The long-term effects of ugly political discussions on Facebook (2014)

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/the-long-term-effects-of-ugly-political-discussions-on-facebook/

by prostoalex • 10 years ago

70 74 10 years ago

proksoup• 10 years ago

Hm, okay, I think we're making progress here though. I've started and continued quite a few controversial conversations that have "harmed" some[1] relationships, but overall I think it's for the better and has improved the relationships I want to improve.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/derekbreden/posts/1670541883212714

Kenji• 10 years ago

That's exactly it. I have this one friend who always posts pro-Israel articles and another one who is black and reposts subtly racist (against whites) quotes. Even if I don't follow them, if I don't block them, their garbage will show up on my timeline sooner or later. And it's always the same things. Like, for 5 years they post this stuff. One could think their world is frozen in time. I never want to be that guy towards my friends, that's why I'd never post anything about politics, religion, etc. Facebook is not the right thing for it. Actually, for me personally, facebook is nothing but a platform to communicate with or find old classmates.

striking• 10 years ago

That's what the "Unfollow" feature is for. For those people who you want to keep a link with, but don't actually want to follow.

Aelinsaar3• 10 years ago

I understand why some people use Facebook, but I've managed to avoid it and have never heard someone in my real life express happiness that they made a different choice. It always seems to offer benefits in theory that don't pan out. Mostly it just seems to make people unhappy.

backlava• 10 years ago

I wouldn't recommend hanging out on Facebook, but if it puts you in touch with lost acquaintances that can be valuable.

Aelinsaar3• 10 years ago

That's exactly it, and why I don't have the, "Facebook = Bad" mindset. It just seems to be bad for most people, in practice, over the long term. Once I found any lost friends I would try to move it over to a better forum for extended contact.

ArkyBeagle2• 10 years ago

That part has mostly just been sad. Time really wears people down.

lazzlazzlazz• 10 years ago

I'm going to copy paste a comment I made a while back that I still stand by:

""" I [deactivated Facebook for] three years and regret it. I realize now that I should have just shaped my use to fit my needs: unfriend or unfollow people I don't care to follow, write more messages rather than scrolling through the newsfeed, and join events and groups more deliberately.

Now I actually use it to keep in touch with people I care about, rather than just pretend that's what I'm doing. I missed out on some things during my three years with Facebook off, and although I learned so much from having done it, I wouldn't do it again. """

esaym• 10 years ago

I'm thinking about doing that. If I can just get the guts to delete half my "friends" FB would be awesome again...

thedevil• 10 years ago

Another, bigger long term effect: everyone is either A) becoming extremist in their political ideas or B) just won't talk about politics at all.

Edit: I've been moving towards B myself.

parennoob• 10 years ago

I would say that might be a side effect of a more fundamental shift – that of social networks making us more stupid (unintelligent?) and unable to coherently defend ideas in real life.

On the internet, it is easy to type out long comments, cherry-pick and refute the ideas of the person on the other side, and sometimes be incredibly rude to them. But performing the jugglery of coherently defending your point while talking frankly, without being rude, in person, is a skill that seems to be conspicuous by absence in Americans today. I have noticed way too many people recently who post 200 things on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest/Instagram, and yet are unable to keep up a decent conversation for more than five minutes without uncomfortable silences or pulling out their phones.

Retra• 10 years ago

How are social networks making us more stupid than generations of family-run farming communities?

Anyway, I don't see any evidence that people were ever able to speak frankly without being rude, nor that silence being uncomfortable is anything but a personal problem. Maybe you think silence is uncomfortable because you aren't properly socialized?

Unklejoe5• 10 years ago

I hear that.

It's one thing to have a debate on the internet, where all the information in the world is basically at your fingertips and you have a chance to review your comments before posting them.

It's another thing to do this on the fly in real life.

Aelinsaar3• 10 years ago

B seems like the way to go, unless you feel like you're in a position to effect some kind of real change. B also lets you forge the widest social and professional network without engaging in friction that probably doesn't need to exist in social or professional settings.

