Just to clarify, I don’t think it’s a problem that hatred is minimal here, and I don’t just mean politics.
I feel like I very rarely see alternative opinions about anything, whether it be software, ai, news about companies, etc. it just seems like everyone universally agrees about anything with only a tiny handful of exceptions.
It makes me hesitant to believe I’m on the “correct side” and I never see any arguments from opposition. This makes me worried that I’m in some sort of echo chamber. In real life, I do see much more diverse opinions and, if I only used the fediverse for social media, would likely be weaker in defending my own since their arguments would be “new” to me.
I understand the reasons for which the fediverse has pretty collective opinion, but it does still worry me. I want to be able to see all the other people with their own thoughts (given it’s respectful) on the Internet, which should be the most capable tool to do so.
I think this is a problem inherent to this style of communication, whether massive social media or individual niche forums. People used to talk a lot about groupthink, though I don’t hear that term as often today. It seems to be a fundamental thing for human beings to come to a consensus as a group, and then for some individuals to react to that negatively. When positive this looks like science, accepting consensus as truth to have a foundation to work off of, and individuals rejecting the consensus to build stronger foundations.
Outside of the Internet we have much less ability to change our environments, so there’ll naturally be more diversity within groups of neighbors, coworkers, students, etc. But here, there is so much less friction to movement, similar people tend to group up more quickly.
The solution is probably not to expect opposition within a group, but to be a member of many separate groups. You are definitely in an echo chamber, but at the end of the day what you choose to accept as true is your responsibility.