Technology

No social media site controlled by Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg is going to be a healthy experience. You will have much more varied content anywhere else.

Nearly all social media is full of ~~eco~~ echo chambers.. I still post and follow stuff on several of the platforms. There is very little nuanced conversation.. Seems like it is more and more just an up vote or downvote storm, or people claiming one thing or another without any supporting evidence.

I doubt that it can be any worse than tech companies with financial incentives doing it. Surrounding yourself with like minded people will surely cause some bubbles like that but since when is letting a targeted algorithm funneling us for ad revenue a better option? I don’t personally think it’s a big deal and guessing that people are just upset that their obsession with mass engagement is getting shook.

Groups of any kind are echo chambers. That's why they exist.

I look at it this way: I don't let in the crazy person on the street screaming racist garbage into my house, so I also don't have to listen to or engage with that person on the internet, either. That doesn't make my house an "echo chamber."

For a long time I tried to treat "internet people" with some level of "respect" so to say. That is, I didn't spend time blocking people and whatnot. But now? Screw em. I don't have time to listen to nonsense, so if someone tries to come in to a conversation in bad faith, it's very easy to block and move on.

Or on short-form social media like Bsky or Masto or whatever if someone posts a racist thing. Or a bigoted thing. Block and move on.

Those trolls live off of engagement so just don't give it to them. And those same trolls are the ones complaining about "echo chambers." "Waaa, no one wants to listen to my racist nonsense. It's an echo chamber!" No, you are just a trash human, and no one is obligated to listen to you.

IMO smaller populations lead to a stronger echo chamber effect. I've definitely noticed that the echoness of Threadiverse communities is generally a lot higher than corresponding subreddits and I suspect the small size plays a major role.

One thing to bear in mind is that, whenever someone accustomed to one platform explores another, they’ll tend to ascribe any differences between the communities to the other platform being an echo chamber of some kind.

Natural end result of social media and user tracking search engines is echo chambers.

The echo chamber is a good thing. For some reason, everyone thinks I'm obligated to read their opinions that disagree diametrically with mine, constantly, non-stop, from hundreds of thousands of bots working for propaganda. I don't.

It's like saying everyone who drinks water will die. It's correct, but it's not a problem.

Echo chambers exist everywhere.

Well that's kind of baked-in to social media. If you'd otherwise talk to lots of different people in person, read much etc and now come to the internet and choose any of the mentioned platforms... That'd be bad. You're now in a smaller filter bubble. If you're already in some echo chamber and for example switch from mastodon to bluesky... that's a minor change. The situation is a bit different if you change from a nazi platform to a regular one. It's still not good. But better.

It’s a valid claim, IMO. The libs leaving Twitter all seem to be VERY into Orwellian practices like “official block lists” and other absurd self-owns.

I don't know how it could get any worse than now. Basically we're all in echo chambers whichever platform you use. Including Lemmy.

Agreement with "consensus" of whatever bucket you're placed into is rewarded, and disagreement is punished. Even if only by upvote/downvote. Switching platforms won't change much.

I don't know that it'll affect the echo chamber effect; you create that through your subscriptions, and avoid it by browsing "all." What will be impacted is the amount of simply shit content, both from idiots and from bots. Moderators' jobs will get harder: the bots follow the people.

I've been on Bluesky very early on, and with the mass exodus of liberals from twitter, they are recreating their own toxic echo chambers on Bluesky now and it's bleeding through into every post they disagree with.