The other thing that's emerged is C) Outrage addicts and D) Trolls. They don't care about the politics, may not even have much in the way of firm politics, but they're bored and maybe not entirely sane; and now with the internet, they have a global platform.

Unklejoe5• 10 years ago

Same. I even went to the extent of completely deleting my Facebook account. I knew that it was going to be a shit show with this upcoming election, and I knew that being constantly bombarded with opinions from a ton of people would stress me out, even if we're in agreement. I don't have enough self control to just ignore those people, so I would inevitably end up in heated debates which ultimately serve no purpose other than pissing everyone off.

As for your A/B scenarios: the latter seems more common amongst my peers, but it may actually be indirectly caused by the former.

I frequently see people opting out of political discussions just to avoid being tag teamed by a group of political extremists.

I think the fundamental issue is that many people want to be accepted and liked by everyone, which is impossible once you start expressing your political views. Therefore, we take the safe option of remaining silent.

PavlovsCat• 10 years ago

many people want to be accepted and liked by everyone, which is impossible once you start expressing your political views

Joke's on them.. I unfriended plenty of people for being sick of their never taking a stance on anything meaningful. There is no safe option, at least not with me. Or as the title of that documentary about Howard Zinn goes, you can't be neutral on a moving train. Besides:

She had blue skin, and so did he. He kept it hid and so did she. They searched for blue their whole life through, then passed right by - and never knew. -- Shel Silverstein

Of course this includes not being on FB, or not talking about politics in social settings, if that is what you want. But it's also the reason I wear my heart and mind on my sleeve.. I don't miss any of the people I "lost" that way, and I wouldn't want to miss any of the people I gained through it.

ArkyBeagle2• 10 years ago

I pretty much only post things that can be verified easily. Most are snopes type things, and only for people I'm on a pretty firm footing with.

I unfeed people who post inflammatory stuff.

IMO, the medium could be great for compare-contrast type things - "I think tradition <x> is important because <y>" but it seems like less and less of that happens now.

mirimir• 10 years ago

Hey, I do both. But as different personas. And not anywhere online with meatspace friends. I learned that lesson on Usenet.

spc4762• 10 years ago

I had a friend (who I've known since high school, and I graduated in the late 80s) unfriend me because of a link I posted as a reply to his reply to a mutual friend's post.

My take: my now unfriended friend can dish it out, but can't take it.

His take (via some third parties): I'm a close minded evil conservative [1].

Yes, I come across posts from friends (and acquaintances) that I don't agree with but I won't unfriend any of them over it. There are 50,000 other channels I can "watch" and I'm certainly capable of changing the channel. Pity more people don't realize that.

[1] Libertarian actually. My friend is, in his own words, "a liberal pinko Commie." Make of that what you will.

towlejunior• 10 years ago

Let's see that link, baby.

spc4762• 10 years ago

It was to a medical study that showed a possible side effect of marijuana use is paranoia. The actual event happened some time last year and trying to dig it up on Facebook is a pain.

rosser3• 10 years ago

Given my own, and many of my friends, calling ourselves some variation on your friend's self-described political views, I think he's being pre-emptively, jokingly snarky, in order to fend off the kind of judgement implicit behind your, "Make of that what you will," from coming into the conversation. If he calls himself a "pinko" or whatever, he's taken its use as an epithet off the table.

That's no small part of why my friends and I do that, anyway.

rosser3• 10 years ago

I had an uncle unfriend me after I called out some of the racist, misinformed crap he was spouting in response to Prince's death. It's unfortunate, because I really want to like the guy, but his posts had really boiled down to one (or, rarely, more) of: sportsball fanaticism, "Immigrants are scary!", or "Why doesn't anyone care about Vietnam Veterans?!"

