Yes, this is how social interaction in the real world, or even smaller online communities, has worked for ages.

It's only on pseudonymous mega-sites like Twitter, Reddit and HN where jumping down people's throats for having an opposing viewpoint is even a thing.

Boy oh boy, I should take you to some Board of Education meetings.

These are actually fine in most places.

You only see videos of the out of control ones because they're the weird ones.

If you only view the world through the snippets that are noteworthy enough to make headlines or get a lot of votes on Reddit, you end up with a very skewed view of what the world is like.

"I should take you to some meetings"

"Acktchually, the reason your news feed is all stupid is because you're a sucker for clickbait, which is why you think some meetings you go to border on bar fights, when actually a meta-analysis of national averages shows...."

Ah, I see you're doing your part to help make the online world a better place

/s

Next to "people refuting claims OP didn't make with irrelevant data", "vagueposting and downvoting by wokes with nothing meaningful to contribute to the conversation" is quickly becoming my Number 4 fetish.

Downvote me harder, daddy! <3

> If you only view the world through the snippets that are noteworthy enough to make headlines or get a lot of votes on Reddit, you end up with a very skewed view of what the world is like.

I think this very much depends on where you live. I'm not responding to reddit videos, I'm responding to events that my family and some friends who are in public education.

Facebook seems to be the most politically divisive to me and it's not pseudonymous.

Tbh, it's worse in the real world, at least in the U.S., with the Democratic-Republican divide. I've personally witnessed extreme rage, foul language yelled at very loud voices, when folks from these two sides met (and talked about anything that was even slightly contentious).

People beat others or kill others over difference of opinion. And sometimes, the "difference of opinion" is that some people think a this or that minority should be killed while minority disagree.

Also, <sportsball>

So it seems people don’t say in public what they really think? Would that explain why we have very different votes during democratic elections compared to what media wants?

You know, there are best practices for moderating discussions.

https://coralproject.net/blog/five-myths-of-community-design...

No it isn't. Small online communities are generally run as a dictatorship. If you disagree with the mods, well screw you.

In the real world it's a bit more nuanced because people care more about conflict in the real world. But even so there's usually a core group of people with similar beliefs and outsiders are pushed away.

In the corporate world conflicting viewpoints in e.g. religion or politics are generally dealt with by making talking about them taboo or explicitly banning it.

When you don't do that you get the mess that Google has found itself in several times recently where someone makes some comment that the majority disagree with (positive discrimination is bad, AI is sentient, etc) and other employees call for them to be fired.

I can't think of many groups that actually manage to get people with opposing viewpoints to get on with each other without just banning talking about them. Universities maybe. The army perhaps?

the hypothesis that attaching real names to posts improves civility is over ten years out of date

"With real names" is not the same as "in the real world."

There is a massive difference between me seeing a stranger's real name next to a Facebook post about how abortion is evil, and me having a conversation with a good friend of 10 years, or my mom, and it comes up that they're pro-life.

We might have a long debate, but in the end, they're still my friend or family.

Have you been anywhere near a university lately? There’s a contingent of super militant students, supported by certain faculty, that spend their time policing who is allowed to have a “platform” and what’s acceptable speech.

In the real world, sure. The Internet would have us believe that civil war is imminent. We need to stop letting the 1% of people who bother to post online drive our national dialog. We have put the crazies in charge of the asylum.

> The Internet would have us believe that civil war is imminent.

The person who could arguably be considered the third most powerful politician in the US just had their own broken into and their spouse assaulted in a suspected act of domestic terrorism. I wouldn't say "imminent" but if you don't think the possibility is at least somewhere on the table I would consider that being naive.

In 2020 in Ottawa, a man rammed through the gates of the Prime Minister's residence with a vehicle. He was in body armour and carrying multiple firearms. He claims he just wanted to meet with the PM, who thankfully wasn't home at the time. Is Canada on the verge of civil war?

Multiple US presidents have been assassinated! Political violence is shocking but not actually so rare that we should latch on to any specific incident with particular meaning. It's particularly meaningless when it is the act of a single person who is somewhat deranged. If an organized group takes out a politician or other official, and this act had some support with the public, then we should start worrying.

In Arizona, bands of visibly-armed thugs are parking themselves around mail-in voting points taking videos and pictures...and even following people in their cars to see where they go. There's a 75 foot distance law, but that doesn't mean much.

What happens if the also-armed liberals get sick of this crap, and the confrontations escalate?

It's not civil war, but it can lead to ugly conflicts.

> Is Canada on the verge of civil war?

So, the difference between the two countries is that this viewpoint in Canada is a fringe one, while in the United States, it enjoys popular support among mainstream politicians and media. Oh, they don't directly endorse violence, but they are very happy to call for someone to 'remove this turbulent priest'.

