I get what you're saying, but I can also see that bad actors can take advantage of people's goodwill and desire to be good people as a form of social engineering.
I've seen calls for mass murder against political opponents just this week that were couched in "we're such nice people and they're such mean people, they should be nice like us or they should be made to disappear".
Remember that the most deadly ideologies of the past 100 years were all anti-individualistic. There's a reason fascism invoked the imagery of a bundle of sticks that together was stronger than every individual stick, and national socialism explicitly created a racial faction of "us" to oppose another faction of "them", and both portrayed idyllic images that were very nice to justify their atrocities.
So in that regard, I think the way to build the communities we actually want to see requires us to be open and somewhat tolerant to behavior we don't condone necessarily, but to be the sort of posters we'd like to see and to participate in positive ways to positive things. Even jerks sometimes have something important to bring to the table, so to reform those people you engage with them when they're doing something positive and ignore them when they're engaging in something negative.
I've seen calls for mass murder against political opponents just this week that were couched in "we're such nice people and they're such mean people, they should be nice like us or they should be made to disappear".
Remember that the most deadly ideologies of the past 100 years were all anti-individualistic. There's a reason fascism invoked the imagery of a bundle of sticks that together was stronger than every individual stick, and national socialism explicitly created a racial faction of "us" to oppose another faction of "them", and both portrayed idyllic images that were very nice to justify their atrocities.
So in that regard, I think the way to build the communities we actually want to see requires us to be open and somewhat tolerant to behavior we don't condone necessarily, but to be the sort of posters we'd like to see and to participate in positive ways to positive things. Even jerks sometimes have something important to bring to the table, so to reform those people you engage with them when they're doing something positive and ignore them when they're engaging in something negative.
Fair enough. Without a massive corporate sponsor to act as everyone's dad for them though, I think figuring out how to coexist with prats is part of the experience. Sort of a cathedral and bazaar social experience. For those who require a professional referee, that might be a problem and openness might not be a good choice.
On the other hand, I strongly believe that the same closed and proprietary algorithm that pretends to shut down hate (too much acceptable hate on mainstream platforms for me to think they actually do) will happily connect people who hate each other to drive engagement. "Hey Mr. Jew! Let me connect you directly with Mr. Actual 1945 non-meme Nazi! One of eight on the platform but you seem to loooove content like this so we'll give you lots!"
On the other hand, I strongly believe that the same closed and proprietary algorithm that pretends to shut down hate (too much acceptable hate on mainstream platforms for me to think they actually do) will happily connect people who hate each other to drive engagement. "Hey Mr. Jew! Let me connect you directly with Mr. Actual 1945 non-meme Nazi! One of eight on the platform but you seem to loooove content like this so we'll give you lots!"
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