Thread by @Noahpinion

Some people think that blocking trolls prevents them from being exposed to alternative views.

But this is backwards. Getting trolled by people with alternative views makes you more likely to discount those views, since you associate them with a troll.

BLOCK EARLY, BLOCK OFTEN.

To say a little more about this...back in 2011-2013, there seemed to be a lot of optimism that Twitter, by enabling fluid, instant, open conversation among a maximally large set of people, would increase the cross-fertilization of viewpoints and ideas...

Although some of that did happen, I would say that largely this hope was dashed. Twitter famously became, in the words of a friend in the tech industry, "open combat". It is now famous for tribalism, bitterness, and endless flame wars.

Why did this happen? Well...

The ease of attacking people with QT dunks and reply-mobs, the lack of any community moderation or community boundaries, etc. meant that people had to gather communities of like-minded people around them as a defense mechanism. To dunk on the dunkers, reply to the repliers, etc.

The necessity of gathering together a like-minded mob for self-defense meant very little viewpoint diversity within social groups ("bubbles"). It also meant that any disagreement tends to be perceived with instant hostility - as an exploratory scouting raid by the enemy army.

As a rule, people on Twitter are much touchier about disagreement, and intolerant of disagreement, than in real life. They react this way not out of inherent unreasonableness or closed-minded-ness, but out of a need for defense against enemy troll-mobs.

This is very much a post-2014, post-Gamergate, post-Trump phenomenon. Before 2014 I could have productive calm Twitter discussions with people with whom I totally disagreed. Now they tend to get immediately mad and defensive.

Did I get meaner? No. Twitter did.

Ironically, Twitter's openness, accessibility, and lack of boundaries made it more conducive to intellectual bubble formation, not less.

So I decided to hack a solution: Block all trolls.

It's a scorched-Earth tactic (which I learned from certain overzealous forum mods), but it works.

Cut out all bad actors, and gradually your reply threads become a place where people instinctively feel they can safely disagree and debate.

Eventually, if everyone blocks bad actors, maybe being "ratioed" will even become a good thing, because it means your tweets are sparking amicable productive interesting discussions.

It's gradual, laborious, inefficient, and unfair, but blocking anyone who views Twitter as a combat zone turns this social network into an actual discussion platform.

(end)