That's the difference between fringe lunacy (present in every country, shit happens, you deal with it and move on), and the peaceful political process unraveling.

Just a reminder - one of the presidential candidates in the past two elections has yet to concede that he lost the popular vote in 2016, as well as the popular vote and the electoral college in 2020[1]. This sort of insanity is so far beyond the political pale in Canada, I can't even envision it.

[1] My state's gubernatorial candidate has also yet to concede that he lost 43-56 in 2020. Why even have elections if the losers don't accept the results?

Also a reminder - a left-wing nut shot Scalise during a baseball game. Rand Paul was attacked at his home and had his ribs broken. There was an assassination plot against a conservative-leaning Supreme Court justice.

The right does not own the monopoly on violent nutjobs among their ranks. Sadly, they exist everywhere, left, right, and center.

Yep. The extremes have gotten crazier. Hence the thought that civil war or at least a really nasty escalation could happen.

No, they haven't. The left used to have people like the Weathermen, the civil rights movement used to have the Black Panthers. Nowadays, there aren't any groups with their reach or methods, whereas their equivalents on the right have exploded in popularity, mindshare, and political reach.

That explosion is what made Jan 6th possible two years ago, and what will give legs to the next try.

In my lifetime, no one on the left tried to assassinate a conservative Supreme Court justice until the last few years. It’s gotten more extreme.

The left might not be as crazy as they were in the 60s or whatever, but things are more heated today than at any point in my 30 year memory.

In Rand Paul's case it was just a conflict with his neighbour over leaves in the garden or some such incredibly stupid thing like that, right? I don't believe there was a political motive behind that one.

Ironically, the suspect in the Pelosi terrorist act was born in Canada...

The thing isn't so much that there are incidents of violence, but rather that there are ideas where violence is both logical and even moral.

Let's take Trump's election fraud claims for example; if you genuinely believe that the election was stolen then violence would be a very reasonable and even moral action in literal defence of democracy. I sure hope a lot of people would rise up if such an event would ever actually happen. Of course, Trump's claims are a load of utter nonsense, but my point is that people seem to genuinely believe it and that violence is a logical and moral result.

This is what worries me. That there's the occasional nutjob or conflict that gets out of hand: yeah, that's "normal". But these kind of ideas ... I'd say not so much. That we haven't seen more violence leads me to suspect many "election deniers" don't actually believe Trump's claims as strongly as they say they do.

American society was far closer to breaking down in 1968 than it is today. Riots in multiple cities, political assassinations, the polarization over the war in Vietnam, violence in the south over segregation and civil rights, crime waves in most large cities, and urban decay that was so bad people don't believe it when they see the photos today...

There's merit in that comparison but there was nothing like an armed group storming the Capitol with a goal of preventing a fair and honest election. What makes the civil war questions more worrisome to me is how bare-knuckle politics has become so accepted by mainstream Republicans: when Nixon's misconduct came out, his party support eventually declined and had he not resigned, most members of his party would almost certainly have voted for impeachment. Today we're seeing the results of a generation of ideological purges where more significant acts have been met instead with near-unanimous agreement to hold the line and the few dissenters have been evicted from the party.

I don't want to call it insignificant, but the US has a long history of more significant political violence that did not signal impending civil war. With a nation of 330M people, there are going to be a rather large number (in absolute numbers) that are unhinged.

If anything, it's kind of amazing that the combination of a large population, low regulation, and easy access to firearms hasn't resulted in more violence than it has.

And you've got MAGA "prophets" out there "prophesying" about the "Angel of Death" visiting their political opponents before the end of 2022.

And you have Bernie supporters shooting up GOP softball games, democrats setting fire to court houses, and radical groups running over Christmas parades attendees because they were white.

Still not as bad or unstable as the 1960s.

You have GOP party members actively supporting a coup. And intend to do so again.

Worse than the 1960s.

There’s a key difference: Darrell Brooks didn’t launch his attack for Democratic goals and no Democrat supports his actions. The protesters in Portland did not have the support of Democratic leaders and tended to criticize them almost as heavily they do Republicans. James Hodgkinson was definitely a leftist but his actions got immediate and complete rejection from Democratic leaders, including Bernie Sanders unequivocal condemnation.

Contrast this with the way Republican politicians and media are hesitant to condemn the January 6th attack or cross Trump on almost any topic, and calls for political violence have been the subject of jokes and outright support from leaders & candidates for years. Those topics poll favorably with far too many Republicans to consider them fringe issues.

That’s scary for anyone who believes in fair elections or the rule of law because, as we’ve seen, those people feel emboldened and are expanding. There are a large number of election deniers running for office this year and they’re all members of one party, with almost no internal pushback.

