This. We created an unrealistic climate where politics is personal and not to be discussed.
Its anything but personal and it should be discussed at length whenever possible where ever possible.
The worst thing we as a society can do, is continue this idea that one should not discuss one's ideals. That's why we have so many ignorant people who find comfort in silos. They have never developed the skills necessary to think past their beliefs.
BTW: that's what a liberal education is all about. Challenging your ideals and pushing your intellectual limits. And that's a great thing for people and for humanity. Insularity breeds crazy. Always.
Please don't bring in people's history as ammunition in an argument. That's a trope of the online shaming/callout culture, and the systemic effects are really horrible. We want to avoid those outcomes here.
It's more that we created a climate where academic discussion, devil's advocacy, and outright anti-human political stances are no longer tolerated in the public sphere without comment and ridicule, because we watched how they are both used to derail progress on important topics and how they provide fascists, nationalists, and racial supremacists and opportunity to find each other and organize.
I perceive the Wild West that the internet started as to be in a phase of cooling and public consumption, where that cooling is including cracking and bifurcation. Sections of society are not finding common ground and likely will not find common ground in my lifetime, but the systems we have built are tuned towards global broadcast bidirectional communication right now, not quiet conversation. It will be interesting to me to see how that changes.
People find a lot of comfort with the validation of their own ideas from others. And since that comfort translates into community, they seek out others of similar feather.
I am afraid that this behavior paired with the "personalized" algorithms are a big part of the problem. Instead of pushing people to facts and figures, new ideas and uncomfortable positions, the systems are instead designed to do the opposite. Hide those things in order to hold attention.
Remember: Attention is the currency of media.
Pair the online phenomenon with the false equivalencies created by right-wing media. That "their ignorance is the same as your knowledge", and you create our current political and social environment ripe for exploit. We now have a whole lot of people who think they're right because they find others who also think they are right.
"the contemporary era is, undeniably, one of separation, hate movements, hostility, and, above all, struggle against an enemy. Consequently, liberal democracies - already considerably leached by the forces of capital, technology, and militarism - are now being sucked into a colossal process of inversion." - Necropolitics pg 42.
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries.
The only comment I have at this point is that the survey report doesn't help me to know what to expect if I were to visit a large number of American workplaces.
The terms are too vague, and the methodology too opaque.
What is "the political climate"? How are people supposed to measure it? Do people in each of the 2,000 workplaces that supplied respondents understand the same thing of this term, or something different?
What does "liberal" mean? Economically liberal? Socially liberal? Sexually liberal? Intellectually liberal? Measured how?
Same for "conservative". Even if the categories are self-selected, unless those terms are defined, how do we know what they mean? Is someone who believes the marginal rate of tax should be lower for wage income than for investment income and sex should only occur for procreation within a marriage whilst one participant is blindfolded and opiated, conservative, or liberal, and how staunchly so?
For this question: "Are you worried about losing your job or missing out on job opportunities if your political opinions became known?" a higher number of "Conservative" respondents indicated worry than "Very conservative" respondents. What are we to make of that? Could it have something to do with whether conservative respondents are employed in conservative workplaces or liberal workplaces? The data doesn't give us any insight.
What does the survey methodology tell us?
"The Cato Institute Summer 2020 National Survey was
conducted by the Cato Institute in collaboration with YouGov
who fielded the survey. YouGov interviewed 2,108 American
adults from July 1-6, 2020 who were then matched into a
nationally representative sample of 2,000 Americans aged 18 and
older. The margin of error is +/- 2.36 percentage points. This
does not include other sources of non-sampling error, such as
selection bias in panel participation or response to a particular
survey. "
Without any insight into the selection method, or the selection bias, the survey could mean anything. Or nothing with respect to the actual America that comprises 350 million people. But consider the opening claim of the article text:
"A new Cato Institute/ YouGov national survey of 2,000 Americans finds that 62% of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. This is up from 2017 when 58% agreed with this statement."
The survey did not find what "62% of Americans believe". It only found what 62% of 2,000 survey respondents answered in response to particular questions. There is a difference. We just have no way of knowing what that difference is.
The reported change between 2017 and 2020, of 4 percentage points, is less than the cumulative margin of error of +/- 2.36 percentage points each for the two polls.
