> Free speech platforms usually end up being extremist platforms.
...when the popular platforms stop being free speech platforms.
Reddit, in its earlier days, was never dominated by the Voat contingent. They were there, but they were far less extreme there than they were on Voat. And then whenever they would post rank inaccuracies, there were clearer-minded people to point out why they were wrong, in the same place where the same people could see it. Meanwhile in the 7% of cases when they actually had a legitimate point to make, they could make it, and the people who benefited from hearing it would actually hear it instead of continuing to be unawares and consequently continuing to be wrong about something.
But it doesn't work to have one popular platform which allows nearly everyone except for Those Deplorables and another that allows "everyone" but the only people with the incentive to move are the people being forcibly ejected from the popular one. Because witch hunts are bad, but if there is a place that owes its existence solely to a policy of not having witch hunts, it's going to be full of witches.
So the answer has to be to stop the witch hunts in the places where everybody else already is.
...when the popular platforms stop being free speech platforms.
Reddit, in its earlier days, was never dominated by the Voat contingent. They were there, but they were far less extreme there than they were on Voat. And then whenever they would post rank inaccuracies, there were clearer-minded people to point out why they were wrong, in the same place where the same people could see it. Meanwhile in the 7% of cases when they actually had a legitimate point to make, they could make it, and the people who benefited from hearing it would actually hear it instead of continuing to be unawares and consequently continuing to be wrong about something.
But it doesn't work to have one popular platform which allows nearly everyone except for Those Deplorables and another that allows "everyone" but the only people with the incentive to move are the people being forcibly ejected from the popular one. Because witch hunts are bad, but if there is a place that owes its existence solely to a policy of not having witch hunts, it's going to be full of witches.
So the answer has to be to stop the witch hunts in the places where everybody else already is.