Now do all the crazy shit that democrats were saying during the "mostly peaceful" BLM riots that did $2,000,000,000 in damage, hurt thousands of cops, hurts thousands of civilians, destroyed thousands of buildings, tens of thousands of cars, and wrecked thousands of American lives - many of them the minorities that BLM claim to support - even though they spent millions on questions "jobs" for family members and millions more on lavish mansions. All of the prominent democrats were behind the BLM violence 100%. Even our VP was bailing out bad actors who would just end up getting arrested again.

Ah election deniers...

Like:

Joe Biden, 2019: “I absolutely” agree that Trump is an “illegitimate president.”

Hillary Clinton, 2019: The election was “stolen.”

Jimmy Carter, 2019: “Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election and was put into office because the Russians interference on his behalf.”

Kamala Harris, 2019: “Absolutely right” that Trump “didn’t really win.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, 2016: It was a “stolen election.”

Jerry Nadler, 2017: It was a “tainted” and “illegitimate” election.

Wtf, pls go on

I just read about this, its crazy. "diverse" viewpoints indeed

I really don't think there's a straight line from this kind of lone-wolf domestic terrorism to civil war. A civil war happens when people who aren't mentally unstable, normal people just like you and I, decide that suchandsuch political objective is so important that our fellow citizens have to be shot in order to achieve it. If that seems like a crazy idea to you (it certianly does to me!) then a civil war isn't yet on the table.

A period of severe unrest like we had in the 60s? That's definitely a possibility.

It's not lone wolf terrorism though, it's an organized + well funded movement to end US democracy. They control a bit over 50% of the Republican party, and a growing percentage of the courts (including the supreme court).

Heck; Biden is would be considered right wing in most developing countries, and here's his take:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

> Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.

I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.

These are hard things.

But I’m an American President — not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America.

And I believe it is my duty — my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.

And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

(Sept 1, 2022)

> (including the supreme court)

This seems like paranoid thinking. The Supreme Court has shifted ideologically to the right, but I haven’t seen any evidence they are part of a conspiracy to end democracy.

Here's some evidence.

They ruled to allow state legislatures to override voters by changing state law to allow that:

https://news.yahoo.com/analysis-supreme-court-tilted-electio...

and an upcoming case to watch, where they're expected to further undermine laws:

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1106866830/supreme-court-to-t...

> Here's some evidence.

These are opinion pieces.

> They ruled to allow state legislatures to override voters by changing state law to allow that

No they didn’t. Nothing in the pieces linked states this.

> and an upcoming case to watch, where they're expected to further undermine laws:

This isn’t a meaningful sentence.

"These are opinion pieces."

That refer to facts such as throwing out the voting rights act, and the decision on gerrymandering? Maybe try reading the opinion pieces??

Nobody has ‘thrown out’ the voting rights act. That’s an opinion. Part of it has not been upheld as constitutional.

The decision on gerrymandering is real.

But you seem to be thinking this is evidence of a conspiracy to end democracy rather than just normal bias. Even that piece admits that gerrymandering was invented by the democrats. This is just normal US politics at work.

"Nobody has ‘thrown out’ the voting rights act. That’s an opinion. Part of it has not been upheld as constitutional."

Semantics.

"The decision on gerrymandering is real."

Yes. It is.

"But you seem to be thinking this is evidence of a conspiracy to end democracy rather than just normal bias. Even that piece admits that gerrymandering was invented by the democrats. This is just normal US politics at work."

Do you not understand the difference between democratic and Democratic? Otherwise, what's the relevance of gerrymandering having been invented by Democrats. The court upholding it is anti democratic

> Do you not understand the difference between democratic and Democratic? Otherwise, what's the relevance of gerrymandering having been invented by Democrats.

That it's a normal part of US politics engaged in by all political parties.

> The court upholding it is anti democratic.

Is it? If it's a normal part of US politics, that is far from clear.

The point is that it's not evidence of a conspiracy to end democracy.

>That it's a normal part of US politics engaged in by all political parties.

Debatable. It's facially anti-democratic. That it's something that can be engaged in a partisan matter doesn't support your argument.

OK, if you don't believe commentators or legal analysts, then read the actual supreme court rulings and the case matter for the upcoming case. They are public record.

Hmm, why don't you wait until they let state legislatures throw out elections to be so sure?

You mean they haven’t actually done anything to undermine election results?

I meant exactly what I wrote. Feel free to let me know if there is something about it you don't understand.

They did already? There was a court case when the legislatures gave themselves the power to throw out elections. It went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruling lets them throw out elections.

Prior attempts by states to do this in 2020 and 2000 failed in court, or led to the winning candidate (Gore) conceding, respectively. The 2020 standards that caused the election results to be upheld no longer apply in the states that changed their laws to take advantage of the new supreme court ruling.

