it haunts me sometimes that the internet is potentially the greatest empathy-training tool created thus far, but it's not often thought of like that
@uma as a controversial opinion: i kind feel like part of this is due to the way social media is designed and thus experienced. mastodon feels special and nice b/c it's small - smallness is actually a critical part of the process, i think. most social media is simply too big, and designed to grow (sometimes without regard for it's users!)
@uma people want to share and empathize, but there's different sizes of sharing and empathizing, and being pushed into a space that's too big is exhausting and /dangerous/.
like, i think the reason tumblr & call out culture have gotten to where they have is b/c the system is too large and too flat, there's no barriers really.
we turn to moderation and reporting tools as means of mitigating this but... the issue of scale and the need for a human touch presents problems
@uma anyways my point is that while public spaces do need to be moderated, perhaps what we also need is not a few big spaces, but many small ones
@uma The expression "human scale" reflects what you say.
More internet spaces at human scale, less at industrial scale. They should feel like villages where everyone knows each others rather than big cities full of anonymous.
@Feufochmar ahh yes, thank you! that's a good phrase to know, it captures the idea well.
and yeah, the internet at the industrial scale feels cold and empty by comparison to at human scale