Being around too many antagonistic people is stressful.
“The impact of election stress: Is political anxiety harming your health?: Psychological science shows that politics can harm our physical and mental health, but the positive aspects of political engagement can lead to greater well-being”
“In polarized communities, they found that bonding ties, or bonds between people who are similar (in this case, politically similar), were linked with better physical and mental health (International Political Science Review, Vol. 75, No. 3, 2022). Bridging ties—connections with dissimilar people—were associated with worse overall health for people who were politically isolated.”
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/10/managing-political-stress
There’s a big difference between analyzing your enemy and letting them shout at you constantly. I can research conservative evangelicals attitudes without having to let one set up a loudspeaker next to my house.
The conservative troll types are also the ones most likely to try and argue about echo chambers because their style of rage farming doesn’t work if everyone avoids them.
I don’t know how it could get any worse than now. Basically we’re all in echo chambers whichever platform you use. Including Lemmy.
Agreement with “consensus” of whatever bucket you’re placed into is rewarded, and disagreement is punished. Even if only by upvote/downvote. Switching platforms won’t change much.
If you stray from world, things are a bit better. World, however, hasn’t seen a ban or anti-free speech action they didn’t embrace fully. World is a cesspool of smug libs that refuse to engage with anyone they perceive to be on their left or right.
I think you’ve been in an echo chamber for too long.
yup. Lemmy.world!
I haven’t had any issues with .world. Ive had more issues with smaller instances banning people/topics. World seems like the most
blandor popular of the lemmy instances.Most of the issues I have with world are invisible because the comments are removed and the users are banned. As long as you stick with their narrative (that Trump bad and Biden/Kamala good) you won’t run afowl of them.
Cant you see everything via the modlist + API? I thought that was one of the benefits of Lemmy is that the modlist is open. I have seen people down-voted for specific comments but not banned.
Many have been banned. A leftist named linkerbaan (or to like that) was one for sure.
Nearly all social media is full of
ecoecho chambers… I still post and follow stuff on several of the platforms. There is very little nuanced conversation… Seems like it is more and more just an up vote or downvote storm, or people claiming one thing or another without any supporting evidence.And that makes me genuinely sad. When I joined Lemmy, I was a little put off by the leftist bent here, but then I realized that I appreciated being challenged on my views, especially since people here are generally nice about it.
I wish I could find something like that for conservatives as well. Better yet, I wish there was a place like Reddit or Lemmy where all views were respected, provided claims are supported with evidence. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be compatible with the world we live in, and that makes me sad.
Seems like there aren’t many centrist communities where you can have nuanced discussions.
I honestly don’t care about centrism, I care about diversity of ideas with citations for claims. If a left wing or right wing policy is the best for a given situation, I’d love to discuss it.
But failing that, I’ll take centrist over either political extreme any day of the week.
Hard to find nuance in anything the current government is doing
You can probably post on 7.62x54r.ru. Reddit had a decent number of anti-establishment leftists who would join up with conservatives on shared issues. I haven’t seen any spaces like that on Lemmy.
Yeah, and that’s something I missed about Reddit. I found a few good communities of centrists, open minded leftists, and open minded conservatives, so I could generally join a pretty good discussion. I still needed to watch what I said, because there were some things even open minded people wouldn’t consider given their political bias, but a lot of things were fair game.
For example, I could bring up Right to Repair to both groups, and I’d get different reasons for and against it from each group.
Here on Lemmy, I don’t get that diversity, either something is compatible with the group’s general leftist persuasion, or I get downvoted into oblivion. And that sucks, because I put in a lot of effort to be constructive and challenge the status quo. Fortunately, I usually know before making a statement which way it’ll go, and there are no downsides (aside from worse engagement) to getting down votes, so I know what to expect. It does make me sad though.
I’ll check out that community though. Not sure what to expect from a .ru domain though as an American…
Being a Reich Winger is incompatible with rational or thoughtful discussion.
Reich wing ideology boils down to subservience and deference to authority, not knowledge.
You seem to have a very specific definition in mind. There’s a lot more to the right wing than fascism.
Reich Wing ideology, the entire thing, relies on subservience and deference to authority. The difference in the various flavors of it are just how much and who.
OK, so you’re just going to spout partisan talking points instead of having a productive conversation.
Have a wonderful day.
Of course, discussing political ideology is “partisan”… Its exactly what we’re talking about.
And no, they’re not just talking points, it’s literally how we describe the various systems of political ideology… Reich Wingers look to construct a society around control and subservience. And, like I said, the question of “who” to obey, and how strictly people are to be controlled are what differentiates the various Reich Wing ideologies.
Reich Wingers look to construct a society around control and subservience.
