Indeed an echo chamber is like a community/subreddit dedicated to pizza but bans any mention of " pineapple pizza".
A group of like minded people might generally dislike pineapple pizza but would still allow it to be discussed.
Polite counterpoint: ‘echo chambers’ are more than that, I feel. It’s not that they are a group of like-minded people, so much as they police groupthink and don’t allow even moderately dissenting opinions.
See: r/conservative, and them permabanning anyone who so much as hints at a different mindset.
dmalteseknight@programming.dev 5 months ago
Maeve@kbin.social 5 months ago
It’s even in leftist zines.
Zippy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It funny you bring up r/conservatism. It use to be a fairly big sub and far more moderate until Trump got into power. But if you had anything bad to say about Trump, banned.
Now it is just an echo chamber with few members. Go there and given day and only a few posts with up vote above 100. Really mostly a bunch of pathetic people since the moderate conservatives left.
Lemmy can be a bit this way but on the opposite spectrum.
vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
It really depends. If I run a queer friendly space, then part of being queer friendly is not putting people in the position to defend their existence every time. Which means that anything I can see that even smells off gets removed immediately. If you come and whine about it instead of giving me a clear signal you understood, you’re getting banned.
Is it an echo chamber?
I don’t know. Probably.
Would I run it any other way?
Fuck no.
eltoukan@jlai.lu 5 months ago
I think in your case you’re definitely banning queerphobia/bigotry, which I hope most people agree is radically different from banning dissenting opinions.
Maybe the definition of an echo chamber should revolve more about what would be different if you weren’t in it? For example, I’d say I’m in a community that is an echo chamber if, when getting out of this community, I might change some of my views that previously seemed obvious. I hope that people in a queer community don’t start questioning their sexuality/worth once they’re outside of a queer friendly community - although after writing it out maybe some do :(
But then it’s not the same mechanics: if I come out of an echo chamber I might read up on some new evidence/arguments/opinions that challenge my thinking, while coming out of a queer friendly space is, as you’re saying, getting exposed to hateful comments and being weakened by these. It doesn’t seem right to say it’s an echo chamber, just like it doesn’t seem right to say there are “conspiracy-friendly” communities!
vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
It’s a bit more than that. In order to enable people to just hang out and relax and be themselves, you have to make sure they are never in a position to justify themselves.
You have to go in pretty blunt and nip stuff in the bud. That means banning not just bigotry, but a whole swath of topics and rhetoric that inevitably lead to “those kinds of discussions”.
This in turn leads to reactions like the other reply. “I was just asking questions”, “I was just explaining a point of view I don’t agree with”, “but you have to see it from their side”. Yes. Silly questions that have been asked many times before. We know that point of view, we don’t need you to explain it. No, we don’t have to see it from their side. Not here. Not now.
Don’t bring that negativity in here. Just leave us and let us enjoy our silly memes in peace.
Sarmyth@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That was my experience on blahaj. I’d never been banned from a community, let alone one I’ve been an ally to before. Such a pure echo chamber that even discussing why the outside world holds the views they have, even without expressing agreement, gets you labeled a transphobe.
Honestly, it soured me on lemmy as a whole since that was the content I had been enjoying the most.
vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
That’s exactly what I described above right? Queer people made a space where they can be themselves without having to justify their existence. You could not manage to behave in such space. Ergo, you were removed.
You spend zero time familiarizing yourself with the mores of the community you were frequenting. And afterward, even now, you make it all about you and your experience.
You can see how that was never going to end well right?
You’re not an “ally”. Whatever that even means.