If this is good or bad is another question. Everyone builds their own echo chamber, consciously or unconsciously. Thats why I don't appreciate the one-sidedness of the article. They make it sound like only republicans like to live in their bubble.
If this is good or bad is another question. Everyone builds their own echo chamber, consciously or unconsciously. Thats why I don't appreciate the one-sidedness of the article. They make it sound like only republicans like to live in their bubble.
They were trying to make the point that these insular platforms are something conservative Republicans are cooking up on their own, but the behavior of the other major social networks attempting to insulate their platforms first and foremost is what is creating these conditions across the board for everyone.
Action, reaction.
Private platforms, newsgroups, bbses, and forums are nothing new for the internet, I wouldn't even know if I would call these apps social networks in the sense of a wide reach like Twitter and Facebook have, but it shouldn't be surprising that if you deplatform a group of people and/or make their political views against the terms of service, that they'll go somewhere else, and if the other place they go to happens to be an echo chamber of political thought built from the ashes of actions committed by other social networks with a perceived political bent, it shouldn't be surprising that the political activism gets ramped way up as a result.
In my opinion, and this goes for both groups, not exposing yourself daily to conflicting opinions and different solutions to problems is intellectually damaging, and I firmly believe how most major social media companies are handling discourse in our country is extremely short sighted and damaging for real problem solving and conversations going forward. The first amendment and free expression is supposed to be an ugly, gnashing, frothy thing full of intellectual guts and blood. Bad ideas and bullshit solutions should get their guts ripped out in spirited debate, and we aren't doing that anymore.
From my perspective, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, et al are close minded companies ran by intellectually weak and close minded people with a myopic world view and it's going to fracture things further, not help it.
I get that you don’t like the Democrats, but if you can’t distinguish between the GOP and conspiracy peddlers like Alex Jones, then I think you hate your own party more than the Democrats do.
And what’s stopping you from doing that?
See, really what you want isn’t Facebook from making the decision for you, since they can’t. Alex Jones has his own show, and FB has no interest or ability in changing that. What you want is to make that decision for Facebook, and not let Facebook make it for themselves.
If Big Tech colludes to deplatform Jones, then it's no longer my decision.
> What you want is to make that decision for Facebook, and not let Facebook make it for themselves.
I can't make decision for Facebook, I don't have that power. I can't force Facebook to do anything. Facebook, on the other hand, has the power to deplatform Jones and force me to not be able to see his content via Facebook, discuss his content with my Facebook contacts, force me off the platform for supporting Jones, etc. etc. Of course, they don't have influence beyond facebook platform, but in collusion with Google, Twitter, DNS providers, certificate providers, cloud service providers, etc. (virtually all those have been participating in deplatforming before) - they wield immense powers, so "but you can build your own Internet, nobody prevents you from doing that" is not really a good suggestion. Even then, that's exactly what the subjects of the article is doing - and they are being mocked for it, too.
Jones was just the start. Why shouldn't conspiracy theorists have the right to use social media? What's next? Can they have a back account? Credit card? Just a month later, we had a huge purge on Facebook and Twitter, targeting mostly left wingers, libertarians and alternative news sites. Sure, some of these are wacky people, but some provided honest content from a different, anti-government viewpoint, like Dan Dicks from Press For Truth for example. Why shouldn't those voices be heard? https://uk.pcmag.com/facebook/117908/news/facebook-purges-80...
https://www.rt.com/usa/441140-facebook-purge-victims-speak/
We should be careful cheering social media giants just banning people. It will backfire
>This is the insular world in which tens of thousands of Americans who use conservative political apps are experiencing the midterm election season.
Because being on Facebook on Twitter is not experiencing an insular world, right? I mean, conservatives would not have to create their own apps to communicate if they would be left to express their views on the mainstream ones.
But I see conservative views on social media all the time, they're doing just fine on mainstream platforms.
The vast leftist purge of conservatives from social media is mostly propaganda and myth.
Is this vision drastically diferent between the American left and the right? I'm not sure. I still feel people are looking for as much personal freedom as possible while maintaining high personal safety.
In that regard, if its true this is still the shared outcome by all Americans, then the disagreement is in how to best achieve it. In that case, there will be someone who'se idea is actually better. If coastal cities are the major influences on this end goal, could it not be that their method works better?
I'm not wanting to downplay the right. There are most likely specific issues which could be better solved with right leaning policies, this is all really hard to predict. The point I want to make is that not everything can be bias. The center isn't necessarily the unbiased position. Its possible the right or the left is actually the better solution on one issue or another. If say the left was overall a set of better solutions, it would be unfair to say that people who believe in those solutions to be biased, they might be unbiased, yet, the unbiased truth is that the set on the left is simply a better way to achieve the desired outcome. This would similarly apply to the right.
But we have a two party first-past-the-post system which encourages ideological polarity and tribalism, so broad and simplistic (and mostly incorrect) narratives about the makeup of American culture and politics win out in the media and get reintegrated into popular culture through osmosis.