This could be a tool that works across the entire internet but in this case I'm mostly thinking about platforms like Lemmy, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram etc. I'm not necessarily advocating for such thing but mostly just thinking out aloud.
What I'm imagining is something like a truly competent AI assistant that filters out content based on your preferences. As content filtering by keywords and blocking users/communities is quite a blunt weapon, this would be the surgical alternative which lets you be extremely specific in what you want filtered out.
Some examples of the kind of filters you could set would for example be:
- No political threads. Applies only to threads but not comments. Filters out memes aswell based on the content of the media.
- No political content whatsoever. Hides also political comments from non-political threads.
- No right/left wing politics. Self explainatory.
- No right/left wing politics with the exception of good-faith arguments. Filters out trolls and provocateurs but still exposes you to good-faith arguments from the other side.
- No mean, hateful or snide comments. Self explainatory.
- No karma fishing comments. Filters out comments with no real content.
- No content from users that have said/done (something) in the past. Analyzes their post history and acts accordingly. For example hides posts from people that have said mean things in the past.
Now obviously with a tool like this you could build yourself the perfect echo chamber where you're never exposed to new ideas which probably is not optimal but it's also not obvious to me why this would be a bad thing if it's something you want. There's way too much content for you to pay attention to all of it anyway so why not just optimize your feed to only have stuff you're interested in? With a tool like this you could quite easily take a platform that's an absolute dumpster fire like Twitter or Reddit and just clean it up and all of a sudden it's useable again. This could possibly also discourage certain type of behaviour online because it means that trolls for example could no longer reach the people they want to troll.
The problem with filtering political content is people are pretty bad at identifying their blind spots. It's a pretty common trap that some people fall into where what they want as non-political conversation is actually just conversation which doesn't challenge their political view.
The same people will then conclude that the tool is making "political" choices in what it's hiding from them.
You're also focusing a lot on left vs right. What about "third way" or centrist politics? What about fringe groups that people don't really consider left or right? How does this work with different countries having different ideas of what's left and what's right (Overton window)? For example, I'd say the US doesn't have a left and right, it has a centre-right and a far-right party.
Finally plenty of people are happy in their echo chambers, despite them being terrible for a person. Challenging and reflecting on the way you fundamentally think about the world (basically what politics boils down to) is hard and sometimes unpleasant. It's easy to see how many people go down the easy road where they double down on existing opinions and seek out echo chambers.
Idk why people expect viewers want to have their ideas challenged when they’re just wanting a general idea of the happenings in the world.
Like I want to know when the Houthis have hit another ship, causing an environmental disaster in the Red Sea (fertilizer). I DO NOT want to know about some bullshit laws being passed in a no name jurisdiction by some no name judge in a no name state that will get overturned in a month. It doesn’t affect me.
attabit.com is a good example of this AI summary done right.
But let me make myself clear. Nobody wants to be subjected to your ideology and echo chambers are fine. It’s not my responsibility to open up my attention to whatever it is you think is socially important at the time.