> isn't this just exacerbating the filter-bubble effect that cranks up polarization?

I don't think that the goals of these software products are to reduce political polarization. What does the telephone do to reduce political polarization?

It is my understanding that no matter which server you sign up on, you can follow people on every other federated server. So, it doesn't much matter what political stance each server officially takes, because the bubbles are connected.

Except with Mastodon, where your server can blacklist whole servers if those servers contain undesirables.

The way I think about it is that it allows for self-regulation the way it happens in real life too. In real life you can't go into someone's neighborhood meeting and harass people, you'd get kicked out and you wouldn't be welcome going forward. The same way servers can cut ties with other servers. Someone here explained it much better than me but the idea that everybody should have an opportunity to be heard by everyone just isn't realistic and isn't what we do in non-virtual communication. Federation allows to facilitate that.

This is exactly the problem I've had with Twitter as a social platform. The network is simply too big to the point that it's strange to me that the default means of posting is to literally everyone using the platform. Smaller discord communities I've been in rarely get into flame wars as often as people on Twitter since they tend to already be a self-selected group of like-minded people. Putting people with wildly different views in front of each other and incentivizing "hot takes" via like and retweet counters is very much the opposite of a healthy social environment.

This analogy in part breaks down because in the digital space, such "bans" don't require any substance.

If in the physical space you'd ban somebody from ever joining your meeting or neighborhood again, you need to have some type of probable cause. Something really bad must have happened.

Meanwhile in the digital space: banned for life because your comment was too long. Don't believe me? Watch:

https://lemmy.ml/modlog

If people aren't happy with how their instance's admin behaves (e.g. "banning" users or removing ties to a particular server), they'll leave the instance. There is no single entity that's in control anymore.

I think we really need to interrogate this idea that filter bubbles are a bad thing. Some of the biggest negatives of twitter (and positive in terms of engagement) is that you have these groups that are opposed, and then a tweet from one bubble goes viral in another causing a war between bubbles. The exact same issue with brigading on reddit. Maybe we should trust people a little more, let people who agree have a space to agree and discuss their shared goals, interests and ideas, and then trust them enough to know that if they want to hear opposing views they know where to go.

> and then trust them enough to know that if they want to hear opposing views they know where to go.

Sounds great. But remind me from where all this brigading, canceling, preventing speech, and censorship is coming from.

That is fine, but the existence of a bubble on Twitter is often defined by having a common external enemy. That's what the participants inside the bubble have in common, and very often not much else.

They aren't necessarily deep friends, these bubble people. Move such a bubble to friendly territory where there is only peace, and many will fall apart.

> I think we really need to interrogate this idea that filter bubbles are a bad thing. Some of the biggest negatives of twitter (and positive in terms of engagement) is that you have these groups that are opposed, and then a tweet from one bubble goes viral in another causing a war between bubbles.

"Thing from one bubble goes viral in another" doesn't require two bubbles to exist on the same platform, as in Twitter. If the two bubbles are segregated to different platforms, people will still post screenshots/etc of one on the other, and some of those will go viral. "Libs of TikTok" is a good example of this – TikTok and Twitter aren't federated, but that doesn't stop left-leaning TikToks becoming viral in right-leaning Twitter; and you can find plenty of stuff on TikTok critiquing "Libs of TikTok" (and Twitter more generally) in turn. Similarly, there are whole subreddits devoted to stoking outrage at screenshots of Twitter and Facebook posts.

No doubt a shared platform accelerates this mutual feedback process a bit, simply by reducing the friction of cross-bubble quotation; but it still is going to happen a lot even without one.

It's not great, but on a centralised alternative administration will take a side and some groups will be pushed out completely. Unless, of course, such platform will commit to being a public square, but reddit isn't that.

Federation offers at least some hope of cross-pollination.

Eh. Some people want bubbles, let them, you can't force people to do something they don't want to do.

Personally I run my own Mastodon instance for myself and federate with everything, left or right, I don't care. I block stuff for myself that is illegal in my country, but I like reading about opinions I don't necessarily agree with.

It is only possible as long as one side is able to have civil discourse, without labeling/demonizing/name calling and violently attacking their opponents. It’s quite hard to have a debate when people’s views are not only completely entrenched, they are simply not willing to give respect at all.

small correction; it's only possible if both sides are capable and willing to set aside heated rhetoric. At this point in time, I honestly question if any of the sides are capable of honest engagement.

I think civil discourse is possible if reasonable debate is allowed. Unfortunately, for one side, it appears that reason itself is problematic for them and they refuse it.

This is called being part of the problem. My side is fine.

That can describe both the left and the right. I'd be very surprised if you weren't alluding to SJWs; but at the same time you're describing Qanon folks as well.

...and that's why we can't have discourse. No one can agree on what constitutes "reasonable debate".

Well, you’re conflating a fringe movement of radical conspiracy theorists with the average person who doesn’t go along with the woke agenda. That in itself is an example of what I’m talking about.

..and in reply to my post I got unironic nonsense about "the woke agenda".

That validated my intuition and proved my point.

