Demolishing the Global Town Square

Paul Ford commenting on the “marketplace of ideas” and the “global town square”:

you think that you’re delivering ideas, debate, and philosophical exchange. You are not...What you are delivering, always, is validation. You can’t escape this when you are making content. People consume the content, seeking validation in context. No one organically seeks out conflict and pressure against their carefully constructed belief system.

We thought we were getting a global space to discuss ideas, allowing the best ones to rise to the top for everyone’s benefit. What we got was the exact opposite: a global space where nothing can be discussed.

it’s bizarre that we thought that this could be the global town square, because it’s actually the opposite. It’s a system for keeping ideas out of the commons because it’s too intense and too emotional. And so what you end up with is everybody having conversations in the group chat back along their ideological lines [and pointing to stuff out in the global space] and going, “that’s a nightmare”.