I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t think that anyone does, even if assumers are extra eager to vomit certainty on the solution, and then wallow on their own vomit. [As such, take everything that I’m going to say with a grain of salt - it might be completely wrong.]
It’s perhaps even impossible to avoid echo chambers, based on the article hinting that the formation of echo chambers might be actually a human tendency that goes beyond social media or online environments.
That said, I have two infographics for you guys. One explores echo chamber (circlejerk) formation from the inside; another, through enforcement of “higher ups”. (Open the pics individually to enlarge them.)
If Lemmy is to avoid echo chambers, I believe that it would need mechanisms that:
- attract people with minority views
- discourage attrition between users with different views
- increase the visibility and accountability of selective rule enforcement (the public modlog already does wonders for that)
The federative nature of the platform already helps a bit, I think, since nobody got the power to meddle with the whole Lemmyverse. And the ability to defederate is also part of that, as you can selectively cut off instances trying to enforce some echo chamber, that helps to protect minority views.
I also think that echo chambers are often further reinforced in social media through the cultural acceptance of three irrationalities, that might as well call “character flaws”. They are:
- eagerness to vomit certainty. I think that reasonable = doubtful people coexist better with different points of views.
- oversimplification of complex matters. It’s often a mechanism used to shun off everyone who doesn’t think exactly in a certain way, as automatically defending the opposite view. (“You either like apples or bananas! If you say that you love bananas you’re assumed to be an apple hater, REEEE!” style.)
- genetic fallacies (“[person] said it’s chrue than its chrue lol lmao”). Because it’s that sort of thing that the intellectually lazy use to brush off their doubt, so it tends to compound with both points above.
Stop defederating with instances is a good start
Come on over to lemm.ee we don’t defed unless it’s a last resort
Of you think of it. Every group is technically an echo chamber. Group of friends, Fandoms, even family tend to have similar tastes and opinions. We can’t really escape it. It won’t go away, it should be our attitude that we should change, we should just keep our selves open to different point of views, empathize more.
We can’t ‘fix’ echo chambers nor should we want to. People should be allowed to use the internet how they like when it comes to communication and social services. There is nothing wrong with like-minded people coming together to form a community to support something.
Does it suck that sometimes that thing happens to be an ideology, extreme political stance, religion, drug, and every other ‘bad’ thing under the sun we don’t personally like? Yeah, sometimes I see a community for something I personally don’t like and wish there wasn’t one based around it. Does it suck that some communities exist for nasty, hateful, willfully ignorant individuals to openly share their bad takes? Yeah.
That doesn’t mean they should not have a right to congregate together on their own privately operated fourms funded and upkeeped by their own members. The nice thing about lemmy instances and the fediverse is that we can defederate entire instances. Its a great sweet spot between not seeing or interacting with hateful echo chambers filled with negative angry people and not infringing on their right to still exist.
Too late. Just say something positive about Elon Musk, reddit, Windows, Electron, or blockchain on here and see what I mean.
you just got DEFEDERATED
What are you doing in an echo chamber (or wall, or similar situation) in real life? You clap your hands. It is the first and easiest thing.
**We should stop all low effort posts. **
They are just handclapping, the easiest way to produce an echo.
Note that this includes all posts that consist only of an external link with no own explanation or comment.
So what about posts that just link to a news article? Isn’t this a good place to discuss current events and professional journalism?
And who decides what counts as low effort? Is just asking a question not enough? Does a user need to prove prior research?
I agree with the goal of improving the signal-to-noise ratio but practical enforcement of that isn’t trivial at all.
So what about posts that just link to a news article?
Yes, they are made with very low effort. And most of these posts want to promote something. This is ‘echo chamber’ at it’s best.
If you want to discuss that topic, then you would simply write your thoughts to the link with your post.
Something like an electoral college, just not in a geographic sense, if that makes sense.
It’s a tough question because the ‘Left’ hasn’t really moved further ‘left’, but the ‘Right’ has, with the help of all sorts of REALLY whacky and downright evil money, has moved VERY far ‘right’ and beyond into insanity.
Where does all the conspiracy jibber jabber frothed up by nefarious state-actor trolls fit into rational discourse? Answer: it doesn’t. And that’s part of their goal.
