Yet another use of the Internet that I never expected 20+ years ago when I thought it would be the magic bullet to help make people more educated, more empathetic, and just overall better humans.
Oh Humanity, how you disappoint.
Oh Humanity, how you disappoint.
It was all a lie ... all those wonderful things were like chewing Coca leaves, holding great promise and benefits. But everything that came after: centralized social media, one dominant search engine, closed chat networks, centralized media ... it was akin to turning the coca leaves into cocaine. It felt amazing to see such growth, like fire. But ultimately, the sickness and addiction set in, and we see actors exploiting people using these tools. "We" are sick now, and need to figure out a way to regain our agency.
First off, people have always been uncivil both on-line and off-line. If you look at the adoption of the internet it started among "tech" people then it was societal elites, like professors, doctors, scientists, and lawyers, then moved down the chain to office workers, collage students and so on. It should not be a surprise that as the "common" people came on the internet that the sophistication and civility of discourse decreased. The same thing would be observed if you had in-person events with these groups of people.
I argue that this is the cause of decline in civility: https://www.statista.com/statistics/865523/us-offline-popula... not consolidation.
Yes their are problems but, if you look at where hate groups and online mobs appear to be most prevalent it is in the small distributed uncontrolled forums that don't have the manpower or compulsion from corporate overlords to police this type of thing.
Secondly it is incorrect to think the internet hasn't done more enormous good, if you look at marginalized communities and the ability for people to find, connect and mobilize it has been because of the internet. I don't think it is a coincidence that the acceptance of LGBT people corresponded with a massive increase in the ability to communicate with other people.
Just as the printing press did not make all of humanity scholars; the internet has not made humanity civil to each other.
Arthur C. Clarke, 2001, a Space Odyssey (1968)
Something of a prophetic sentence.