this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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I see. Good points all around. But I would not consider than an echochamber. That is just a diversity of respondants, many of which are poor quality and low effort.
Some because they are low intellect. Some are children. Some are edgelords and shitposters just trying to provoke for shits and giggles. Some just find the questions so obviously out of whack, that they presume OP to be a shitposter, and respond in kind. Lots of reasons, similar results. I noted a few recent ask lemmy questions where the questions were so malformed, people couldn't tell it it was a bot, esl, neurodiversity etc and made jokes about op. That's a case of garbage in/garbage out. While not cool, if you can't be bothered to make a quality question, you can't insist on a quality answer.
For reference: I go with the standard def:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)
That which reinforces bias from innapropriate confirmation or unduly limits discussion of counter views.
The problem is that if that toxicity is widespread enough, and accepted enough, it does interfere with any discussion of opposing viewpoints. When helpful comments that advance the discussion are consistently burried under dozens of unhelpful ones, it makes it difficult to have a meaningful discussion, and incentivses those whose opinions that go against the ingrained group-think to leave. Akin to the Nazi bar allegory, allowing that sort of toxicity to fester just chases off anyone who doesn't want to join in, leading to a echo-chamber.
Fair point. But how to distinguish it from unpopularity? If the "toxic" waste is disingenuous, bad faith, bot based flooding, we have the tools to suppress it. If something is just genuinely unpopular, you have to be careful calling it an echo-chamber. Lots of folks think toxic of anything that disagrees with their obviously superior opinions.
There is no perfect answer. Garbage in, garbage out. Welcome to humanity.