Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, we’ve seen many talking about leaving the site for safer places like Discord. I’ve never been on that platform so perhaps it is, but I am a fix what’s broken and not start over kinda guy.
Twitter can be toxic, there is no doubt about that, but so are many other entities in our everyday lives.
There is a local blog that was once a very popular space for civic discourse. It’s publisher and contributors created well researched and thought out articles about key issues facing our communities and broader society. Many of the articles also saw long comments threads and yes, there are always trolls but one feature that I loved, was that comments that were downvoted would slowly fade until they were no longer visible. You could choose to see those comments but they were otherwise hidden.
What this does, is allows the broader community to police what is deemed accessible standards through a popular vote. Of course, if a site leaned too far left or right, some comments might disappear through sheer political beliefs but that’s also why having the option to show comments maintains transparency.
Facebook offers us a few different emojis to react to posts and comments, but they can be confusing because sometimes an angry face – for example – could mean you hate the post or dislike what happened to a person in the article. Downvoting is clear. I didn’t like the post.
That site above is no longer active. One of the last posts was the publisher questioning the blogs future because they didn’t feel they could keep it a safe place from hate.
I say better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
We need to build resiliency and empowerment.
Life isn’t a safe space.