I think I’ve argued against this in many threads, and against many users. People come and say there is an echo chamber, then I scroll back up and put all the comments into a few simple buckets (support the supposed echo chamber position, against the supposed echo chamber position, unrelated to) and find that by count posts or users presenting an opinion, the echo chamber accusation just isn’t supported.
I’m going through my own post archive for instances of “echo chamber” and finding the following:
- I first noticed this “echo chamber” used to discredit progressive discussion back in gamergate in discussions of Sarkeesian
- In one case a person accused the BBS of being an “echo chamber” because they agreed with a particular post (that was not deleted, obviously) and no one else seemed to
- A case where three people argued for X and five argued for Y and someone said the BBS was an echo chamber for X
- A case where, over a 276 post discussion, six men arguing for X largely agreeing that the BBS was an echo chamber for not X because three women were arguing for not X
- An instance where I used it jokingly to refer to the fact that BB is pretty pro-maker and pro-3D printing
- Someone saying that it was interesting to them that even when Cory posted something outside our normal “echo chamber” we just parroted it back gleefully - that is, someone seeing evidence that we are not an echo chamber and interpreting it as evidence that we are
- A case where I could find at least four different viewpoints on the issue which most people would think was a for/against issue that we were supposed an echo chamber for (including the back and forth “That’s a useless oversimplification.” to “I think it’s a useful oversimplification”)
- One case where people said that “Targeted Individuals” retreat into echo chambers
I have done the work to count posts and re-read threads on numerous occasions. Based on my rereading of some of these posts and a few comments from the threads they were in I’d say:
- BBS has diverse posters with diverse points of view (that is, it is not an echo chamber)
- The accusation of “echo chamber” is leveled at least as often by the majority against the minority as the other way around (though obviously this is skewed by my tendency to only step in where this was the case)
- “Echo chamber” is used as a “tu quoque” by alt-right/gamergate/redpill to validate their displays of aggression towards people they disagree with