Thanks!

The “woke agenda” is a mainstream political shorthand. But I find it telling that you were able to infer that I was speaking about the left when I mentioned opposition to reason.

"woke agenda" is not a mainstream political term, and the fact you state it is demonstrates both your own position (to the far right) and inability to step outside of that viewpoint and discuss issues from a genuinely detached viewpoint.

I hope that, like me, you enjoy the rest of your day.

Well, it’s a rather convenient shorthand to describe the set of views and positions (largely emotive and inconsistent) that characterize leftist thinking.

> that characterize leftist thinking

But that's a large part of the problem, reducing everything to a simplistic "left-vs-right" dichotomy – everything is either "left" or "right", and everyone who is good/sane/rational/decent/etc belong to one of them and everyone on the other is irrational/insane/wicked/etc

Yeah, IMO "left" and "right" are just two different flavors of neo-liberalism factioned off like sports teams; and the mentality and self-awareness of those who back either one tend to be similar in nature to the point of being indistinguishable.

If someone is pro-war (to any degree), anti-worker/union or pro-capitalism I have a hard time taking them serious as a leftist; that's more of a liberal bag.

Complaints about "woke"/"wokeness" aren't confined to one part of the political spectrum. Many present the term as a "right-wing talking point" – but if you go looking for it, you can find Marxists invoking the term critically too (for example, the noted African-American Marxist Adolph L. Reed Jr.)

I think it is an attempt to name a real phenomenon – a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence, which (among other distinctive traits) foregrounds issues of race and gender/sexuality, in opposition to the classic Marxist emphasis on economic class as the "underlying cause" of all those other issues. If you don't want to call it "wokeness" – fine then, what should we call it?

>what should we call it?

My personal suggestion would be to go back to what it was called when I was a kid; "knee-jerk". "knee jerk" doesn't have a specific axis connotation (unlike "woke" which refers explicitly to progressive issues). It was primarily aimed at (knee jerk) liberals but could easily be aimed at reactionaries without any change of meaning.

But this is a type of knee jerk reaction confined exclusively to folks on the left.

I asked what we should call "a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence". Your answer ("knee-jerk" which "doesn't have a specific axis connotation") isn't actually answering the question I was asking, because a term intended to apply to people with widely differing ideologies (obviously) isn't appropriate as a label for one particular contemporary ideological stream.

I misunderstood your intent -I thought the idea was to suggest a term which could be applied to the True Believer regardless of ideology. I didn't realize you simply wanted another phrase you could sling at the left.

My apologies.

You absolutely have misunderstood my intent – I was asking for a descriptive term for a particular current of contemporary left-leaning thought, to replace a term which has admittedly become rather pejorative in connotation – yet you seem to misunderstand me as looking for a pejorative instead. And "woke" is still not exclusively pejorative–it is not hard to find people calling themselves "proudly woke"–maybe that's ironic, or "reclaiming"; but couldn't also some of it be in homage to, or even in continuity with, its origin as a positive self-descriptor? And not all critical invocations of "woke" are fairly labelled as "pejorative"–such as when Reed criticises "woke" from a Marxist perspective. [0]

Surely it is valuable to find descriptive terminology for different ideological currents – across the totality of the political spectrum? The traditional Marxist answer is "yes" – followed up with an analysis of the ways in which those various currents support class interests, which is what Reed presents for "woke".

[0] https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin...

Well in practice I don't think that the typical outcome would be partitioning users by interest. In email, we don't have that for the most part, instead people choose the provider that provides the service they like the most, with some exception.

It's a good thing to create an enviroment that is safe from 4chan-style brigading, yes.

>Is it really no longer possible to have conversations happen between folks that disagree,

At this point? No -because neither side can agree on common references; the left get their news from one set of news outlets and the far right get their news from qanon or whatever facebook fringe groups.

It's impossible to have a conversation if you cannot even agree on basic language or common references.

With their being fewer and fewer genuinely left-of-center outlets it becomes necessary for people to be able to build enclaves that won't be shitposted into oblivion (see also: reddit with the_donald and other brigading subs)

> isn't this just exacerbating the filter-bubble effect that cranks up polarization

It's the opposite. When people are aware of the bias of their sources the filter-bubble effect cease to exist.

The whole problem with the filter bubble is that people are unaware of the existing biases.

It's surprising how people don't understand this...

You are right, but subreddits have the same issue. It doesn't seem markedly worse than what it is attempting to replace.

The really painful thing is that probably 80% of people are quite reasonable but on social media the extremes on both sides dominate conversation. Extreme toxicity as well as extreme fragility are the norm.

Extremity is highly engaging and richly rewarded, hence maximizing polarization has become an incentive on its own. "normal" users have been exposed to this discourse for several years now, and may have internalized it.

Replying to myself here because there's no single comment in here that this matches, but rather all of them: I appreciate the thoughtful responses I got here that raise points for consideration beyond simplistic answers (like questioning the assumption that "filter bubbles are bad", or questioning whether it's _always_ an applicable assumption).

Thanks, folks!