I want to agree with your ideals but there are 1,000x more people who read and rarely share. The viewed stat on a top rate hn submission is probably 50,000 views on average where comments are measured in the hundreds.
If you talk about anything in a public place, say in a pub, it won't take long to hear a differing opinion.
We've worked so hard to create closed communities on the Internet, that you're not exposed to opposite ideas unless you work hard at looking outside your bubble. Social media with its very smart recommendation algos will try to keep you firmly in your echo chamber.
Yeah, you can listen on the Internet too, but you often only hear the choir.
I wonder how much opinion was an important factor in societies before internet. To an extent you can go to a pub every night, full of people you disagree with yet you all live in the same area / space ..
I often feel human groups are not about high level ideas.. but emotional flow and basic needs. Most of the time we don't discuss to debate but to share feelings and share needs.
Social media algorithms might not be the only thing keeping people within a bubble. For example, Fediverse instances or Reddit communities (infamously known for the “hivemind”).
People might simply be tribal in nature, however this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t improve.
If the response counts as a comment, then that ratio is impossible to fulfill - although in that interpretation it'd be impossible to fulfill IRL as well, so I don't think we can use comments vs replies as a metric, unless you only count root-level comments as "talking" and sub-root comments as "listening", in which case I feel like the ratio does hold true
My favorite takeaway from social media has been realizing that many people have an agenda to push, and will use charged language to push that agenda.
Riling people up and making them angry at other people is a good way to get attention, and from that attention you can make money by selling that attention to other people. The more angry and upset you can make people, the more money you can make selling ads.
It's a cycle and I want no part of it. When I catch myself doomscrolling I remember this, and start skipping the electric stories in favor of ones of beneficial interest to me. It's done a little good for my mental health.
