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Comment by dmatech | Hacker News Reader

This somewhat assumes that the purpose of democracy is to create stability and institutional trust at the possible expense of freedom.

Social media creates terrible disorder compared to what you can get by ABC, CBS, and NBC giving you roughly the same nightly news and fostering agreement among the masses. At that time, getting into the mass media business was costly. There wasn't too much competition if you wanted that kind of reach.

But now, reach is very different. Gone are the days when reach was restricted to the upper crust. Now, some YouTuber can gain a following that rivals one of these esteemed institutions.

So I'll ask the big question. Does society need gatekeepers to control who has reach in order to remain stable? You can easily argue that it still does, but they're people who tweak algorithms or work at trust & safety departments. And if society needs these gatekeepers, what should their qualifications be?

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> Does society need gatekeepers to control who has reach in order to remain stable?

This is the unspoken part of these sorts of criticisms of social media--people aren't responsible enough to form their own opinions. I actually believe that's the case, but I also believe in free speech, and I'm not sure how to reconcile those things.

Decentralization of views will never yield the "right" opinion with unanimity, because we're all so often drawn to bad ideas, bickering, or what not. But it will also never always yield the "wrong" opinion with unanimity. And that latter aspect, in my opinion, is so much more important than the former. Because in any system where you have a centralized opinion-maker, that authority will sooner, rather than later, end up being abused. The examples through history are endless and horrible. Imagine a scenario in modern highly interconnected times should the right opinion become the reich opinion once again.

Such wrongness is only allowed to foster when it eventually becomes impossible to challenge it publicly. Of course alongside that freedom also comes my freedom to publicly reject the idea that 2+2=4. It seems to me that in modern times the problem has not been so much people coming to 'wrong' opinions, but people being unable to accept others having such opinions. Then in the fruitless and effortful battle to convert the pagan, divisions are only widened and beliefs hardened.

Perhaps the issue is not one of wrongness but intolerance of wrongness. I suspect we all get this feeling when we see something we believe to be wrong of "Agh! If he only knew what I knew, he'd never think this way." Of course the catch is the other guy is also often thinking the exact same about you.

I think part of remedy is promoting an informed electorate. I imagine this would start at the level of schooling with promoting critical thinking and instillation of democratic supporting virtues (like always vote)

I agree with you, but the problem with this approach is there a vocal minority (in the US at least) that vehemently opposes this as it hurts votes for "their side". The last thing they want is an educated, critical thinking, populace. They want people who will fall in line, and do as they are let to believe.

While I inferred a particular angle from this comment, I realized that it actually works for folks across a broad spectrum of political leanings. It's a Rorschach test.

I would argue that there are two such vocal minorities.

This is a feedback cycle. It's hard to become "responsible" and able to form your own opinions if you hardly ever get the chance.

Too add to that, if those who do express their own, dissenting, views get pilloried for it, who is going to want to start learning to express theirs? The usual answer is the thickest skinned and the most extreme.

for a true democracy, all voices must be equal, and no single voice of a private entity can be allowed to have more reach than any other.

for that, any media that is designed to amplify some voices over others would have to cease.

one way to help with that would be by disconnecting ideas from the people who shared them so that good ideas can be shared and discussed without creating leaders that people will be compelled to follow. (imagine if hackernews discussions would not show any usernames, so you would not know who said anything, and any message would have to stand on its own. i believe this would work because practically, i rarely notice who the parent posters that i respond to are, unless we start a longer discussion thread with the same few people. moderators would still see usernames, so they could identify spam accounts.)

this of course completely contradicts the personality cult that is made out of current leadership.

That sounds like 4chan :)

I’m sympathetic; I believe in the ideals of democracy, but it seems to me that those ideals come from outside of democracy itself, and that democracy cannot function without them. An example is the belief that everyone participates in a common rationality, such that there is benefit to be had by allowing different perspectives to be heard. This belief has been undermined in a very deep way in the US, to the point we can fairly clearly say that it is gone. I am deeply worried about what this means in the future, and am skeptical that there are procedural or technical solutions.

(As an aside, I think that the traditional left vs right hermeneutic is beyond useless to explain how this belief disappeared, but that’s maybe a different discussion).

That sounds like 4chan

well, not really, because technically, hackernews works that way too. the difference between 4chan and HN is, who the people are that participate. and what topics they are discussing. even 4chan has different topics and each topic is moderated. it's not a free-for-all. the difference is that on 4chan almost any topic and tone is welcome, whereas on HN it is not. the same would be true for any democratic discourse where we want to address the problems of our community.

any person should have an equal voice, as long as that voice contributes to the discussion of the problem at hand. moderation of off-topic or inappropriate contributions still needs to happen.

This belief has been undermined in a very deep way in the US, to the point we can fairly clearly say that it is gone.

not just in the US but pretty much world wide.

I am deeply worried about what this means in the future, and am skeptical that there are procedural or technical solutions

there are a few things that i believe are clearly a problem, and by changing those, democracy could be improved.

the strongest one is partisan politics, which causes groups to fight with each other instead of letting those interested in solving a problem work on it together.

another is the personality cult that is created by candidates around elections. if instead we have write-in nominations only, without allowing any kind of promotion of particular individuals, we would be able to elect those people that the majority feels, actually represent them.

that of course doesn't scale, so these elections would only happen at a local level. at regional and national levels the elections would be done by electorates from amongst themselves. so, in order to become president, someone would have to be elected locally into the regional electorate, and then be chosen by the regional electorate and later the national electorate all the way to the top.

and while we are at it, let's not have a single president but a committee of elected leaders who can only enact decisions if the majority of them agree. like the supreme court.

forgot to add another low hanging fruit: ban any form of lobbying

You're missing is the time factor. Someone with infinitely more time to post on Hackernews will have their opinions amplified over people who are more casually interacting with the site.

The probably with people is that if see the same opinion X number of times they tend to believe it. Nobody is immune to it.

hackernews actually already supports rate-limiting people from posting to much. so it is possible to implement systems where individual voices don't get a chance to dominate. i think that would address this problem.

I don't have time to create hundreds of alt-accounts or run proxies through alternative servers but there are people who do. I used to run a forum and play this game of cat and mouse.

> This somewhat assumes that the purpose of democracy is to create stability and institutional trust at the possible expensive of freedom.

the expense is a fact.

You are describing the social contract, right?

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