My feed is a lot less unpleasant now, but we're both that much more isolated in our echo chambers. Granted, I think the acoustics are much nicer in mine, but a breadth of discourse does, one hopes, help to keep one's mind ... if not more open, at least more aware of what other people are thinking.

Kequc2• 10 years ago

Calling someone a racist is a quick way to get unfriended, yes. I've been blocking people who use that kind of personal attack on me and my life is better for it. His perception of your feed and your perception of your feed are likely very different.

Since he is your uncle, you have an inroad available of meeting him to hopefully patch things up. But be aware that you might have to try and understand his point of view rather than labelling it, and writing him off as a bigot.

I don't know the full story, but I've become somewhat skeptical when I hear things like this.

rosser3• 10 years ago

I didn't call him a racist, though I can see how my phrasing of what went down might imply that. I pointed out places where his beliefs about Prince were based on factually false ideas about the man and his life, and supplied information he was clearly lacking that gave context to the things he'd heard about him that inspired those mistaken beliefs.

E.g., "He was a druggie!" Yeah, no. It was Percocet, because his hip was profoundly fucked up from all the jumping around on stage he'd done for decades. As a Jehovah's Witness, drug abuse was strictly against his faith, and he didn't even allow guests at Paisley Park to drink or smoke tobacco. That kind of thing.

See how making an assumption about someone and proceeding with that as a premise leads to mistaken beliefs about the events in their lives?

Yhippa• 10 years ago

Facebook has gotten to the point for me where even normal, non-political things I post on Facebook draw trolls and shitposters. Probably just the cocktail of friends I have but people use my posts as a way to express their particular way of standing out. I posted a picture of an iris recently and even that brought out people making some weird comments. Stuff like that makes me want to hold back on posting. If I ask for restaurant recommendations I don't feel like dealing with a ton of sarcastic comments anymore.

MatthiasP• 10 years ago

I had that very experience a few days ago, after the first round of the Austrian presidential elections my facebook wall exploded. Marked several friends for "don't show messages, but stay friends", because I am not interested in political opportunism, no matter which side they are on.

chatmasta3• 10 years ago

The problem with political discussion on Facebook is the problem that has always existed with political discussion. Facebook just amplifies it x100. People simplify political rhetoric to fit it into a finite number of "camps": Democrat/republican, liberal/conservative, "SJW"/anti-PC, feminist/mysoginist...

The simplified rhetoric pigeonholes issues into bipolar ideological frameworks. As a result, political "discussion" does not reflect the reality of complex networks of opinions, people, and ideas. Instead, it reflects a shallow mask of "us" and "them." Nuanced, rational discussion does not stand a chance against the uncontrollable biases of ingroup/outgroup psychology.

Once someone forms an opinion, and finds validation of it from within a group, they have joined the ingroup. At that point, it will be nearly impossible to move them to the outgroup. Hearing any opinions from the outgroup will only drive them further into the ingroup, as they retreat to the echo chamber of their peers and emotionally reconfirm their own beliefs instead of critically engaging opposing viewpoints.

Of course, I'm mostly talking about the "ingroup" of "feminists and SJWs" (I hate that acronym because it seems hypocritical to criticize SJWs for reductionism and then give them an acronym). Right now the "regressive left" is certainly the most guilty of seeking affirmation from ingroup dynamics, and the group most unwilling to engage with the opposition.

However, I think every single human is subject to the same biases of ingroup/outgroup psychology. The "SJW" group is only the most recent example of a group whose opinions are pigeonholed, amplified, and ultimately opposed. But many of the people crusading against political correctness are guilty of the same unwillingness to consider the other side.

This dynamic has always existed, as long as humans have been a social species. It's how society evolves. But it sure is messy.

(visualization of the political polarization in congress: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/23/a-stu...)

Unklejoe5• 10 years ago

This is one of the fundamental problems with politics today. The quantization of opinions into discrete "groups" has been happening forever, but I really think we're at an all time high now.

The system seems to be the most divided it's ever been.