What am I missing?

> They did already?

You seem fairly literate. Why would you ask this?

So then no they didn't.

Again, this sounds very different from a scenario where a civil war is on the table. Biden's concern with "MAGA Republicans" is that they might win political power locally and use it to subvert national election results, not that they might shoot him and seize power by force. (Scare quotes because I find the term unhelpful, not because I disagree that such a group exists.)

Read the whole speech:

> They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.

They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.

That’s why respected conservatives, like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a “clear and present danger” to our democracy.

> In the real world, sure.

Can you point at one? A council with "widely diverse viewpoints" that is actually an effective, tie-braking decision maker?

Judge panels (like SCOTUS), county boards, city councils, school boards, non-profit boards and councils, corporate boards.

I actually don't think this is the case. Almost all of these in the US are largely bipartisan, not nonpartisan. In some cases they also tend to self select for people that favor certain viewpoints. NIMBYism is prevalent in local government, for example.

They're optimized to serve the interests of the two prevailing parties in the US, which aren't the only two legitimate viewpoints.

I’ve had better experiences and I also find that issues that aren’t neatly D or R weigh more heavily on them in smaller or more local jurisdictions. I think there is a good case to be made for a similar dynamic on a social media’s board, where the mechanics of good moderation and guidance, combined with cordial operating principles, should be too front-and-center to ignore.

I am not super familiar with US judicial bodies and what their mandate actually entails, but, in general, what judges do fundamentally revolves around interpreting laws and/or constitutions.

Twitter does, of course, also have to comply with law. In regards to this council we are however specifically focusing on an area, that is not already decided by law. Coming up with a decision in a "wildly diverse group" without the need to argue along law (because that is not what your mandate asks for), is a very, very different setup.

I feel the other examples are problematic for other reasons, i.e. "city councils": In the EU people get elected into these positions and no one mechanism will be placed for them to have "wildly different viewpoints". They get elected to get something done, which will then revolve around making compromises, or just not being involved in the process.

Interesting. In the US councils represent different areas of their city or county, and those areas have different political party leanings as well as different economic and community goals, and that’s what brings the diversity to the governing body. There are cities that are too uniform for this to work well, of course.

Sure. The Oversight Board. Facebook did exactly this years ago.

oversightboard.com/decisions

Interesting! Glancing at the board, there is a clear makeup of highly educated, decorated, democratic, liberal-ish people. I would be hard pressed to call this setup one that focuses on "wildly diverse viewpoints".

Even that board has managed only 29 decisions in ~3 years, only 6 this year. A single advisory decision, with the rest being single issue. Leaves a lot to be desired for a supposed social media advisory board.

Supreme Court justices, despite their huge partisan differences and passionate disagreements on many individual cases, often talk about how they personally enjoy working with each other. My impression is that this is true of many Congressional committees as well, although it's less legible there because most congressmembers find it politically advantageous to talk about how mad they are at the other party.

There's a huge amount of history there, though. It didn't just get formed this week. It's got some members who have been on the court since the early 90s. Some since the late 90s and others in the aughts. The SCOTUS has long-lived institutional memory and norms of behavior. It's members also tend to become somewhat isolated from what's going on in the culture outside.

Every institution was new at some point.

In the real world, sane people have diverse opinions and are civil all the time.

It's the politicians and similar race-baiters who benefit from convincing citizens that they should hate eachother.

Surprisingly enough, the need for such things has been perceived and addressed before. A recent method that's widely used for organizing such things is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%27s_Rules_of_Order

Yes, and it's been written up. It doesn't have a moderating effect, at least on its own: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/02/upshot/these-...

(It was covered by the Times but paid for by a non-partisan group, with researchers participating)

The article you linked seems to show that it did, in fact, have a moderating effect?

> NORC surveyed the group before the conference, and again on the same questions at the end; the results were compared with a similar panel of voters who did not get an intense dose of deliberative democracy in the interim. Voters at the event on both the left and the right appeared to edge toward the center. Democratic support receded for a $15 federal minimum wage and for “Medicare for all”; Republican support grew for rejoining the Paris climate agreement and for protecting from deportation immigrants brought to the United States as children.

526 people is not what I’d consider a “council”. That’s the size of a large high school graduating class.

Maybe that's part of the plan. They can livestream the council meetings on Twitter's new streaming service. That's their first show. Every season starts in the boardroom but ends on Twitter Island. It's a real life hybrid of The Hunger Games and Squid Game.

The future of entertainment is a modern twist on old school gladiators. Elon Musk is our Augustus.

Diverse is pretty vague, maybe it’s just Elon and not Elon.