this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2024
21 points (100.0% liked)

Chat

7506 readers
34 users here now

Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
21
On the making of an echo chamber (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 week ago by luciole@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The widely held belief of the echo chamber has been bothering me for a while now. I don't question the phenomenon itself. It's happened often enough; I totally agree this is a thing. What bugs me though is the idea that the root cause is members of a group agreeing too much.

Agreement is good wtf. Consensus should be a welcome occasional checkpoint. How are you even supposed to build healthy communities if you don't share some common ground, like say equality for all. Sealioning is not a vaccine against radicalization. If anything the constant bickering from contrarians has the opposite effect.

Diversity may be a better sign of healthy community. Diversity of age, origins, gender, whatever. I don't believe such a community turns into a radicalization timebomb for being like-minded. We need shared values to build upon, lest loneliness swallows us all.

Nevertheless I feel that obsessing over the homogeneous aspect of an echo chamber is mistaking the symptoms for the essence. My intuition is that the danger is in the discourse itself and to a certain extent in the platform used. I can't say I've made up my mind on the specifics though.

What do you think? It's OK if you disagree lol 🤪

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Glide@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What bugs me though is the idea that the root cause is members of a group agreeing too much.

I just think you have this wrong. The root issue isn't the group agreeing too much, and I don't really think the collective opinion is that it is. The root issue is the belief that your constructed space of similiar world views is representative of truth, rather than bias.

People assume, since everyone in their systematically built social media space agrees, that their opinion or action is widespread and therefore acceptable. When someone is told their views are damaging, unrealistic and/or represent a tiny minority, it is easy for their ego to refute this interally: "everyone online agrees." The pre-cherry picked answers in the echo chamber then feeds into the fallacy of majority, the ego feels justified in rejecting the statements contrary to their opinion and world view, and no discussion is had. The conversation immediately stops (even if the talking continues) and no benefit is drawn from engaging with each others world views.

[–] luciole@beehaw.org 1 points 1 week ago

The root issue is the belief that your constructed space of similiar world views is representative of truth, rather than bias.

I'm not much of a relativist to be honest. In fact I feel your statement about the root cause of echo chambers is broad to the point of swallowing itself. It's important to differentiate opinion from fact (I'm not expecting everyone to agree with me about black licorice being delicious, or about every public policy) but I disagree that all worldviews are mostly bias. If you really think it's all bias, how can you even state that as fact? Do you really have that much distance with your own worldview?