Hear me out: I am a leftist. Don't ban me - this is something i've been thinking about quite a bit recently.

I mean, at a macro level comparing the far left to the alt-right -- we seem to be a lot more focused on egalitarianism (while disagreeing on the means to that end). The alt-right seems to be focused on creating an ethno state, pretty much. Comparing them, the morality clearly skews towards our direction.

However, what concerns me is how we (you and i) are further insulating ourselves into message boards. When I first think about insulation, what comes up to my mind are those idiots who get brainwashed by alt-right facebook propaganda. They interact with it, then that's all they see on their wall, and all of a sudden they are in an echo chamber. We've all heard about these and know how bad they are.

My first thought is: "Oh, well, I'm educated and I read books and theory. I'm not like them. Alt righters are just dumb ass facebook moms who haven't read a book in years."

My second thought is: "Oh, shit. I'm insulating myself JUST like them, though."

I don't know. I'm just kind of conflicted. Left ideologies aren't morally bad, unlike alt-righters. But, at the same time we are creating an echo chamber, just like how /r/thedonald did with thedonald.win -- after we both got banned by a traditional news outlet.

What are the effects of that? Is this good or bad?

  • shakyamuni [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    "Echo chamber" theory is flawed. Platforms are catalysts for discourse and therefore the structure and reproduction of these platforms create a field of potential discourse and an enregistrement of the governing ideology. NPR and RT are echo chambers no less than any active online community. The lemmy instance is not subject to the same conditions of reproduction as the subreddit so therefore constitutes an altogether different discursive field. As much as chapos enjoyed the notoriety of the "quarantined" status of the subreddit, the head mods severely limited its accessibility precisely to limit the discursive field within bounds acceptable to reddit as a whole. The lemmy instance is without a doubt a step forward for the cultivation of leftist social media culture.

    • josefjohann [none/use name]
      1·
      4 years ago

      Exactly. The entire concept of an 'echo chamber' is punishingly stupid. The idea that any community can be classified as an echo chamber based entirely on a broad-brush gloss of its ideological disposition/subject matter of focus ignores so many important indicators for what makes for deep engagement with ideas. There are so many important indicators such as:how broad are the range of interests and media shared by the group, how responsive are people who talk to one another, how many ideas are people able to keep in the air at the same time,how much are people talking to each other in a way where they bare the idiosyncracies of their personality vs. how much they're memeing + chasing clout or engaging in shitposting etc. etc.

      Part of the common values of a community can be its disposition to openness and engagement with new information and ideas, too. They can function as sources of new information and new interactions with people that pull them up out of their stupor of circlejerking and echoing familiar concepts to each other. There's a whole slate of ideas and metrics you would use to analyze whether people are gaining from, or being made more shallow by any given community and the 'echo chamber' concept is thoroughly inadequate to engaging with the question.

      • shakyamuni [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Circlejerking, as the dense repetition of content, can still appear in platforms open to new information and ideas, as they appear in any platform large and energized enough to generate feedback within its circuits. However, it's a mistake to take the most visible discourse as the whole. r/askhistorians is an example of a particular valuable discursive place that exists on Reddit despite the unbearably closemindedly liberal nature of the Reddit circlejerk as a whole. And so insightful, pertinent discussion is still possible within the chapo culture in the shade of the circlejerk of low effort Mao memes.

          • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Marxists hold that man's social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit". The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice. Thus Lenin said, "Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality." [1] The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice. The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.

            Honestly. This shit is fire.

    • RindlessWatermelon [they/them,he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Before the internet, every small country town was an "echo chamber" more often than not of rather conservative and reactionary beliefs, but for some reason "echo chambers" only became a problem when vulnerable people found a way to organise and collaborate free from bigotry.

    • fusion513 [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      This!

      /s But how will we compete in the marketplace of ideas if we want to abolish the free market?! /s

      I don't feel as though I'm being deprived not having to hear for the millionth time from Tony "Numb Nuts" Chuderson about his oh-so-insightful theory why skull shapes are the most predictive factor for criminal behavior. Bad ideas are bad ideas.

      On this site - even if I don't agree with something I read 100% - I can assume it's a rational, compassionate person speaking their mind and it can challenge my beliefs in a positive constructive way.