The Silence Is Deafening | devonzuegel.com

As a result, the feedback you do receive in digital conversations is more polarized, because the only people who will engage are those who are willing to take that extra step and bear that cost of wading into a messy conversation.

A huge part of the problem is that digital spaces generally have no equivalent of a disapproving glare. You're stuck choosing between staying silent and entering the fray, with few options in between. If you have little reason to believe that other reasonable people will back you up, you're going to stick with the default: silence.

This is a coordination problem. Reasonable people understand that if they join the fray alone, they'll most likely be drowned out by the yelling, or worse they'll get dragged deeper into it. As a result, they choose stay out of it.

In digital conversations, giving feedback requires more conscious effort. Silence is the default. Participants only get feedback from people who join the fray. They receive no signal about how the silent onlookers perceive their dialogue. In fact, they don't receive much signal that onlookers observed the conversation at all.