Preempting the "Echo Chamber" Criticism of Liberty.me

Science & Technology: Internet

Kevin Vallier April 30, 2014 at 1:00 pm

I suspect one of the first criticisms that Liberty.me will face is that it’s creating an ideological echo chamber for libertarians. The thought is that this will make participants more ideological, separated from reality and hostile to their ideological competitors. I don’t think this will happen, as Liberty.me isn’t focused on reinforcing ideology, but I suspect someone will claim as much.

Here’s a potentially neat way to pre-empt the problem: a “Challenges” category of topic, news, etc. I’m not sure where to put it, but it could link to articles and ideas and books critical of liberty. That way, people could choose to confront themselves with challenges to liberty in a direct way.

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Matt Pritchard April 30, 2014 at 1:08 pm

Some people are going to make that criticism no matter what, and they will always be partially correct (this is a social network for libertarians after all). *But* those same people will sit on facebook in their libertarian facebook groups, follow libertarian news pages, and eventually post articles to facebook that were written on liberty.me. In this respect, liberty.me is no more an echo chamber than any other social network.

The advantage of liberty.me (even if you aren’t a paying member) is that a large amount of high quality content and news will be available in one centralized place. I don’t have to hunt down articles by my favorite libertarian authors because most of them will be featured on the main page in one location. For new authors looking to build an audience, liberty.me offers prime real estate with a built in set of subscribers.

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David Montgomery April 30, 2014 at 1:58 pm

Everyone here is united by their passion for liberty, but that certainly doesn’t make it an echo chamber. I’ve read articles and discussions from people across the liberty spectrum — ancaps, minarchists, Constitutionalists, crypto-anarchists, religious and secular libertarians…all communicating together in a friendly and intelligent way. It’s remarkable — unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The echo chambers are sites run by editor-gatekeepers who only publish content they approve of. Liberty.me is the polar opposite of an echo chamber.

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Kevin Vallier April 30, 2014 at 4:22 pm

The problem is that what looks like diversity up close looks like homogeneity from far away. We see diversity, but non-libertarians see uniformity. That is partly their problem, but maybe we could use some sort of dilution, just to make sure we’re on the right track.

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  Rick Rule April 30, 2014 at 4:27 pm
  
  Kevin
  
  I really like your idea. I have a couple of “pet pinko’s” I like, genuine, sincere, misguided statists. I’m going to propose to them that they post here, I’ll pay their membership dues, and then we can POLITELY, repeat POLITELY, debate their positions from a libertarian perspective. We only convert others one at a time. Did I mention that we conduct these discussions, POLITELY?
  
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  Kevin Vallier April 30, 2014 at 4:28 pm
  
  Thanks! Now we just have to get Jeff’s attention. Can we tag him?
  
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  Rick Rule April 30, 2014 at 4:33 pm
  
  I have a rotary brain in a digital world… if someone is going to ” tag” him, that would have to be you. I don’t know what that means, let alone how to do it!
  
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Jeffrey Tucker April 30, 2014 at 7:33 pm

I would be happy with this of course. I’ve been an editor most of my life but this site already convinces me that we don’t need them. The articles here have been superb!

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  Cloudius Albinus May 2, 2014 at 3:50 pm
  
  “Here, Here!” Cheers! Good Call Jeff! The spontaneous order in effect here is absolutely tremendous!!! Let it fly!
  
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Tiffany Madison April 30, 2014 at 11:09 pm

Very cool idea, Kevin. It’s been added to our features request. I really appreciate that clever thought. 🙂

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  Kevin Vallier May 1, 2014 at 11:23 am
  
  Thank you! Awesome!
  
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Liam May 1, 2014 at 11:33 am

Honestly, there is nothing like debating an actual socialist or Keynesian. You can know every argument in the book, but debating these issues takes more than just knowledge: It takes practice.

If only there was a sister site called equality.me with which we could have organized debates against socialists and the likes 😛

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  Rick Rule May 2, 2014 at 3:27 pm
  
  This is our site! We pay for it and benefit from it. It is for profit, valuable and sustainable. The traffic and content generated by these discussions is useful and valuable to this site, why should we give it away. They host these conversations here, in our house, graciously. Lets develop the knowledge and the patience to win, and lets share both with our own community here, at our own site.
  
  I think our own persuasion lab would be useful and amusing.
  
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