Re:My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network
by tachyonbeam on Monday January 11, 2021 @10:45PM
(#25742000)
My response would be that while it's true that clearnet forums have more reach than darknet forums, there is a risk that pushing people away into really isolated corners radicalizes them even more. If you have a really big open discussion platform, maybe you get assholes saying that Texas should secede or making racist statements, but you probably also have some amount of normalization from regular right-leaning folks who disagree with that. However, if you ban some political opinions, maybe you end up with isolated islands with fewer people that hold much more extreme views, and nobody to tell them that they are going off the rails and pull them back to reality.
Re:My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network
by johnmaguire2013 on Monday January 11, 2021 @11:32PM
(#25742308)
> If you have a really big open discussion platform, maybe you get assholes saying that Texas should secede or making racist statements, but you probably also have some amount of normalization from regular right-leaning folks who disagree with that.
While this sounds reasonable, it is not at all clear that it is truly the case.
Re:My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network
by tachyonbeam on Monday January 11, 2021 @11:44PM
(#25742386)
I agree. I would like to see (serious) sociological research on this topic.
What we had more recently was a kind of social media conveyor belt and sieve system that found, nudged and filtered people into a specific direction until there were enough deluded/lunatic/trolls/whatever you want to call them citizens from across the country willing to storm the capitol building.
Your darknet chat room just doesn't have that reach, potentially it has the reach to organise domestic terrorism in terms of bombings or something similar, but you'd never get a group of people so self assured in their bubble of reality that they'd willingly assault the capitol building.