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Comment by Reedx | Hacker News Reader

If Facebook and Twitter wanted to make good on the mantra of "making the world a better place", they could do it today simply by disabling things that are reinforcing echo chambers, rewarding anger and generating outrage.

e.g., Disable algorithmic feeds, remove sharing/RTing and stuff like Trending.

Engagement metrics would plummet, yes, but they would literally make the world a better place.

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So, what would a feed consist of then?

Posts by your friends in chronological order?

That would do nothing to fight echo chambers.

What exactly do you think causes echo chambers? When algorithms inSocial networks reward bad behaviors bad behaviors will dominant. One of those bad behaviors is lazily espousing the dominant viewpoints in pursuit of social acceptance. Another is avoiding broadcasting certain beliefs out of fear of holding the unpopular opinion. Who disagrees with a highly comment? These are the behaviors which create mono cultures and echo chambers.

I don't think echo chambers are necessarily as maliciously or narcissistically inspired as you do. They are a natural result when people have complete control over what they hear and they primarily seek to hear things that reinforce their existing worldview.

It would stop amplifying them.

Yes, you'd get natural echo chambers of the type we've had since antiquity, but not the hugely accelerated toxic meme spread enabled by news feeds.

But we didn't have natural echo chambers of that sort and magnitude, because we didn't live in a global village.

I believe that the ideological self-segregation is mostly because you can choose who to interact with. That's also why it's primarily online, because you cannot choose to a similar degree offline, and the physical distance between you and your near-duplicates is too large for echo chambers to form, unless you make an intentional move to bring them together (e.g. sects moving to a certain location).

What facebook needs is a dislike button and making it invisible to other users when it reaches 3 dislikes. That's how an organized society work. In facebook they only started with likes that's why bad post are amplified because there are engagement even if lots of people dislike the post.

Isn't that how you end up with echo chambers? I think something obviously needs to change, but giving the majority a button to hide posts they don't like from everybody on the site won't lead to more meaningful discussion.

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