Well yeah, before the internet, it was harder to find like-minded people, so you engaged with whoever was close to you, like family and neighbors.
The internet made it a lot easier to find like-minded people and ignore everyone else. I think that’s the main reason we’re so polarized today. Just look at Lemmy, it’s basically all leftists, and even the conservative areas are just leftists making fun of conservatives.
If you put moderation on the client, there’s a chance that people from various backgrounds will use it and just moderate out the stuff they don’t agree with, and people who want a mix can have it too. At least that’s the hope.
I think one reason that is often overlooked in that polarization is that there are a lot fewer places in RL too where you have to interact with others in a more than superficial way or even can do so if you actively choose to do so.
A big reason for that is cars which isolate people as they travel from place to place and another is the reshaping of our cities into large homogeneous parts, each just for a group of people with similar income and culture.
Perhaps, but at least my experience with mass transit and walking is that people largely don’t interact directly and are doing their own thing.
I think the biggest thing to blame is smartphones. Before phones became commonplace, a few people would wear headphones or whatever, but most didn’t. I had lots of conversations on buses and trains and at stops and stations. But now everyone is on their phones instead.
Well yeah, before the internet, it was harder to find like-minded people, so you engaged with whoever was close to you, like family and neighbors.
The internet made it a lot easier to find like-minded people and ignore everyone else. I think that’s the main reason we’re so polarized today. Just look at Lemmy, it’s basically all leftists, and even the conservative areas are just leftists making fun of conservatives.
If you put moderation on the client, there’s a chance that people from various backgrounds will use it and just moderate out the stuff they don’t agree with, and people who want a mix can have it too. At least that’s the hope.
I think one reason that is often overlooked in that polarization is that there are a lot fewer places in RL too where you have to interact with others in a more than superficial way or even can do so if you actively choose to do so.
A big reason for that is cars which isolate people as they travel from place to place and another is the reshaping of our cities into large homogeneous parts, each just for a group of people with similar income and culture.
Perhaps, but at least my experience with mass transit and walking is that people largely don’t interact directly and are doing their own thing.
I think the biggest thing to blame is smartphones. Before phones became commonplace, a few people would wear headphones or whatever, but most didn’t. I had lots of conversations on buses and trains and at stops and stations. But now everyone is on their phones instead.