Shame Storm

After starting his career in politics as a vicious partisan hack e.g. involved directly in a conspiracy to undermine Judiciary Committee hearings, perjuring himself in his first judicial confirmation hearing, and spending his judicial career on tireless and extreme support for corporate interests, he should have not been the nominee; there are many less controversial and more respected choices among high-profile career members of the GOP. But if he had acted like an adult in the hearing and been willing to admit to being an angry drunken partier as in his teens and twenties who might have done stupid things and not remembered, and demonstrated some contrition and sign of personal growth, I and many others would have some respect for it.

Instead, his behavior was the most hostile and disrespectful I have ever seen in a public hearing. I urge anyone curious about this to watch the 3 hour hearing for yourself. In my view his confirmation is a stain on the Senate and the Court. It cements the public perception that the rich and powerful can do anything they want, remain unapologetic, and face no consequences.

TL;DR, if you (like me) really want to push back against dangerous ideologies like racism, fascism, white-supremacy, etc, then you should oppose groups who try to combat moderate ideas by conflating them with the aforementioned dangerous ideologies.

NOTE: The author of "Liberal Fascism" is a moderate conservative, by the way, and trying to associate him with extreme right-wing views is exactly the problem (and we can acknowledge as much without endorsing his ideas).

It's not going to stop because it works.

I don't think there's anything wrong with social media. It's just pointless and irrelevant. The only thing that's wrong is that we rely on it to do something it could never do. As experience on HN showed me and others years ago, with a big enough crowd? You can't say anything. People misunderstand. People disagree with points you never made. A term you use in one way can be construed another way. You're foced either to write 10K word essays on supercillious topics like "I like ice cream" or accpeting the feedback as not worth responding to.

I think there are two things that are required for useful social forums: curated participation and a creed (not a set of standards). You need to have a group of 3-30ish people that you've curated that all subscribe to a small set of beliefs. (Beliefs might be something like "the primary reason for our existence on this planet is to care for and help others", or "Building a strong AI is more important than anything else we can do")

Both the number of members and the number of items in the creed have to be manageable. They both have to be visible at all times.

At that point -- I think -- you can start sharing content and opinions, speculating on interesting and complex social topics.

Just not with the world at large. Big groups don't work that way. Big groups where everybody tries to be kind to one another, and isn't that the point, norm downward to the weakest member. We can't both emotionally-reassure a mentally-challenged victim of gang rape while simultaneously discussing something like sexual harassment legislation. This is stuff we all know innately if we're in a room with a thousand people but somehow completely forget when we're typing stuff into a little box on a screen. Important conversations about tough topics don't happen like that. There's nothing wrong with Twitter, it's just not the tool for having any kind of interesting/difficult conversations.