I really don't want to be the one who has to go to the other places for the sake of discourse and be told that because I enjoyed some some song that I'm a nazi or a libtard ...

I don't disagree with you entirely, but I also am not sure I'm doing any good being called names and I want to spend time places online where folks don't hate at me.

Where do we go? The public squares are owned by oligarchs.

Since when is a private social media website the public square? X doesn't even allow browsing most posts or responses, with almost everything except gory videos requiring a login.

Do you volunteer as tribute to go yell into the void you don't agree with, though?

No, lol, I don't partake at all. I post in a few subreddits, and lurk here, but that's about it. Ditching social media, and not getting involved in temporal, partisan issues, has been more of a boon to my mental health than exercise, sleep, and diet. I cannot recommend it enough.

I guess I should add: I understand why people do what they do, and I see how we arrived at this point. I don't blame anyone on Bluesky for not wanting to associate with certain types. But, it seems the end results are echo chambers which certainly aren't healthy for a functioning democracy.

I'm fine with not separating discourse.

So long as there is an open network where we can analyzer participants behaviors, and where we don't have to be subject to the moderation and algorithmic wins of a single controlling interest. So long as we can shield ourselves from people we don't like.

There seems to be very very very few places where there are the fundamentals in place for it to make sense to be there. There are very popular very large networks, but I absolutely cannot imagine how anyone is remotely ok trusting the "public discourse" to be held on such imbalanced lopsided private property, that's tilting the discourse invisibly underfoot.