Presidential candidates are forced to align themselves with their respective groups.

It's a shame really. Were probably missing out on a lot of good ideas from candidates who are afraid to offend their base and think outside the box.

You can't be a pro-choice republican, etc.

losteric• 10 years ago

Our two-party system really doesn't help with the "in or out" mentality either... it's completely permeated our 24/7 media culture and encourages dangerously binary thinking. I wouldn't be surprised to see the system break apart in a couple more years of these increasingly vicious primaries.

jalami3• 10 years ago

The human brain will be as mentally lazy as it can be. If the computer mouse hadn't hit the scene as it did, we'd all know all these cool keyboard shortcuts to get around everything and would be much more efficient. If you use VIM/emacs its because you needed it or actively pushed yourself to learn it. I feel the same dedication is needed to avoid subconscious lethargy.

Group think, stereotypes, reductionism, compartmentalization. All of this makes it easy to make decisions, tough ones, without thinking hard or stepping out of our comfort zone. Even better, we get social recognition and adoration if we use the mental training wheels, isolation if we publicly don't.

We need, as a society, to avoid mental laziness in order to fix this problem. Sadly, it's built-in, easy and everyone's doing it.

PS. Not strictly saying computer mouse use is the fast-food of ui navigation. Just a metaphor.

guelo• 10 years ago

WTF, you had me until the "SJW" group being the most guilty. My guess is that you're part of some ingroup that is polarized against the SJW group so it seems to you like it's the most extreme. But that's just typical polarized ingroup thinking.

chatmasta3• 10 years ago

That's why I included the paragraph after that, saying "every group is guilty of this." Yes, I include myself in that, and yes you are correct in your assessment of my polarization.

Slothrop99• 10 years ago

I don't know about "most guilty", but when you have a group who first and foremost values intense self-critisism, they're going to be highly obnoxious on social media because of in-group signaling.

For myself, I don't engage on this stuff on social media. But my mother gets all riled up arguing with her "republican jerks" and "trumps" on facebook. But in the end they all go out and drink too much and have a grand old time. It's a different mentality.

hueving• 10 years ago

They easily fall into the most extreme category when it comes to online discourse. I've never seen a group more organized when it comes to brigading and propaganda about how to respond with essentially copy and paste replies to any category of response elicited to their arguments.

SJWs pushed out the CEO of Mozilla, made GitHub stop rewarding people based on the merit of their work, and pressured companies to hire under qualified minorities over other more qualified people[1]. Even if they don't have a strong presence in other industries, they have completely dominated tech companies to the point where people fear using a race or gender to describe how someone looks.

1. Assuming equal qualifications from each group, there will be more qualified non-minorities than minorities by definition.

venomsnake• 10 years ago

The SJW are definitely the most vocal and annoying lately. Reading their posts makes you dream about the d eloquent communist debates in USSR plenums after the October revolution.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...

kmm• 10 years ago

I don't know about the parent, but you'd guess that wrong about me. There are a ton of subreddits I sort of politically align with that I can't join because I don't align with their brand of feminism. Besides that, I think there's something wrong if you can get banned for using the word "bitch", even to describe a man or nobody at all, on a very non-serious sub. I've yet to meet someone with that opinion in real life

I personally have no interesting in aligning with an anti-SJW ingroup, because it seems like a waste of time, and they tend to attract people on the other kind of the spectrum, which isn't ideal either.

qrendel• 10 years ago

Most political views for most people are used as a signal of tribal identification, rather than as an actual opinion on what the best policy option would be. See: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... (long, but worth it)

The camps are essentially a feature, not a bug - though probably not a good feature. The majority of political posts exist to reinforce that tribal identity, sending up a signal and hoping you get some back.

