I don’t even know if you can see this since the post was deleted, but thank you for responding and putting real effort into your reply. I don’t have answers for a lot of the world’s problems, and I know I sometimes let my anger speak before I think things through.

I think you’re right that online spaces make it very easy to forget that a lot of people are scared or reacting from limited experience rather than acting in bad faith. I assume bad faith most often because of my lived experience in seeing this toxic rhetoric and division from various interested parties over the last 20 years. Well documented in most cases, the effects of those influencers and systems. It’s difficult not to see them as intentional, even when some entities call them incidental. It’s the optimist in me that believes that they can still be seen for what they are.

I still think some ideas are harmful and worth pushing back on, but I do agree that just treating every person with a bad or extreme take as an enemy usually doesn’t get us anywhere.

I believe it’s important to try to bring discourse back to online spaces and keep discussion alive, both here and in the real world. If I can say that I am one thing, it’s a humanist. We don’t find answers or solutions by just being angry. Sometimes it feels like the internet can’t be salvaged, but there are still some corners where real discussion happens.

I appreciate your outlook, I often think I need to make more time for work in my own community. As much as is happening in the world, the real impact is probably going to be person to person, especially if you don’t have the tools to preach from a podium.

So yeah, thank you.

Dope name. I will follow you past the Cardies’ lines and back.

I grant you, I have my walls up more today than I did ten years ago, but if someone proves me wrong with good data, then I accept that. I just scrutinize my opposition more than my allies, which could be a flaw, but if I’m changing my outlook, I want it to be because of facts, not propaganda.

Very cool that some of the old-school meetings let the infiltrators stay. I honestly didn’t know that. But it’s harder to make that tactic effective in an online environment. The stakes are lower and higher at the same time because you can disarm them in person. Here, they can send people down pipelines that they may never come back from.

This is a good point. engagement itself will increase visibility. The best way to win is not to play…

Too many people, likely including you, use the desire for free and open discussion as a smokescreen to spread misinformation and lies. Worse, we are entering a period of history where well-documented and proven events are being rewritten and erased by bad actors with money. This turns our desire to educate others against us, as the sources of truth are erased and anyone on the fence inevitably ends up finding those new fake sources more credible.

So yes, ban them. After a decent number of warnings about sources and references, they should be banned for spreading bad science. It shouldn’t be instant, but it should happen. You can have an open-door policy without allowing people to scream against your interests.

Do you think old-school socialists, anarchists, and communists just let Pinkertons and FBI agents stay in the meeting and push for bad decisions?

I feel so lucky to have come up on the internet when I did. It was the sweet spot of getting unfiltered news and reports before authoritarian governments and think-tanks started censoring and pumping false information. Back in like 2008, Russian influencers were really saying somethings.

Anyway, I agree.