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Nothing is ever so black and white or night and day as to be perfectly separable into binary categories - e.g. it tends to get dark at night, but a light sensor or timer could be confused by a moonlit night being brighter than a cloudy day, or like someone or an animal walking in front of the former and thus casting a localized shadow even on a fairly bright day.

Yes obviously echo chambers "work", or else they would not exist. They are imperfect solutions to some of the real problems that people face. Perhaps we can come up with better solutions, which will require even more work, not because they are binary="bad", but rather bc despite working to solve some problems (kicking out trolls reduces the effectiveness of their campaigns of harassment tactics), they do not work well for other issues, namely they leave someone vulnerable to be misled into believing whatever the owner/admin/mod chooses to feed their sheeple.

And make no mistake: similar to hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, Lemmy.ml is also very much of an echo chamber, as too is Lemmy.world. Though also the Lemmy code being offered to the whole world free of charge is quite friendly - both are true at the same time.:-)

Also true is that Lemmy.world blocking some of the worst behavior present on the Fediverse is helpful, even while that happens at the expense of it being an echo chamber. At some point, if 1+1=2 but some people disagree and say that it =3, and I mean VEHEMENTLY - and more to the point abuse the power control systems like anonymous downvotes on EVERYTHING that someone posts regardless of its own content - then yes, such people need to be banned. Not bc of their toxic beliefs, but due to their abusive actions. That much isn't even evidence of an "echo chamber" effect - that's just mandatory keeping a community alive rather than allowing all the members to be harassed and thus everyone quits.

The real problem, afaik, comes from there being far too few volunteers to do all the necessary work, hence those that do step up tend to be power hungry dictators. And yes, again, Lemmy.ml admins are known for exactly this - don't pretend that everyone else is an echo chamber but they somehow are not.

Though personally the reason I blocked it is bc the users there, I guess bc they get used to talking only inside of their echo chamber provided to them, are far less well-behaved than the average across the Fediverse. I was able to delete so very many individual user blocks that I had made previously to blocking the entire instance, plus new people that now I don't have to have the displeasure of getting to know them first before not having to see them anymore. Me refusing to listen CONSTANTLY to "b-b-but 1+1=3", without my consent... okay call my solution an "echo chamber" if you like, but it's just not fun or worthwhile (and frankly, it's not an echo chamber, not quite, bc I discuss plenty of things that I do not agree with, with people who are polite:-).

Not all "opinions" are equally thought out or valid. And then yeah there's agitprop too but I've been ignoring the intentional stuff in order to focus on useful idiots who simply don't know themselves even what they are saying, but ofc agitprop would be an even more extreme version. Anyway, it's a personal decision not a defederation - I'm not making any decisions for anyone else, just stating a preference, and sharing that thought and yes advocating for others to know that they can similarly enact their preferences, even if theirs happen to differ from mine:-). e.g., perhaps they'll create an account on Lemmy.ml - that is their right and I would not dream of trying to stop anyone from such, though also I demand to be free myself to enact my own freedom of choices.:-)