I have encountered people who are scared to post in large public channels. Part of growing up in chatrooms was an implicit bravery of saying something out loud in a room full of thousands of people. There seems to have been a shift, somewhat, in the comfort level of different generations about saying things "out loud" in large public rooms.

Chatrooms have evolved in a really interesting way. I think the first generation to have them didn't fully understand how "public" they were. Maybe there are more people in the more recent generations that have a more visceral understanding of online "publicness" as they have grown up with (and perhaps have been burned by) those concepts from the very beginning. Maybe they have a better understanding of the permanence of online utterances and therefore have a more conservative approach to interacting on what feels like the permanent public ledger.

Maybe it's because the concept of pseudonyms has devolved since the early days. Corporate social media has an interest in doxing its users to advertise to and control them but pre-corporate social media was filled with anonymous usernames. Posting in a large group under your permanent forever name is much scarier than posting under an anonymous, temporary identity. One of the things I advocate people do is post online anonymously, instead of with their real name. It alleviates a lot of the fear of speaking your truth, which we need more of!

There is something there. The ability to try on identities in a safe environment before you discover which one you really identify with. It's much harder to do this with your real name. Your past comes with a lot of baggage and people who know you don't want you to change because it makes them feel uncomfortable.

I use pseudonyms and post weird shit online, but I still feel very reluctant to post anything on large public channels inside a company. Everything is tied to your real name and all of us are hyper aware now that every single fucking thing on the internet is monitored, and will be used against you if necessary. I am 99% confident a tool already exists that a manager can use to get all messages from employee X over the last N months and summarize the content and surface any "red flags", which in a corporate setting would be incredibly broad.

The problem in my opinion is that folks afraid of posting treat chat channels like email and official record instead of a conversation. I like to post ideas, brainstorm, engage if I have a minute to respond to someone with a thought - kinda like being in an office - whereas many others seem to use it to blast out information after a lot of polish and they form a culture of announcements and no engagement, and get stressed whenever someone asks a question or actually replies.

Use tools for what they are good for and create a culture that makes each tool work best for your organization.

I got a minor reprimand in a performed review for having a slightly heated conversation in a public channel. In the past that company had been very open about communicating about negative stuff (our CEO emailed the entire company when he visited one of the hardware labs that was a mess), but the upper management started tamping down on anything negative, and one of the things that suffered was any sort of honest communication.

Kind of a ship of theseus situation culture wise - when the original leaders are all gone, did they pick good successors to fill their spots? Very often not.