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Re:Aether – Free, privacy-sensitive public communities by the8472 on Saturday November 03, 2018 @11:57AM (#18370803)
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.

Re:Aether – Free, privacy-sensitive public communities by fbender on Sunday November 04, 2018 @07:17AM (#18375526)
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.