, it assumes a level of reasonableness in the discussion that is simply not there for many people who hijack online forums. People have lost the ability to discourse with others that's for sure. If you do know how to do so, you can turn a comment that is unreasonable to derive a conversation out of them. I do this all the time. >They are "spreading misinformation" in the sense of shouting over everyone else and not observing any rules of civil discussion. What they say is often not even coherent enough to be worth trying to refute with better speech. The only way to keep the forum viable at all is to ban them. And the point being made is once again confirmed. You cannot have community when all opposing viewpoints are banned. Your community becomes an echo chamber. In fact lets even back off slightly. Let's say we are pre-echo chamber. What happens, how does it become? As I said it was moderation. It can be the mods themselves or the downvote system. Every community has a bias and the people who agree with the hivemind get the most upvotes but the opposing viewpoints get downvoted. So what happens? The most reasonable people are removed first. This is a goal, if you remove the reasonable opposing viewpoint, it leaves your hivemind and the unreasonable opposing viewpoint that helps reinforce the hivemind. So now that we have all these echo chambers and no communities. How healthy is society? It is far worse off than 10 years ago.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > If you do know how to do so, you can turn a comment that is unreasonable to derive a conversation out of them. I do this all the time. I agree one can sometimes do this, but I don't think it's always possible. I strongly suspect you do not have the ability to, for example, turn all of the trolls and hijackers in a toxic reddit thread into reasonable conversationalists. > You cannot have community when all opposing viewpoints are banned. Banning trolls and hijackers is not the same as banning opposing viewpoints. I am not saying people who reasonably argue for opposing viewpoints should be banned. I am saying that trolls and hijackers--people who don't reasonably argue for anything but simply shout down everyone else--should be banned. Doing that is necessary to make it possible for reasonable people arguing opposite sides of an issue to have an actual conversation. > So now that we have all these echo chambers and no communities. How healthy is society? It is far worse off than 10 years ago. I'm not sure I agree. The sickness might be more visible now, but I don't know that it's actually any worse, just more visible. I'm also not sure the sickness is quite as bad as you say. Are there really no communities at all? For example, is HN not a community? Is it just an echo chamber? I see opposing viewpoints argued reasonably here all the time; after all, that's what we're doing in this very conversation.
pjc50 6y ago
> What's the cure to 'wrong speech'? Better speech. See upthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 : people endlessly posting shock and gore to drive away other users. The problem is that bad/unpleasant content also drives people away. And the right have, in many places, made a "f--- your feelings" viewpoint part of their platform.
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  >See upthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 : people endlessly posting shock and gore to drive away other users. The problem is that bad/unpleasant content also drives people away. And the right have, in many places, made a "f--- your feelings" viewpoint part of their platform. Free speech rules are not without limitations. Obscenity like gore can be removed without violating free speech. Illegal things like calling for the death of a person can also be removed. In terms of "f--- your feelings" in many cases that's an acceptable position sometimes.

pdonis 6y ago

> What's the cure to 'wrong speech'? Better speech. Not banning their misinformation. While I agree with this in principle, it assumes a level of reasonableness in the discussion that is simply not there for many people who hijack online forums. They are not "spreading misinformation" in the sense of making factual statements or reasoned arguments that happen to be wrong, and then engaging in a civil discussion about the matter. They are "spreading misinformation" in the sense of shouting over everyone else and not observing any rules of civil discussion. What they say is often not even coherent enough to be worth trying to refute with better speech. The only way to keep the forum viable at all is to ban them.

sleepysysadmin 6y ago
>While I agree with this in principle, it assumes a level of reasonableness in the discussion that is simply not there for many people who hijack online forums. People have lost the ability to discourse with others that's for sure. If you do know how to do so, you can turn a comment that is unreasonable to derive a conversation out of them. I do this all the time. >They are "spreading misinformation" in the sense of shouting over everyone else and not observing any rules of civil discussion. What they say is often not even coherent enough to be worth trying to refute with better speech. The only way to keep the forum viable at all is to ban them. And the point being made is once again confirmed. You cannot have community when all opposing viewpoints are banned. Your community becomes an echo chamber. In fact lets even back off slightly. Let's say we are pre-echo chamber. What happens, how does it become? As I said it was moderation. It can be the mods themselves or the downvote system. Every community has a bias and the people who agree with the hivemind get the most upvotes but the opposing viewpoints get downvoted. So what happens? The most reasonable people are removed first. This is a goal, if you remove the reasonable opposing viewpoint, it leaves your hivemind and the unreasonable opposing viewpoint that helps reinforce the hivemind. So now that we have all these echo chambers and no communities. How healthy is society? It is far worse off than 10 years ago.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > If you do know how to do so, you can turn a comment that is unreasonable to derive a conversation out of them. I do this all the time. I agree one can sometimes do this, but I don't think it's always possible. I strongly suspect you do not have the ability to, for example, turn all of the trolls and hijackers in a toxic reddit thread into reasonable conversationalists. > You cannot have community when all opposing viewpoints are banned. Banning trolls and hijackers is not the same as banning opposing viewpoints. I am not saying people who reasonably argue for opposing viewpoints should be banned. I am saying that trolls and hijackers--people who don't reasonably argue for anything but simply shout down everyone else--should be banned. Doing that is necessary to make it possible for reasonable people arguing opposite sides of an issue to have an actual conversation. > So now that we have all these echo chambers and no communities. How healthy is society? It is far worse off than 10 years ago. I'm not sure I agree. The sickness might be more visible now, but I don't know that it's actually any worse, just more visible. I'm also not sure the sickness is quite as bad as you say. Are there really no communities at all? For example, is HN not a community? Is it just an echo chamber? I see opposing viewpoints argued reasonably here all the time; after all, that's what we're doing in this very conversation.

pjc50 6y ago

> What's the cure to 'wrong speech'? Better speech. See upthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 : people endlessly posting shock and gore to drive away other users. The problem is that bad/unpleasant content also drives people away. And the right have, in many places, made a "f--- your feelings" viewpoint part of their platform.

sleepysysadmin 6y ago
>See upthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148403 : people endlessly posting shock and gore to drive away other users. The problem is that bad/unpleasant content also drives people away. And the right have, in many places, made a "f--- your feelings" viewpoint part of their platform. Free speech rules are not without limitations. Obscenity like gore can be removed without violating free speech. Illegal things like calling for the death of a person can also be removed. In terms of "f--- your feelings" in many cases that's an acceptable position sometimes.