So what is the new survey telling us? Are Americans more sensitive about offending other people? If so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Or are they more wary about exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech because of self interest? If so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I really don't know. I'd have to spend a good deal of time talking with a good number of Americans in a diverse number of locations and employment situations to even begin to develop an understanding.
Do you care to post the organizational info for YouGov also, as the Cato post the OP shared says it was a joint Cato/YouGov survey? I familiar with Cato, but not so familiar with YouGov, https://yougov.co.uk/.
I 120% oppose cancle culture. So much I'd not report someone for a serious crime who should get fired. Because fk cancel culture.
But the reality is you should be fired for current Twitter posts while in your current job. It's a publishing platform. You are running another company. If that company contradicts your current one that's a conflict of interest.
To make matters worse, Twitter and Facebook are not up-front about this requirement. They will let you create an account, and then lock you out or suspend you until they get a phone number.
Anonymity so your opinions don't get you fired isn't new to the internet. "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is an old saying indicating how divorcing people's online persona from their real life persona was supposed to create an opportunity for meritocracy to grow.
It didn't really work out in practice precisely, but it was a good idea.
And of course I mean this is totally untrue. I have no anonymous Twitter account and I follow the group think at every turn. I apologize for joking that I don’t follow the group think at any time. I will of course honor the group think at all times. Please forgive me for this bad joke.
You'll have to clarify what you mean; If you're speaking about Obama, I cannot remember a time that he suggested the US just toss one of the amendments out the window.
And 77% of conservative and strong conservatives don't want to share their views because they feel that they will offend someone. (from the article)
Is that because those views are hard to say, argue, or back up with fact? If you think your views offend a lot of people, doesn't that mean you should maybe examine why you have those views, or why those views offend others? But it doesn't seem like that's happening, people are just shutting down and would rather not even talk, unless its to their echo chamber.
In general I think this is a bad thing, as it's a whole new level of denial in that people don't even want to argue about things anymore. Breakdowns in communications never bode well for relationships, and I don't think this is any different.
> If you think your views offend a lot of people, doesn't that mean you should maybe examine why you have those views
Why do you assume they haven't examined those views, and decided to keep them? Especially since it's popular views that are easier to hold without examination, as they by definition get challenged less.
I think that's fascinating! Very interesting, thanks!
And yeah, he should have, and probably did. And is braver than I would probably be in the same situation. I'm not saying anyone's beliefs are wrong at all.
I have many beliefs that probably offend others and I don't want to talk about. Many of these fall into a "to each their own." But they aren't political, and I'm certainly not trying to influence law or policy or push them on others. For political views, when you are talking about law and affecting everyone, I think it's important to talk about these.
In general for me, examining my beliefs I've always considered a very positive activity. Sometimes it strengthens them, or makes me question. Having people question my beliefs makes me think. Either way I feel stronger by the end of it, even if there is some discomfort in the middle.
I think it's beliefs that we aren't willing to think about or question that scare me the most personally.
> "If you think your views offend a lot of people, doesn't that mean you should maybe examine why you have those views..."
Being an atheist or agnostic used to be offensive to a lot of people. Should people have "examined why they have those views" and the West have remained a thoroughly religious society instead of secular? Obviously not. Other examples abound, including the transition to democracy from monarchy and the civil rights movement itself.
Your argument is basically conservatism in a nutshell: whatever the current zeitgeist is or was at any given time was "right" and things should remain or should have remained that way indefinitely.
Today, many Christians are disparaged by atheists, as the assumption of many in western late-modern cultures is that public discourse ought to be secular.
Yet this is often based on an assumed common ground of Enlightenment humanism, with an a priori ruling out of any possible religious basis for claims. However, as Kuhn and Polyani have shown, science is a very human endeavor, full of underlying beliefs and assumptions that color and guide inquires, as well as setting conceptual limits on what is and isn't possible. Many of the great early-modern scientists (Kepler, Newton, and Boyle come to mind) were driven by their Christian convictions to break with older inaccurate theories and follow the observational data.
I think much of the deep political divide in our culture ties back to a philosophical rejection of truth, à la Nietzsche, leaving only the raw power grabs. As a Christian who believes truth is both real and objective, yet also has a personal/relational character, I'm particularly saddened when Christian communities participate in power grabs that perpetuate deep political divides rather than living our a self-giving love that would build trust for conversations across political (or racial or socioeconomic) divides.
