>let them speak and prove them idiots. It's really not hard

No popular platform works like this. All working solutions involve hard moderation and separate forums/groups for different people.

>they, are people

Not necessarily.

Even if they are real people they may be paid propagandists, trolls or promoters. You need heavy moderation or access restrictions to make things work after the size of community grows. Eventually even moderation breaks down after the size grows.

The problem, however, is that people are unresponsive to arguments. We are not reasonable, unfortunately. People aren't coming to these places to learn. They don't want to learn.

I'm very curious as to how we can get out of this, because I really have a hard time understanding people and this is an enormous laboratory.

> unresponsive to arguments

Not just unresponsive to arguments, but will argue in bad faith, and it takes 10x as much effort to disprove someone's bad contentions than it does to produce them.

I agree with this position and wonder if there is any supporting evidence that speaks to this point that you know of?

And since everyone is unreasonable you think someone should be in charge of deciding what's reasonable at the barrel of a gun.

I really don't think you've thought your argument through.

An argument doesn't have to be reasonable. You have logos, pathos, and ethos [1] to convince somebody.

It's like a good sale, you identify what they want and then you show them a more social and friendly approach to reach their goal.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric

What if you don't want to prove them wrong, or indeed engage them at all? Not everyone is owed a debate, a response, or even eyeballs. There's plenty of interesting content out there that people are paid to read, what makes you think anyone who values their time would be willing to read racist trash for free?

That's perfectly fine. But just because you don't want to debate with someone does that mean they're not allowed to talk to each other?

In my opinion it's more important to let groups self-moderate and compartmentalize. We can have a peaceful talk because "they" are over there, where they don't disturb us.

> Not everyone is owed [...] even eyeballs.

Where to look is up to each pair of eyeballs.

> they... compartmentalize

And that's the key problem. People are more divided than ever, especially in politics, to the point where rational discussion is nearly impossible.

Instead of letting people separate into echo chambers, it seems much better to force everyone to be in the same space, which should result in people hearing each side of an argument. Use moderation to punish people who don't act civilly, which should eliminate the worst offenders.

I prefer things to be self moderated as much as possible, but not to the point where echo chambers can form. Some ideas:

- content gets removed after N reports - users with N reported posts get shadow-banned for some period (exponential scale) - users get N reports, which get replenished faster if reports result in content removal - users that brigade get their reports silently nixed (e.g. you consistently report content along with the same users)

Or something along those lines. Just having an open forum leads to one group out-shouting other groups, which leads to echo chambers. There must be some moderation, but not so much as to recreate the problem a different way.

What? No, we should not force people to share the same space as fascists and racists. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. If I were to encounter neo-nazis in real life, I would not engage in a civil discussion, confident that the police is there to make sure everyone is civil. I would walk away. Online, it's pretty much the same thing. I'm not sure why it's so hard to fathom that most people have more productive uses of their time than hearing what racists and fascists have to say.

You can still walk away, but the key point is that those who do not want to walk away will still hear differing (to theirs) opinions.

I think you want to narrow the overton window. My preference is to keep the overton window wide but have multiple subgroups along the continuum so that the outer percentiles only form small subgroups that don't dominate.

In other words echo chambers are only a problem when they are large and even worse when you have to choose one of two chambers dominated by either extreme. The political analogue would be the 2 party system in the US vs. the multi party parliaments with coalitions and fringe parties that you can find in europe.

I disagree. The small groups, especially the ones with self-amplifying „high echos“ in their groups are the ones (groups or individual members of that group) that easily radicalize. That‘s how terrorist cells, guerillas, and „lone wolf“ aggressors arise (left and right, political and social, agnostic and religious, whatever-you-can-think of extremists). Just check the news of the last months, I mean weeks…er, days!

And I‘m not saying your point about large echo chambers is wrong, it’s quite true (again, see recent news). But the problem is with any kind/size of echo chamber. And „echo chamber“ is a different thing than domain-specific groups like HN – it‘s only an echo chamber when HN is your only source of (tech/entrepreneurial) news/discussions. Note that even where you live can easily become an echo chamber if you rarely break out of it.

>literal Sieg Heil Nazis are people deserving respect

I respectfully disagree.

ETA: Sunlight isn't actually a disinfectant here. If it was, moderation-lite platforms wouldn't be full of fascist trash.

What actually happens is this: 1. Someone makes a moderation-lite platform in response to censorship on mainstream platforms 2. Thousands of awful people flock to the platform, along with two or three principled free speech advocates. Most normal people avoid it because they don't realistically need to worry about being banned from mainstream platforms and they don't want to deal with fascists. (Besides, the racist trolls aren't actually interested in open and respectful discourse. That's a lie.)

Conversely, as mainstream platforms ban more and more viewpoints, it does start to affect "normal people" as well - and that increases the potential userbase for all these alternative services to spring up.

"awful people" As in, people who are inherently awful, cannot be helped, and should therefore be cut out of society. Why stop there? Why not put them in prisons? Fine with that? Why stop there? Why waste resources on trash? Why not incinerate them in some kind of large cooking appliance? :^)

There‘s certainly a risk here but that is why we have laws. E.g. in Germany, showing fascist symbols is forbidden (unless it‘s an educational/historical context). It‘s up to the people and courts to ensure the law is not overstepping the boundaries of free expression, and it‘s up to the executive and judicial branch to ensure people don’t tend to prejudgement.

Oh, goodie, a community where every topic of conversation, no matter how mundane, turns into a "debate" about if [insert group here] are human or not and if it should be ok to own women and why don't we still send Jews to the gas chambers? Sounds like a pleasant place, I can't wait to spend my time there "debating" levelheaded reasonable people who I just "disagree" with.

You're not entitled to have every community be in your image.

It's all fun and "debate" until someone shoots up a synagogue.

Wtf..

Slippery slope fallacy.

No, that's how we got here. We're already below that point on the slope. Fascist trash bins leak, into the real world.