Actual discussion about alternative policy options and their consequences is a small-time hobby most people don't care to partake in. The adversarial behaviors re: "political discussion" make a lot more sense once you stop lumping both types of posts under that single label.

jalami3• 10 years ago

I agree for the most part, not sure about your SJW rap, but the problem we have is lumping ideas/beliefs into groups and then defending those groups instead of the beleifs. The beliefs are sacrosanct because they happens to be in that group, not because they hold merit on their own. Often these beliefs are only mildly ideologically connected in the first place.

People regard these ideas as being like in kind if they're in the same group, but every party/religion/human construct is a motley assortment of dissimilar beliefs. They're just beliefs. Every belief should be held up to scrutiny.

I think understanding how to logically reason and knowing the human psychological traps that we all fall into help us avoid them. Things like being individually cognizant about the Bystander effect, Ingroups/outgroups and the Broken Window theory help me make informed decisions every day. I'm sure I fall into all kinds of logical antipatterns, and I want people to point them out, not simply nod, grimace or unfriend me.

DanielBMarkham3• 10 years ago

I'm very happy to have friends about evenly split between left and right, with a nice chunk of folks from various countries.

I'm going to make a political observation, so apologies.

I grew up in the south. I know a lot of bible-belt conservatives. I know the feeling of being embarrassed when somebody you like says something ignorant and trivializes a complex issue. It makes you want to wince.

As a third-party guy now, I'm feeling that same embarrassment for my left-wing friends. My right-wingers just shut up: perhaps they have some other site they go to and vent. Who knows? But my friends on the left, at least some of them, are insufferable. Most of the few people I've muted were on the left, posting multiple times per day from political sites, going on at length about how they hate various right-wing group X. With a couple of folks, it's to the point that I suspect mental illness.

So much of what I see on FB that qualifies as politics from all of my friends is just simple virtue signaling. It's taking 3 seconds and cross-posting an idiotic and over-simplified argument or attack against other folks simply because it's easy to do that and it lets folks publicly know that you're one of the "right people" (It's actually a form of bragging)

Facebook is a great way to have an ongoing family newsletter. It sucks as a tool for reasoned political discourse.

SyneRyder• 10 years ago

"My right-wingers just shut up: perhaps they have some other site they go to and vent. Who knows?"

That question fascinates me, as I've heard it before from my left-friends. As far as I know, most of my right-friends don't have a site they go to, or commentators they follow. They just do their own thing, and politics isn't as central to their identity or lives. They value doing things, where my left-leaning friends seem to value interesting conversation & debate.

In Australia, we had a political commentator called Andrew Bolt, who I guess is like Australia's Fox News. But the only people I've ever heard watching his show were politically-left friends, who seemed to enjoy being offended & outraged at what was said, and debating it with their friends. They seemed convinced that's what right-leaning people watch, but my right-leaning friends can't be bothered with it, or most TV / newspaper discourse.

BrandonMarc• 10 years ago

Fantastic visualization. Just at a glance, I think I can tell which of those dots is Joe Leiberman.

soneil• 10 years ago

I'd be honestly curious to see the same study enacted outside the US. I do wonder if it'd come up with very different results.

I don't want this to sound like stereotype-bashing, but I do notice that politics in the US seems to be incredibly polarized. There seems to be very little in the way of "difference of opinion", and more .. O is the antichrist, H is a criminal, B is a communist, T is going to bring on the apocalypse/ww3/economic collapse armed with little more than ignorance and arrogance ..

It's hardly surprising people find political conversation divisive, when they see someone who disagrees with them as not having a differing opinion on one or two key issues, but as supporting a regime that's going to destroy their way of life (.. which never ends up happening).

Unklejoe5• 10 years ago

This is probably because the USA is relatively large and there are significant differences between states in terms of culture and industry.

For example, the people of New York probably have very little in common with those of Tennessee.

For example, it's easy for a liberal in Massachusetts to label a conservative in Arizona a "bigot" for wanting to close the border, but the liberal in Massachusetts has probably never experienced the issues of illegal immigration in the way that someone from Arizona has.