Its acceptance of a secular zeitgeist that tolerates no real diversity of viewpoints, and Christians easily fall into the same habits.
You're conflating thoughtful self-examination of your own beliefs and the motivations behind them with simply abandoning those beliefs. Just because you hold a belief that goes against the majority opinion doesn't necessarily mean that you're wrong, but neither does it give any guarantee that you are right, either. These are exactly the cases which warrant the most thorough research and self-examination.
The point that the parent is trying to make is that so often, nowadays especially, people will simply shut down and refuse to hear any challenges to their most tightly held beliefs. Instead, they choose to retreat to the comfort of like-minded echo chambers - something that is all too easy with the prevalence of algorithmically reinforced Facebook news feeds and heavily moderated subreddits which explicitly ban any dissenting opinions.
I've heard several. The simplest one is the question of obligation to deliver evidence. Stories of deities are not reproducibleand modern observation does not align with what's recorded in religious texts regarding the cosmology of the universe.
We don't accept evidence Spider-Man is real because his exploits were recorded in a comic book without physical evidence of a web swinging vigilante protecting New York City, but we accept evidence of various gods from various textbooks. gods are held to a different standard than comic book characters, and it's a less stringent standard.
There's compelling evidence that you can't prove supernatural beings exist. However, it similarly impossible to prove they don't exist.
In our experience, everything that exists comes from something else that exists. There is nothing that comes into existence from nothing. The Universe exists, therefore it must have come from something. It's a dodge to suggest that progression goes on forever. Something created everything, which was not itself created. We can't prove it is God Who did this, but there is no more reason to believe it "just happened" either.
Atheism is as much an act of faith as is belief in the supernatural. You can no more give me physical proof that God does not exist than I can give you proof that He does. If you do not have faith and want to claim true objectivity and empiricism on your side, you admit that agnosticism is the only acceptable position.
As I noted, generally if you're going to conjure an explanation into being, the burden of proof is on the conjurer, not the listener. The response to "prove God doesn't exist" isn't "I can't, therefore God must exist;" it's "Happy to consider it if you can bring some evidence that the existence is necessary."
> there is nothing that comes into existence from nothing
This aligns with our observations by analogy, though not directly (as there is a singularity at the limit of the Big Bang, where our observational power is limited). And I respond to the assertion that it's a dodge to assume an infinite chain of causality with "It's a dodge to assert by analogy that an infinite chain cannot be the answer," because we are aware from study of mathematics of the possibility of infinities.
But even if we assume the prime mover hypothesis is true, we don't arrive at a place that most religions do. For we also observe plenty of causes that fundamentally mutate or destroy themselves in the causation, and plenty of intelligent designers that create things and then walk away from them, content to let them operate under their own rules.
At the very least, it seems that present-tense atheism (the assertion that there is no god right now, agnostic to the question of whether there was a god to set things in motion) matches observation and the Occam's Razor of assuming no additional, unnecessary unobservables. Occam's Razor is, itself, a bit of an act of faith---The trick to Russell's teapot is without the technology to probe it, we can't actually prove that there is no teapot in orbit around Jupiter---but it invites us to take the leap but there need be no unobservable magic in the universe If a simpler explanation can fit the observables.
Even if an invisible purple dragon created the universe, I'm not obligated to assume it's still around.
> Is that because those views are hard to say, argue, or back up with fact?
Perhaps it is because of what I experience: People get offended and then attack you rather than responding to what you say. The most bigoted and nasty people I've ever met online are usually liberals. It's very uncommon to find someone in most forums who will actually discuss things rationally and civilly. This didn't used to be the case.
It is useless to have a conversation with those who will not listen. It is useless to debate those who cannot change their mind. Fewer people, on both sides, are willing to listen, think, and fairly consider a viewpoint that doesn't match their own. As you say, trying to talk about stuff is (far too often) pointless and tedious.
Even on anonymous forums i've stopped sharing them for this reason, as well as the fact that at a quite small amount of negative karma your account gets shadow banned (Reddit). +It gets tedious on the 7th account created.
The answer is simpler than that: make political affiliation a protected class. California, New York, and D.C. already have such laws; see https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri... Extend these laws nationwide and cancel culture can be nipped in the bud.
Honestly, that's a terrible idea. You want society to have the resources to pull up Nazis by the grassroots. Otherwise, they can readily leverage personal power into political power.
