This greatly saddens me. Can't there be some way to build a platform that encourages intelligent, reasonable, polite debate? Discussions of ideas based on their merits instead of personal attacks and tribal allegiances? Some way to provide free speech without providing free amplification? Has society devolved to a point where this is no longer possible?
Yes. They are called journals and academic conferences.
Most people aren't interested in these things and if you build forums for everybody, it definitely will not turn into scholarly debate.
Start everyone off with a maximum influence credit of say 10 people, like in your local neighborhood.
As you contribute to thoughtful discussion, as determined by the diversity and ratio of up/down arrows, your maximum influence credit grows as a function of your geography.
The reason is you're inappropriately applying an technical solution to a social problem.
You also make at least one critical error:
> As you contribute to thoughtful discussion, as determined by the diversity and ratio of up/down arrows
Upvotes/downvotes pretty much never measure "thoughtfulness," because for them to do so would require a level of social cohesion that would probably make upvotes/downvote unnecessary.
What if there were separate dimensions for: Factually accurate, Morally agreeable, and Polite?
A machine learning algorithm could quickly work out which groups of users have different ideological positions, and which topics are likely to devolve into flame wars, so it could require that users have a minimum politeness score to be able to participate in a debate.
It could also, as you say, check for echo chambers forming and incentivise people with differing opinions to enter a discussion to balance it out.
The general talk of free speech and censoring is not really useful here without specifics. Just like someone can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, there are other things we are finding that may be similar in nature. I think a more useful discussion could be around the specifics. Should the POTUS be able to communicate anything they want? Should platforms be forced to carry it?
Notice also I didn't say Trump, but POTUS in general. What do we want to do here going forward? Should the POTUS be treated differently than a private citizen?
What this current period reminds me of historically is McCarthyism, except we have the POTUS lobbing baseless claims instead of a senator. I don't think McCarthyism impacted the general public as much as claims undermining the election does though.
I think the "POTUS actively undermining democracy" is a gaslighting / pearl clutching for what is a crass person but otherwise business as usual in the White House...
Apparently Patriot Act, mass surveillance, Guantanamo, the "WMD", Echelon, trillion dollar bailouts, false congress testimonies, etc weren't "undermining democracy", but an old guy tweeting some braggadocio/BS is.
And those that designed, established, and voted those things (e.g. Clinton, Bush, and Obama) are all love for each other, and all stand "united" against the "big threat" that is this guy...
Talk about a circus...
Treating everything as if there were only two sides is part of the problem. But I see dissent within the democrat party over these issues - and not within the republican party, who have supported everything that Trump has said and done.
The fact is that every decision is a balance of consequences.
Besides this, there's a clear feedback loop that happens regardless of the intent of the service's creators. The people most likely to get kicked off of social media platforms nowadays seem to be far-right kooks. So when they are looking for a new platform, they'll go somewhere that advertises for no moderation. What happens next is pretty obvious; the more those sort of people migrate to the service, the more visible their content will be to any visitor. And that content tends to be pretty effective at driving away non-kooky users, which leads to a reinforcing cycle that, over time, turns you into yet another take on Voat.