this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Thanks to Big tech censorship, there are lots of people who are more anti-establishment right on the fediverse. Lots of fairly large instances. Some of them are real nasty pieces of work filled with folks dropping n bombs and swastikas, some of them are filled with some of the sweetest religious right folks you ever met in your life.
I think one of the biggest differences is that you don't have the Jerry Springer algorithm trying to match up a bunch of black people with a bunch of KKK members. Most far right instances don't defederate anyone, but many of the far left instances defederate the moment anyone looks at them funny so despite sharing a platform, typically there just isn't that much engagement between the two groups. In the middle of there are instances that are more than happy to federate with both as long as they aren't too big of jerks.
Did you come up with "Jerry Springer algorithm" expression? Very apt way to express it.
After realizing that it would put a bunch of black guys and a bunch of KKK members in the same space intentionally because it drives overall engagement, it became clear that's what it was. haha
Yet despite the clear creation of echo chambers, which I think is inevitable given how freedom of association works so smoothly and easily online, the Fediverse forces them all to "live next to each other".
It's not an entirely separate service I need to go on if I want to see what all the Nazi kids are up to these days.
This forced adjacency and inability to create any blocks stronger than defederation (which is pretty weak, really, compared to what other services can do) is going to have overall beneficial effects in the long-run, I think. Though it'll certainly cause its fair share of headaches too.
I'm actually happy to see the reduction in echo chambers for myself because it does 2 things:
For someone who thinks for themselves, seeing extremism in some cases actually makes you less extreme because you see it and realize you don't agree with it at all.