This is why I think more power needs to be given to individual states rather than the federal government.

alva• 10 years ago

I think this is what was behind (still is?) the huge surprise to many, that Trump has a large number of supporters.

The social cost in my friendship group of airing conservative views, has for the last few years been quite great. If you are not completely on board with the currently promoted view, you are accused of "wrong think" and chastised. The best strategy, as differing views on politics are rarely worth losing long-time friends over, is simply to shut up. Unfortunately this reassures the group in their unquestioned beliefs. It reminds me of Taleb's minority rule [0]

When it comes to anonymous polling and voting, for this kind of group there is a massive disconnect between their perceived reality (reduced dissent or differing opinions due to social cost) and reality. It is a shame, both sides lose.

A large part of why I love HN and other pseudo and fully anonymous forums is that you are able to engage in proper discussion, disconnected from this social suppression.

[0] http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf

golemotron2• 10 years ago

There's a political science term for this: preference falsification. People were surprised by the recent conservative win in the UK. It wasn't anticipated by the polling, probably for the reason you mention.

chatmasta3• 10 years ago

Interestingly, people are falsifying their preferences through omission. Rather than responding affirmatively or negatively, they are simply not responding at all... until they enthusiastically check a box on a ballot.

vintermann2• 10 years ago

I don't quite buy it. Opinion polls should be a pretty risk-free way to talk about your real preferences. If people are afraid to expose their controversial views as a checkbox on an anonymous form, why aren't they afraid to do so in the voting booth too?

hkmurakami3• 10 years ago

You're hardly alone, and when I voice this concern to my vocally liberal friends, the vast majority don't give any reply at all and pretend that my message never reached them or wasn't worth responding to. I find this brand of (what is essentially) censorship to be quite disappointing.

------------

It’s November 2008, after President Barack Obama’s first election, and one of professor Ruth R. Wisse’s undergraduate students comes in to speak with her.

“I really did want to tell you that I’ve been feeling very guilty,” says the student, a freshman.

“About what?” asks Wisse, an outspoken conservative faculty member and prominent Yiddish scholar.

“Well, I worked on the Obama campaign,” the student says.

Wisse laughs, and replies, “You and everyone else—why would that necessarily make you feel guilty?”

“You see, I’m for McCain, and I voted for McCain.”

Wisse was now puzzled—and intrigued. “Well, why did you work on the Obama campaign?”

“Because I so wanted to be with my roommates and with everyone else.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/1/conservatives-sc...

adrianratnapala• 10 years ago

I'd say if they are ignoring messages they don't like, then you are doing well. After all, we have the right to say what we like -- not the right to be taken seriously.

I am not saying it means your friends are being wise or balanced, it's just that what they are doing is not censorship.

argonaut2• 10 years ago

How does that anecdote support your point? It's quite natural to want to work with your friends. Also, there's no indication that person's friends actually pressured / shamed the person into working for Obama.

13of40• 10 years ago

Back in my day, you had to gain someone's confidence, get invited to a party at their house, share a bottle of jack, then get invited into the back bedroom with two of their skeeziest buddies and some crank before you found out they liked Trump. In the Facebook age, everyone wears it on their sleeve.

golergka• 10 years ago

You mean, you haven't been downvoted for moderate right views on HN? May be you just haven't spent much time here

danielvf• 10 years ago

It's true that you may pay a fee of a few karma for such an opinion, but by and large the discussion itself stays civil and focused on the ideas themselves. This is a huge step up from the usual social violence that would follow in many places.

I'm impressed by both the community at the moderation that allows this to happen.

JanneVee• 10 years ago

Well the whole thing about people who support the notion, "speech should have social consequences" don't see how bad it is for democracy. When a group says there is no discussion to be had opinions and beliefs aren't challenged and with that the any chance of affecting them for anyone.

It is a shame, both sides lose.