I believe that's working is intended. Reddit doesn't particularly want controversial opinions, at least, not controversial enough for most people to signal they hate them. Because that generates a clear signal to Reddit that most people hate that content, and people who hate the content don't come back.
As with face-to-face human interaction, the trick is to start by reading the room.
You may not want to hear it, but it involves manning the hell up and just whip it out. Your political views. You cannot hide them forever. In real life I have no problem letting people know exactly how I feel. And if you don't know how I feel about something feel free to ask.
Does anybody have information on how this has historically changed?
Think about what the world was like 50/60 years ago and what it would be like if we had a global notice board where people post their views under their real names. Back then, I would have been fired without a second thought if my employer found out that I'm gay. Not even for my political views, just for being gay. There's no way I could express my politics under my real name in a public setting.
What about the 50s? You'd be accused of being a commy if you weren't in with the prevailing political ideals.
Think about how the hippies, feminists, or abolitionists were treated? Would they be OK publishing their opinions under their real name without fear of professional retribution?
I have to imagine that we've gotten better and that it's really our assumptions about what is acceptable to announce publicly under our own names that have shifted.
Alternatively, I wonder if these are the pains of a group of people who were used to speaking up about their brand of politics in public without being challenged because those were the popular opinions of the time. Now, their ideas have fallen out of favor and they wonder why people oppose them online and consider that to be oppression.
Indeed. Practically, the difference appears to be the existence of that global notice board, and the fact that opposed viewpoints could live in the same ecosystem by simple lack of interaction with each other. But if you share an opinion on Twitter, it's visible to everyone and everyone can comment.
This is, in fact, why I don't have a Twitter account. It does not appear to me that that model is actually beneficial to society.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadIts anything but personal and it should be discussed at length whenever possible where ever possible.
The worst thing we as a society can do, is continue this idea that one should not discuss one's ideals. That's why we have so many ignorant people who find comfort in silos. They have never developed the skills necessary to think past their beliefs.
BTW: that's what a liberal education is all about. Challenging your ideals and pushing your intellectual limits. And that's a great thing for people and for humanity. Insularity breeds crazy. Always.
> I prefer beautiful women to hand out beverages and snacks on my flight; something that sadly appears to be a dying trend.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=online%20shaming%20by%3Adang&s...
Also, HN threads are supposed to be conversations, and it's better conversation to respond to what someone is saying now.
Briefly though: it normalizes aggression as the default mode toward people who have some point of difference from oneself.
I perceive the Wild West that the internet started as to be in a phase of cooling and public consumption, where that cooling is including cracking and bifurcation. Sections of society are not finding common ground and likely will not find common ground in my lifetime, but the systems we have built are tuned towards global broadcast bidirectional communication right now, not quiet conversation. It will be interesting to me to see how that changes.
I am afraid that this behavior paired with the "personalized" algorithms are a big part of the problem. Instead of pushing people to facts and figures, new ideas and uncomfortable positions, the systems are instead designed to do the opposite. Hide those things in order to hold attention.
Remember: Attention is the currency of media.
Pair the online phenomenon with the false equivalencies created by right-wing media. That "their ignorance is the same as your knowledge", and you create our current political and social environment ripe for exploit. We now have a whole lot of people who think they're right because they find others who also think they are right.
-- Wikipedia
I've provided context by identifying the interests behind Cato Institute, which is the organisation that conducted the poll and wrote the article.
Have you inferred something from what I wrote? If so, would you like to say what that is?
The terms are too vague, and the methodology too opaque.
What is "the political climate"? How are people supposed to measure it? Do people in each of the 2,000 workplaces that supplied respondents understand the same thing of this term, or something different?
What does "liberal" mean? Economically liberal? Socially liberal? Sexually liberal? Intellectually liberal? Measured how?
Same for "conservative". Even if the categories are self-selected, unless those terms are defined, how do we know what they mean? Is someone who believes the marginal rate of tax should be lower for wage income than for investment income and sex should only occur for procreation within a marriage whilst one participant is blindfolded and opiated, conservative, or liberal, and how staunchly so?
For this question: "Are you worried about losing your job or missing out on job opportunities if your political opinions became known?" a higher number of "Conservative" respondents indicated worry than "Very conservative" respondents. What are we to make of that? Could it have something to do with whether conservative respondents are employed in conservative workplaces or liberal workplaces? The data doesn't give us any insight.
