Severit

When you have the ability to deplatform, censor, or shadowban someone in any way shape or form, you don't actually have to engage in the discussion. You're bigger than them: you can just shut them up and save yourself the headache. Will you win in the short term? Of course, because the idea is still there all you did was sweep it under the rug. When you don't have any of these tools at your disposal, all of those ideas come out of the rug and your only choice is to engage in discussion and speak rhetorically. You are forced to learn to be persuasive, forced to learn to make a logical argument, and forced to understand the other person's perspective in order to refute it. This dichotomy is a causal link. If you're in a part of the internet and no real discussion is happening, it's because someone has power over the other.

Dislikes should be normalized on NOSTR. Hear me out. Removing dislikes from forms of content first happened at around the same time YouTube started removing them. Since then, people have been less and less able to communicate their dissatisfaction and this has led to more polarization. The idea behind removing dislikes is because we are a polite society and we don't want toxicity. The issues with this is now you have the opposite which is toxicity but in forms of virtue signaling. Toxicity is necessary and often times the litmus test for a free and open platform. We may not like it, but we have to recognize its place in general communication and subsequently social media.

Even here everyone seems to be loaded with an agenda. Maybe some of it is a vestige from the old social media platforms, or some of it is cryptocurrency tribalism. Either way take a step back from your agenda and ask yourself what your position actually is. Critical thinking isn't meant to win an argument, its to help you reach a more meaningful truth and you may be wrong in the process which is okay. The internet is the safest playground for experimenting and exchanging ideas that has ever existed. If you feel like the information someone is spreading could negativly impact your life, instead of responding take that time to log off and use it to build infrastructure in your own life so you are not dependent upon what other people think. Remember your position isn't your life. I came to NOSTR mainly because I still believe in the original vision of the internet, which is technology will make people smarter and their lives easier, not the other way around.

I'm noticing a positive feedback cycle... The politicians enact more tech regulation and censorship laws which cause the people to be more uneducated which cause the people go vote in uneducated politicians that vote for more short sighted regulation and censorship which only reduces the debate and information available in a society etc.

I can't quite say how freeing the internet will fix 90% of problems, but I have a feeling it just will. Words are just that, the idea that certain words have a guaranteed effect on people is just a justification pushed by the government for more censorship. I truly believe that people can govern themselves. And even if they can't do that, I still believe that an anarchical regime is the most stable state of nature. Someone, somewhere with tact will pick up the microphone on the internet, cultivate an audience, and start a trend or push a school of thought that will at the very least place everyone under scrutiny and make nothing sacred. Because only the people in power get to decide what is sacred and not. The elephant in the room will be addressed someday… I have a bit of hope. And even if it doesn't change reality, it will at least change people's perspectives, mine included.