No both sides don't lose... One side wins more and the opposition drums up support, by not challenging the winnings sides arguments, opinions and beliefs. You don't win arguments by attacking people.

jalami3• 10 years ago

I like to call things people don't want to talk about "untouchables" because you can't argue them, you can't reason them out, you can't even comment on them without getting a glare or worse. Religion, politics, economics etc.

People feel affronted when these things are talked about. I think that's why we have these political/religious/economic strongholds/echo-chambers where no one will disagree with you so you feel powerful in your conviction. In all honesty though, we know our positions have holes, but never talk about them as a society.

I think if we talked more about thing we disagreed about, we'd realize we're wrong or not quite right about everything. Untouchables would go away. The problem is hard illogical convictions and echo-chambers where we allow ourselves to let our guard down.

Not talking about things as a society is the problem, not the solution. We shouldn't get upset and break off relationships when people do.

IMHO of course.

Edit: rewording

ChuckMcM• 10 years ago

Interesting word, "homophily". Apparently it has been around for a while, I recognize the effect.

It is interesting that discussions can be hugely enriched by discussing differing opinions, and at the same time very threatening. Especially if there is limited trust. Interesting to consider when sharing things at home, at a party, at the office, and in random groups.

Lxr• 10 years ago

To me this is just a 21st century example of the old adage 'don't discuss religion or politics' - you will often be unpleasantly surprised by the views of friends and family that you considered like-minded people. I avoid these topics entirely, unless I know someone really well and even then would not post about it on Facebook et al.

julian55• 10 years ago

Exactly. I would rather not know the political opinions of many of my friends as Often we would disagree and it wouldn't be a fruitful discussion.

hnruss• 10 years ago

I don't mind thoughtful political discussion, but much of what I see on Facebook is partisan political propaganda. Commenting on it only seems to legitimize it.

DanielBMarkham3• 10 years ago

I'd like to balance the article out a bit and say something nice about Facebook. (Holds nose)

Yes, these things turn ugly. But I think there are a lot of people who have strong political opinions but have not been forced to communicate them (and defend them) in writing. Instead, they'll just tell a joke to a few friends that they know share the same view.

The old complaint about television was that there were no segmented conversations anymore. It used to be that grown-ups talked about one thing with the kids around, other things with just adults, and still other things with close friends. Television changed all of that. Now every type of conversation was fair game for everybody. This is probably one of the main driving factors for the youth-dominated culture of the past several decades, but I digress.

Facebook is doing that about politics -- and to some extent, religion. You don't get a special set of friends you make those atheist or conservative jokes to. It's everybody, all the time. This is forcing folks either to 1) learn to defend their views in longform discussions civilly (which is very rare), 2) have lots of flame wars with people (I disagree with the article. I think some of these folks can be fairly close), or 3) just shut up and self-censor.

I've been privileged to be on a couple of sites where open and civil discourse was promoted, and I miss those experiences. I learned a lot and managed to change my opinion on a couple of things.

Facebook is not that kind of site. At first I thought I could cultivate reasonable discourse in my comment feed. I could not. Then I tried a private group, thinking a smaller group could self-moderate. Perhaps some could, but mine could not. The more people realized they might be in error, the more abusive they became. Now, for me, it's just jokes, travel pictures, and humorous family stories. About once a month somebody will sucker me into a political/religious discussion. I always apologize and bow out.

I love having difficult conversations. I like being challenged to think differently about the world around me. But for this to happen implies a high level of written respect for other participants that simply doesn't exist on the site. I eventually decided to become a no-politics guy on FB because it made me a worse person. It made me angry at people that I liked. How many times can you explain concept X to a friend before you don't have to again? Well, the answer is an infinite number of times if the other person doesn't want to hear it. So discussions have no progress. No matter what you do or say, a couple of weeks later you're going to be doing and saying that all over again. I do not have the infinite patience required to do this, and hell, I like these people! Easier just to dumb down my content so they can consume it.

The long-term effects of ugly political discussions on Facebook (2014)

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