What does the survey methodology tell us?
"The Cato Institute Summer 2020 National Survey was conducted by the Cato Institute in collaboration with YouGov who fielded the survey. YouGov interviewed 2,108 American adults from July 1-6, 2020 who were then matched into a nationally representative sample of 2,000 Americans aged 18 and older. The margin of error is +/- 2.36 percentage points. This does not include other sources of non-sampling error, such as selection bias in panel participation or response to a particular survey. "
Without any insight into the selection method, or the selection bias, the survey could mean anything. Or nothing with respect to the actual America that comprises 350 million people. But consider the opening claim of the article text:
"A new Cato Institute/ YouGov national survey of 2,000 Americans finds that 62% of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. This is up from 2017 when 58% agreed with this statement."
The survey did not find what "62% of Americans believe". It only found what 62% of 2,000 survey respondents answered in response to particular questions. There is a difference. We just have no way of knowing what that difference is.
The reported change between 2017 and 2020, of 4 percentage points, is less than the cumulative margin of error of +/- 2.36 percentage points each for the two polls.
So what is the new survey telling us? Are Americans more sensitive about offending other people? If so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Or are they more wary about exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech because of self interest? If so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I really don't know. I'd have to spend a good deal of time talking with a good number of Americans in a diverse number of locations and employment situations to even begin to develop an understanding.
But the reality is you should be fired for current Twitter posts while in your current job. It's a publishing platform. You are running another company. If that company contradicts your current one that's a conflict of interest.
Anonymity is also under attack on most major platforms. Twitter and Facebook now both require phone numbers I believe.
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/8e5m73/twitter_is_...
https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=2784948...
To make matters worse, Twitter and Facebook are not up-front about this requirement. They will let you create an account, and then lock you out or suspend you until they get a phone number.
It didn't really work out in practice precisely, but it was a good idea.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
There's more brigading on HN than during the 1908 San Francisco earthquake.
That is by definition not very "liberal". Perhaps it should say "progressive" or good old-fashioned "left-wing"
So, yes, at this point openly donating to him is donating against traditional America. I can see why people wouldn't be accepting of that.
Is that because those views are hard to say, argue, or back up with fact? If you think your views offend a lot of people, doesn't that mean you should maybe examine why you have those views, or why those views offend others? But it doesn't seem like that's happening, people are just shutting down and would rather not even talk, unless its to their echo chamber.
In general I think this is a bad thing, as it's a whole new level of denial in that people don't even want to argue about things anymore. Breakdowns in communications never bode well for relationships, and I don't think this is any different.
Why do you assume they haven't examined those views, and decided to keep them? Especially since it's popular views that are easier to hold without examination, as they by definition get challenged less.
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-lone-german-man-who-refu...
Maybe he should have "examine why he have those views, or why those views offend others?"
And yeah, he should have, and probably did. And is braver than I would probably be in the same situation. I'm not saying anyone's beliefs are wrong at all.
I have many beliefs that probably offend others and I don't want to talk about. Many of these fall into a "to each their own." But they aren't political, and I'm certainly not trying to influence law or policy or push them on others. For political views, when you are talking about law and affecting everyone, I think it's important to talk about these.
In general for me, examining my beliefs I've always considered a very positive activity. Sometimes it strengthens them, or makes me question. Having people question my beliefs makes me think. Either way I feel stronger by the end of it, even if there is some discomfort in the middle.
I think it's beliefs that we aren't willing to think about or question that scare me the most personally.
Being an atheist or agnostic used to be offensive to a lot of people. Should people have "examined why they have those views" and the West have remained a thoroughly religious society instead of secular? Obviously not. Other examples abound, including the transition to democracy from monarchy and the civil rights movement itself.
Your argument is basically conservatism in a nutshell: whatever the current zeitgeist is or was at any given time was "right" and things should remain or should have remained that way indefinitely.
Yet this is often based on an assumed common ground of Enlightenment humanism, with an a priori ruling out of any possible religious basis for claims. However, as Kuhn and Polyani have shown, science is a very human endeavor, full of underlying beliefs and assumptions that color and guide inquires, as well as setting conceptual limits on what is and isn't possible. Many of the great early-modern scientists (Kepler, Newton, and Boyle come to mind) were driven by their Christian convictions to break with older inaccurate theories and follow the observational data.
