The internet I grew up on barely had any moderation at all. Or polarization. Or algorithms that feed on that polarization.

I grew up in a conservative, religious family. The internet, forums, and IRC exposed me to lots of ideas outside my upbringing and helped shape who I am today.

I was already starting to really dig biology, science, and evolution as a teenager. Early internet culture helped tip the scale. I'm now LGBT, moderate, atheist. I did my undergrad in molecular bio and computer science. Without the internet, I really don't think that would have happened.

Critically, the internet was not so polarized back then. Conservatives and socialists and liberal democrats (were they a thing?) could all talk amongst one another and generally get along.

There was mud-slinging, to be sure, but nothing like what we see today. The platforms today willingly feed on this hate. We reward outrage and division. We ban posts and people we disagree with and then rub it in their faces.

Freedom from censorship used to be a liberal idea. Conservative culture dominated in the 80's, 90's, and early 00's. Conservatives were the chief agents of censorship. (There were tv shows about God and Jesus on prime time TV back then! "Touched By An Angel", FFS.)

It literally "wasn't okay" until Ellen and "Will and Grace" started breaking down barriers. Until that point, it was the more liberal minded folks on the internet that espoused freedom from censorship, sharing of different perspectives, acceptance, and understanding. (Interestingly, the ACLU at that time supported both sides of the political aisle! No favoritism - our rights matter regardless of politics or beliefs.)

After Obama's win, liberal culture and values started taking over. The internet was reaching widespread adoption throughout not only America, but the rest of the world.

It was shortly after this point that "Tumblr culture" started giving platform to more extreme and less tolerant liberal ideas. The people that used to uphold the values of freedom from censorship started being overshadowed by the ones that instead weaponized censorship against political enemies at the platform level. The Obama presidency was an incubation period to normalize this. Reddit, Tumblr, and lots of other forums became dominated by liberals censoring conservatives.

The first Trump presidency flipped the pendulum back. Media censorship used against liberals. The second Trump presidency got censorship at the platform level and garnered tech company alignment.

We just need to stop.

Stop the algorithmic ranking of content. Stop the extreme polarization. Stop the tit-for-tat banning of people. The indoctrination into hating the "other side".

I appreciate that we won't easily come together and find unity. But at the same time, why use that as an excuse to stop trying? When people and ideas can freely be exchanged without folks attacking one another, there can be friendship even amongst disagreement.

If we keep building tools to censor "the other side" they will eventually be used against us.

We're building 1984 and thinking it serves us. It doesn't.

▲

wredcoll an hour ago | parent [-]

> Critically, the internet was not so polarized back then. Conservatives and socialists and liberal democrats (were they a thing?) could all talk amongst one another and generally get along

Really? 4chan has been around preaching death and hatred to all sorts of minorities for, like, 20+ yeara at this point and it's hardly the first or only.

It's great that there are better places on the web than 4chan, but those places, without exception, are better because they ban the hateful and intolerant.

> The Obama presidency was an incubation period to normalize this. Reddit, Tumblr, and lots of other forums became dominated by liberals censoring conservatives

This is such a weird lie to insert in the middle of this rant and it really makes you wonder about the rest of it.

No one is required to tolerate assholes spewing hate no matter how liberal or tolerant you are supposed to be.

	▲	karlitooo 27 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Present day racism is carefully calibrated to cause hurt and outrage. That wasn't really a thing in the 2000s even on 4chan. 4chan was more freakshow culture than what Gaming The Algo for Clicks did to our media diet
	▲	echelon an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> This is such a weird lie to insert in the middle of this rant Either I should have expanded on that or you're not recalling the same period of time I am. The Obama years were when Millennials went to college. They're when broadband and smartphones proliferated. This is when IRC and the indie web died. This is when platforms became predominant and when censorship became top-down mandated. This is when "app stores" over "unlimited web installs" won. Everyone entering the internet during this period entered into a world where censorship was normalized. Where the algorithm started to take over. Those of us who used the internet before the Obama years remember a vastly different internet. It's not that it was Obama that did this. It's simply a marker in time to denote confluence of changes and generational coming of age that coincided with it. What is interesting is that the Trump presidencies swung the pendulum of who was being censored in the opposite direction of the pop culture that had originally adopted the platforms and set the 2010's status quo. > 4chan I remember an internet before 4chan. Their anonymity, ironically, became something of a protest to the platformization of the years that followed. Wasn't there once a lot of pro-LGBT stuff on 4chan? I avoid it, but I've read that it's a melting pot? Just very extreme? I'm more concerned about Kiwi Farms type places. I know friends of Near, and bullying is something that irks me.
	▲	cindyllm an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]