This is a talking point, and you’re basically implying everyone on the right believes this, and that’s patently false.
Happy to see the word “nuance” being used… wish there was more of that too. This whole binary with-me / against-me mentality will bring us all crashing down.
Eco chambers sound like a good thing.
Absolutely not. If for no other reason then you lose the ability to actually argue for your ideas if you’re in an echo chamber.
The person was referring to the eco typo in the original post.
I look at it this way: I don’t let in the crazy person on the street screaming racist garbage into my house, so I also don’t have to listen to or engage with that person on the internet, either. That doesn’t make my house an “echo chamber.”
For a long time I tried to treat “internet people” with some level of “respect” so to say. That is, I didn’t spend time blocking people and whatnot. But now? Screw em. I don’t have time to listen to nonsense, so if someone tries to come in to a conversation in bad faith, it’s very easy to block and move on.
Or on short-form social media like Bsky or Masto or whatever if someone posts a racist thing. Or a bigoted thing. Block and move on.
Those trolls live off of engagement so just don’t give it to them. And those same trolls are the ones complaining about “echo chambers.” “Waaa, no one wants to listen to my racist nonsense. It’s an echo chamber!” No, you are just a trash human, and no one is obligated to listen to you.
Those trolls live off of engagement
Not anymore. Back in the day trolling was a recreational activity done for fun. Deny the fun, cut off the troll’s food. Now it’s being done for political purposes, so cutting off the fun no longer functions since it no longer strikes at the primary motivation.
The result for the people who block them is still the same, though: they no longer see the troll garbage.
Deplatforming works.
It decreases the spread. Cutting form the engagement means free people who aren’t already subscribed to that content will see it, since there’s fewer people arguing with it. Which means those who are susceptible to falling for it have less chance to even encounter it, meaning fewer fall into it.
Even if the incentive to create the trolls has changed, the counter to letting it spread hasn’t.
Depends on platform I suppose. Here, the level of activity is low enough that if you’re reading the comments, you’re usually reading all of them. In a major reddit sub that is seldom the case.
This was about bluesky/Twitter type social media. Things with reshare and follows to specific users, where someone you follow arguing with someone you don’t will expose you to the person you don’t follow.
Groups of any kind are echo chambers. That’s why they exist.
I doubt that it can be any worse than tech companies with financial incentives doing it. Surrounding yourself with like minded people will surely cause some bubbles like that but since when is letting a targeted algorithm funneling us for ad revenue a better option? I don’t personally think it’s a big deal and guessing that people are just upset that their obsession with mass engagement is getting shook.
For all the great enforcement problems KOSPA has, at least it incorporated Filter Bubble Transparency…
It’s a valid claim, IMO. The libs leaving Twitter all seem to be VERY into Orwellian practices like “official block lists” and other absurd self-owns.
I assure you that official blocklists are a very fringe viewpoint.
So fringe that BlueSky officially lists the most blocked accounts on BLueSky IN THEIR API: https://vqv.app/
So fringe that millions of people subscribe to them.
So fringe that over 1700 people upvoted this list on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/BlueskySocial/comments/1gtqtd3/and_remember_you_can_block_all_magarelated/
Talk about blaming the victim. I’d challenge you to create an account and put that you’re trans in the profile. See how long it takes to get death threats. There is a reason for these block lists. Maybe people don’t want to get harassed every time they post something.
Also, where is the “most blocked accounts” list in that link?
That’s a great point that I honestly hadn’t considered.
That people create blocklists that become popular absolutely does not prove endorsement of a potential official blocklist. While an official, default blocklist may be Orwellian, unofficial opt-in blocklists that require searching for are not Orwellian at all. One knows they’re there, one chooses to block them. Your line of reasoning leads to arguing against the block feature entirely. And what’s wrong with providing transparent statistics?
All totally valid points. I just so happen to disagree with API official ban lists.
Group efforts to root out fascism or other malcontents is hardly “Orwellian”…
Group efforts to root out fascism or other malcontents
You can read those words, right? Who decides what is and isn’t fascism? Who decides who is the malcontents in society? See what I mean?
Fascism has a very clear definition. And who decides the malcontents? That’s also easy: Are you trying to harm people? Then you are a malcontent.
You are attempting to obfuscate the discussion here. We all know what fascism is. We also all know its wrong to hurt people.
You can barely detect your own biases! Have a great day. Continue with the fascist bullshit pretending you are ordained from some higher power.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Nothing in there contradicts what I said here… There’s not fascist about preventing fascism from taking root. You’re making the same mistake made in “On Authority”, and calling revolutions where the people cast off their chains of oppression as “Authoritarian”…
I don’t know that it’ll affect the echo chamber effect; you create that through your subscriptions, and avoid it by browsing “all.” What will be impacted is the amount of simply shit content, both from idiots and from bots. Moderators’ jobs will get harder: the bots follow the people.
even if it doesn’t isn’t having more twitters bad? because it causes more places of toxicity to exist
People need to be civil. On every platform they have shown that they can’t be (or have no good reason to choose to be).
