Our systems, personal human systems really light up when we think we are avenging something. The tech systems are all built to reward that instinct. So it’s easy to mass mobilize against a thing. It lights up everyones serotonin and cortisol release. https://twitter.com/marcprecipice/status/1357106918322434049

And the tech companies keep building solutions based on the premise that good information wins out in the end. It does not. Anything that makes people feel like they are committing vengeance wins in the end.

I think there are tech solutions for this but I also think we all have a lot of immaturity in how we interact with these systems in their absence. I do it too.

Lately I’ve been been asking myself if what I’m tweeting is helpful or for the use of my self-righteousness aka my cortisol and serotonin release. It’s usually not easy to discern the two.

The problem is volume and the amount of garbage in that volume.

She says it well here: https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1357111250744991752

I’ve always wondered what would happen if when you tweeted something at someone if you received a warning that said “large volumes of people are currently tweeting at that tag/person causing indistinguishable amounts of information being sent to them - still want to send?”

Much of this is purposefully abusive, so it wouldn’t make this right, but I honestly wonder what happens if you give people awareness that another human is being bombarded. That harm could be caused.

I’ve also wondered how things would go if we could flip a switch that says no more. You’re being bombarded and it takes it all out of your mentions and allows you functionality to mass block/hide/report. Or block everyone following an abusive account.

Anyway, none of the solutions address the issue because there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. And in some ways I think the way we are taught about democracy in schools leads us there.

Folks act like we can retain the project by just routinely exercising a vote in it. We cannot. And we have not. You create popular agreement on the realm of agreeable things democracy will take on. And folks vote within that paradigm.

At base the maintenance of Democracy is a highly relational project. So of course ensuring that a place where everyone is having conversation requires relational approaches. Context and volume are imperative but we never talk about that. We talk about debates and fights.