The Internet Wants to Be Fragmented

This is how we restore the old internet — not in its original form, but in its glorious, fragmented essence. People call Twitter an indispensable public space because it’s the “town square”, but in the real world there isn’t just one town square, because there isn’t just one town. There are many. And the internet works when you can exit — when you ... See more

It started with the Facebook feed. On the old internet, you could show a different side of yourself in every forum or chat room; but on your Facebook feed, you had to be the same person to everyone you knew. When social unrest broke out in the mid-2010s this got even worse — you had to watch your liberal friends and your conservative friends go at ... See more

That experiment failed. Humanity does not want to be a global hive mind. We are not rational Bayesian updaters who will eventually reach agreement; when we receive the same information, it tends to polarize us rather than unite us. Getting screamed at and insulted by people who disagree with you doesn’t take you out of your filter bubble — it makes... See more