Moderation is the key, but moderation is challenging. That’s why self moderation (keeping yourself civil) is very important. Which loops us back to the beginning.
No social media site controlled by Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg is going to be a healthy experience. You will have much more varied content anywhere else.
Echo chambers are on par with human nature: we fear the unknown and flock to like-minded people. It takes a degree of discomfort to read something you don’t agree with (explained rationally and with civility) and trying to argument in kind - it’s easier to down-vote and here we are…
The echo chamber is a good thing. For some reason, everyone thinks I’m obligated to read their opinions that disagree diametrically with mine, constantly, non-stop, from hundreds of thousands of bots working for propaganda. I don’t.
You are both right and wrong there.
You need different opinions in your life, otherwise your echo chamber will tend to move to more extremist. Pretty soon you think those “others” are evil and so you are willing for anti-democracy coups by your side, or to fight wars to kill those infidels or other evil things. You need a steady input of other opinions to remind yourself that reasonable people can disagree and that is okay.
Also sometimes you are wrong. Few people have the guts to read a well reasoned opinion and admit they are wrong, but it is one you should be willing for.
Of course there is far more possible opinions than you have time to read. So eventually you have to say I don’t have time to deal with this subject and shut it out. So long as you avoid the problems of an echo chamber they are fine. Be aware of them though and make sure you are not falling into those traps anytime you shut something out.
I recognize and demand that everyone has an opinion, that everyone can speak their mind. And I have the right to have mine. And so, when all of Twitter is full of russian bots on the government payroll, there are hundreds of thousands of them, in all languages, I’m not kidding and not dramatizing. What i supposed to do about it? Read it all? Or retire to the echo chamber? I’m withdrawing, for now here, and if anything, from social media
If by bots you mean computer programs or AI, they are not people and should be ignored/blocked. If you mean (as seems to be common) people with a different opinion, then you need to be more careful lest you get the faults of an echo chamber.
By bots, I mean people who are employed, go to work, and get paid just for writing comments, posts, and other texts, according to the orders from their superiors. You can call them a computer program, but what they are not is a person with a certain and different point of view. They have no point of view, they write what they are told to write, and yes, there are thousands of them, and they each lead a hundred fictional people. If you still didn’t know how the bot farm in Russia works, welcome to a new world
Those still aren’t bots. Bot farms are literally a bunch of servers running computer programs. That’s not the same thing as some online sweatshop pushing disinformation manually.
Its becoming more clear that the only winning move is not to play. All of us should remember that twitter wasnt the best before musk either. Microblogging at such a large and worldwide scale is simply an outdated, deceptive, and abusive concept at this point. For a long time we have been fucking around and now we found out
I watched a video about this and it claims that social media has advanced and grown so much that our brains are still not used to it and we all act as if echo chambers are a bad thing when in reality its actually just how its been for our entire existence. Its how we are wired right now, atleast most of us besides Gen Alpha. Being active in a local tribe, community, city, etc. Not engaging with the entire world and thousands of people at once.
The freedom of speech crowd isn’t real big on the other half of the equation. Freedom of association. No one is obligated to listen to anyone else’s bullshit. They’re free to be butthurt about it, I’m free to not give a shit.
I’ve been on Bluesky very early on, and with the mass exodus of liberals from twitter, they are recreating their own toxic echo chambers on Bluesky now and it’s bleeding through into every post they disagree with.
Well that’s kind of baked-in to social media. If you’d otherwise talk to lots of different people in person, read much etc and now come to the internet and choose any of the mentioned platforms… That’d be bad. You’re now in a smaller filter bubble. If you’re already in some echo chamber and for example switch from mastodon to bluesky… that’s a minor change. The situation is a bit different if you change from a nazi platform to a regular one. It’s still not good. But better.
I think having a marketplace full of alternatives helps prevent that kind of entrenchment somewhat. Here is my problem though, who decides what an echo chamber is? I like a good back and forth conversation, but hate bad faith arguments. If people talk stupid shit, how much tolerance should one reasonably expect?
The problem isn’t different opinions, or even radical ones, it’s these opinions garnering more clicks and views, incentivizing them as a result.
The reddit model works well for discussions but the mod fiasco ruins everything.
One thing to bear in mind is that, whenever someone accustomed to one platform explores another, they’ll tend to ascribe any differences between the communities to the other platform being an echo chamber of some kind.
