Hardly any different than fanatic religions. Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly. I think the problem with digital walled gardens is when the filter totally prevents critical thinking and sometimes even the ensuing cognitive dissonance. Most will resolve the dissonance via withdrawal, not changing their minds. But even withdrawal is better than escalation.

If the walled garden makes it easy for people to confuse belief and knowledge, it's a problem.

If people with kooky beliefs are repressed, it's also a problem.

I think that the key difference between the human filter bubbles of old (in Germany we call that “Stammtisch“, after the table where the village pub's regulars meet to mutually confirm their shared beliefs) and the new filter bubble in social media is that the latter gives more of the appearance of professional journalism, with all the expectations we associate with that. And even if what we see in the social media bubble actually is professional, balanced journalism, it's still a much narrower selection compared to what we saw in the age of mainstream mass media.

When we watched TV news or skimmed a newspaper, we would also selectively focus on our favorite topics. But other topics at least momentarily grazed or attention while we mentally tuned out or skimmed for more interesting headlines. With highly personalized online media (and yes, the social media filter bubble is just one method to achieve that) we are losing that weak connection to out-of-focus topics. The worst part is that we do not even notice, because when our personalized digest contains a certain amount of content that would be on general news we feel our desire stay up to date already satiated.

If real news (as in what would have made it into mainstream mass media) would somehow disappear from our personalized feeds (leaving them with only the necessarily personalized stuff like niche hobbies, friends and very local content), we would go back to consuming more mainstream news channels again, making us less vulnerable to viral fakes and the like. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a solution since there is no way Facebook could do this (and they would not want anyway).

> Even the KKK gets freedom of speech and assembly.

Yes, but their freedoms stop well before lynching people.

Any proof it was a "Republican?"

The WaPo story made no mention of political party.

Do we say "Democrat guy" when referring to the Orlando shooter? He actually was a Democrat. James Holmes who shot up the Colorado movie theater -- also a registered Democrat and even volunteered for the Obama campaign. Andrew Stack who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building -- was a supporter of communism. John Patrick Bedell who shot police officers outside the Pentagon in 2008 -- registered Democrat and subscriber to the 9-11 "Truth" conspiracy, not to mention an extreme hater of Bush/Cheney.

My point is that assuming facts not in evidence is exactly the problem. Now everyone who tends to agree with anti-Republican sentiment has their view reinforced by your own fake news. It works both ways. Fake news isn't a 'Republican' thing any more than it's a 'Democrat' thing. Plenty of fake stories circulate in places like Marin County about the 'vaccine conspiracies' or how this political or that has secret deals with "big oil" or whomever.

Promoting an unproven narrative of a "Republican" shooter IS fake news unless there is actual evidence otherwise.

> Any proof it was a "Republican?"

Yes. His party registration. https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch

I dont see this kind of influence from twitter and reddit. The personal feeling in facebook is far far higher than twitter and reddit. I have never used reddit. The active user share is no where close to facebook. Their reactions buttons are very much reflective of people's views.

Trump tweets lies to 16 million people at a time.

The Pizza shop conspiracy was heavily marketed on Reddit, and I'll bet the shooter today got all his info from there.

These platforms have a HUGE problem.

I follow him but i have never seen his tweets though. They are big but not as big as facebook especially in the emerging markets.

My mum uses FB everyday but she has no idea about reddit whatsoever. She has heard about the name twitter from some news channel. Do you understand the difference?

> My mum uses FB everyday

Facebook has 1.7 billion users; that is more than Twitter's 313 million and Reddit'a tens of millions [1].

I am agreeing with your point, in this limited case, albeit not with how you're making it.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...

Yo I'm from India.

I've read quite a lot about that and I have yet to see anyone advocating for violence. This guy would appear to be a lone nutcase.

Well, what's dangerous is that those sites operate in country where getting a gun is so damn easy

I'm kind of surprised that the interaction between bonkers US conspiracy politics and actual shootings is so _low_. It's as if the beliefs have a sort of ritual status that "everybody knows" they're not expected to act on.

The biggest reason is that most of the Dale Gribbles of the world, just like the local college's Revolutionary Socialist club, are all talk. It takes a lot of commitment to actually carry out a shooting or bombing or whatever, and most people are happy to say "This is really bad. Someone oughta do something, and it's good thing that I'm aware of this unlike the rest of the sheeple" while doing absolutely nothing to effect that agenda.

The people who actually manage to commit these acts are on an entirely different level of nuts.

Pedestrian example: How many gung-ho teenagers talk about joining the military? How many of them actually go through with talking to a recruiter, going to MEPS, and signing on the dotted line? And that's for a cause that is widely accepted by society and confers actual benefits rather than guaranteed violent death or lifelong incarceration in an elaborate concrete box in rural Colorado.

Did you know in France they allow people to rent trucks?

A lot of people don't share your irrational fear of guns.

What's the primary function of a truck?

Does it matter? Weapons are where you find them.

The Nice attacker used no firearms and killed eighty-six people. The DC attacker used a firearm and killed no one. Is it possible that firearms aren't really the problem here?

In Canada here we have a strange definition of a weapon (as opposed to firearm or otherwise). A object becomes a weapon when it is used with the intent to harm/kill someone. Or something close to that, prevents shenanigans trying to skirt the formal definitions.

For this reason some bikers carry hammers on their bikes, y'know incase repairs need to be done. In the case of Nice, a truck is inherently a weapon. Can't really regulate every truck though

As an American, I demand that you turn over this secret technology you undoubtedly must possess for inserting common sense into the written law!~

The idea that "tool" and "weapon" are separated by intent rather than construction is so simple and obvious that apparently no one in certain buildings of Washington, DC, is capable of thinking it.