the outcome they are imagining for online spaces without moderation of what people say is essentially a fabricated option
Yep. In real life, intelligent debate is already difficult because so many people are stupid and arrogant. But online this is multiplied by the fact that during the time that takes it for a smart person to think about a topic and write a meaningful comment, an idiot can write hundreds of comments.
And that’s before we get to organized posting, where you pay minimum wage to dozens of people to create accounts on hundreds of websites, and post the “opinions” they receive each morning by e-mail. (And if this isn’t already automated, it will be soon.)
So an unmoderated space in practice means “whoever can vomit their insults faster, wins”.
I’m of the opinion that democracies tolerably work in a pretty narrow range of conditions
One problem is that a large part of the population is idiots, and it is relatively easy to weaponize them. In the past we were mostly protected by the fact that the idiots were difficult to reach. Then we got mass media, which made it easy to weaponize the idiots in your country. Then we got internet, which made it easy to weaponize the idiots in other countries. It took some time for internet to evolve from “that mysterious thing the nerds use” to “the place where the average people spend a large part of their day”, but now we are there.
Yep. In real life, intelligent debate is already difficult because so many people are stupid and arrogant. But online this is multiplied by the fact that during the time that takes it for a smart person to think about a topic and write a meaningful comment, an idiot can write hundreds of comments.
And that’s before we get to organized posting, where you pay minimum wage to dozens of people to create accounts on hundreds of websites, and post the “opinions” they receive each morning by e-mail. (And if this isn’t already automated, it will be soon.)
So an unmoderated space in practice means “whoever can vomit their insults faster, wins”.
One problem is that a large part of the population is idiots, and it is relatively easy to weaponize them. In the past we were mostly protected by the fact that the idiots were difficult to reach. Then we got mass media, which made it easy to weaponize the idiots in your country. Then we got internet, which made it easy to weaponize the idiots in other countries. It took some time for internet to evolve from “that mysterious thing the nerds use” to “the place where the average people spend a large part of their day”, but now we are there.