Facebook (social media in general) is not equivalent to the internet. All of what you just enumerated is still possible. I have wonderful dialoges on HN, exchange ideas at erlangcentral or reddit and create collectiveley on github. It's just the case that most people really like their filter bubbles, and don't care about much else. The problem, it seems to me, is that closed spaces are more attrctive.

As a newcomer to HN, I can see that there is a strong, fairly homogeneous culture here. For the most part, we are all in favor of increasing technology and automation, reducing reliance on non-renewables, but we don't want educated, hard working people to get shafted. Support for foreign wars is thin. We consistently don't respect Trump supporters, and it seems to go without saying around here that racism is bad.

If you think that this is just how all people are naturally, that these opinions and preferences are too obvious to even discuss, then you need to travel.

Also, I don't really do reddit myself, but I hear it is heavily moderated, to the point of removing posts that are politically incorrect, from a liberal American point of view. I'm not sure to what degree that varies by subreddit.

We disagree on a number of topics: SJW/feminism, middle East politics, abortion, 2. amendment etc comes to mind.

We respect dang to close those discussions though and we try to be civil even before he closes them ;-)

That said I'd ask you to reconsider the part about "We consistently don't respect Trump supporters..."

I for one at least manage to dislike Trump while still understanding those who support him.

Oh: and reddit: yes, some subreddits are quite different from others. I have been surprised to see the difference between what people say about certain subreddits and what it actually looks like.

> "If you think that this is just how all people are naturally"

Gee, I don't think that. Why do you think I have such an opinion? I am from Germany (the eastern part), and have family members who are AFD-supporters and worse. So I do realize that most people (esp. here where I live) don't share my liberal world views. But in contrast to them I don't just get my news / filterbubble-content from facebook. I read conservative Newspapers that disagree with my opinions, because it is important to look beyond your own Horizon (even though I constantly get mad when I read the likes of Jasper von Altenbockum).

> I'm not sure to what degree that varies by subreddit

A lot, I am mostly on smallish/specialized subreddits: erlang, haskell, spaceengine, gis. There not much conflict potential fairly few trolls.

Oh and by the way: the best dialogues I had on Hacker news were technical, not political. Also I don't think that the HN-crowd is that homogeneous.

Sorry, I didn't mean you specifically. You're right, we don't know each other at all. I was trying to make a general observation about the community.

One thing that I didn't remember earlier, is that there is an exceptionally high percentage of deep, introspective people here. That's pretty cool.

Honestly, that's how humans work. There does seem to be a tendency for people to "cluster" into various tribes, and form various information and cultural "bubbles".

One of the ways to mitigate this to a degree (everyone is biased in one way or another even with the best of efforts, I think) is to engage yourself in multiple "bubble zones". The old social media experience (forums etc.), which was very de-centralized, could provide this experience. Even if you just went to specialized forums of, say, your hobbies and interests, there is a decent chance that each forum will have a different cultural viewpoint compared to the other one. Forum culture also allow you to peak into other cultures you aren't even into at all, just for some perspective.

From my viewpoint, one possible problematic trend I see with the Internet (at least from a social media perspective) is centralization of the experience, and the implications of algorithmic filtering (as implied by fears over a "filter bubble" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)). I am not sure if the "filter bubble" concern is 100% warrented now (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/technology/facebook-study-...)... but for subjects which provoke strong feelings, there seems to be a tendency for those with the loudest, strongest opinions to actually strongly want a filtered comfort zone, one free of any conflicting opinion, or even people with that opinion.

My hope is that the Facebooks of the world note that not everyone desires epistemic closure. I'm not terribly optimistic about this though.

> We consistently don't respect Trump supporters

I respect Trump supporters, I just don't respect Trump.

Ah, and now we confront the elephant in the room.

> I feel cheated.

You were cheated by yourself then, surely.

The only thing stopping one's ability to connect on the internet is a failure to actively branch out. I am ignoring language barriers for a moment.

Nothing stops you from using different search engines, blogs or news venues.

> Nothing stops you from using different search engines, blogs or news venues.

As of recently, Google has been cornering me into a subset of the results I used to get, based on my language : while I used to have a pretty balanced and well-optimized experience with results being either in english or my language depending on what I looked for. However, as of recently, even asking question in english, or asking question on a topic where most sources are in english yields subpar results in my home language. This transition has been very fast - and very brutal, as if Google trapped me in a subset of my former experience.

I have been using google for some time now, and keep using it, because its competition focuses on US market optimization (bing), doesn't achieve the same level of relevance (ddg) or simply sucks. This won't change for one reason : Google's competitors don't get enough data to become relevant.

The consequence for me right now is that I have no efficient tool to search, and that Google's move forces me more and more to find alternatives to searching in order to access some of the data I need.

Have to agree, I remember in the past getting tons of links in German, French, etc... but now it seems to think I only speak (or care about English).

And I'm an american, safe bet probably, but while my ability to butcher spoken french is legion, reading it isn't too bad. German I find much better and for tech sometimes the only link I have found fixing something has been in German.

If you find something that searches all languages again let me know, google is shit now for search.

Try changing the identity you are to Google, start using the Tor Browser.

>Try changing the identity you are to Google,

Delete cache and cookies, block all analytics through a combination of hosts file, adblocker, ghostery, and noscript, and google in private mode. That should help.

>start using the Tor Browser

...and you'll probably join the NSA's ever growing list. Of course, you're probably on the list for reading anything about Tor, Tails, PGP, or other online privacy or security tools, techniques or news[1]. Remember the saying, "you only worry about privacy if you've got something to hide." I think that's how it goes?

[1] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/interest-privacy-will-ensure-yo...

It can totally connect the world and help foster dialogue, but the humans using it have to want to connect with other humans and engage in meaningful dialogue with them. Some people do, but most of humanity probably doesn't even realize that that's an ideal they should try to aspire to. I think we're witnessing a decades-long process of the internet evolving and humanity slowly catching up to it, in terms of things like etiquette and expectations for social interaction and slowly learning to have empathy for strangers elsewhere in the world typing things into little boxes.

So much of humanity came online in such a short period of time, it's bound to be chaos for a few more decades. If you took 1000 of the world's smartest, kindest, and most articulate people, stuffed them all in the same giant room, and only allowed them to interact via shortish typed messages with no other social queues, those people would probably descend into anarchy and barbarism within weeks or months. The internet's kind of like that except it's several billion people covering the full range of age, intelligence, education, economic status, religion, language, nationality, mental health, maturity, etc.

I'm hoping that in 20 years we'll look back on how things are now in the same way we look back on the '90s...with a combination of nostalgia for how many unsettled frontiers there were, coupled with amazement at our collective naivete when seen in hindsight. It'll still seem like everything's terrible in 2036, but I suspect we'll all still feel like it's way better than it was back in 2016.