We're in an interesting time right now, when at least 50% of people in first-world countries remember a time before the internet (obviously higher in countries with less internet adoption)

In 70 years, everyone alive will have grown up in a world where the Internet was everywhere.

There's definitely pros to this as instead of having to hide things like your sexual orientation in your community due to bigotry you can go online and find others like you. There are also cons abound, where instead of (for example, not trying to push policy here) ranting about how nobody rides the bus and encountering your neighbor whose car broke down and is riding the bus you instead go online and talk to other people who think buses are stupid.

No it will take time to characterize the effects. Today we know exactly how and why it was designed.

Ps. HN is also an echo chamber but here readers are more keen to ask questions.

Although I’d agree if you are referring to secondary effects — they will take a little longer to manifest. But we are certainly seeing some of those already.

I've stared to think that handing everyone the "microphone" of something like YouTube is actually a way to prevent even moderately subversive thought from ever reaching the mainstream.

Basically let people say what they want - but they have to complete with every other loud moron, while ignoring the manufacturing of consent through traditional channels.

It's horribly dystopian. I almost long for a time when running a pirate radio station meant you had a political message you felt needed to be heard.

I remember that feeling, that something could be important to say.

It's completely gone though. There's only the compulsion to reply.

Pirate radio stations generally weren't run by people who had things that needed to be heard, in the US most notable examples were simply people who thought broadcasting music illegally was worth getting raided by the feds.

   In these times of compassion when conformity's in fashion
   Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in
   - Bob Dylan, Foot of Pride (1983) rec. w/Sly+Robbie,Knopfler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2roZjsv44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4siXnAuVb8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2UHrJg2h4 (perf. Lou Reed, GE Smith)

if you don't like group think, avoid popular websites like this one and stick to smaller, more like minded communities

1. Government grants for open source alternative development. Aka fed oversee and what not can apply for grants.

2. Label all social media and phones common carriers.

3. Require common carriers to be subject to FOIA and audits by citizens. This would include source code. They can still profit from being centralized for the time being, because of networking effects that likely won’t change.

My final thought is that social media shouldn’t be tied to ones public identity.

That's called Twitter and as far as I can tell, more incognito it is, the more toxic it is.

It’s easy to think of say communism in reference to the horrors of recent history, but it showed up before the US civil war. In the context of slavery and the often stated “need” to compensate people who owned slaves before freeing them it suddenly seems very different. Which just demonstrates how ideologies are shaped by the time period and why understanding history takes more than a history textbook.

Actually reading old newspapers or political speeches is eye opening in the way that’s hard to summarize. https://www.loc.gov/newspapers/?dates=1920-1929 first page of first newspaper The Evening Star (March 8, 1920) “Income tax on dividends held Invalid by Supreme Court Government To Refund Millions” alongside “President takes ride in Automobile” which was apparently newsworthy including the prohibition of taking his photo. Just as interesting “Woman instantly killed by an Auto” referring to a car accident was a front page story. Meanwhile “Democrats Figure Electoral Victory on “WET” plank” referring to a lighter version of prohibition while still prohibiting saloons and Whisky. “British to Sell no part of West Indies to the US” which shows the past wasn’t just a history timeline it was filled with unrealized possibilities.

From the perspective of those tools, the problems are brazen - if you accept that there is, effectively, a 'big lie' (without one specific liar). That it's possible for so many to be so misled, for the social norms (groupthink) to be so widespread and wrong, is shocking to experience first-hand. Looking at history, it shouldn't be surprising at all.

What prevents such widespread ignorance is the Enlightenment and post-modernism/positivism. It should not be surprising that the problems are so brazen and that the 'old' tools work so well. It's not coincidence; we got here by discarding them, by (bizarrely) disarming ourselves. The results are completely predictable - discard scientific reasoning and critical thinking and you get lies and conspiracies. Throw away post-modernism and you get, almost immediately it seems, the same cults of power and personality that it protects us from. The consequences aren't overwhelmingly clear to observe. Whoever drives the reactionary movement, one of their first targets was those tools and the norms and institutions that support them: fact, critical thinking, education, all the humanities.

(I'm speaking a bit loosely about the philosophical terms, but close enough, I think, for my point.)

One newsgroup I recommend is `comp.sys.raspberry-pi`. It has a pretty high SNR and is quite active, especially in comparison to some other groups on Usenet.