> One of the most pernicious parts of Twitter is how people will retweet something dumb, offensive, or awful that an opponent said, along with a message mocking that opponent. Over time, this leads people on all sides of an issue to see only a distorted caricature of their opponents, comprised of an amalgam of all the worst features of that group.
> How does Mastodon solve this issue? Well, Mastodon doesn't have retweets; it has "boosts". Boosts are essentially like retweets, with one key difference: there's no option to add your own commentary.
I think "Right problem, wrong solution". The reason people mock bad ideas on Twitter is probably because Twitter has a character limit. Refuting bad ideas often takes longer than 240 characters. In fact, putting forward bad ideas takes less time and energy than refuting them. This is why, usually, burden of proof is placed on the one making a claim. Otherwise people who value truth will be exhausted from the approximately 10 times the effort it takes to refute false claims and truth will never win out.
Showing bad ideas to be bad is very important in civil discourse, not being able to point out bad ideas by "retweeting" them with commentary will likely make this social network an echo chamber devoid of intellectual curiosity
> How does Mastodon solve this issue? Well, Mastodon doesn't have retweets; it has "boosts". Boosts are essentially like retweets, with one key difference: there's no option to add your own commentary.
I think "Right problem, wrong solution". The reason people mock bad ideas on Twitter is probably because Twitter has a character limit. Refuting bad ideas often takes longer than 240 characters. In fact, putting forward bad ideas takes less time and energy than refuting them. This is why, usually, burden of proof is placed on the one making a claim. Otherwise people who value truth will be exhausted from the approximately 10 times the effort it takes to refute false claims and truth will never win out.
Showing bad ideas to be bad is very important in civil discourse, not being able to point out bad ideas by "retweeting" them with commentary will likely make this social network an echo chamber devoid of intellectual curiosity