Real-life political conversations are difficult enough ;-)

I've found the New York Times's comment section to be surprisingly decent for some reason. But that's in comparison to my very low expectations for these things.

There's something about having a public political decision that turns it into combat in front of an audience instead of a collaboration between two partners trying to better their situation.

what if there’s no moderation? I mean, what if moderation is part of the problem..

There are a few dozen smaller Discord servers whose community nature allows you to engage with more interesting political viewpoints and discuss. There are still incidents, but in general if its possible for a communist to debate an anarchocapitalist in good faith, most political discussion should be possible.

I don't think that it requires heavy moderation.

Reddit, up until some years ago, was great for political discussion. Simply ignore low quality opinions and focus on the few people who have actual knowledge.

Then the "safe space" movement started and anything that wasn't mainstream opinion was banned all over the place.

Suddenly, political discussion became impossible, because you could not discuss any non trivial things without few of being misunderstood and your account getting banned.

Marginal Revolution is run by Tyler Cowen who is an economist. He has largely libertarian views and uses economic theory to justify them over the span of about a blog post. I personally don't think that's enough time to make a point about the sorts of things he talks about.

But Marginal Revolution is well known for having the worst comments on the internet. Literally nothing but edgy one-sentence snark. It’s just a step above caveman grunts.