A giant step forward into the echo chamber

I interpret this as "I expect my opinions to be heard by people who don't want to hear them". Show me the ill effects of having an opt-in, consent-based social space where it's not infiltrated by unwelcome participants?

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zeta0134 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Well, imagine for a moment that the unwelcome participants are the ones against murder. Everyone currently in the group thinks murdering people who disagree with you is a fine way to solve problems. Outsiders might share insights and opinions to discourage this way of thinking, so they're not allowed to join.

	▲	amatecha 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah? That's the nature of social circles. To take the example further, I definitely won't be able to work my way into a social circle of violent criminals who murder rival gang members and think murder is okay. I will not be on board with their general way of life and general perspective on the value of human life, or my overall aversion to committing crimes. They will definitely not "let me in" (unless they intend to exploit me as an unwitting participant in something, lol) The jist of what I'm saying is, I don't feel like I have a right to join every conversation everywhere just because I have a computer and an internet connection. Groups of people have established norms for what's acceptable and what's not. For once, those social boundaries, the delineation between one group of people and another, can actually be represented in server-to-server communication permissions. That doesn't mean that "murdering ppl who disagree with you is okay" people will never interact with the "murdering ppl who disagree with you is bad" people. They just probably won't be on the very same server, but the servers will probably communicate between each other unless the conflict level gets particularly high, at which time one server may defederate from or block the other. I regularly see opinions and views I don't agree with or share. Life isn't so black and white, I don't (and my server doesn't) block people just because they say something a bit spicy or weird. Some people/servers might, but the idea is that, for myself, I can interact with those different chunks of humanity in a way that works for me. All part of the word I keep saying, "agency". Beyond all that, I've not seen anyone provide any reasons that an opt-in consent-based medium has any ill effects.

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beeflet 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Firstly, there is still pretty centralized moderation done through the bureaucracy of mastodon operators and federation. Similar situation in bluesky. The whole advantage of these "networks" is that they allow you to opt-in to blocklists. A federation essentially becomes a massive aggregation of blocklists, because members that do not obey the blocking policies of others will become defederated. These aren't really opt-in consent-based social spaces here because the vast majority of the "consent" is still delegated by a third party.

These networks appeal to control freaks who subscribe to many massive blocklists so they don't have to confront challenging ideas. I oppose them on the grounds that being a control freak is bad for the individual and society in general.

Unfortunately, we are all unwelcome participants in society at large. This is the idea behind protests for example. Real life is not consent-based, so the more time you spend in these networks the more poorly acclimated to reality you will become and the more removed you will be from the public arena of ideas.

The ill-effects are that whatever (political?) faction that embraces these sort of networks will become mentally weak and will continue to lose debates, and eventually (political?) power.

	▲	amatecha 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know about whoever you're referring to but I actually just want to chat with cool people (and hear about what they're up to) and don't want to see any bigoted, ignorant bullshit. It has worked out so well that I have zero interest in any other "social networking" protocol/software whatsoever. In my circles I see exactly zero control freaks, probably because I only associate/interact with people who have respect for the agency of others. I just block/mute people who violate that agency (tho I've only had to do so once or twice) and the server I'm on generally correlates with that vibe. The "public arena of ideas" has almost nothing to offer me. If I dare to peruse something like Reddit or Twitter I am immediately aware of the overwhelming averageness of the ideas and degree of insight generally at hand. Such places are poor venues for depthful, nuanced discussion, especially about any difficult topics, especially with the outrage-bolstering "algorithms" in full force, forcing divisive content in everyone's face.

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tdb7893 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Echo chambers aren't good but the large scale social media I've tried has a tendency to put me in an echo chamber (specifically one trying to wring out all the engagement possible, often with stuff to make me angry) and also elevate low quality opinions (often factually incorrect or philosophically incoherent).

Smaller and more personally curated social media has been better for sourcing broad opinions actually if I put just a little work into it.