I agree with the fact that people should be allowed to say what they want even if I don't agree. Without this, people will only be in their own echo chamber and never compromise or reason with others.

Freedom of speech is very important but not for that reason.

Freedom of speech is a basic right without which free society is impossible but not because with freedom of speech people will step outside of their own echo chambers and start compromising and reasoning with others.

In societies where there is no free speech, there are no echo chambers. Echo chambers are a product of freedom of speech.

People creating their own echo chambers and refusing to compromise and reason with others (=people with differing opinions) is what happens when people have an abundance of avenues through which to express their opinions. See, people naturally seek like-minded company. When they can do it online, they will. Reasonable debate with those with differing opinions and compromising with them is painful because it involves some degree of self-reflection and examining your own beliefs to find out which of them you can compromise on at a minimum.

What the Internet did was to enable the subscribers of every belief system to form an echo chamber to reinforce that belief system. As a result, there is no platform for civilized debate. There's just different groups screaming and hurling insults at each other and sometimes even propagating all sorts of wacky conspiracy theories.

For one thing, this has caused democratic processes to suffer. But there are other reasons to value the smorgasboard of opinion present on the Internet. It is valuable for like-minded people, sometimes separated by great geographical distances, to come together. My life has been greatly enriched by the Internet in many ways.

I see the breaking up of oligopolies as the greatest benefit of decentralized media. It's a serious problem that extreme levels of wealth has been extracted from billions of people to a handful of people like Zuckerberg. It would be vastly preferable to have millions of people to earn leverage their computers to earn an income from hosting media content rather than be Zuck's cash cows.

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