I don’t disagree. I just wish the cure was The Absence of Hate, as opposed to Backing Oneself Into a Corner and/or Becoming More Easily Manipulated Because You Feel Safe.
Online spaces are rife with people who want to act like you so that they can influence you. This is more easily done in a place that allows you to drop your guard. Tumblr is not the safe space everyone wants to believe it is. It’s merely a mask for yet another person-shaper.
I guess me calling it an echo chamber doesn’t really point to my issue with the place.
I think the problem isn’t echo chambers as a concept, but as a constant. Having a space where you feel welcomed is so important, and the magic of the Internet has always been that if you can’t find that space IRL, you can probably still find it online. But corporations have realized that a feedback loop of things people want to hear is the best way to keep people on and looking at ads, so that’s what they push. It’s gotten to a point where the sites that most people spend the vast majority of their time on will automatically, algorithmically create those echo chambers with no option to turn them off. Many of them will refuse to serve any content at all if you try to log out or view things through a VPN. And it’s that enforcement of echo chambers that is really so dangerous.
I don’t disagree. I just wish the cure was The Absence of Hate, as opposed to Backing Oneself Into a Corner and/or Becoming More Easily Manipulated Because You Feel Safe.
Online spaces are rife with people who want to act like you so that they can influence you. This is more easily done in a place that allows you to drop your guard. Tumblr is not the safe space everyone wants to believe it is. It’s merely a mask for yet another person-shaper.
I guess me calling it an echo chamber doesn’t really point to my issue with the place.
that’s the goal, but a humble social media website is not gonna undo centuries of oppression and bigotry
the best you can do is give marginalized people the tools to block that hate and, ideally, for them to never have to see it in the first place
(which is a goal that, to be clear, with their racist and transmisogynist moderation, tumblr is dogshit at doing)
I think the problem isn’t echo chambers as a concept, but as a constant. Having a space where you feel welcomed is so important, and the magic of the Internet has always been that if you can’t find that space IRL, you can probably still find it online. But corporations have realized that a feedback loop of things people want to hear is the best way to keep people on and looking at ads, so that’s what they push. It’s gotten to a point where the sites that most people spend the vast majority of their time on will automatically, algorithmically create those echo chambers with no option to turn them off. Many of them will refuse to serve any content at all if you try to log out or view things through a VPN. And it’s that enforcement of echo chambers that is really so dangerous.
There ya go. I agree.