And that's the key problem. People are more divided than ever, especially in politics, to the point where rational discussion is nearly impossible.

Instead of letting people separate into echo chambers, it seems much better to force everyone to be in the same space, which should result in people hearing each side of an argument. Use moderation to punish people who don't act civilly, which should eliminate the worst offenders.

I prefer things to be self moderated as much as possible, but not to the point where echo chambers can form. Some ideas:

- content gets removed after N reports - users with N reported posts get shadow-banned for some period (exponential scale) - users get N reports, which get replenished faster if reports result in content removal - users that brigade get their reports silently nixed (e.g. you consistently report content along with the same users)

Or something along those lines. Just having an open forum leads to one group out-shouting other groups, which leads to echo chambers. There must be some moderation, but not so much as to recreate the problem a different way.