I think much of the deep political divide in our culture ties back to a philosophical rejection of truth, à la Nietzsche, leaving only the raw power grabs. As a Christian who believes truth is both real and objective, yet also has a personal/relational character, I'm particularly saddened when Christian communities participate in power grabs that perpetuate deep political divides rather than living our a self-giving love that would build trust for conversations across political (or racial or socioeconomic) divides.
Its acceptance of a secular zeitgeist that tolerates no real diversity of viewpoints, and Christians easily fall into the same habits.
The point that the parent is trying to make is that so often, nowadays especially, people will simply shut down and refuse to hear any challenges to their most tightly held beliefs. Instead, they choose to retreat to the comfort of like-minded echo chambers - something that is all too easy with the prevalence of algorithmically reinforced Facebook news feeds and heavily moderated subreddits which explicitly ban any dissenting opinions.
Contrast it with, as an arbitrary example, the idea that America should build a giant wall along one of its massive borders, in the era of air travel?
Since I've never heard a compelling argument for it, I would say so.
We don't accept evidence Spider-Man is real because his exploits were recorded in a comic book without physical evidence of a web swinging vigilante protecting New York City, but we accept evidence of various gods from various textbooks. gods are held to a different standard than comic book characters, and it's a less stringent standard.
In our experience, everything that exists comes from something else that exists. There is nothing that comes into existence from nothing. The Universe exists, therefore it must have come from something. It's a dodge to suggest that progression goes on forever. Something created everything, which was not itself created. We can't prove it is God Who did this, but there is no more reason to believe it "just happened" either.
Atheism is as much an act of faith as is belief in the supernatural. You can no more give me physical proof that God does not exist than I can give you proof that He does. If you do not have faith and want to claim true objectivity and empiricism on your side, you admit that agnosticism is the only acceptable position.
> there is nothing that comes into existence from nothing
This aligns with our observations by analogy, though not directly (as there is a singularity at the limit of the Big Bang, where our observational power is limited). And I respond to the assertion that it's a dodge to assume an infinite chain of causality with "It's a dodge to assert by analogy that an infinite chain cannot be the answer," because we are aware from study of mathematics of the possibility of infinities.
But even if we assume the prime mover hypothesis is true, we don't arrive at a place that most religions do. For we also observe plenty of causes that fundamentally mutate or destroy themselves in the causation, and plenty of intelligent designers that create things and then walk away from them, content to let them operate under their own rules.
At the very least, it seems that present-tense atheism (the assertion that there is no god right now, agnostic to the question of whether there was a god to set things in motion) matches observation and the Occam's Razor of assuming no additional, unnecessary unobservables. Occam's Razor is, itself, a bit of an act of faith---The trick to Russell's teapot is without the technology to probe it, we can't actually prove that there is no teapot in orbit around Jupiter---but it invites us to take the leap but there need be no unobservable magic in the universe If a simpler explanation can fit the observables.
Even if an invisible purple dragon created the universe, I'm not obligated to assume it's still around.
Perhaps it is because of what I experience: People get offended and then attack you rather than responding to what you say. The most bigoted and nasty people I've ever met online are usually liberals. It's very uncommon to find someone in most forums who will actually discuss things rationally and civilly. This didn't used to be the case.
I love a good debate, but they are fewer and further between.
As with face-to-face human interaction, the trick is to start by reading the room.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est#Historica...
Think about what the world was like 50/60 years ago and what it would be like if we had a global notice board where people post their views under their real names. Back then, I would have been fired without a second thought if my employer found out that I'm gay. Not even for my political views, just for being gay. There's no way I could express my politics under my real name in a public setting.
What about the 50s? You'd be accused of being a commy if you weren't in with the prevailing political ideals.
Think about how the hippies, feminists, or abolitionists were treated? Would they be OK publishing their opinions under their real name without fear of professional retribution?
I have to imagine that we've gotten better and that it's really our assumptions about what is acceptable to announce publicly under our own names that have shifted.
Alternatively, I wonder if these are the pains of a group of people who were used to speaking up about their brand of politics in public without being challenged because those were the popular opinions of the time. Now, their ideas have fallen out of favor and they wonder why people oppose them online and consider that to be oppression.
This is, in fact, why I don't have a Twitter account. It does not appear to me that that model is actually beneficial to society.