I really agree here—other factors that make Facebook conversations particularly inflammatory include Facebook’s lack of threading, so you can’t easily see who a person is responding to and if the tone of the response is appropriate to the original post, the way Facebook comment threads rapidly stack up with hundreds of comments, some only tangentially related to the original post, and the wide variance in moderation schemes. I’ve been disillusioned by some of the conversations on Facebook, but this comment made me more optimistic that is a platform issue, not a problem with open discussion of EA concerns.
Empirically, discussions of diversity here do seem to be doing a lot better than the ones on the FB group. (I’m thinking particularly of this thread and AGB’s post from a while ago.)
I’ve noticed that Facebook seems to “bump” discussions that get new comments to the top of the group feed. This seems like a sufficient explanation: a topic that’s controversial will get more comments, which will bump it to the top of the group, which will get it more attention, which will get it more comments, etc. Controversy feedback loop!
I really agree here—other factors that make Facebook conversations particularly inflammatory include Facebook’s lack of threading, so you can’t easily see who a person is responding to and if the tone of the response is appropriate to the original post, the way Facebook comment threads rapidly stack up with hundreds of comments, some only tangentially related to the original post, and the wide variance in moderation schemes. I’ve been disillusioned by some of the conversations on Facebook, but this comment made me more optimistic that is a platform issue, not a problem with open discussion of EA concerns.
Empirically, discussions of diversity here do seem to be doing a lot better than the ones on the FB group. (I’m thinking particularly of this thread and AGB’s post from a while ago.)
Still think so, in light of the heated discussion in the comments at http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1g3/why_how_to_make_progress_on_diversity_inclusion/ ?
I’ve noticed that Facebook seems to “bump” discussions that get new comments to the top of the group feed. This seems like a sufficient explanation: a topic that’s controversial will get more comments, which will bump it to the top of the group, which will get it more attention, which will get it more comments, etc. Controversy feedback loop!