alt Hacker NewsOK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly:
> The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor.
That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're moderates in the sense that anti- is the conventional position to take. But they have opinions. (They could also be in the minority, and this fear of speaking up would still be a bad thing.)
Otherwise, if they're truly moderate, but are frightened into silence supposedly, what would they be saying if they dared? "Everybody listen to me, I have no strong opinion on this matter"?
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> OK, so to start with you're saying that there's a small noisy pro- side, and a small noisy anti- side, and a moderate majority. But then suddenly:
> The Majority Goes Silent - When the majority of people looks at the feed and assumes they're outnumbered, people will often self-censor.
> That's not the same thing, is it? Here the majority is, say, anti-, but they are being frightened by a noisy pro- minority. They're moderates in the sense that anti- is the conventional position to take. But they have opinions.
I don't follow your argument (which is different to the one in the article):
There's a small noisy pro-side, a small noisy anti-side and a majority, but not necessarily a moderate majority!
The article doesn't say anything about the majority being moderates, does it?
> Otherwise, if they're truly moderate, but are frightened into silence supposedly, what would they be saying if they dared? "Everybody listen to me, I have no strong opinion on this matter"?
Not necessarily true; there's a noisy pro minority, a noisey anti- minority and a silent majority. Who know if they are pro or anti or equally split?
And even if they were actually moderate, they could see opinions like "everyone should have guns" and "no one should have guns", and keep their majority moderate opinion of "people should be allowed guns depending on whether they cross some objective line into dangerous or neglectful behaviour".
That's both a moderate and a majority position, and yet you won't see it expressed in a forum because all the noise is being made by the two extremes.
The argument you're making is that the silent majority must necessarily be moderates, but that's not a requirement.
But that assumes a black-and-white viewpoint - one or the other. But there's a big nuanced gray area that is underrepresented everywhere.
Take immigration or refugees - the obvious thing is that you're either for or against it. But there's so many things in between, so much nuance, etc. And that takes reasonable adults to think and talk about.
Perhaps this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
I have a similar intuition to yours. On many topics it isn't so much self-censorship, it is simply that for many people there is rightly no motivation to go around announcing their nuanced, moderate, or no-opinion-but-unimpressed-by-extremes positions.
Even when people do have strong opinions on a topic (and a moderate opinion can also be strong), most people have better things to do with their lives than to go around blasting their opinions to the world as a hobby. And the few in this camp that do are not very likely to be amplified by the engagement algorithms.