This is a thread to help people understand why Mastodon is a much nicer environment than Twitter. It has nothing to do with "echo chambers" and everything to do with what drives Twitter's advertising revenues. The algorithms used by supposedly "free" social media whose profits come from advertising are dangerous. It's due to self-reinforcing feedback. And it means that social media bears a great responsibility for the rise of bigotry and the far right.

https://twitter.com/gchaslot/status/1036323806242066432?t=NmqABCf08JrZ5S4KQCKT1Q&s=19

A brexit supporter on Quora asked me to explain something I had written about trade law, with a question about a subject that I know confuses a lot of people and makes them think the EU is applying different rules to the UK than to its other trade partners. Fair play, I thought. So I wrote this answer, which I thought was worth reproducing as a thread (with some further additions).