With Bluesky, the social media echo chamber is back in vogue
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I'd argue the moderation is the issue. It's one thing to have a discussion between different ideologies, but there's no more conservatives to discuss anything with. They've left twitter too, and the only people left are... not engaging in good faith discussions, to be polite about it.
Users seem to have an expectation of(or rather a desire for) civility, moreso than echo chamber agreement, but the current owner of twitter seems to think that restricting hate-speech is restricting free-speech. Then, for whatever moderation is left, all the most popular alt-right accounts also get an exemption from that, which encourages all their followers to be their worst version of themself.
When you think about the town square, anyone could set up a soap box, say anything and be heard by anyone... anyone within a 50m radius depending on background noise. Standing in the town square didn't give you the ability (or right) to be heard by anyone in any town square.
But nowdays, you can (and sometimes are obligated to) have an opinion on anything. Local politics in a country on the otherside of the planet - go right ahead. Opinions on the mid-east that most people are not qualified to provide, sure thing!
And worse, if the echo chamber deems that "silence is violence" not only can you not refrain from expressing your opinion, silence means you have out-group-think, so either agree or be removed.
Twitter was fun... for a bit. But its quite obvious that this idea that anyone can have an idea, and everyone can hear it is just plain bad for society.
In most of the world you have free speech - go outside and use it. But online for the world to hear... maybe thats just overrated.
Seen in many of these echo chambers people state that if people don't actively campaign for something, they're scum of the earth, as bad as X Y Z and people with the polar opposite view of them and not welcome on the platform these echo chambers use.
I find platforms like Mastodon have had an effect of strengthening these echo chambers and the extremity of peoples views, emboldening the division of society and ultimately being self-harming.
Can't have both. You can either have a free Internet where everyone, including yourself, are free to say what they want, or you don't.
Are any of us truly going to live better lives if we see a bunch of conspiracy theories and racist rants?
Some of those posts are a result of genuine mental illness. I have a clinically retarded uncle who is a big fan of nazi stuff. I'm glad the internet wasn't around when he was young.
And these 'clinically retarded' people, as you call them, have all of the same rights you do, including the right to vote. It's antithetical to democratic and egalitarian values to imply that a value is lesser somehow because many of the people who hold it have intellectual disabilities. If anything you could just as easily say the reason people with disabilities hold these fringe ideas are because they aren't included in the public discourse, and we have failed to learn to communicate with them effectively enough to instill them with our values.
Have you ever taken an IQ test?
Good riddance to them. You aren’t entitled to bother others if they don’t want to hear from you.
its also blocked in progressive democracies such as Russia and China