'Social media is the greatest barrier to intelligent debate'

Debating this motion in a few days, would like to hear some other opinions on this.

It encourages more debate.

Some of it is low class.

Some sites like Quora. do encourage high debate and exchange of information. Others are just interested in clicks and dont care.

Reply 2

ejmoney

Original post by 999tigger

It encourages more debate.

Some of it is low class.

Some sites like Quora. do encourage high debate and exchange of information. Others are just interested in clicks and dont care.

But would a site like quora be considered social media? I'm on the side of IT IS a barrier to intelligent debate (the harder side in my opinion) and I want to ensure we stick to social media and not just online.

To me, social media is like facebook twitter instagram etc.

Reply 3

Miss Maddie

Yeah - people can block stuff they dislike rather than be forced to debate it. Any good view can withstand scrutiny.

Reply 4

AngeryPenguin

Original post by Madeline_H95

Yeah - people can block stuff they dislike rather than be forced to debate it. Any good view can withstand scrutiny.

Many good views don't stand up to scrutiny. A lot of good arguments are hard to articulate. Just look at how innocent people can be imprisoned.

The dangers of echo-chambers are echoed every time by the right-wing on here, but there are dangers to overly adversarial battlegrounds for ideas too. Look at the Unabomber - the CIA's program that radicalised him involved breaking him down psychologically by running each of his fundamental beliefs through defence lawyers and attacking them mercilessly.

Reply 5

999tigger

Original post by ejmoney

social media
noun noun: social media; plural noun:

social medias websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.

Reply 6

HighOnGoofballs

To claim that social media is the greatest barrier to intelligent debate, you would have to prove that people were going out of their way to debate intelligently pre-social media. If such a fact cannot be established, it's hard to see social media as a barrier - it's more of an addition to society in which stupidity festers.

Moreover, you would also have to establish that if social media were to disappear, the intelliectual debates would flourish...which, I fail to see as a defensible position.

Reply 7

Napp

You could always raise the obvious point that when people debate online it almost always seems to degenerate into mud slinging. Not to mention Godwins law :rolleyes:

Reply 8

AngeryPenguin

Original post by Napp

You could always raise the obvious point that when people debate online it almost always seems to degenerate into mud slinging. Not to mention Godwins law :rolleyes:

fuk u nazi

Reply 9

Napp

Original post by AngeryPenguin

fuk u nazi

Buy me dinner first and we'll talk.

Reply 10

AngeryPenguin

Original post by Napp

Buy me dinner first and we'll talk.

first send pic of vagene or bob pls

Reply 11

CookieButter

I think online debates serve a constructive purpose. Thanks to online debate I've been exposed to many things that I did not know before. its a good platform for sharing and developing ideas.

A couple of years ago nobody on the internet knew that thanks to sexist laws women in this country are exempt from prosecution for rape. This has been the case for almost 150 years in this country yet nobody knows about it. One thread, one article, one blog, one debate involving a couple hundred people and two years later the good majority of people on the internet now know this for a fact. Social media sites serve a very important platform for sharing and developing ideas through debate.