I have such disdain for the e/acc crowd given that I believe that "we do not understand the consequences of what we are building".

But now I'm not sure if it's fair to ignore the consequences of building Twitter, or even the internet. Seeing people's behavior during this event has been incredibly disheartening.

The wikivoyage page for the United States explicitly advises that neither politics nor religion should be discussed when meeting people in this country.

How did we get to this point.

▲

solid_fuel 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> How did we get to this point.

I don't think we ever left? The KKK was still marching in the annual parade in my home town when I was born, in 1994. Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, and still - to this day - racists make a habit of shooting at the memorial sign. [0]

Forget don't talk about politics or religion, there's still large portions of the US where you should avoid being visibly black or gay if you want to stay safe.

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/emmett-till-memori...

	▲	enricozb 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		When I say "how did we get here", I don't mean "how did we end up with these opinions (e.g. racism) on our soil". I mean something more like: 1. Why is discussing these things so difficult? So many internet forums are a pure deluge of unkindness, anger, and dishonest discussion. 2. There was a video of someone promoting their social media handle and asking people to subscribe with the backdrop of the shooting. How does someone end up acting like this? I do not think there will be a time where racism is eradicated like a disease, but I think it's possible to confine it to small spaces and individuals. Similar to how I believe the majority of views like pedophelia: people with those mindsets exist, they don't form (huge) groups, and are generally consistently condemned. With the values I believe the US to have (tolerance of opinions and religion) this will always be a constant struggle. Continuing with this disease analogy, the internet + social media has removed all possible herd immunity strategies to stupid ideas. People with any kind of ideology can search up their groups and commiserate, without ever encountering a differing viewpoint. Furthermore, people are offloading their thoughts more and more to LLM's, so much so that we're becoming the mental equivalent of those wall-e humans [0]. We're not thinking for ourselves. Other people are thinking for us, delivering those thoughts to us, pre-digested. This leads to reactionary behavior, I think. And in an environment with such a reactionary populace, populism becomes so easy to exploit. [0]: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*uFK... P.S. Sorry for the rambling. You're not wrong that the US has been, and still is, incredibly hostile to specifically identifiable groups of people. However, I think that the ability to discuss how to go about solving/remedying/containing this has been uniquely hampered in the last 20 years.

▲

rigrassm 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I have such disdain for the e/acc crowd given that I believe that "we do not understand the consequences of what we are building".

> But now I'm not sure if it's fair to ignore the consequences of building Twitter, or even the internet. Seeing people's behavior during this event has been incredibly disheartening.

For at least the last 5 or so years I've been right there with you with the same thoughts and concerns. I'm completely convinced after what I saw today that global social media platforms were and still are a mistake. Especially so for the younger generations that have never known a world without them.

▲

dgb23 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It was always like that or worse. Social media just surfaces it.