It sucks that our Tribe can't be 7 billion people. It really does. But we should see it as a positive and a war of _benefit_ instead of a war of _ideas_. What _benefit_ does believing in QAnon offer? What _benefit_ does being apart of Group A have over Group B?
Each community is responsible for its own truths and policing them how they see fit. We should be arguing over how to make our _benefits_ better than theirs, not trying to force our ideologies onto them.
When that tribe has externalities to their behavior that harm members of my tribe, is when it gets rough. (I want you to stop putting mercury in my drinking water, endangering my drinking water with your oil pipeline, I want you to wear a mask to reduce my chance of infection, etc etc etc.)
In my perfect world, it is Mutually Assured Destruction between tribes that keeps us not putting mercury in any drinking water outside our own, etc. I know that isn't going to work but that is the most _fair_ to me.
Our current best-worst solution to tribalism has been a small number of sovereign nations with large populations and democratically elected governments. Everyone admits the emergent qualities are suboptimal but they are still better than all the other options we've tried so far, as the saying goes. The solution to online tribalism is likely to look very similar.
Considering that the externalities of these internet-based tribes cross over into the physical world (such as the drinking water/oil pipeline examples above), I suspect this leads to a likely future where internet tribal communities end up overlapping with traditional national boundaries (eg, China's great firewall).
To be clear, this isn't the future I want but it's starting to seem like the most likely outcome. I admit my past optimism for a truly "open" internet is being tested these days. I don't want a closed internet anymore than I used to - but it might simply be the only practical option if society wants to continue functioning.
That's my hot take.
One tribe has a list of things they are demanding the other tribe do.
The other tribe just wants to be left alone.
Sure, one tribe wants to live free of societal consequences, but they still want to participate in society.
Else every serious libertarian would actually go live alone and grow their own food. That doesn't happen. In reality, they go buy groceries alongside everyone else.
The consequences I was referring to are things like spreading COVID-19 because they are careless about it, etc.
We've barely gotten to a stage where that is even considered a viable and realistic idea, just because it's not instantly a smashing success does not translate to an ultimate failure.
Particularly as many such big ideas had to go trough their "growing pains" before ultimately working out.
If we were to have a Tribe of 7 billion people, we would need to come up with "facts" that can be agreed upon by 7 billion people. We cannot get 7 billion people to agree that the earth is not flat. I don't have any hopes that we can get 7 billion people to agree on human rights or other things that can be described as "us vs them".
This may be my anarchist/extreme leftist ideologies that I personally hold bleeding into what I think is possible/should be done. I have a very hard time separating those feelings from "facts" and I think that makes this point even more clear!
That goes contrary to my personal experience with a www that wasn't mainstream yet, but most certainly already had larger groups of people.
As tired and lame as it might sound, imho the biggest culprit is social media and what kind incentives it has set.
Social media does not thrive on facts and information, it thrives on emotions, but dry boring non-sensational headlines and information don't make people emotional.
What makes people emotional, and interact with your platform, are the crass headlines and claims, the dramatic stuff. So that's what gets pushed to people, and they react accordingly by liking it, and at that point it's already a self-reinforcing loop with increasingly more sensationalist and crass claims that constantly need to top each other to stay relevant.
It also directly affects what kind of content people contribute and most importantly how they do it; All the big "influencers" spend quite some time and effort in optimizing their content for that extra reach, along with that come certain behavior routines to sell the content, which then get normalized.
And because traditional media struggles to keep up with that, and stay relevant, they also get colored by this, not only by having made social media their new source of reporting, but also by making their own reporting more in line with these trends.
Too many just chasing the dopamine kicks from the "likes" and "karma", it feels like mass-hysteria that's steadily increasing in intensity.