Hi lemmy! So this is kind of controversial, but hear me out. Let me start off by saying I’ve been on a few reddit alternatives, as I’ve mentioned in different posts, and I’ve seen language that is very hateful. I was disgusted by the language, but after seeing it over and over again, I just got sad. These people only know fear and hatred. I’m not sure anyone’s shown them kindness.
Should we be kind to those that we disagree with or that use hateful speech?
Why would echo chambers be bad? Why are commenters lecturing tech-savvy teens for their echo chambers on Facebook/Reddit, and not bourgeois people when they organize a “rally” (at least that’s the word in French)? Why is it bad for people to meet with people they feel comfortable with? Dismantling echo chambers means imposing a single, unified dominant ideology on everyone and preventing any form of counter-culture from emerging. That’s a very authoritarian stance, to say the least.
Except in specific circumstances where everyone is open to debate, publicly debating bigoted views that are not based on facts risks to trigger a chain-reaction of confirmation bias : “Some other people are advocating for white supremacy, they’re being downvoted and debated, so it must be true that the’re victim of a global black-jewish conspiracy and i should join the secret white resistance”. Of course it’s possible to engage in education with people holding bigoted views, but organized disinformation campaigns from the alt-right are an entirely different species.
Echo chambers aren’t bad in and of themselves. They can be fine in the context of, say, a safe space for LGBTQ where they don’t have to deal with people who want to debate their very existence. They can also be good for developing ideas where everyone’s already on the same page. But echo chambers are problematic when there is little to no crossover between echo chambers. They produce a fractured, tribalistic society where ideological rivals are dehumanization and reduced to existential-level enemies. That’s happening right now in the United States, and it is a major driver behind the paralysis in our politics.
Dehumanization is the problem, indeed. But having separate tribes is definitely not a problem. I think you’re overplaying how much dehumanization takes place: that is certainly a feature of privileged/dominant cultures to try and eradicate others, but i’ve never seen that as part of a counter culture. As much as we can make a liberal cis white man uncomfortable, or give a nazi a few punches in the face or joked about eradicating them, i believe most of us have some form of empathy preventing it from going too far. On the other hand, nazis and masculinists (among others) are very determined to genocide/sexocide people who don’t follow their rule. And it’s not just talked/joked, they did it throughout history, and they’re still doing it on the margins. Polarization is not a bad thing, kyriarchy is.
About a paralysis in politics, residing outside of USA i don’t exactly see this from here. It appears your politics are business as usual full of psychopaths running the show.