The article uses the word "partisan", the opposite of which I think is "independent", not "centrist" or "middle", but to be fair the article seems to conflate the two as well and never uses the word "independent". However to me there is a big difference between being a centrist and being independent. One could be independent with views that are at times deemed extreme right and at times extreme left. Similarly, some people are "centrist" yet somehow deeply partisan in the sense that their party can do no wrong and everything is the fault of the other party.

> Part of me is happy about it. The sooner we get out of the social media landscape, the better the society as a whole will be.. in my opinion anyway. Still, we have already lost so much of the original internet. That loss makes me sad.

While I share the hope, it's probably not going to happen: most folks have moved from FB to use AI chats. Now it's the tool to manipulate opinions and habits. And it's working very well and nuanced. With AI, the society will be more divided, more polarised, and less happy than before.

And there's no way back already! Even if the web search works well one day, the folks desire (and habit!) to outsource thinking is too strong, especially among younger.

Amusingly I've solved this problem of polarized partisans personally. I have an extraordinarily large blocklist of users (including an auto-hide on the top 1000 commenters by word-count). Annoyingly this has created a new problem: reading HN is a lot more enjoyable so I use it more.

I think a lot of what's happening is that individuals and their in-groups are replacing social media for comms with chat apps, leaving much of the remaining social media use being either reposting crap or for opinion blasts... or in the worst case, thoughtlessly reposting other people's [extreme] opinion blasts.

One thing is true: actual, active socializing is happening in chat apps (and Discord), not FB, X, or IG.

I don't think the social media landscape is inherently bad, but the ways in which it evolved. And I think the shift in social media towards consuming content instead of connecting with others is a direct reflection of the era we live in; one of abundant information.

Social media will stop becoming relevant when we stop treating each person as a mini corporation that needs to provide value, trying to optimize every aspect of your life in a life-long marketing campaign.

What do you mean exactly by lost so much of the original internet?

I feel like this misses what's actually going on. The "small, sharp, ideologically extreme" discussions aren't going away, they're just happening elsewhere. From the abstract, the reason for the decline is: "the youngest and oldest Americans increasingly abstaining from social media". The young people are talking in private Discord groups, and the old people are talking in private text groups. These private groups don't show up in social media studies. The paper even states this directly: "everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps".

> Still, we have already lost so much of the original internet.

Hyper-monetization killed it all

YC does have brakes ... Accounts are rate limited for engaging in conversations that are determined to be beneath the dignity of the platform. It's not clear if the rate limiting is biased against certain perspectives.

FB and Twitter seem to drive heavy political ideological content at the slightest hint of engagement.

I think a problem with loud poles and a quiet middle is the political class takes its queue from the internet discourse. The algorithms drive content, but in a reverse fashion they also poll the electorate, providing signal the political scientists use to calibrate messaging.

That's the result of excess censorship and PRs on those platform, you can play with people more or less easily but you can't re-program them at such speed. They understand and start rejecting the narrative.

Vocal minorities vary but tend just to excite the others, not to affirm any point.

There is some slight irony talking about a vocal minority in a top comment, heh.

It's worth questioning how much of the polarized rhetoric out there is rooted in reality, and how much of it is just social media selecting and promoting extreme views. The answer seems to be that it really depends on where you are.

As a Canadian, I feel that people on opposite ends of the spectrum, although they might literally call for the deaths of those on the other end, have a huge amount in common with each other. Canada has problems, but its still a pretty great country. If people would step outside of the hyper-partisan identities they've been constructing for themselves online and try to see the concerns of the other side, they'd probably find they're not as horrible or misguided as they might think while reading facebook or reddit. If the reasonable centre that dominates public policy can continue to ween itself off of American social media, there's hope for a strong, unified country that's capable of having adult political discourse between people who disagree on finer points. We clearly have some challenges to face (e.g. separatism) in getting there though.

If you're in the U.S. though, things appear very different. While both political parties seem to have been co-opted by billionaire interests, one party has fallen into what can be described as, if we're being charitable, a cult of personality. Unfortunately, that personality has been doing things that are impossible to dismiss as the online hysteria of the other side. Threatening allies with military invasion. High seas piracy. Kidnapping of a foreign leader (admittedly a not very nice one) from his nation. Betraying allies to cozy up to dictators like Putin. Torching global markets with constantly changing tariffs. The list goes on. Then there's what's going on within U.S. borders. If you're in the U.S., the polarization isn't just online. It's something very real. I feel that somebody opposing what ICE is doing in Minnesota and a die-hard Trump supporter really don't have a lot in common and I don't think removing them from online social media will result in civil discourse between the two. There are very real differences there that are coming to a head.

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