Fair point. But how to distinguish it from unpopularity? If the “toxic” waste is disingenuous, bad faith, bot based flooding, we have the tools to suppress it. If something is just genuinely unpopular, you have to be careful calling it an echo-chamber. Lots of folks think toxic of anything that disagrees with their obviously superior opinions.

There is no perfect answer. Garbage in, garbage out. Welcome to humanity.

Agree completely. My original terse comment was based on this very assumption. Having read more of OPs comments, I think the latter is more apt.

There is more to it I think. In a masters level course I took, our Instructor was a nearly retired Ph.D in Taxation. He had spent a lifetime in the halls of corporate power as an expert, conducting research and giving policy advice to corporations, governments and institutions.

Among the friendly banter during breaks, some interesting conversations came up about ethics in business. He interjected and offered an explicit personal opinion. He was very clear he was speaking as a person eating his lunch, not as our instructor and in no way does what he was about to say reflect the course material in any way:

If you want to understand how corporations’ executives and more importantly, how Boards of Directors, and a lot of high level civil servants and political actors really measure performance under these ethical scenarios, read Machiavelli’s “The Prince”. It explains everything.

I read it the next day. Then I went on to read Xenophon’s “The Education of Cyrus” because Machiavelli referred to it in the book.

Edit: Having read a few more of OPs responses, I think OPs subject is just saying they agree with/admire Machiavelli’s The Prince, and to the point of my story, so do a LOT of powerful people. You know, the types who tend to score high on the DSM’s dark triad and run global corporations.

Ah. So they read The Prince, and they admire the self-centered, amoral pursuit of political power.

We call those people conservative or fascist, depending on the degree of ideological rigour and if any off flavours are present.

To answer your question, I consider the dish ruined. It should be discarded and you should try anew from scratch.

I see. Good points all around. But I would not consider than an echochamber. That is just a diversity of respondants, many of which are poor quality and low effort.

Some because they are low intellect. Some are children. Some are edgelords and shitposters just trying to provoke for shits and giggles. Some just find the questions so obviously out of whack, that they presume OP to be a shitposter, and respond in kind. Lots of reasons, similar results. I noted a few recent ask lemmy questions where the questions were so malformed, people couldn’t tell it it was a bot, esl, neurodiversity etc and made jokes about op. That’s a case of garbage in/garbage out. While not cool, if you can’t be bothered to make a quality question, you can’t insist on a quality answer.

For reference: I go with the standard def:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)

That which reinforces bias from innapropriate confirmation or unduly limits discussion of counter views.

They are flat out lying. Machiavellians tend to be manipulative and giving this knowledge away defeats the goals and purpose of machiavellianism.

Like beating someone to death for not believing you’re a pacifist.

Edit: See my other posts for a better take on what’s going on here.

I find the mods heavy on banning death threats. I also consider your example of AI pile-ons to be unpopular, not an echochamber. The distinction is important.

You didn’t understand what I wrote.

denying the existence of echo chambers.

Never did that. I even explained the main causes of them.

The solution is not nearly as simple as blocking known ml and maga spaces.

I never said that either. Block bad faith instances and users was part of it, but you need to not self-censor either.

Edit: Are your strawmen bad faith or a misunderstanding? ;)

I think you are abusing the term echochamber here. An online community only becomes an echochamber under two circumstances:

1. if the mods make it one. .ml counts due to the right-of-passage banhammer for saying taboo things like facts, logic, reason or calling out hypocrisy. Lemmy does not qualify because .ml is still federated despite being a dumpsterfire of bad faith.

2. If you use the self-censorship tools to simply ban people, communities or instances you disagree with. Every public online community has bad faith actors. That’s what you get for being an audience. That’s life. Humanity is also full of people with poor reasoning, varying age and experiences, a few pathologies and posting while drunk/high or masturbating. If you feel you’re in an echochamber, you might have crafted one for yourself. Can you tell the differences between someone who is objectively wrong, drunken shitposts, is neurodiverse, has come to a reasonable but different conclusion than you based a different weighting of relevent criteria or is posting in bad faith?

Lemmy provides tools to block bad faith posters, but it’s up to you to use them judiciously.

I would argue Lemmy is less of an echochamber as I see more genuine LGBTQ2S+, Anarchist, Tankie, Antifa than reddit ever had. I think the smaller population here just chopped the top of the gaussian distribution curve, and we have relatively fewer “normies”. People passionate, and articulate about their things.

Blaze-on my friend. Climb every mountain.

Let’s not paint Lemmy as a whole based on .ml. It is, notoriously, the dumpsterfire of the Fediverse.

Edit: Like minded people sharing and discussing is not an echochamber, at least until you start excluding good faith points of view because they challenge your beliefs.

Ignoring, downvoting and censoring bad faith rhetoric, like most of .ml, or US Maga, Russian agitprop, Chinese propaganda and similar dis/misinformation is perfectly reasonable and logical. Same goes for domestically produced bullshit.

What is your ratio of high:sober?

24 hrs:

6 mos:

Lifetime:

No conflict. Take plan B. Pull-out is a pregnancy magnet. Like not even remotely viable.

Play safer next time. You are far too valuable for an STD or unwanted pregnancy.

Found the Jr. Dev!

Itzakaya Yakitory/ton/kushiyaki smoked and grilled on a woodfire. Little skewers of chicken, beef or pork, with bits of onion in between. (Green, red onions) in a marinade of soy, mirin, brown sugar and sake. Then mix it up with chilli, mustard or oyster sauce for variety. Served with grilled vegetables and a selection of fine beers.

Real crowd pleaser. Easier than it sounds and forgiving.

Old kinda idiot. Marketing Dept pumping stock with “white paper”.

Be good looking. Everything is easier when you are good looking.

Edit: Lose weight, take care of hair and skin. Clothes, style all help.

Wait until the rest of the world figures out that Epstein wasn’t the only kompromat operation. There are several, simultaneously running ops from Russia, China, US, Israel, and likely quite a few more. Honeypots that include children where advantageous towards agency goals.

It’s not like the current US admin have any reservations whatsoever in using children this way.

If you’re at a dining table with 11 other people and one of them is a Nazi, you are at a Nazi dinner party, with 12 Nazis.

It’s an AND not an OR. Let’s not go to war. Work from home, build public transit and everything else to stop using fossil fuels.