>>> Now if you're not on the big platforms your opinion may as well not exist.

> Before global social networks your opinion didn’t matter either. And that was probably a good thing. People are entitled to their opinions but most peoples opinions are idiotic and shouldn’t be broadcast around the world to be picked up and amplified by other idiots.

Oh but who decides what opinions are idiotic? This is how the idea of free speech emerged :)

> who decides what opinions are idiotic?

This is a valid question. The answer is clearly not a firehose—free speech absolutist forums are selected against by users for the toxic pits they devolve into.

Multiple forums and the gating mechanisms of wealth and literacy were the Enlightenment era’s filters. We don’t want nor have those any more.

The question is further interesting because social media already tried to answer it: you do, for yourself!

At scale, with naive ML clustering algorithms that also prioritize engagement... that devolves into bubbles.

(I think that's still the right answer, but the implementations need work.)

> Oh but who decides what opinions are idiotic?

I'll gladly clear this one up for you. It is: whoever decided the T&Cs of the platform you're using - the ones you agreed to when you signed up.

If you're banned from Twitter for posting white supremacist hate speech, paedophilia, for organizing targetted harrassment or anything else Twitter deems contrary to their T&Cs remember that (depending on where you live) while you may have the right to express yourself, I have the right as the operator of a platform not to listen to you or have you on my platform.

What most of the people whining about being booted from Twitter are upset about is that they aren't able to annoy the people they want to anymore. I'm fine with this.

What a stupid and idiotic question! Why would you even think to ask such a thing?! I'll have you know that my understanding of the situation is so much more evolved than yours, because I saw a headline referring to an article on another site that said that my assumption with no data is correct, as dictated by my emotions being reinforced with the multitude of soundbites affirming my smugness in my perceived expertise based on my OWN research!

Deleted by me

Do both democratic and meritocratic methods of polling suggest the opinion is harmful? Delete.

Otherwise it stays until consensus.

The edge cases pale in comparison to the broadly accepted manipulation of a near-majority. And furthermore compared to the point-of-no-return where the majority is sufficiently manipulated.

Edit: downstream comments emphasizing the edge cases must've missed my last paragraph. The improvement only has to be better than doing nothing. Right now doing nothing is arguably acutely affecting almost 50% of the US population. No way the edge cases add up to that.

> democratic and meritocratic methods of polling suggest the opinion is harmful? Delete.

This is, in essence, selecting for experts spouting popular opinions. That’s a dangerous incentive model. (All before we even get to the question of delineating the experts.)

it's almost as dangerous as non-experts spouting bad, counterfactual objective claims and pretending they are experts

Which doesn’t sound very dangerous to me

Except that in the last 12 months, people have literally died because they believed non-experts creating and amplifying anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

'I wish I'd been jabbed'...

Thanks for this.

It's like, other people would rather ignore reality, life and death, than budge on their uneducated opinions.

Ego is the enemy.

Should the majority be able to suppress the speech of minorities when they express unpopular opinions on, let's say, civil rights and equality? What is meritocratic polling and who specifically gets to evaluate merit?

If I were to get on twitter right now and start posting my opinions, no one would give a shit. There's something else going on that is promoting polarizing opinions and making these forums devolve.

I think it's monetisation. In the past, monetising your opinion was difficult. It was limited to a select few who could get on the TV or in the print media. Now, people are incentivised to say things which will generate controversy because eyeballs == money. If you got on Twitter and started posting polarising opinions and worked on promoting those eventually the engagement will (possibly) reach a point where you can gain financially from it and you're now incentivised to continue posting polarising content. The content doesn't even need to be ethically right/wrong, it just needs to make one group of people angry and another defensive. There are plenty of things we need to have a debate about as a society (because they are not black/white and require nuance to solve) but they will never get solved properly because both sides refuse to discuss the issue.