Ask HN: How do I escape the echo chamber?

Re:Ask HN: How do I escape the echo chamber? by KirinDave on Sunday January 29, 2017 @07:33PM (#13517757)

The answer to this is trivial: find people with dissenting opinions and put them in your feed.

Apple fan? Find a pro-Android site. I'm an increasingly adamant progressive, but I make sure to read r/the_donald (if only to scan their vile talking points). I make sure to read twitter feeds of people deeply critical not only of Silicon Valley, but of capitialism entirely.

But be aware that lots of people engage in deliberately manipulative behavior in social networks these days. You need to be extremely critical of everything you read as you widen your social network, until you can safely weed out the bad actors you may have introduced.

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Re:Ask HN: How do I escape the echo chamber? by noonespecial on Sunday January 29, 2017 @08:35PM (#13518018)

>I make sure to read r/the_donald (if only to scan their vile talking points).

I did the same. It's easy to assume that Trump supporters agree with all of Trump's wacky policies and so must be horrible people. Closer to the truth is that very often they only focused on one issue that they thought was very important to them and think the rest of it is just as nutty as you do.

It's a good thing to understand their positions as best we can because the mid-terms are coming in just 2 years and we're going to need their help to reign in some of this guy's excesses. The US can (and has) survived unfortunate choices for president. Its built into the system.

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Re:Ask HN: How do I escape the echo chamber? by KirinDave on Monday January 30, 2017 @10:49AM (#13522106)

Ugh.

The problem is that these people, while the majority, are just happy to ignore or go along with basically anything and anyone's talking points. Folks like VA-issue voters have a reason you can empathize with, but the harm they're causing to get the "single issue" that wasn't even promised on redressed is stunning.

Sorry to vent at you, I just think these single-issue folks are the worst. They're the ultimate selfish category of voter. In many cases, it wasn't even the democrats who dropped the ball on them, they just have this weird idea DJT is an outsider somehow and not a massively connected rich man with ties to the GOP.

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Re:Ask HN: How do I escape the echo chamber? by marcus_holmes on Monday January 30, 2017 @07:23AM (#13520587)

I tried this - I have an anti-vaxxer "friend". Didn't work, the algorithm doesn't publish any of her stuff, I have to go and check her feed specifically for the weird stuff she posts.

I have another pro-Trump friend, again, nothing he says makes it into the feed.

Is there some critical quantity of "alt-friends" you need to balance?

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Re:Ask HN: How do I escape the echo chamber? by KirinDave on Monday January 30, 2017 @10:46AM (#13522078)

It's just quantity. But also I have about 6 bookmarks that I open all at once. So there is something of deliberate "dipping into the pool" you need to do.

I youtube sometimes and my fans have asked me what that "Absolute Despair" bookmark hotbar is. It is this.

For me, so much of my family hates me, my lifestyle, my profession, and my refusal to put their kids through religious college that I can never really escape.

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